Carlo Gozzi
Carlo, Conte Gozzi, (b. Dec. 13, 1720, Venice—d. 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. 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, 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. 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).
