Carlo Gozzi

• Born: December 13, 1720
• Birthplace: Venice (now in Italy)
• Died: April 4, 1806
• Place of death: Venice (now in Italy)

Other Literary Forms

Carlo Gozzi wrote some poetry in the satirical vein. He also wrote his memoirs in the three-volume Memorie inutili (1797; Useless Memoirs, 1890). This eight-hundred-page autobiography represents his other major contribution to Italian literature. Gozzi’s attraction to, and involvement in, the Italian theater are predictably detailed in his memoirs. His recollections, however, are possibly more valuable for their depiction of the Venetian republic and its declining culture. In France, ideas and events that would shape an age were occurring, and Gozzi provides an incisive view of the disdain and fear that he and other members of the aristocracy felt toward these developments.

Achievements

Perhaps no other Italian playwright has received such divergent criticism of his work as Count Carlo Gozzi. Some critics believe that Gozzi constitutes a notable example of the decadent literature that Venice produced during the latter portion of the eighteenth century; others laud him as a playwright second only to William Shakespeare in language, verse form, and dramatic impact. This controversy in the criticism of Gozzi’s works seems a logical extension of several controversies that actually provoked him to write his plays and that surrounded their theatrical production. Although Gozzi was writing poetry at the age of nine, along with gift sonnets and philosophical treatises during his ensuing youthful years, his major contribution to Italian literature rests in the thirty-two plays he wrote between 1761 and 1798. The most famous of these are his fiabe, fairy tales that he took from a Neapolitan collection by Giambattista Basile and transformed into fantasy dramas satirizing the Venetian scene and literary circumstances of his day.

Rigidly conservative by background and nature, Gozzi wrote the fiabe in an effort to denigrate the realistic comedies of manners and character that his arch rivals, Abbé Pietro Chiari and Carlo Goldoni, had popularized on the Venetian stage. Gozzi wished to show that traditional, nonrealistic Italian plays, the type he so dearly loved, could be as popular, if not more so, than the “new wave” productions he despised. To achieve his purpose, Gozzi drew on the great commedia dell’arte form, which had made Italian actors and their productions famous throughout Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Even though his use of fantasy, satire, and especially written dialogue exceeded the limits of the traditional, improvisational commedia form, Gozzi invariably included four of the stock characters, or “masks,” from that form in his fiabe. Later critics have seen this as a major flaw in Gozzi’s works because these characters or masks, incorporated by Gozzi with strict fidelity to their commedia dell’arte origins, do not change from play to play, even though their station in life and geographic locations may vary drastically. On the other hand, because he did employ these masks as a standard feature in his plays, Gozzi is credited with lifting the commedia dell’arte form out of its moribund state in Venice and putting it back “on the boards” during the second half of the eighteenth century.

Linked to the commedia dell’arteform, providing Venetians a welcome escape from the problems of the declining republic, Gozzi’s fiabe were very successful. They virtually eclipsed the realistic plays of Chiari and Goldoni, so much so that Goldoni left Italy for France, where the realistic dramas still prevailed, and Chiari retired from writing. Because Gozzi’s plays contained much fantasy, high virtue, and pageantry, all encased in verse form, his works also became popular with members of the early Romantic movement. The English Romantics heralded Gozzi’s use of imagination and heroic virtue as part of the emerging Romantic vision. The Germans were especially taken with the highly imaginative and phantasmagoric aspects of his plays, aspects they believed provided a sense of direction away from the eighteenth century and its “age of reason.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller both adapted works of Gozzi to the German idiom; Ludwig Tieck and E. T. A. Hoffmann were directly prompted by Gozzi’s use of satire and caustic humor to use similar elements in their own works. Gozzi’s prominence among German writers was underscored when Andrea Maffeio decided to translate the “classics” of German literature into Italian. His selections included Schiller’s Turandot, an adaptation of Gozzi’s own piece, which was therefore being translated back into the language in which it had been originally written.

Another aspect of Gozzi’s works, which the Germans developed extensively, was the musical adaptation of his pieces. In the early nineteenth century, German composers often turned Gozzi’s tales into operettas, and composers from other nations also drew on this potential. Later, in the twentieth century, Sergey Prokofiev added music to Gozzi’s first fiabe, The Love of the Three Oranges; Giacomo Puccini’s last opera was based on Gozzi’s most widely read tale, Turnadot.

