Carlo Gozzi

Carlo Gozzi (Venice, 1720-1806) was an Italian playwright, poet and storyteller from the Republic of Venice, who wrote in Italian. He is best remembered for his fiabe teatrali, stage works drawn from fairy tales. His significance lies in offering a fantastical, traditionalist alternative to the realist theatre of his contemporaries Pietro Chiari and Carlo Goldoni.

He was the sixth of eleven children in a noble family of Ragusan origin, with estates in Friuli and near Bergamo, but serious financial trouble caused by his father's poor management. After his father's early death, the family's affairs passed to his mother and sister-in-law, and debts led to a division of the inheritance, lawsuits and lasting strain between relatives. His elder brother Gasparo was a respected intellectual. Carlo had an irregular schooling and largely taught himself, reading mainly Tuscan literature. He served as a soldier in Dalmatia, the only long period he spent away from Venice, and showed a theatrical bent from an early age.

His work reflects conservative political and social views, defending established authority and noble privilege, and a preference for the Tuscan of the classics. As a member of the Accademia granellesca, he wrote satires against Chiari, Goldoni and the Enlightenment spirit. His breakthrough came in 1761 with The Love for Three Oranges, staged by Antonio Sacchi's company, and a series of fiabe followed that mixed commedia dell'arte characters with marvellous plots. They found more success in Germany than in Italy. Later he freely adapted many Spanish Golden Age comedies.

His legacy lives on mainly through Turandot, which inspired Goethe and Schiller in Weimar and, much later, Puccini, Busoni and Brecht. Friedrich von Schlegel compared his theatrical fantasy with Shakespeare's, and his idea of thirty-six dramatic situations was taken up by Polti.