Carlo Goldoni

Carlo Goldoni (Venice, 1707 - Paris, 1793) was an Italian playwright and librettist from the Republic of Venice, who wrote in Italian, Venetian and French. He is regarded as one of the founders of modern Italian comedy. He moved away from the masks and intrigues of the commedia dell'arte and put on stage realistic characters and the everyday life of the middle classes, changing Italian theatre for good.

He was born into a middle-class family facing financial problems. In his Memoirs he describes his father as a physician, though he was probably an apothecary, and he presents himself as a boy who loved theatre from an early age. He studied law and practised as a lawyer for a time, until an unexpected summons to Venice led him to devote himself to writing and to running theatres. His first serious attempt, the tragedy Amalasunta, failed in Milan. According to a well-known story, after a harsh remark from the count in charge of the opera, he threw the manuscript into the fire at his inn. He went on to write tragedies and opera libretti, but soon realised that his talent lay in comedy.

His reform took shape in Venice. In 1743 he staged La donna di garbo, for which he wrote all the roles, and he soon worked with theatre managers such as Girolamo Medebach. He argued for the literary worth of the written text against actors who relied on improvisation, and he favoured comedy of character over comedy of plot. He collaborated with the composer Baldassare Galuppi on more than twenty opera buffa libretti, and several of his librettos were later set by other composers, including Joseph Haydn. After a bitter quarrel with Carlo Gozzi, who mocked his comedies, he moved to Paris in the mid-1760s. There he served at the court of Louis XV, and in old age he wrote in French the play Le bourru bienfaisant (1771) and his Memoirs, published in 1787.

The French Revolution cost him his royal pension, and he died in poverty. The day after his death the pension was voted back, and it went to his widow. His legacy is twofold: he gave Italian comedy a classical form that few have matched, and he showed the middle class on stage with humour and without preaching. He is often compared with Molière, whom he himself took as a model.