Antonino Russo Giusti was an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 drama

Drama

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...

tist.

After passing his youth in Belpasso

Belpasso

Belpasso is a comune in the Province of Catania in the Italian region Sicily, located about 150 km southeast of Palermo and about 10 km northwest of Catania...

, Giusti studied the classics at Catania before taking his diploma in jurisprudence

Jurisprudence

Jurisprudence is the theory and philosophy of law. Scholars of jurisprudence, or legal theorists , hope to obtain a deeper understanding of the nature of law, of legal reasoning, legal systems and of legal institutions...

, upon completion of which he dedicated himself to forensics

Forensics

Forensic science is the application of a broad spectrum of sciences to answer questions of interest to a legal system. This may be in relation to a crime or a civil action...

. He eventually became artistic director of the communal theater in Catania, which showed his first work in the Sicilian language

Sicilian language

Sicilian is a Romance language. Its dialects make up the Extreme-Southern Italian language group, which are spoken on the island of Sicily and its satellite islands; in southern and central Calabria ; in the southern parts of Apulia, the Salento ; and Campania, on the Italian mainland, where it is...

, L'eredità dello zio canonico; this was followed in 1920 by U Spirdu, with music by Francesco Paolo Frontini

Francesco Paolo Frontini

Francesco Paolo Frontini was an Italian composer. He studied music with his father, composer Martino Frontini; he also studied the violin with Santi D'Amico, playing a concert with him at the town concert hall at the age of 13...

 conducted by Gaetano Emanuel Calì

Gaetano Emanuel Calì

Gaetano Emanuel Calì was an Italian composer, orchestra conductor, and bandleader. He was student of Francesco Paolo Frontini, under whom he began to study classical instead of popular music....

In 1923 Tommaso Marcellini showed L'eredita dello zio canonico on the Italian mainland for the first time; it was performed at the communal theater of Trapani

Trapani

Trapani is a city and comune on the west coast of Sicily in Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Trapani. Founded by Elymians, the city is still an important fishing port and the main gateway to the nearby Egadi Islands.-History:...

 under its Sicilian title, U tistamentu di lu ziu canonicu. Marcellini later showed another one of Giusti's plays, Il biberon di papà, giving it the Sicilian title of A sucarola du papà.

Among Giusti's other plays was Un autore di assalto, a comedy that some branded Pirandellian

Luigi Pirandello

Luigi Pirandello was an Italian dramatist, novelist, and short story writer awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934, for his "bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and the stage." Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written...

. He authored 27 plays total over the course of his career.

Angelo Musco acquired the rights to L'eredita dello zio canonico, playing the protagonist of a film of the same name produced in 1934; he also played the same character in the film Gatta ci cova.

Giusti died in Catania in 1957.