COPYRIGHT SCOTT ALEXANDER YOUNG, SYDNEY 1992

Casanova, Casanova; the name echoes across the centuries as a byword for lusty adventure. As well it might, for in his extraordinary life, Casanova was to come face to face with an army of enemies; mostly because he couldn't keep it in his trousers. If not gambling, or acts of exaggerated chivalry, then it was usually what he referred to as his 'steed' that would get him into trouble. And time and time again this haughty, cunning and intrepid rake would outwit his foes, and emerge, bloodied sometimes, yes, but bowed? Not for long.

Born in 1725, Giancomo Casanova was the illegitimate son of an actress and a Venetian theatre owner. Giancomo refused to let 'low origins' stand in his way. In his life, he was variously a priest, librarian, philosopher, cook, playwright and producer, army officer, author, violinist, mining consultant, dancer, student, merchant banker, poet, silk manufacturer, lottery organiser, mathematician - and lawyer. He was also a pimp (to Louis XV, no less), as well as spy, snob, con-man, charlatan, abortionist, prisoner and escapee, duelist, sexual philanderer, murderer - and lawyer. (Well, there are all kinds of lawyers).  More than anything else perhaps, Giancomo Casanova was a lover of women, and that by all accounts, including his memoirs (and some deductive reasoning) seems to have been the key to his success with the sex. To be succinct, Giancomo spent his adult life wandering around Europe getting out of tight spots as effortlessly as he placed himself in them. A man for his century - and an inspirational figure in this puritanical era. As indeed are the manners and mores of his time, to scholars of elegaic debauchery. It was a time when sexual relations were often no more concealed than eating. In fact they were often performed at the same time, at the table, but only by the very best sort of people.

This was the world in which Casanova cut his swathe: Fashionable Europe. It was one of royalty, popes, dukes, great ladies and courtiers; and also one of harlots, confidence tricksters, gigolos, charlatans and bounders. As a young man in Rome Casanova was granted a special dispensation by the Pope to read smutty books, hardly unusual in a society where prostitution was frequently managed by the church. There were even select orders of nuns whose main duty was to act as courtesans.

Casanova's own sexual adventures began at the tender age of eleven, with hand relief administered by an understanding eighteen year old peasant lass. There was a hiatus until he was seventeen during which the desperate-to-be-pious lad shunned females. But once he caught on, he really caught on. Casanova lost his virginity to two sisters in the same bed, and so began a career as a gentleman stud of the 1700s, one from which he never looked back; though to judge from the number of times he contracted venereal diseases, (eleven), his discernment was not always impeccable. In his famed memoirs 'Historie de ma vie', he recorded all his amorous escapades, even those which ended in pain, or in the instance of a chambermaid from Turin, red faces: 'At the moment I penetrated her, a loud eruption rather cooled my ardour, so much so that the young girl covered her face to hide her embarrassment. Endeavouring to reassure her with a tender kiss, I started again. But a blast louder than before struck my ears and nose. I kept going, but with each thrust she exploded, as regularly as clockwork'... their ardour eventually disappated in hysterical laughter.

Don't let the vulgar anecdotes fool you, for Giancomo was the dashing saviour of more than one woman in peril; proving that he was capable of finer feelings, as well as flat out lust. It was this chivalrous nature that landed him in real trouble with authority for the first time in his adult life. As a prosperous young man about Rome, he gave money to a pair of star-crossed lovers, enabling them to elope. Roman society was, like much of Europe, as hypocritical as it was decadent, and Casanova's involvement in the affair was seen as a bare faced affront to the city's decency. He was banished, reluctantly, by his friend the Cardinal Acquaviva. (Bet those two were talking about more than catechisms when they got together). Adventures in Rimini, Corfu, Constantinople and all points in between ensued. Eventually Casanova was able to resettle in Venice and once again the sun seemed to shine upon the fortunes of the dashing blade. In his lifetime Casanova would visit every great  city of Europa, including an especially troubled stay in London. But Venice remained the city of his heart, and little wonder. Fellatio, in those days, was known as a 'Venetian kiss'. Sexual love between women, to which Casanova was no stranger, was called 'The Venetian Vice'.

It was also in Venice that he found patrons - suckers - to back him in his preferred career, that of a gambler for high stakes. Casanova once played cards, specifically 'Piquet', for forty two hours without respite against a jealous lover, Pierre Louis d'Entraigues du  Pin. The Frenchman was trounced. When the going was good (which often it was, for Giancomo was a skilful - and spectacularly lucky - gambler) he set off for further travels. To Milan, Parma, Geneva, Dresden, Prague and Paris; where he thoughtfully procured a nymphet for Louis XV's harem.

A trail of broken hearts, jealous husbands and an air of scandal followed Casanova wherever he went, but it was back in his beloved Venice where those wicked, wicked ways would catch up with, and nearly destroy him. Basically, he was getting too big for his handmade silk condom, and the Inquisition went after him. They discovered, among other things, that he was a member of the Freemasons, and guilty of practicing 'Cabbalism': black magic. (In essence, little more than numerology). He was forewarned of what was afoot, and given  time  to  leave Venice. An ignoble position for a Gallant such as Giancomo Casanova: he stayed on. His pride was rewarded with imprisonment in Leads Prison; from which no-one had ever escaped. No-one that is, until Casanova; around eighteen months after being locked up. Contemporary historians cannot decide whether to believe Casanova's own escape story; one of ingenuity and physical courage. Or the more likely version, that he simply bribed the guards. I choose to buy his tall tale - of carefully excavated escape routes, swinging by bed sheets from the prison rooftop to his safety; accompanied, and slowed down by, a fellow inmate: a fat, errant priest. Nobody, after all, disputes that he spent his first night on the run in the arms of a Venetian police chief's wife. And why should they? At thirty two years of age Giancomo Casanova was just at the beginning of a succession of outrageous escapades that would last until the very twilight of his years, which he spent tending a nobleman's library and writing his own incredible memoirs.

The great loves of his life (and there were several) were all spirited creatures with natures as sensual and abandoned as his own; whether princess or prostitute, countess or peasant woman, actress or nun. One of his early loves, Angela Calori, had disguised herself as a 'castrati'; a boy castrated at an early age, for the purpose of playing women's parts in the theatre. Her disguise incorporated a false penis made of gut, enough to dupe the clergy and Roman inquisition, but there was no fooling Giancomo Casanova. At least, not on that subject.