Carlo Goldoni Research Articles

«AH, CHE BARBARO APPETITO!», O L’ARTE DELLA TAVOLA NEL CONVITATO DI PIETRA DI GIOVANNI BATTISTA LORENZI PER GIACOMO TRITTO E DINTORNI

In considering Il convitato di pietra by Giovanni Bassista Lorenzi and Giacomo Tritto (Naples, Teatro dei Fiorentini, 1783), this essay aims to first present the characters and the plot, to then study the orchestral score, and, closely linked to the intonation, the metrical choices of the librettist. Finally, it focuses on the topos of the banquet in its various facets, contextualising the 1783 draft with respect to the spoken versions of the pseudo-Cicognini, dating back to around the middle of the seventeenth century, and of Don Giovanni Tenorio (1736) by Carlo Goldoni, and other contemporary adaptations: the other Convitato di pietra (1776) by Nunziato Porta and Vincenzo Righini, Don Giovanni (1787) by Giovanni Bertati and Giuseppe Gazzaniga, Il nuovo convitato di pietra (1787) by Giuseppe Foppa and Francesco Gardi, Il dissoluto punito (1787) by Lorenzo Da Ponte and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

BETWEEN PRESTIGE AND DEPRAVITY: OBSERVATIONS ON THE EARLY RECEPTION OF DANTE AND BOCCACCHIO IN BULGARIA (1878 – 1918)

The current study focuses on the presence of the Italian classic authors Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio in the period from the National Liberation to the end of World War I. The reception scope after the National Liberation is actually hard to trace and some surprising findings might appear on the horizon, especially regarding the scattered in periodicals texts. The published translated books are not indicative of the reception range during the analyzed period and they constitute only a small part of it. A large number of works by the most popular authors reached the Bulgarian audience through translations published in periodicals, textbooks and anthologies. Moreover, a lot of translated works did not appear in specialized philological publications, but in the literary sections and serials of daily newspapers. As early as the first decade after the Liberation, the classics missing from the Revival catalogue of translated literature started to appear. The Bulgarian reader became acquainted with the sporadic works of authors studied at school like Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Torquato Tasso, Ludovico Ariosto, Carlo Goldoni, Vittorio Alfieri, Giacomo Leopardi and Ugo Foscolo. In the defined period, the classic authors were not among the most influential translated Italian writers for the Bulgarian audience during the epoch. This is evidenced by the limited distribution of Konstantin Velichkov’s translation of Inferno, which managed to attract the interest of only a small circle of intellectuals. A main reception factor is the taste of the reading audience, which predominantly in the postliberation conditions still lacked structured esthetic criteria and preferred more common and comprehensible literature.

Comedy against socialist realism in Georgian theater performances of the twentieth century

Since the establishment of the professional theater, about half of the repertoire of Georgian theaters has been comedies. The production of plays by Carlo Goldoni and Carlo Gozzi, brilliant representatives of Italian dramaturgy, was considered appropriate by any censor at every stage of Georgian theater history. With an observation of the Italian and Georgian peoples, many common features can be discovered. Southern temperament, emotions, expressive manners. Because of these similarities in characters, the Georgian audience loves Italian plays and especially Italian comedies. The period of Goldoni staging in Rustaveli theatre was a very tragic time in the history of Georgia. In 1936, when Dimitri Aleksidze staged “The Mistress of the Inn,” was the beginning of the period of Soviet repressions in all Soviet Union. The culmination of these tragic years was 1937: the sequences of violence, most of the Georgian intellectuals were executed. And it may seem strange, that Rustaveli Theater had been busy with comedy performing. However, in fact, it was a way of survival. The play becomes the hope of Georgian public, that normal life will return in Georgia and laugh, something very natural for humanity, will save their homeland.

