I doubt the name Fregoli nowadays means anything at all to the vast majority of Maltese. One hundred years ago, it had turned into a household word.

Leopoldo Fregoli (1867-1936), the most renowned and versatile quick-change entertainer of all time, had toured the world a few times over, leaving hysterical admirers behind wherever he went.

I well remember my father, when I was a child, dismissing with poorly hidden contempt political turncoats who switched principles with the same ease they changed their socks: “our home-grown Fregoli”.

Father was only borrowing the trendy Italian neologism ‘fregolismo’, used to describe the programmed ambivalence of unprincipled politicians. And my mother, impatient when my sisters took long to change, urged them with affectionate irony to hurry up with the words “make it snappy, Fregoli”.

An autographed photograph of Fregoli in an għonnella, performing in Malta before World War I.

Who was Leopoldo Fregoli?

The international entertainer published his autobiography in 1936, shortly before his death, and what urbane and charming memoirs they turn out to be. Their main failing is an almost total, exasperating absence of dates. In them, he dedicated only two paragraphs to his visits and performances in Malta. He wrote:

“During 1921 and 1922, I remained in Italy for a long tour of all the principal cities from Piedmont down to Sicily, from where I proceeded to Malta. In this island, very Italian by history, language and passion, I had already been twice, at the Britannia Circus.

“On this occasion, I was welcomed by the Royal Opera House, in which an Italian operatic company was performing, enjoying marked artistic success, but registering sales that dwindled every evening. The impresa of the theatre, sensing how business was waning, summoned some courage.  It decided to alternate one evening of opera with two of Fregoli, and this contributed, at least partly, to improve the financial result.

The Royal Opera House in Valletta where Fregoli performed during his second and third visits to Malta.

“Malta then was not – and I believe is still not, given the political turmoil it is passing through (1930s) – an ideal theatrical venue, though the public willingly frequents Italian performances and vents through outbursts of warm enthusiasm, which it fails to display when the shows were British.”

A reader can sense the inevitable Fascist rhetoric of the era.

The uncompromising Roman Fregoli remained famous worldwide as an impersonator, mimic, comedian, actor, musician, and ventriloquist, mostly for the lightning speed with which he changed clothes, costumes, appearance and roles.

He was born in the building in Rome behind the Fontana di Trevi that today houses the Accademia di San Luca, whose members rank as Nobel prize winners in European art, and of which only two Maltese were ever elected members – the seicento sculptor Melchiorre Cafà and my father Vincenzo.

In 1897, the Alhambra in London engaged Fregoli. Though he struggled to speak one word of English, his acts created a sensation and took London by storm. His fame spread, first throughout Europe and then to North and South America. 

A portrait of Leopoldo Fregoli in his heyday.

The impersonator appeared on stage as a man and in split seconds he reappeared as a woman. He mimicked historical personalities, morphing from Verdi to Rossini to Wagner to Mascagni and Paderewski before the eye could take in the change. He sang as tenor, baritone, bass, contralto and soprano, leaving anyone who watched him entirely dumbfounded. In the Paris Olympia, he enjoyed full houses every day for well over a year. Everywhere, orgies of superlatives greeted him.

Fregoli in Malta

As Fregoli hints in his memoirs, he visited and performed in Malta three times, twice before World War I, crowned by a final season sometime after 1923. 

I have not managed to trace in the contemporary media his third visit, but the first two, in September 1907 and November 1913, received extensive coverage.

One characteristic is immediately evident from the contemporary reportages in the local press – the unanimity with which they raved about him and his unique talents.

In Malta, polarisation about governance hardly saw the light yesterday. It flourished – coarse, irrational, bellicose, crass and unyielding – from the moment major political divides appeared in the 19th century.

Fregoli published his autobiography in 1936. This is the cover of the 2007 edition.

The imperialist, pro-colonialist media hated anything Italian with unbridled passion; those who promoted the italianità of Malta’s culture resented anything British.

But on Fregoli, they discovered common ground – they both rooted for him with unqualified abandon. In 1913, Governor Sir Leslie Rundle went personally to the Opera House to applaud him.

He left anyone who watched him entirely dumbfounded

Whichever country he toured, Fregoli included some number in which he changed into the national costume of the guest region. In Malta, one of his flash transformations was into a Maltese lady wearing the għonnella.

