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Carlo GoldoniDenetian playwright and librettist.
Date of Birth: 25.02.1707
Country:  Italy |
Content:
Biography of Carlo Goldoni
Carlo Goldoni [Goldoni Carlo, 1707-1793] was an Italian playwright and librettist. He was born into an intellectual Venetian family who wanted him to become a lawyer and forced him to study law. However, from a young age, Carlo developed a love for the theater. At the age of fourteen, he ran away from Rimini, where he was studying philosophy, and traveled with a troupe of wandering actors. Four years later, he was expelled from the school in Pavia for writing a satirical play that mocked his teachers. Eventually, he reluctantly obtained his doctorate and became a lawyer in 1732. However, Goldoni was more interested in pursuing a career in playwriting.
In 1738, his play "Momolo cortesan" marked the beginning of his true career as a playwright. Although his early works were not particularly successful, in 1748, he became the resident playwright for the Medebach theater company. Soon after, Goldoni settled in Venice, his hometown, where he spent 14 years (1748-1762) and achieved remarkable success and productivity. In just one year (1750), he wrote 16 comedies, including masterpieces such as "The Liar," "The Coffee House," "The Antiquarian's Family," and "The Gossips." Between 1756 and 1762, he wrote around 60 more comedies for the entrepreneur Vendramin, including the trilogy "La Villegiatura," the famous "The Squabbles of Chioggia," and the widely acclaimed "The Mistress of the Inn."
Many of Goldoni's comedies portrayed Venetian life and were written in the Venetian dialect, which he mastered. These plays, which still remain popular today, are considered some of his best works. In 1762, Goldoni realized that the Venetian audience preferred the fantastical comedies of Carlo Gozzi over his realistic plays. Rather than experiencing his fame in his hometown, Goldoni decided to leave Venice and accepted an invitation to move to Paris. He bid farewell to his audience with one of his most beautiful comedies, "Una della ultime sere del Carnevale."
In Paris, Goldoni lived for 30 years, continuing to write comedies. One of his best works, "Le bourru bienfaisant," was originally written in French. In his old age, he began writing his memoirs, which remain some of the most vivid depictions of Italian theater, literature, and everyday life. He also gave Italian language lessons. In his final years, Goldoni lived in poverty. Although he was granted a pension by the state, he passed away before receiving any payments.
The Reformer of Italian Comedy
During his Venetian period, Goldoni accomplished the reform he had envisioned. He provided the Italian bourgeoisie with the exact type of comedy they needed. In the mid-18th century, the Italian bourgeoisie, after more than two centuries of inactivity, began to establish themselves. Engaging in a fierce struggle against absolutism and the ruling aristocracy, and passionately denying their privileges, they demanded literature that would support their fight, justify their aspirations, and strengthen their class consciousness. The old mask comedies, which had entertained the nobility and the common people, could no longer satisfy the cultural demands of the bourgeoisie. By this time, the genre had lost its youthful creative impulse, offering no new inventions or actors of former strength, and clearly repeating what had been considered innovative and youthful a hundred years ago. Many recognized this, and attempts were made to reform the old improvisational comedy. However, these attempts were unsuccessful. Goldoni, on the other hand, brilliantly achieved what others could not. He gradually approached his goal. His play "Momolo cortesan" was halfway between a script and an improvisation. In the first two years of his Venetian comedies, there was still ample room for improvisation. However, starting in 1750, when Goldoni staged his programmatic play "The Comic Theater," he decisively moved away from scripted techniques. Yet, he did not dare to completely break with everything that had been cherished by the Italian audience in the mask comedy. Thus, he preserved in his comedies the most popular mask characters of improvisational comedy. Pantalone, the Doctor, Harlequin, Brighella, Columbina, and many other masks appear in his works, but they rarely retain the characteristics that had been passed down for two centuries. Goldoni's reinterpretation of the inherited mask types was guided by his skill in keenly capturing the prevailing social moods. In the portrayal of characters inherited from mask comedy, satire became softer. The Doctor, originally portrayed as a charlatan and drunkard, became an honorable family man; Brighella, once a rogue and swindler, became a respectable steward or tavern owner, and so on. Goldoni's Pantalone is not the funny old man, stingy and lustful, as he was portrayed throughout Europe, subject to mockery and ridicule in the mask comedy. In Goldoni's works, Pantalone is a respected elderly merchant, carrying the best traditions of the Venetian bourgeoisie. In this mask, Goldoni's moralizing character is particularly pronounced. Aristocrats must listen to his lectures and preachings, such as "Be good, and you will be noble." While denying the legitimacy of their privileges, Pantalone speaks of the "natural" rights of all people. When the Italian bourgeoisie, which was beginning to promote its own ideals, watched Goldoni's comedies, they found in them both encouraging praise and gentle moral instruction. Meeting the needs of its class for the consolidation of its class consciousness and self-esteem, Goldoni instills in the Italian bourgeoisie the idea of its spiritual superiority over a decadent, morally corrupt nobility and warns against imitating it. Thus, he criticizes the wealthy bourgeoisie for their inclination towards empty social pursuits, extravagance, and other "bourgeois" vices inherited from the aristocracy. His strongly negative characters (of which there are many) either appear as foreigners or belong to a declining aristocracy. Goldoni sharply exposes the arrogance and ignorance, frivolity and immorality of the aristocracy, the superficiality and corruptness of aristocratic marriages with their "friends at home" and "cicisbei," and more. Harshly satirizing the contradictions between aristocrats' claims and their deteriorating material circumstances, the new economic conditions dominated by those who understand the value of money, Goldoni warns against imitating the aristocracy. In Goldoni's comedies, the Italian bourgeoisie is portrayed as an extraordinarily healthy class, both morally and intellectually, from top to bottom. Goldoni idealizes not only the wealthy merchant but also the small artisan, the innkeeper, the shopkeeper, the gondolier, the peasant, their women and girls (with Betina in "Puta onorata" being particularly characteristic). In several of his plays, Goldoni celebrates bourgeois "virtues" ("The English Philosopher," "The Dutch Doctor," "The Honest Adventurer," etc.), asserting bourgeois ethics.
This social content is reflected in Goldoni's technique. Even with "Momolo," Goldoni understood that "one should take plots that develop characters since they are the source of a good comedy." Goldoni certainly knew how character comedy was developed before him, primarily by Molière, but he found it unbelievable that Molière, in his best comedies, would center on a single character, such as a miser, a hypocrite, or a misanthrope. From Goldoni's point of view, life never offers such a simplified scheme. In life, multiple characters always coexist simultaneously. And comedy, which aims to make an impression, must be a true reflection of life, following all its diverse twists and turns. That is why in Goldoni's comedies, we almost always encounter a range of characters, each one almost completely different. Even when Goldoni uses old masks, he tries to find the diversity of life within them. His reliance on everyday life observations is so great that he created a comedy based on a chance encounter with an Eastern sweet seller in the Piazza San Marco ("Le pettegolezze delle donne"). Goldoni's significance in his homeland lies in the fact that he laid the foundation for Italian bourgeois drama, skillfully combining elements of Italian popular comedy with French character comedy and its intricate techniques. Goldoni owes his pan-European significance to the fact that, while drawing much from Molière, he diverges from him towards greater realism and greater lifelikeness in his characters. The characters of the "Italian Molière" are more diverse and less schematic than those of the French playwright. This was recognized by his contemporaries. Voltaire called him the "son and painter of nature" and praised the "naturalness" of his writing.
