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manuscript rolled up in his luggage when he noticed a play-bill for
Harlequin struck mute through fear
, to beperformed by the San Samuele players in the Roman arena. To his astonishment the first actor to come out on stage was Casali, the very man who had commissioned his new play. The actor introduced Goldoni to Imer, who invited the young lawyer to dine with them the following night. Goldoni found the entire theatrical company, including Zanetta Casanova, assembled at Imer’s lodgings. ‘The dinner was splendid,’ he later wrote, ‘the gaiety of the comedians charming. They made up couplets, and sang drinking songs. They anticipated my every wish, as if they were whores who wanted to seduce me.’ After they had eaten, Goldoni nervously read out
Belisario
in front of a rapt audience, and to his relief their applause at the end was genuinely enthusiastic. ‘Imer took me by the hand, and in a magisterial tone said to me:
Bravo,’
he reminisced later in his
Memoirs
. ‘Everyone complimented me; Casali wept with joy.’ 9
    Goldoni ended up spending the remainder of the season with the company. Imer’s talent as an impresario inspired the deepest respect in him. ‘He contrived the introduction into comedy of musical interludes which had long been inseparable from grand Opera, and had at last been suppressed to make way for Ballets. Comic opera had had its origins in Naples and Rome, but it was unknown in Lombardy and in the State of Venice, so Imer’s project succeeded, and the novelty produced much pleasure, and was highly profitable to the Comedians.’ Imer’s personal qualities also impressed him: ‘Without having had much of an education, [he] possessed wit and intelligence; he loved Comedy with a passion; he was naturally eloquent, and would have been very well-suited to play the extempore lover, following the Italian fashion, if his height and his face had matched his talent. Short, thick-set, without a neck, with small eyes, and a flat nose, he appeared ridiculous in serious roles, and exaggerated characters were not in fashion.’ 10
    There was one part, Goldoni noted, which Imer played to perfection: that of Zanetta’s admirer. ‘I perceived that he had a decided inclination for his friend the widow; I also saw that he was jealous of her.’ 11 When Imer commissioned him to create a shortthree-act musical interlude for the troupe, Goldoni wrote
La Pupilla
, basing the plot on the couple’s relationship. It was a daring move, and one which Imer instantly noticed. However, Goldoni’s interlude ‘seemed so well crafted to him, and the attack so honest and delicately put, that he forgave me for the pleasantry. He thanked me, he praised me, and immediately sent off the piece to Venice, to the composer whom he had already commissioned.’ 12
    When the players returned to Venice that September Goldoni accompanied them, and on 24 November, the Feast of St Catherine,
Belisario
was premiered at the San Samuele. Venetian audiences, like those throughout most of Europe, were accustomed to talking, gambling and flirting their way through every performance, but Goldoni’s naturalistic characters and dialogue reduced them to an unprecedented silence broken only by applause between the acts and the occasional cry of pleasure. At the close of the play the actors took so many curtain calls that they broke down with laughter and tears of joy. And when the principal actor came back out on stage to announce the next day’s play, the audience drowned him out with cries of
Questa, questa, questal – This, this, this!
. – signifying that they wanted to see
Belisario
again. In the end, the play was performed every night for three weeks. On the sixth night, Imer inserted
La Pupilla
into the intermezzo, with Zanetta playing the romantic role which had been written for her. This became even more popular than
Belisario
.
    Thanks partly to