Perhaps the greatest irony of Gozzi’s career is that, even though he triumphed over Chiari and especially Goldoni in matters of the theater, later history and critics have not afforded him comparable success. Most of Gozzi’s own works, when performed during the nineteenth century, were seen in the puppet theaters. Goldoni’s plays, on the other hand, achieved a national prominence in Italy, where they have been produced for their dramatic qualities and studied for their literary merit, where a statue stands in honor of Goldoni, and where a theater in Venice is named for him.

Biography

Carlo Gozzi was a member of the aristocrat-burgher class of eighteenth century Venice, the sixth of eleven children born to Jacopo Antonio Gozzi and Angela Tiepolo. Although Gozzi was not of the patrician class and therefore unable to be directly involved in governing the Venetian republic, he shared the traditional values of the upper classes and championed the conservative view in all areas, especially the theater.

Gozzi’s involvement with the theater began early when he and his brothers and sisters performed improvised plays at their summer home for the local, rustic audience. Apparently, Gozzi’s attitude toward theater audiences was influenced in part by these activities. He held a low opinion of those who attended the theater in Venice, believing that they did not represent the higher stations or qualities of Venetian life. Some critics contend that Gozzi, therefore, chose the fairy tale, or fiabe, as the basis for his plays because that was the type of puerile story the Venetian audiences could best understand and appreciate.

Gozzi had just begun a formal education when a stroke paralyzed his father, aggravating the family’s already shaky financial situation and ending his formal schooling. He studied intermittently with several priests after that, but most of his education came from his own efforts and his insatiable appetite for reading. Gozzi remained, however, basically an uneducated man, a fact that critics point out is evident in his plays, in which coarse language, improper grammar, and a varying use of dialect often appear.

Family financial problems also forced Gozzi, at seventeen, to leave home for Dalmatia and a military secretarial position with the Venetian forces occupying that country. Disdaining the bawdy and licentious life his comrades led, Gozzi immersed himself in Italian literature. He also became a poet of some repute after reading a sonnet in praise of peace at a celebration for the governor general in Zara. Gozzi became even better known for his participation in the plays that were put on periodically for the governor general; he played the soubrette, the intriguing, outgoing female servant, a rendition that he claims in his memoirs was called “the wittiest and most humourous soubrette who ever trod the boards of a theatre.” The improvisational aspects of the role attracted Gozzi. His memoirs reveal that he realized that the characters, whether Gozzi acted the parts or wrote them, provided an outlet for the emotionless, reclusive count, and he directed much of his energy toward their creation in his plays.

When Gozzi returned from service in Dalmatia, he was personally in debt and his family’s affairs were in a state of collapse. Unwillingly, he stepped in to try to salvage what was left of the family’s possessions and honor because his elder brother, Gasparo, had relinquished all such matters to his wife’s inexperienced hands while he wrote plays, most of them unsuccessful. This period in Gozzi’s life was not, however, without effect on his ideas about the theater. During this time of family quarrels and bitterness, Gasparo translated the French comedy Esop at the Court for presentation in Venice. The production was successful, and a sequel entitled Esop in the Town followed. To the latter, however, Gasparo added a scene that satirized and scolded Carlo and two other brothers for their meddling in family financial matters. Although not as successful as the first Esop production, the sequel helped introduce Carlo to the idea of satirizing contemporary figures, attitudes, and events in the drama, something that became a central device in his plays. After Gozzi’s father’s death in 1745, litigation over family finances lasted eighteen years; Gozzi ultimately received some parcels of land that provided him a small income and allowed him to devote more time to literary pursuits.

One of the few diversions Gozzi enjoyed during the years of family disputations was the Accademia Granellesca, a Venetian literary society dedicated to the traditional values in literature, especially a pure and simple use of language. As a member and informal head of this group, Gozzi entered into the first of the great controversies that occurred during his career.

