La dama velata is a 2015 Italian-Spanish mystery drama television miniseries directed by Carmine Elia. It was produced by Rai Fiction, Lux Vide and Telecinco Cinema, with a budget of about 10 million euros. It is set in Trentino, in the late nineteenth century. In Italy, the series was broadcast on Rai 1 and Rai 1 HD from March 17 to April 16, 2015.
Plot Clara, a splendid young woman belonging to the noble Grandi family, is raised by the peasants of the San Leonardo estate where she was born. She grew up free from society and established a very intimate relationship with Matteo, an orphan raised with her by the Staineri spouses. Years later, Count Vittorio Grandi, the young woman's father, forces her to return to Trento where the destiny of spending her life with a man imposed upon her awaits her. Count Guido Fossà, a womanizer in debt from head to toe, is the man chosen for her and, although not easy and not at all obvious, love is born between the two. The same love that turned Clara into a woman risks making her unhappy forever, in a context of secrets and plots against her life. The darkness that has entered her life endangers her, eventually making her mentally ill. Clara is locked up in the city mental health institution for hysteria, but manages to escape. Someone pushes her into the waters of the Adige, leaving her to drown and staging a suicide.
Believed to be suicidal by all, Clara is saved by the nuns of the convent of the estate and after recovering she assumes the identity of a Swiss noblewoman. With her face hidden by a black veil she manages to return to her home as a piano teacher to her daughter, Aurora. In this way she is able to reveal the secrets that have loomed over her since the night her mother died giving her life and to protect her daughter.
Cast
Countess Clara Maria Elena Grandi married Fossà portrayed by Miriam Leone.
Daughter of Count Vittorio Grandi and his wife Elena, and Matteo's fraternal twin sister, she was raised by the Staineri family, factors of the San Leonardo estate after the death of her mother, which occurred due to complications during childbirth. She has a very intimate relationship with Matteo, an orphan of the same age (born on the same day) raised by the Staineri family, the two do not know that they are actually fraternal twins. When her father comes, years later, to learn about the relationship between the two of them, he brings back his daughter back to Trento, and decides that she will get married so that he will have a male heir for the house of Grandi. Clara marries Count Guido Fossà at the behest of her father. There is attraction between the two, but the arranged marriage and the Count's dark past hinder the relationship between the two. Despite this, the count learns to love Clara deeply, but he never manages to be completely honest with her. Aurora, their only daughter, is born, but not even the happy event brings serenity to the family. Clara falls victim to the plots of her aunt and cousin who manage, thanks to them slowly drugging her with laudanum on making herself and other people believe that she is going crazy, and to have her locked up in an asylum from which she will escape, thanks to some help, in order to cause her own accident, making everyone believe, that she fell into the Adige river and died. Subsequently, to discover the secrets hidden within her own family, Clara will pretend to be of Emilia of Saint-Hubert, a Swiss noblewoman. She will also manage to exonerate Guido from the accusations of crimes he has not committed, and take revenge on her own aunt Adelaide and cousin Cornelio.
Count Guido Andrea Fossà portrayed by Lino Guanciale.
Son of Count Fossà, he is a womanizer, full of debts and with a dark past. He marries Clara, but continues to lead a worldly lifestyle, but later on he will develop a feeling of true and sincere love towards his wife, which will radically change him. However, he hides various secrets concerning his mysterious past: the death of his first wife in Paris and the death of his business partner and friend, Baron Ludovico Vallauri. He is also accused of Clara's murder. It is Clara herself, who wanders around their house under the false name of Emilia of Saint-Hubert, as the educator of their only-begotten daughter, Aurora, - who finds in her drawer the bottle of laudanum that had poisoned her, as she believes really that Guido is guilty and instigator of his murder. Sentenced to death by shooting, he confesses to Clara, in the guise of Emilia, the whole truth about her history and his innocence. Clara manages to save him by tracking down in France and making confess Gèrard, an old friend who blackmailed Guido by threatening to reveal details about the death of his first wife (who actually committed suicide). During the confession to Clara, Guido reveals that he has sold his share of the silk factory to guarantee an annuity for his daughter and that in his will, he has left the estate of San Leonardo to Matteo and his wife to administrate until Aurora reached the age of majority, thus preventing its sale by Adelaide and Cornelio.
Cornelio Grandi portrayed by Andrea Bosca.
Cousin of Clara and Matteo, and son of Adelaide, he is the administrator of his uncle Vittorio, as well as pretender to the latter's inheritance. Cornelio is violent and opportunistic, he pretends to be Guido's best friend but actually he actively collaborates in his misfortunes. He was raised by his mother in the expectation of becoming the sole heir of the Grandi family. He gets peasant Anita pregnant, and doesn't take responsibility for it. Once he has become the keeper of the family's fortune, Cornelio makes everyone believe that his mother is crazy, even going so far as to have her locked up in an asylum when she becomes obsessed with the "ghost" of Clara, who in the role of Emilia is actually plotting her revenge, making herself seen only by her.