Mapping Artistic Networks: Eighteenth-Century Italian Theatre and Opera across Europe ed. by Tatiana Korneeva (review)

Reviewed by: Mapping Artistic Networks: Eighteenth-Century Italian Theatre and Opera across Europe ed. by Tatiana Korneeva Anna Giust Mapping Artistic Networks: Eighteenth-Century Italian Theatre and Opera across Europe. Edited by Tatiana Korneeva. (Music History and Performance: Practices in Context, vol. 5.) Turnhout: Brepols, 2021. [231 p. ISBN 9782503584959 (paperback), $157.] Illustrations, bibliography, index. Mapping Artistic Networks, the fifth volume of a series directed by Christine Jeanneret, contains eleven essays selected and revised from papers presented at the conference Mapping Artistic Networks of Italian Theatre and Opera across Europe, 1600–1800, held at the Freie Universität Berlin on 11–12 April 2019 (p. 21). The essays are organized in three parts: "Itinerant Italian," with articles by Melania Bucciarelli, Marc Niubo, Anna Parkitna, and Gesa zur Nieden (pp. 27–85); "Russian Italians," with articles by Tatiana Korneeva, Nadezhda Chamina, Anna Korndorf, and Bella Brover-Lubovsky (pp. 89–170); and "Translational Encounters," with articles by Javier Gutiérrez Carou, Piermario Vescovo, and Massimo Ciavolella (pp. 173–222). The volume opens with Tatiana Korneeva's "Introduction: Italian Theatre Reverberated" (pp. 11–21). Korneeva's research focuses on dramatic theater, opera, and cultural transfer and transmission in early modern and eighteenth-century Italy and Russia. Her choice of these two paradigms for comparative studies probably stems from her education in classical philology (MA from Moscow State University M. V. Lomonosov) and in classical languages, linguistics, and history (PhD from Scuola normale superiore). In recent years, Korneeva has been gradually shifting her focus from classical to Russian studies and notably to opera and commedia dell'arte, which she views from the perspective of a literary scholar. She has produced a substantial number of publications in the field of Italian theater and musical theater in Russia in the eighteenth century, including the coedited critical edition of commedia dell'arte texts staged in St. Petersburg between 1733 and 1735, Edizione scientifica digitale e la traduzione italiana della raccolta degli scenari delle commedie dell'arte rappresentate alla corte di San Pietroburgo dal 1733 al 1735 (2021; https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5802046, accessed 21 January 2023). Korneeva's volume offers a selection of case studies for a wide range of musical activities, from opera seria to opera buffa, following individuals and their careers from Italy to the rest of Europe. While the first part presents cases of actor–singers active in cities such as London ("Italian Singers on the Move," pp. 27–40), Prague ("The Italian Opera in Prague in the Eighteenth Century," pp. 41–52), and Warsaw ("Pursuing Enlightenment Delights," pp. 53–63), the second part is devoted entirely to Russia. This part maintains a heterogeneous character through a rich variety of perspectives, from the survey of biographical data on individuals ("Italian Operisti in Early Eighteenth-Century St Petersburg," pp. 89–110)—which is also present in part 1 ("Operatic Patchworks and Their Crossings," pp. 65–85)—to visual aspects ("The Scenographic Fantasies of Giacomo Quarenghi," pp. 111–24, and "Italian Stage Designers and the Staging of the First Russian Epic Drama," pp. 125–41), to the relationships between individual works and the political context in which they were produced ("Andromeda Rescued on the Banks of the Neva," pp. 143–70). In part 3, the discourse [End Page 625] turns back to the dissemination of works by prominent Italian playwrights and librettists, such as Pietro Metastasio ("The Textual Evolutions of Metastasio's Semiramide," pp. 173–202), Carlo Goldoni ("Carlo Goldoni's Repertoire in Dresden," pp. 203–11), and Giacomo Casanova ("A Mirror of Deceit," pp. 213–22), who is considered here in the context of his literary production rather than his notorious adventures. It is therefore difficult to give a synthetic account of the volume as a whole and to assess it from a specific point of view, apart from noting that thematic consistency may have been a challenge for the editor too. As one can see from the way the book is presented, the volume and conference were conceived as a contribution to research in music and theater mobility, a theme that has become à la page in the last decades. "The mobility of Italian musicians in Europe in the eighteenth century with the...