The state of Venice was divided into two main factions during the eighteenth century. The liberals read Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, envisioning an egalitarian society, while conservatives clung to traditional views and accepted social stratification. This division extended to the theater. The new plays, the “pathetic comedies,” which Goldoni and Chiari had brought to the Venetian stage under the French influence, were thoroughly repugnant to Gozzi and the Accademia Granellesca. Besides their questionable use of the language (Gozzi labeled Chiari’s and Goldoni’s work in this regard “diarrhea”), these plays shunned accepted religious principles, mocked heroic virtue, and attacked established elements in society such as the female’s role. The outrage Gozzi felt over these plays prompted him to prepare the first major salvo in his battle against them, La tartana degli influssi (1757). In this mock-almanac, Gozzi examined various disasters that supposedly threatened Venice, not the least of which were the plays of Goldoni and Chiari. Gozzi also tried his hand at his first play, Il teatro comico all’osteria del Pellegrino, which was designed to satirize and condemn the types of plays his rivals wrote. It was not, however, until Chiari and Goldoni directly challenged Gozzi and his fellow academicians to present a play that was as popular as theirs that Gozzi began in earnest to write the plays that constitute his major literary achievement.

Despite his family’s financial problems and his own frequent indebtedness, Gozzi never sold his plays. As a member of the aristocratic class in Venice, he considered taking money for his writings to be improper. Goldoni, the plebeian, could sell his works; Gozzi gave his to the performing troupes, in particular to the Sacchi Company, a commedia dell’arte company that had toured Portugal with some success but was forced by the great earthquakes of 1755 to return to Venice. The troupe, a victim of the public’s thirst for the novelty of Goldoni’s and Chiari’s plays, was playing to meager audiences in a run-down theater in Venice when Gozzi became acquainted with them. He was especially attracted to this band of players because of their reputation for high moral standards, a striking contrast to the usual image of actors and their morals at that time. Thus Gozzi became the playwright-patron of the Sacchi Company, a position that fulfilled his desire to become a more active member of the world of the drama and that eventually brought him in contact with the one great romantic interest in his life, Teodora Ricci.

Ricci was a semitalented actress whom Antonio Sacchi had hired, along with her husband, into his company. Although Gozzi recognized that Ricci was not an actress of the first class, he wrote several plays to help establish her in the Venetian theater. The early attempts at making Ricci a “star” failed because of her limited acting ability, but Gozzi’s La principessa filosofa: Ossia, Il contravveleno, adapted from the Spanish, proved to be a vehicle well suited to Ricci’s talents, and she became established as the Sacchi Company’s leading lady. Gozzi, in his fifties by this time, also became Ricci’s cavalier servente, and he attended her publicly, as was customary in such a relationship in Venice, despite her marital status. This relationship also led to the next great controversy in which Gozzi would become involved.

Piero Antonio Gratarol was everything Gozzi was not. Rich, he lavished extravagant gifts on his friends and acquaintances; flamboyant, he was well-known about Venice for his colorful and distinctive apparel; powerful, he was secretary to the senate of the Republic. Gratarol was also an inveterate womanizer who made the mistake of ending a relationship with Catherine Tron, the brilliant and vindictive wife of the Procuratore of San Marco, to direct his attentions to Teodora Ricci. The latter luxuriated in the attention given her by both Gozzi and Gratarol, often playing them against each other for her own gain. The scandal that arose from Ricci’s open alliance with Gratarol, and the humiliation it caused Gozzi, forced Gozzi to end his liaison with Ricci formally. As all this occurred, Gozzi was also preparing a new play, Le droghe d’amore, an adaptation of the Spanish play by Tirso de Molina. Rumors flew that Gozzi would strike back at Gratarol by mercilessly satirizing him in the play. In his memoirs, Gozzi adamantly, and apparently legitimately, denies any such intention, but on opening night, with Gratarol in the expectant audience, the actor who portrayed Don Adone displayed such an obvious and outrageous parody of Gratarol’s manners and dress that the secretary left the theater furious. Various public meetings, threats, and rejoinders between Gratarol and Gozzi followed, the latter even offering to halt the play’s production to cease the offense to Gratarol. The Venetian censor’s office stepped in, however, and declared that the play had to be presented and to be performed as scheduled because it had been approved by that office and therefore was considered public property. This action, in part precipitated by the vengeful Signora Tron, so disgraced Gratarol that he left Venice for Stockholm, where he wrote a scathing condemnation of all those involved in the affair, which cost him his properties and status in Venice.

