Jon Mirsalis on Piano. (Doll Wife). Maman Poupée, one of the best and most successful melodramas by the director-actress team of Carmine and Soava Gallone, reminds us that divas, while larger than life off-screen, could play heroines of another sort on-screen. Soava portrays a wife and mother whose innocence and joy cause her husband, a vain man with political ambitions, to dub her "doll wife." Her happy personality gradually changes to bitter disillusionment when she is confronted with the fact of her husband's infidelity with a card-carrying femme fatale. Even a doll can wield a knife, when pushed to it. "Soava Gallone was a delicate, deeply moving interpreter whose measured gestures and docile expression contrasted with the mannerisms and exaggerated attitudinizing adopted by many divas of the time." (Eva Vittadello)