The Lottery Fantasy and Social Mobility in Eighteenth-Century Venetian Literature: Carlo Goldoni, Pietro Chiari, and Giacomo Casanova

ABSTRACT This article examines the lottery fantasy as a cultural figure and literary topic in the works of Carlo Goldoni, Pietro Chiari, and Giacomo Casanova. The lottery fantasy is to be understood as the dream of social ascension through sudden, life-changing wealth, which exercised a powerful allure on eighteenth-century Europe. The three authors addressed this figure in literary form, through the comedy, the novel, and the memoir, giving distinctly different representations and moral assessments of the lottery as a social and cultural practice. Despite their differences, all three works engage with the fundamental issue underlying the lottery fantasy: an increasing pressure towards social mobility in the nonmeritocratic society of the Old Regime. The article uses Roger Caillois’ categorisation of play as an analytical lens for examining how the three works link the aleatory game of the lottery to cultural practices aimed at meritocratic, social mobility.

Whiteface versus Black Performance: Accounts of Black and Afro-descendant Performers in Portuguese America

Abstract: This study of theatrical performance in Portuguese America examines the prevalence of Black and African descendant performers onstage, whether enslaved or free. On the one hand, I consider the artistic implications of these performers' prominence in terms of how their performances fused European theatrical elements, for instance, with plays being staged in opera houses and featuring works by Pietro Metastasio and Carlo Goldoni. Other engagements with the European tradition suggest Spanish influences, such as performances of comedias and comic farces ( entremezes ). On the other hand, we find Afro-diasporic performance practices on the Portuguese American stage. Additionally, I address methodological challenges: How can this kind of theatricality be analyzed? Is it possible to reconstitute such scenes of Black performance and analyze acting methods, notwithstanding the scarce documentation? Finally, must we interrogate the connections between social organization in colonial Brazil's slave-holding society and forms of artistic expression. Sources mobilized for these queries include travelers' descriptions of performances, documents found in archival sources, and firsthand accounts of fêtes.

К. Гольдони. «Истинный друг»

“The True Friend” is not the most famous comedy by Carlo Goldoni that are often put on a stage. It has a different importance. It was “The True Friend” from which Denis Diderot borrowed the plot for his play “The Natural Son,” then being accused of plagiarism and beginning to defend himself. This controversy contributed to a more explicit designation of various trends in the dramaturgy of the 18th century. The miser’s monologue in “The True Friend” became a source for the baron’s monologue in Pushkin’s “The Miserly Knight,” and the very figure of the miser in this play by Goldoni gained a prominent place in the literary series formed around this “eternal image” (from Plautus and Molière to Pushkin, Gogol and Balzac). “The True Friend” was previously published in Russian only as a collotype and in free translations.

Bertoldo, Bertoldino e Cacasenno: the Original Score Examined

Bertoldo, Bertoldino e Cacasenno was the first comic opera, which opened the Venetian era in the history of opera buffa. Contemporary dictionaries name Carlo Goldoni (text) and Vincenzo Legrenzio Ciampi (music) as its authors. The detailed review of the manuscript (preserved in the Estense Library in Modena) undertaken in the article for the first time, reveals the original “pasticcio” nature of this opera. An analysis of the handwriting and various markings shows that the score contains musical material representing two different productions of the opera: the Venice premiere in 1749 and a performance in London in 1755. Ciampi, who wrote about one third of all the musical numbers for the Venetian premiere of the opera in 1749, was apparently joined in his work by other composers. For the London production in 1755 Ciampi added a newly composed portion of musical numbers, however, still almost a quarter of the entire score remained consisting of insertions of music by other composers. The surviving music also makes it possible to establish exactly what material from the Venetian production was used in the parodies on this opera composed in Paris: Bertholde à la ville by Louis Anseaume (1754) and Le Caprice Amoureux, ou, Ninette à la cour by Charles-Simon Favart (1755). The study of Bertoldo, Bertoldino e Cacasenno expands our understanding of the practices of opera buffa at the early stage of its history.

Translation as a Paradigm of Intercultural Communication The Case of La Locandiera by Carlo Goldoni in Quebec

Marco Micone is among the most important French-speaking writers in Quebec. Through his works, he gave an important reflection on literature as a means of mediation and expression of intercultural communication. He also translated some classics of Italian literature. In our work, we intend to investigate how much the translation of Carlo Goldoni’s La Locandiera can become a paradigm through which to investigate the characteristics of intercultural communication. His Locandiera can be defined as a migrant translation, in the sense that, through it, its author expresses the complex approach to diversity and inclusion.