The Gozzi-Gratarol controversy marked the end of Gozzi’s most productive literary period. After 1780, he wrote only two more plays, and the Sacchi Company disbanded. In 1798, Gozzi stopped writing for the theater entirely.

Analysis

In many of Carlo Gozzi’s plays, he philosophizes to his Venetian audiences. Although Gozzi initially feared that his ideas fell on deaf ears, perhaps his audiences were a bit more sophisticated than he first thought. His movement away from the extreme use of fantasy and magic in his plays and into more serious and substantial themes would seem to indicate that the playwright thought that his words, and the players’ actions, would not be lost on his audiences. This progression in his plays intimates that Gozzi hoped to contribute more than merely “fairy tales” to eighteenth century Italian literature.

Il teatro comico all’osteria del Pellegrino

Gozzi’s first play, Il teatro comico all’osteria del Pellegrino, was notable because it unveiled his penchant for using his plays to satirize and criticize the Venetian scene—in this instance, certain literary aspects. Written during the early stages of Gozzi’s feud with Chiari and Goldoni, Il teatro comico all’osteria del Pellegrino enacts a carnival scene at Saint Mark’s Square, where the merrymakers are interrupted by a monster with four faces and four mouths. Gozzi used this monster to represent the Goldoni theater; the several mouths open to present aspects of the comedy of manners and plebeian prose that characterized Goldoni’s plays. The onlookers in the play become bored with these attempts at theater, thus revealing the monster’s fifth mouth, previously hidden, which confesses that the weak and objectionable aspects that came from the other mouths of the monster had been created solely for one purpose—to gratify the desires of the monster’s belly. Thus, with this initial sally into the world of drama, Gozzi established his use of satire and fantasy in his plays.

The Love of the Three Oranges

Gozzi’s fiabe continued his use of these devices; the fiabe also evidenced a progression in the themes and components he would employ in his works. The Love of the Three Oranges, Gozzi’s first fairy-drama, makes full use of satire, fantasy, and high romance presented in the commedia dell’arte form. In the play, Tartaglia, one of the characters, or masks, which the playwright adopted from the commedia form, portrays the son of the King of Spades, the latter appropriately dressed in giant playing cards throughout the play. The prince is dying from boredom and consumption; the only cure for this malady is to laugh, something his father and the courtiers have not been able to make the prince do. Truffaldino, however, another of the commedia masks, is also at court and attends the prince to see what can be done about this situation. The fairy Morgana enters the square dressed as an old woman, and Truffaldino, employing a standard lazzo (bit of comic “business”) from the commedia form, trips her, sending her head over heels. This makes the long-suffering prince laugh and thus shed his ailments. In retribution for this humiliation, Morgana curses the prince and implants an undeniable desire in him to seek the mythic three oranges that have been imprisoned in a distant, fantastic castle. The remainder of the play deals with the prince’s adventures, as he and Truffaldino travel to the distant land and find the oranges, which turn out to house three beautiful maidens, each of whom must be given water as soon as she is released from the orange, lest she die of thirst immediately. High drama and romance pervade the ending of the tale, as Truffaldino, unaware of the presence of the maidens in the oranges and unable to handle the situation as the first maiden emerges, breaks open the second orange to try to give a drink to the first maiden. Both maidens die, but the prince happens on the scene in time to fill his boot with water and therefore save the final maiden’s life. Love between the two youthful figures develops instantaneously, and the prince vows to marry her. Some further complications by Morgana delay the wedding; nevertheless, the tale ends with the couple happily wed and the King of Spades exhorting all within the range of his voice to keep martellian verse (the form found in Chiari’s and Goldoni’s plays) away from his court, so that ready wit and improvised humor can flourish there and make all happy.