Matteo Staineri/Matteo Grandi portrayed by Jaime Olías.
Matteo is an orphan, but he was raised together with Clara her fraternal twin sister by the Staineri family. He loves Clara dearly and for this he deeply hates whoever speaks ill of or wants to hurt her. Matteo has very strong conflicts with Count Grandi, with Guido, but above all else with Cornelio after the death of Count Grandi. He is chased from the estate by Cornelio, who wants to sell to pocket the value. It turns out that he is Clara's fraternal twin brother, therefore a legitimate heir even if he is second born. Adelaide had stolen him from the arms of her dying mother, in order to then kill him in the Adige, wanting to favor her son Cornelius. However, the basket gets entangled in a reed bed near a nunnery. Matteo enters the service of the Foreigners - above the estate - and is raised by them as a son together with Clara and Anita, the only daughter of the Foreigners. He later marries Anita, and they raise hers and Cornelio son : Giovannino, as their own.
Count Vittorio Grandi portrayed by Luciano Virgilio.
Clara's father, devastated by the death of his wife, refuses to see his daughter and entrusts her to the peasants of the San Leonardo estate (a possession brought to him as a dowry by his wife), as he holds Clara responsible for his wife's death. On the surface he is a stern, rigid and oppressive man. But actually he's a man who suffered greatly from the loss of the woman he loved. The birth of his granddaughter Aurora will awaken the good of the past in him. He has a heart condition, and he dies of a heart attack in the middle of the series.
Adelaide portrayed by Lucrezia Lante della Rovere.
Wife of the deceased brother of Count Vittorio Grandi and the mother of Cornelio, she is a ruthless and greedy woman and demands that her son inherit the wealth and the title of her brother-in-law. She is the architect of the "misfortunes" of the family : she foments Count Grandi's hatred for her daughter, promoting Cornelio in the eyes of her brother-in-law; she slowly poisons Clara after Aurora's birth, managing to make her declare mad and have Guido - unable to understand - accuse her of her death and her disappearance. At the end of the series she will be interned in the mental hospital in Trento by her son Cornelio.
Aurora Fossà, portrayed by Emma Orlandini.
Only daughter of Clara and Guido, she appears for the first time in the 5th episode. Aurora has a very close bond with her maternal grandfather, and with Matteo's son, Giovannino.
Anita Staineri, portrayed by Úrsula Corberó.
Peasant woman, friend of Clara and daughter of the superiors of San Leonardo. She grows up with the latter and with Matteo, with whom she has always been in love. She is the victim of the attentions of Cornelio, with whom she will have a son, Giovannino. She later marries Matteo, and the man "adopts" Giovannino as his son.
Countess Matilde Grandi, portrayed by Mar Regueras.
Count Grandi's sister and Clara's paternal aunt. She is a painter and a modern woman, as she has always refused to marry to live her life freely and travel. She loves Clara as a daughter and is one of her few confidants. She is the only one to whom Clara reveals that she is not dead as everyone believes and aids her in her investigation, constantly fearing for her safety.
Episodes +SeasonEpisodesYear of releaseSeason 1122015
Episode 1: Radici spezzate (Broken roots) The series opens with a flashback of Clara's childhood from her birth in San Leonardo to her return to Trento. We discover right away that Clara has a male fraternal twin, but at first we don't know much about the baby's life after his birth, we are only told that he is still alive, that he was found by nuns soon after their birth, and that his name is Matteo. Clara is educated in San Leonardo by reading her mother's books and keeping in touch with her paternal aunt. She has never seen her father, and uses her mother's silverware to purchase quinine to cure farmers of a potential cholera epidemic. Her cousin Cornelio manages the estate on behalf of Clara's father and treats everyone with contempt; he does not take into account his cousin, he then discovers the shortage of silver and reveals to his uncle that his cousin wants to escape and marry Matteo. It is precisely during one of Cornelio's unwelcome visits that Clara meets the young Guido Fossà - who remains bewitched by her. Cornelio wants to use Guido to convince the chief engineer of the railways to buy the estate to transform it into a coal storage area. Count Grandi, under the threat of having Matteo arrested for the theft of the silver, forces Clara to return to Trento and informs her that he will give her in marriage to have a male heir to whom he can leave their fortune. Arriving in Trento, Clara meets Adelaide, Count Vittorio Grandi's sister-in-law and Cornelio's mother, who seems to be taking care of her.
Episode 2: Nella casa paterna (Inside the paternal house)