Brevi cenni sul rapporto tra turismo e letteratura italiana

"Brief notes on the relationship between tourism and Italian literature. Using literary sources, the essay covers three points in the relationship between Italians and holidays: the first is the transition from vacation to tourism; the second from summer vacation as a moment of rest (mainly in the countryside) to vacation as an opportunity for fun (mostly at the seaside). In addition to these two, we have a third point: in the second half of the Twentieth century, holidays become a mass phenomenon, no longer elitist as they had been until the first half of the same century. They become something possible for most Italians who, especially in August, leave the cities empty. This historical-sociological parable is revisited through literary testimonies that go back to the roots of the mother literature, the Latin one and then it resumes its path, interrupted in the High Middle Ages, around 1300 in conjunction with the first literary testimonies (the triad Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio). The vacation phenomenon, intended as staying for the summer months in a villa more or less outside the city walls, finds its maximum expression starting from the 16th century with the Renaissance villas of the aristocracy, until it meets the aspirations of the small nobility and of the upper middle class in the 18th and 19th centuries. Crucial testimony is Carlo Goldoni's “Vacation Trilogy”, a triptych of three comedies that actually constitute a single text portraying the vacation phenomenon as a status symbol far from the motivations of previous centuries (vacation as a moment of peace, ‘’otium’’, rest). During the Nineteenth century, holidays are associated with tourism (especially in the thermal baths and in the mountains), while from the Twentieth century, the favourite option is the seaside. However, another change will characterize the use of leisure in the Twentieth century: the birth of mass tourism. With brief literary notes, we try to explain how in Italy holidays have now turned into something with anxiety-inducing traits, especially among young people and not only, in an almost spasmodic search for fun (with Dionysian and Bacchic traits) at the expense of original motivations (rest, leisure, “otium”) in a relationship in which the “horror vacui” seems to have ousted the “horror pleni”. Keywords: vacation, tourism, holidays, literature, Italy. "

Invisible agents in translation history: Censors and actors in performed drama of eighteenth-century England

ABSTRACT In dialogue with the social turn in translation studies, this article uncovers the work of invisible agents shaping the translation of performed drama in eighteenth-century England. Unlike other genres, performed drama was subject to a system of state censorship that shaped translation practices in ways that have not been fully accounted for by translation historiography. Using Carlo Goldoni as a case study, the article reveals the intervention of censors and actors in shaping Goldoni’s translations, making visible for the first time the central role they played as ‘rewriters’ in English theatrical culture. In reading translation through the material conditions of eighteenth-century theatre, an argument is made for a re-evaluation of performed drama in the historiographical account of eighteenth-century translation in English.

Carlo Goldoni and the Construction of Authorship on the Printed Page

Abstract The transformation of a play composed for the stage into a text printed to be read is a complex operation often mentioned by the playwrights themselves in the prefaces to the editions of their works. The printed publication could become the ‘place’ for perfecting what was performed on stage but it could also, for some authors, become a ‘place’ in which they defended their authorship through the control of the editions, even going so far, in the case of Carlo Goldoni (Venice 1707-Paris 1793), as to break the rules of the book trade. The author attempts to show how the construction of Goldoni’s authorship can be analyzed on three different levels: the expression of the author’s will; his claim for the right to publish his works himself and finally the representation of the figure of the author with the use of a different portrait for each edition.

«Кофейная» Карло Гольдони в переводе А. Н. Островского

«Кофейная» Карло Гольдони в переводе А. Н. Островского

Goldoni's Mémoires: Subliminal Voice of a Post-Exilic Octogenarian

Italian playwright Carlo Goldoni's stylized Mémoires were written in French during his Parisian exile (1762-93). This article traces the conjoined motifs of exile and of ageing that course through these memoirs, positing that at their confluence there emerges a subliminal voice determined to terminate his lifelong exilic self-identification. Resolving to end narrative exile permits the aged Je to relax within his Parisian adopted home, thus fending off the dreaded exile of aged solitude. In celebrating his old age through narration of his memoirs, Je ultimately embraces the physically reduced sphere and the private existence of an everyday, urban octogenarian.