The great latitude that Gozzi found in the tale of the three oranges allowed him to incorporate the fantasy and satire that made his first fiabe a great success. Venetian audiences apparently recognized the boredom and consumption that affected the prince as a statement about the realistic, often somber plays that Chiari and Goldoni wrote. On the other hand, the inspired wit and antics of Truffaldino represented the kind of improvised comedy that Gozzi loved and his audiences expected. Actions, however, were not the only elements in this play that Gozzi used to satirize his rival playwrights. The martellian verse, which the king forbids at the end of the play, is used at one point to kill a character with boredom. Another condemnation by Gozzi appears with the king blaming the new comedies by Chiari and Goldoni for his son’s disobedience when the latter defies his father and leaves to find the three oranges. Various characters also appear in this tale who represent extreme versions of characters in the Chiari and Goldoni plays. All these satiric elements, mixed with fantastic items such as the “thousand league” iron boots, which the prince and Truffaldino wear to get to the enchanted castle, various devils, a magic salve that opens the rusty gates of the castle, the baker’s wife who sweeps the oven with her breasts for lack of a broom, and the overgrown oranges with their imprisoned maidens provided the Venetian audiences with some delightful theater and established Gozzi as a formidable member in the dramatic circles in Venice.

The Raven

Gozzi’s next two plays show his continued reliance on the fantastic and magical. The Raven deals with two magicians, one evil and vengeful, the other beneficent and just. These men’s powers are brought into contention as Gennaro, brother of King Millo, tries to save the latter from some great suffering, which has been imposed on him by an ogre/magician whose raven the king has accidentally killed. To save him, Gennaro must find a woman with features as rare as the raven’s who will marry the king and free him from the curse. Unfortunately, Gennaro abducts Armilla, who possesses the necessary features, but she is the daughter of another great magician, and he, in turn, imposes further maledictions on Gennaro and Millo. Gennaro learns that a messenger hawk he has sent to his brother will pluck out the king’s eye, a dragon will attack the king in his bedchamber after he weds Armilla, and a horse he has as a gift for his brother will kill the king. To add to this, Gennaro is powerless to warn his brother of these impending misfortunes, because Gennaro is also cursed and will turn into a statue immediately should he attempt to do so. This transformation does occur when Gennaro is forced to try to save his brother; Armilla, however, selflessly takes her own life so that Gennaro can be restored his, all of which prompts her father to bring her back to life as a reward for her behavior and to round out the circle of transformations. While Gozzi’s emphasis on magical and extravagant transformations remained strong in this play, The Raven differed perceptibly from The Love of the Three Oranges in certain other ways. The lazzi and pranks, which were very prominent in his first fiabe, were reduced to a lesser number and position in this play. In what he called a “lofty tragedy,” Gozzi also attempted to deal with some more serious themes, such as the question of punishment for needless cruelty and the proper exercise of brotherly devotion and family obligations.

The King Stag

Gozzi’s third fiabe, The King Stag, continues his proclivity for magic and multiple transformations, along with some political philosophy. King Deramo receives two gifts from a magician, the first one allowing him to tell when a woman is lying, therefore enabling him to find an honest wife. After several thousand maidens fail the test, one, Angela, succeeds and is to marry the king. The commedia dell’arte figure, Tartaglia, however—in this play the king’s minister—desires Angela for himself. He learns from the king that the second gift from the magician is a verse that, if recited over a corpse, causes the reciter to become an enlivened version of the corpse. Tartaglia tricks the king into reciting the verse over the body of a dead stag. It works, thus allowing Tartaglia to repeat the verse over the king’s body so he can assume that form and marry Angela. Several ensuing transformations occur, but virtue conquers as Angela uncovers Tartaglia’s deception, recognizes her husband, now in the body of an old man, and Tartaglia is changed into a grotesque monster as punishment for his evil deeds. The notion that justice prevails made this one of Gozzi’s “lofty” tales. He also recounts in his memoirs that many people saw this particular piece in a political light as a warning to monarchs or others in positions of power who rely too much and too easily on their ministers, a warning about the possibilities for malfeasance that such reliance can produce.

