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My Son, My Son, Nino, 1976
Marilyn Cohen
An equestrian on a horse
circles the ring.
The rider leaps and turns in the air –
10-year-old Giovanni Zoppé
is the first in circus history
to complete a feet-to-feet somersault
on the back of a galloping horse.
Like the first Zoppé clown,
nine generations earlier,
he is called Nino.
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| An equestrian and a daredevil clown, Nino was born into the American circus, with roots in an Italian circus family that survived two world wars and entertained a pope and the kings and queens of the world.
Like many children of the circus, Giovanni performed before he could walk, riding around the ring atop the shoulders of his father on horseback. When he was 2, his unrehearsed debut brought him his first applause. Waking from a nap in the family trailer and wearing no clothes, he joined his parents in the ring, happily taking his bows.
He and his sisters grew up in the circus and, like children everywhere, they played "circus," charging their parents a dollar admission to see their show. But and unlike other children, instead of Barbie dolls and GI Joe, they played with elephants horses and on the trapeze, and there was always a clown at their birthday parties.
Today, the wirewalking, juggling, unicycling, acrobatic equestrian constructs an edifice of straight-backed chairs and steamer trunks, stacked end to end, 35 feet above the sawdust floor. In his baggy suit and clown nose, the 6-foot-1-inch daredevil climbs and balances atop his precarious tower, triumphant.
A son of a son of the circus, he performs all over the world. As the star of his family's one-ring Circo Zoppé Europa, he and his sister re-enact the romance of the first Zoppé clown and the ballerina, three centuries ago.
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