The course illustrates in detail the reasons for an extraordinary and unexpected theatrical success, that of the dramaturgical rewriting of the Dante episode of Paolo and Francesca by the young Silvio Pellico. The inexperienced and still unknown Piedmontese intellectual, attracted by the lively Milan of the early nineteenth century and its artistic opportunities, gets involved and throws down a fashionable piece of bourgeois color, romantic and patriotic, overcoming the initial slating of Foscolo . In fact, he (recalibrated the verses of the five 'Dante' acts as best as possible) with the help of Lodovico de Breme had his romantic and capricious Francesca staged by the talented primactress Carlotta Marchionni at the Teatro Re, on August 18, 1815. The success it is immediate, overwhelming, lasting and soon international: completely anomalous, according to the dull workmanship of the verses, the modest aesthetic appearance of the work and especially when compared to the complete silence resulting from the numerous 'themed' rewritings of the time, such as those of Ulivo Bucchi , Luigi Bellacchi Francesco Saverio Salfi and many other authors who did not even have the honor of the scenes, at least in the first and second level companies. The fact is that Pellico becomes' the author - par excellence - of Francesca da Rimini ',' the great tragedy ', an authentic celebrity whose fame will accompany him in the harsh and paradigmatic experience of prison which, with the reading of' My Prisons ', will be the subject of in-depth analysis.