Abstract Despite Andrea Camilleri's success in historical fiction and the Detective Montalbano novels and subsequent television adaptations, it is in the field of theater that Camilleri expresses his best and original ideas. Camilleri's love of theater and theatricality is most present in his penultimate book of the Commissario Montalbano series, Il metodo Catalanotti. In this novel, the murder victim, Carmelo Catalanotti, is both a “good usurer” and an unconventional and passionate stage director who has created a method that transgresses the standard approaches to train actors. In fact, he coerces actors to submit to terrifying physical and emotional tests to satisfy his sadistic desires for control and humiliation. Ultimately, he finds a submissive and masochistic victim who will become his murderer. The article will delve into Camilleri's insights into the depths of the dual but inextricably connected human emotions of sadism and masochism that he frames within the world of theater.
Anthony Fragola (Wed,) studied this question.