Goldoni's <em>Mémoires:</em> Subliminal Voice of a Post-Exilic Octogenarian

Italian playwright Carlo Goldoni's stylized Mémoires were written in French during his Parisian exile (1762-93). This article traces the conjoined motifs of exile and of ageing that course through these memoirs, positing that at their confluence there emerges a subliminal voice determined to terminate his lifelong exilic self-identification. Resolving to end narrative exile permits the aged Je to relax within his Parisian adopted home, thus fending off the dreaded exile of aged solitude. In celebrating his old age through narration of his memoirs, Je ultimately embraces the physically reduced sphere and the private existence of an everyday, urban octogenarian.

Truffaldino - sługa dwóch żołądków

Truffaldino – servant of two stomachsAbstractThe article treats about the relationship between one of Carlo Goldoni’s first plays – Servantof Two Masters – and the tradition of commedia dell’arte. The key to the search for commonpoints was the character of a servant Truffaldino whose constant hunger links him to hispredecessor zanni. Thanks to a never-before carried-out analysis of Brighella’s zibaldoni andzanni and Goldoni’s comedy in the context of vocabulary, metaphors and lazzi referring tofood and hunger, it can be observed how much the contemporary plays of the Venetian writerare related to the old theatrical tradition.Keywords: Carlo Goldoni, comedy, hunger, commedia dell’arte, settecento

Jerzy Adamski i jego nieznany przekład Dom Juana Moliera

Jerzy Adamski – an outstanding literary critic and educator, the author of numerous articles and essays, was also a translator of Italian and French dramas. He translated texts of Carlo Goldoni, Jean Genet, Jean-Paul Sartre, Luigi Pirndello and Moliere. Adamski translated Moliere’s play Dom Juan which was never staged in the theatre. The translation was completed in 1990, and it exists only as a type-written script with the translator’s handwritten notes. The purpose of this article is to introduce the translation to a wider audience and to compare it to the translation produced in the same decade, in 1996, by Jerzy Radziwilowicz. Many examples of Adamski’s own interpretations and imprints on his translation are given, as this text endeavours to provide reasons for his choice of translation strategies.

"La buona figliuola" by Carlo Goldoni and his Spanish translations

S’analitzen tres traduccions a l’espanyol d’un dels drammi giocosi per musica de Goldoni: La buona figliuola , estrenada en 1756. En primer lloc s’estudia el context teatral i musical en el qual es van produir les seues representacions a Espanya, en especial a Valencia. En segon lloc, es dona a coneixer una traduccio, publicada a Valencia en versio bilingue en 1769, de la qual no es coneixien exemplars fins ara, i se n’examinen les principals caracteristiques. En tercer lloc, es comparen tres traduccions: l’anterior, la de Juan Pedro Marujan i la d’Antonio Bazo, que posen en practica estrategies de traduccio molt diferents, encara que amb resultats menys positius en les dues ultimes.

Possibili modelli letterari della «farsetta» alfieriana I poeti: «fondo» di Lesage e influenza goldoniana

This article analyses two literary models that may have served as inspiration to Alfieri for his first prose work, the ‘little farce’ I Poeti. The observations made by Ezio Raimondi serve as a springboard for the first part of the study, which examines the relationship between this minor work by Alfieri and Alain-Rene Lesage’s novels, Le diable boiteux and Gil Blas; however, there does not seem to emerge any close rooting between Lesage and the farce. A much greater bond lies between I Poeti and Carlo Goldoni’s Il teatro comico; in fact, both texts express the poetics of the respective authors in theatrical form, and the use that Alfieri makes of the characters in his ‘little farce’ shows how his familiarity with Goldoni’s work was by no means superficial, thereby revealing the extent to which Alfieri emulated the playwright so early on in his theatrical endeavours.

Gli studi goldoniani in Cina alla metà del XX secolo

This paper aims at analysing the critical interpretation of Carlo Goldoni’s theatre in China in the second half of the twentieth century, reading it as, using the definition of Chen Xiaomei, a form of Occidentalism. Chinese essays are analysed and compared with the Russian and Italian studies of the same period so as to highlight the peculiarities of the Chinese interpretation. The paper illustrates how Chinese criticism has mainly focused on the social and ideological meanings of Goldoni’s works rather than on their formal aspects. As a consequence, the Venetian’s plays have been introduced as an example for the creation of revolutionary and modern Chinese theatre, and in order to endorse this effort made by Chinese theatre experts.