Gozzi, Carlo, Conte

Gozzi, Carlo, Conte

▪ Italian author
born Dec. 13, 1720, Venice
died April 4, 1806, Venice

      poet, prose writer, and dramatist, a fierce and skillful defender of the traditional Italian commedia dell'arte form against the dramatic innovations of Pietro Chiari and Carlo Goldoni (Goldoni, Carlo). Admired in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, Gozzi's dramas became the basis of many subsequent theatrical and musical works.

      Born into a noble but poor family, the younger brother of Gasparo Gozzi (Gozzi, Gasparo, Count) (q.v.), Carlo joined the army. On his return to Venice in 1744, he wrote satires and miscellaneous prose and joined the reactionary Accademia dei Granelleschi, a group determined to preserve Italian literature from being corrupted by foreign influences. Gozzi's own crusade was to revive the traditional commedia dell'arte (q.v.). He began by attacking Carlo Goldoni, author of many fine realistic comedies, first in a satirical poem, La tartana degli influssi (1747), and then in an exotic commedia dell'arte play, L'amore delle tre melarance (performed 1761; “The Love of the Three Oranges”), in which he personified Goldoni as a magician and Pietro Chiari as a wicked fairy.

      Following the huge success of this play, Gozzi wrote nine other fiabe (fantastic plays; literally, “fairy tales”), based on puppet plays, Oriental stories, popular fables, fairy stories, and the works of such Spanish dramatists as Tirso de Molina, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, and Miguel de Cervantes. Outstanding among these fiabe are Il re cervo (performed 1762; The King Stag), Turandot (performed 1762), La donna serpente (performed 1762; “The Snake Woman”), and L'augellin belverde (performed 1765; “The Pretty Little Green Bird”).

      Gozzi's fiabe were popular for a time in Italy and had an even more lasting influence elsewhere in Europe, particularly in Germany, where they were published in 1777–78. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and the Schlegels all admired them: Schiller turned Turandot into a serious play, and Friedrich von Schlegel compared Gozzi to William Shakespeare. Turandot was used later as the basis for operas by Ferruccio Busoni (performed 1917) and Giacomo Puccini (performed 1926); L'amore delle tre melarance provided the basis for Sergey Prokofiev's opera The Love for Three Oranges (performed 1921).

      Gozzi also wrote a vivid, if immodest, autobiography, Memorie inutili (1797; The Memoirs of Carlo Gozzi).

* * *


Universalium. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем сделать НИР

Look at other dictionaries:

  • GOZZI (C.) — Héritier d’une vieille noblesse vénitienne déchue, Carlo Gozzi n’est pas un écrivain né. Il ne se manifesta guère, en effet, que pour s’opposer après avoir définitivement fait son choix de la solitude. C’est pourquoi son œuvre est surtout faite… …   Encyclopédie Universelle

  • Carlo Goldoni — Goldoni par Longhi. Activités Dramaturge Naissance 25 février …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Goldoni, Carlo — born Feb. 25, 1707, Venice died Feb. 6, 1793, Paris, France Italian playwright. He practiced law but preferred to write plays, beginning with Belisario (1734). He renovated the commedia dell arte form by replacing its masked stock figures with… …   Universalium

  • Carlo Goldoni — Infobox Writer name = Carlo Goldoni bgcolour = silver imagesize = 200px caption = Carlo Goldoni pseudonym = birth date = 25 February 1707 birth place = Venice death date = 6 February 1793 death place = France occupation = dramatist, librettist… …   Wikipedia

  • Gozzi, Gasparo, Count — ▪ Italian author (conte) born Dec. 4, 1713, Venice [Italy] died Dec. 27, 1786, Padua, Venetia       Italian poet, prose writer, journalist, and critic. He is remembered for a satire that revived interest in Dante and for his two periodicals,… …   Universalium

  • Gasparo Gozzi — (né le 4 décembre 1713 à Venise et mort le 26 décembre 1786 à Padoue) est un écrivain et dramaturge italien du XVIIIe siècle. Biographie Cette section est vide, insuffisamment détaillée ou incomplète. Votre aide est la… …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Italian literature — Introduction       the body of written works produced in the Italian language that had its beginnings in the 13th century. Until that time nearly all literary work composed in the Middle Ages was written in Latin. Moreover, it was predominantly… …   Universalium

  • theatre, Western — ▪ art Introduction       history of the Western theatre from its origins in pre Classical antiquity to the present.       For a discussion of drama as a literary form, see dramatic literature and the articles on individual national literatures.… …   Universalium

  • Lee, Vernon — ▪ English essayist pseudonym of  Violet Paget  born Oct. 14, 1856, Boulogne sur Mer, France died Feb. 13, 1935, San Gervasio Bresciano, Italy       English essayist and novelist who is best known for her works on aesthetics.       Paget was born… …   Universalium

  • Prokofiev, Sergey — ▪ Russian composer Introduction in full  Sergey Sergeyevich Prokofiev  born April 23 [April 11, Old Style], 1891, Sontsovka, Ukraine, Russian Empire died March 5, 1953, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.       20th century Russian (and Soviet) composer who …   Universalium

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
… Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”