(Spoilers included) This is one of the many film vehicles for Italian tenor Beniamino Gigli made during the 1930s and 1940s in Italy or Germany. It was shot in two versions, with a slightly different casting for the German version, although much of the Italian version seems to be a dubbing of the German one. The plot is consummate silliness and a pretense for providing an opportunity for what the audience really wanted, to hear the smooth-voiced Gigli sing. Here he plays a famous American tenor (yep!) who wants to spend an incognito vacation on a farm near Naples. We see him robustly singing with vocal alacrity in the fields of the Campania countryside in the opening scene. He spends some time providing the singing voices for a local marionette operatic theatre; hence the film's title. He is mistaken by a woman journalist as a hitherto unknown singing voice, and she devotes much of her allotted movie time launching the career of this "unknown talent", her "discovery." The tenor plays along with the woman's plan as a lark, and feigns backwardness during her musical tutoring and "education." They have fallen in love, of course, and only on the evening of the gala surprise event, does she realize she has been duped. The audience, expecting a novice, realize they are watching an already famous talent. Humiliated, she plans to run off. Not to worry, though. Love annuls the embarrassment and all looks well for the two as a couple headed for the altar. The cheerily clueless woman is played nicely by Carla Ruest, who occasionally suggests Loretta Young. How many musical-operatic films like this has director Carmine Gallone made over his long career? Many, many, many indeed.
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