“Registration number 577 of 30 May 1900 reports that Luisa De Filippo, aged twenty-one, housewife, domiciled in this city, presented herself at eleven in the morning to the secretary of the first Naples-Chiaia section, Cavaliere Oreste Trombaccia , at via Vittoria Colonna number 5, who declared that, at eight in the afternoon of the twenty-sixth of the current month, from her natural union with a celibate man who is not related or related in the degrees that preclude recognition, a child was born who presents me and to whom he gives the name of Eduardo». This was revealed by Candida Carrino, director of the State Archives of Naples, commenting on the document found in which it is discovered that Eduardo De Filippo was born on May 26, 1900 and not on May 24, as reported in all the texts and biographies dedicated to the great Neapolitan playwright and actor. To surprise the experts is the fact that the actor never revealed his mistake during his life, while his natural father, Eduardo Scarpetta, never recognized his son.
Carrino observed that in the document «Luisa De Filippo (mother of Eduardo, ed.) commits, by signing it with an handwritten signature, together with the two witnesses, a forgery in a public deed, withholding the name of the natural father certifying that he was a celibate man not a relative nor similar: Eduardo Scarpetta, king of the Neapolitan theater, at the time forty-seven years old, in fact, had been married for twenty-four years to Luisa’s aunt, Rosa, and had other children out of wedlock in addition to the De Filippo brothers, including, it seems, the poet, playwright and journalist Ernesto Murolo, born from his union with his sister-in-law Anna De Filippo». In fact, Eduardo was not the only child born of Scarpetta’s extramarital relationship with Luisa De Filippo, and the expert adds: «Two years earlier, when she was just 19, on 27 March 1898, Annunziatina, known as Titina, was born. It will probably also be possible to check her birth certificate, to collect unpublished details ». And finally Candida Carrino concludes: «It is surprising how, three and a half days after the birth, Luisa went personally to the Civil State to register Eduardo’s birth. Young and strong, she faced her condition with pragmatism ».
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