Goldoni, Carlo [Fegejo, Polisseno]

(b Venice, 25 Feb 1707; d Paris, 6/7 Feb 1793). Italian playwright and librettist. His best comedies, distinguished by a seemingly effortless dramatic technique and an acute observation of character and manners, place him in the front rank of Italy’s dramatic authors. In a career that began slowly but at its peak made uncommon demands on his creative energies (in 1750–51 he promised, and delivered, 16 new comedies), Goldoni also found time to write some 80 librettos, most of them comic, although he also wrote opere serie, cantatas and oratorios.

1. Life.

2. Works.

LIBRETTOS

WRITINGS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PIERO WEISS

Goldoni, Carlo

1. Life.

Goldoni’s early years were full of false starts. He evinced a literary bent while still at school but wrote poetry of no special distinction. He studied law at Padua and was admitted to the bar in Venice in 1732. Meanwhile he had written some comic intermezzos (1729/30, 1732) and a dramma per musica, which he himself destroyed (1733). Finding his legal profession unprofitable, he attached himself to a commedia dell’arte troupe in 1734, furnishing them with spoken tragicomedies and sung intermezzos, the latter set to music by mostly unknown composers and performed between the acts of the spoken plays. It is highly unlikely that Vivaldi set to music Aristide, as some believe; this, one of two operatic parodies by Goldoni, was simply another intermezzo, sung inexpertly by the comedians themselves (see Weiss, 1984). At the same time he was hired to assist Domenico Lalli, the poet-in-residence at the chief opera house in Venice, S Giovanni Grisostomo; this involved helping to stage opere serie and adapting or rewriting their librettos. The experience thus gained in two very different branches of theatre was to stand him in good stead in later years; meanwhile, he appears to have aspired to the dignity of tragic poet à la Metastasio, for the years 1736 to 1741 saw the modestly successful production of five (if not all six) of his serious operas at the S Giovanni Grisostomo.

Financial difficulties put an abrupt end to this early phase of Goldoni’s career; in 1743 he left Venice, eventually settling in Tuscany to practise law. When he returned to Venice, in 1748, he was under contract to another commedia dell’arte troupe. Abandoning traditional scenarios in favour of wholly written-out comedies, Goldoni at the age of 40 embarked at last on the career that gained him his place in Italian literature. At the same time, he launched upon the long series of opera buffa librettos, working at first with Ciampi but soon (from 1749) with Galuppi, in a collaboration that over the next seven years produced some of the century’s most successful comic operas (see illustration). Other composers who availed themselves of his librettos in Venice included Cocchi, Giuseppe Scarlatti, Bertoni and Fischietti. Goldoni worked fast; a comic opera libretto took him four days, as he testified in a letter of 24 July 1762 from Bologna (having just finished La bella verità, set by Piccinni – a libretto of peculiar interest, since it deals with the production of an opera buffa, making fun of its singers and conventions). Goldoni was then on his way to Paris, where he arrived that August. There he settled permanently, never to return to Italy; his productivity as both playwright and librettist continued for a while but then abated. His last great success was a comedy written in French, Le bourru bienfaisant, performed at the Comédie-Française in 1771; but his last stage work, like his first, was a libretto (Il talismano, 1778).

Goldoni, Carlo

2. Works.

In his various autobiographical writings, Goldoni studiously belittled his librettos; indeed, once he had become famous he invariably signed them with his Arcadian sobriquet, Polisseno Fegejo, as if to distinguish them from the works on which he wished to rest his reputation. To him they were a lucrative sideline. Yet he permitted, and most probably supervised, at least the first collection of his comic librettos, in four volumes, published by Tevernin (Venice, 1753), and very probably approved the ten-volume set (Venice, 1794–5) published by Zatta shortly after his death. At least three other collected editions appeared during his lifetime, not to mention numerous unauthorized versions of single works; of these Goldoni took the trouble to warn readers of his Mémoires (Paris, 1787): ‘Nota. Les Opéras-Comiques de M. Goldoni ont parcouru plusieurs endroits de l’Italie [he might more correctly have said ‘de l’Europe’]. L’on y a fait par-tout des changemens au gré des Acteurs et des Compositeurs de musique. Les Imprimeurs les ont pris où ils ont pu les trouver, et il y en a très-peu qui ressemblent aux Originaux.’ It was the fate of comic operas, even more than of opere serie, to be turned into virtually unrecognizable pasticcios very soon after their first run. If not proud of his librettos, therefore, Goldoni at least was wary lest the numberless corrupt versions circulating be imputed to him; for, being a successful man of the theatre, he was much scrutinized and attacked by literary critics.