Turandot

Gozzi’s next play, Turandot, shows his movement away from the world of magic and transformations and into a world of more human drama, the world of “ tragicomedy,” as he labeled it. In order to counter the charge that the stage effects and fantastic elements in his plays were what made them so popular, Gozzi wrote Turandot and I pitocchi fortunati without the wondrous and special effects that characterized his earlier fiabe. Turandot, in particular, relies much less on stage effects and more on the dramatic interplay of the characters to deal with a theme that several of Gozzi’s plays would pursue, the woman opposed to marriage. Although Turandot uses an exotic Eastern locale, which was something of the vogue in Venice at that time and which appeared periodically in Gozzi’s plays, the main emphasis in the play is Turandot’s character and its evolution. The haughty Princess Turandot, wishing to avoid marriage, has set forth three riddles that her suitors must solve to win her hand. All fail, and are put to death as a result, until Prince Calaf, in disguise, correctly answers the questions. Rather than submit to his demands for her hand in marriage, however, Turandot restates her hatred for men and vows to kill herself. Calaf, in the true romantic and chivalric manner, tells Turandot that if she can discover his real identity, he will kill himself instead. Because a female servant who secretly loves Calaf has unwittingly revealed his name, Turandot is in a position to eliminate Calaf. Nevertheless, love rather than hate or pride conquers the princess, and as Calaf draws his dagger to end his life, Turandot declares her love for him and her intention to marry the prince. These romantic and exotic elements made this play one of Gozzi’s most popular, especially outside Italy, and his movement into character and sentiment rather than fantasy and effect has made Turandot one of Gozzi’s best-known tales.

The Green Bird

Although not as popular as Turandot or The Love of the Three Oranges, most critics agree that The Green Bird represents a high point in terms of Gozzi’s ability to mix elements such as tragedy, satire, philosophy, the grotesque, and comedy. The plot, fragmented but manageable, concerns the twins Renzo and Barbarina, whose mother, the queen, was hated by the wicked queen-mother and imprisoned after the twins’ birth. The babies were to be killed by Pantalone, another of Gozzi’s stock characters; instead, they were spared and given to a peasant couple, Truffaldino and Smeraldina, to be reared by them. The twins, however, are turned out of the house by Truffaldino in a fit of rage, and the major portion of the play deals with their wanderings as they search for a home, philosophizing, along the way, about life and their predicament. They discuss such matters as family obligations, obedience to parents who mistreat their children, respect for elders, the need for family ties, and death. Renzo is bitter because of their experiences, and he expresses his negative attitudes toward these subjects. Later, however, as the twins travel along a desert shore, they encounter a talking statue, which rebukes Renzo and sets forth the belief that selfishness does not govern all actions, that virtue and a sincere desire to act kindly toward others are what really motivate people. These views, presumably Gozzi’s own (as spoken by the statue), lead to a resolution of all the disparate elements in the play. Barbarina confesses that she has been courted by a little green bird, the latter having saved the twins’ mother’s life by bringing her food and drink as she remained buried alive in a dungeon. The entombed mother is eventually freed and returned to her husband the king, the evildoers in the play are transformed into ugly animals, and the green bird becomes a prince and marries Barbarina.

Bibliography

DiGaetani, John Louis. Carlo Gozzi: A Life in the Eighteenth Century Venetian Theater, an Afterlife in Opera. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2000. This biography of Gozzi looks at his popularity during his lifetime and the popularity of his plays for operas after his death. Bibliography and index.

DiGaetani, John Louis. Introduction to Carlo Gozzi: Translations of “The Love of Three Oranges,” “Turandot,” and “The Snake Lady,” by Carlo Gozzi. New York: Greenwood, 1988. DiGaetani provides critical analysis of Gozzi’s works in his introduction to his translations. Bibliography and index.

Harvey, Dennis. Review of The Green Bird, by Carlo Gozzi. Variety, October 16-22, 2000, p. 44. Review of a performance of The Green Bird, adapted by Steven Epp for Théâtre de la Jeune Lune. Discusses the play and its suitability for modern presentation.

Wilson, Edwin. “Gozzi’s Enchanting Fable.” Review of The King Stag, by Carlo Gozzi. Wall Street Journal, September 21, 1990, p. A12. This review of a production of The King Stag by the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, provides insights into the play as comments on the rivalry between Gozzi and Carlo Goldoni.