I am fortunate to have in my collection of antique portraits of stage entertainers a rare one of Fregoli in a very Maltese faldetta, taken in a local studio.

In Malta in 1907, Fregoli performed daily at the Britannia Circus in Floriana with a number of stage hands and a 35-strong orchestra conducted by his favourite musician, Alipio Calzelli (1865-1956) – a rather lightweight composer of catchy, often humorous, operetta tunes.

Caricatures of Fregoli in an American publication.

When Fregoli came to Malta, the Britannia Circus, housed in a fine building, was almost brand new, having been designed by the architect Godwin Galizia c. 1905. Sadly, destined to be very short-lived, the authorities demolished it in 1918 to make way for the King George V Memorial Hospital, later Boffa Hospital.

Some allowance has probably to be made today for old-fashioned press hysteria, but all the same, the Malta Herald (October 4, 1907) is worth quoting about the expectations for Fregoli’s first night in Floriana: “Fregoli, after bringing the public on the verge of craziness by anxious expectations for his debut, will, without fail, make his appearance in the Britannia Theatre and Circus this evening at 8.30pm.

“The crowd of people that collected yesterday behind the closed doors of the Britannia Theatre was simply enormous, notwithstanding that numerous notices were to be seen everywhere that the debut had to be postponed owing to want of sufficient time to rig out the thousand and one contrivances with which Fregoli enchants his audience.”

The paper adds it was afraid that the sanitary statistics of Malta would have to be altered for the entire ensuing fortnight by the appearance of thousands of cases of a new disease, Fregolimania, highly catching and very difficult to get rid of. The only effective treatment, according to the paper, was to take the suffering patients “to every performance of that modern sorcerer and in the intervals keep up a conversation about his wonderful achievements”.

The Italian-language Malta would not be outdone in either hero-worship inflation or in hyperbole: “If Fregoli, after having toured the world, gathering applause and admiration in so many great cities, always attracting immense audiences, and always meriting the praises of the media of every country ‒ if today he allows us to admire him on the humble stage of the theatres of our island, we must agree that his visit, as we have already said, amounts to a true artistic occurrence, the likes of which we will not be enjoying frequently. Fregoli is an artist with no rivals in his genre. There are many copycats, but the distance between them and Fregoli, the creator of this art of transformation, is impossibly enormous.”

Fregoli, added the Malta daily, “always delivers three hours of pure entertainment – exhilarating comic sketches, astonishing transformations, especially tasteful songs, intriguing sleight of hand, dance, music - always him … him alone … Fregoli!”.

Malta (October 10, 1907) then quotes a foreign newspaper: “Fregoli has received the acclaim of millions, repeat, millions of people, and, in the space of only 12 years, he has filled the pockets of stage producers in Europe and America, and, I believe, his own, with millions of Francs.”

Fregoli visited Malta a second time in November 1913, months before the outbreak of World War I. This time round, he performed both at the Royal Opera House and at the Britannia theatre.

According to a report in the Malta (December 1, 1913), “there was a moment, last Friday, when it seemed that the applause would never come to an end. It lasted almost five minutes, continuous and boisterous”.

A poster promoting a Fregoli spectacle.

Fregoli, according to another feature in the same paper “had bewitched everyone under his spells and captured the public with his endless and uninterrupted mirth for three hours which however seemed like one minute” (Malta, November 29, 1913).

Press adverts for the two visits by Fregoli record the differences in prices, in sterling, between the Britannia and the Opera House.  In the former, a box cost 15s. 0d., a seat in the pit, 2s. 6d. and in the gallery 9d. while in the latter, boxes cost between 12s. 0d. to 6s. 0d., armchairs in the auditorium cost 2s. 6d. and chairs 2s. 0d.

It is perhaps sad to accept that a person universally acclaimed by many as the world’s most genial entertainer today relies on an uncommon psychiatric condition to have his name remembered at all.

In mental health sciences, the Fregoli syndrome refers to disordered patients labouring under the delusion that different persons are in fact the same person who only changes instantly from one disguise to another.

On his tombstone, the entertainer wanted this inscription carved: “Here Leopoldo Fregoli performs his last transformation.”

Acknowledgements

My thanks to Maroma Camilleri and Vicki-Ann Cremona for their substantial input in this research.