Goldoni in fact was no Zeno or Metastasio: his librettos do not stand up as literature. Yet they worked remarkably well in the theatre and were repeatedly set to new music (though not as often as those of his two illustrious predecessors). Indeed, it was through his librettos that Goldoni’s work first reached St Petersburg and Moscow, Warsaw, Prague, Brussels, London, Madrid and Barcelona; and Haydn and Mozart were among the many foreign composers who set them to new music.

Goldoni’s flair for the living stage prevented any of his productions (whether for the spoken theatre or for the opera house) from ever smacking of literature; they were meant to be seen rather than read. The same genius that produced vignettes of everyday life in the spoken plays provided talented composers with the most variegated materials, drawn mostly from fantasy and rich in spectacle and twists of plot, for the realization of the very different requirements of the opera buffa. An opening ensemble (eventually to be termed ‘introduzione’), providing a colourful tableau and some inkling of the action to follow, plentiful ensembles sprinkled throughout the rest of the three-act work, a duet between the two principals just before the concluding scene of Act 3: these are some of the hallmarks of the typical Goldoni opera buffa libretto. His principal contribution, however, and one recognized as such by his contemporaries (see Gozzi, 427), was the lengthy, action-studded finale, designed for continuous musical setting, that invariably concluded each of the first two acts. It is here that composers learnt to deal musically with one element in opera (action or incident) that had traditionally been beyond their purview, having been relegated until then to recitative.

Before extensive comparative studies have been made of the librettos of less eminent contemporary authors, it is not possible to state categorically that every single aspect of this new, mid-18th-century opera buffa type originated with Goldoni. There is no doubt, however, as to the sheer quantity and immense popularity of his librettos. His Il filosofo di campagna, set by Galuppi in 1754, and La buona figliuola, in the 1760 resetting by Piccinni, were possibly the most influential, certainly the most successful operas of the period. His, it is safe to say, was a pivotal role in the history of the genre; at the very least he helped to give opera buffa the shape in which, in the mid-18th century, it gained the ascendancy on the stages of Italy and Europe.

Renewed interest in Goldoni’s works on the part of composers in the early 20th century led to operatic settings of some of his plays by, among others, G.F. Malipiero and Wolf-Ferrari.

Goldoni, Carlo

LIBRETTOS

Editions: Opere complete, ed. G. Ortolani and others (Venice, 1907–71)Tutte le opere, ed. G. Ortolani (Milan, 1935–56)

intermezzos

serious operas

comic operas

other works

Goldoni, Carlo

WRITINGS

Mémoires (Paris, 1787) [repr. with the autobiographical prefaces to the Pasquali edn of his works (Venice, 1760–61) in Tutte le opere, i]

Epistolario, Tutte le opere, xiv

Goldoni, Carlo

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BurneyH

LoewenbergA

G. Gozzi, ed.: La gazzetta veneta, 1760–61; ed. A. Zardo (Florence, 1915/R)

V. Alfieri: Vita di Vittorio Alfieri scritta da esso (London, 1807; Eng. trans., 1810, 2/1961)

A.G. Spinelli: Bibliografia goldoniana (Milan, 1884)

A. Wotquenne: Alphabetisches Verzeichnis der Stücke in Versen aus den dramatischen Werken von Zeno, Metastasio und Goldoni (Leipzig, 1905)

A. Della Torre: Saggio di una bibliografia delle opere intorno a Carlo Goldoni, 1793–1907 (Florence, 1908)

H.C. Chatfield-Taylor: Goldoni: a Biography (New York, 1913)

O.G.T. Sonneck: Miscellaneous Studies in the History of Music (New York, 1921/R)

W.C. Holmes: ‘Pamela Transformed’, MQ, xxxviii (1952), 581–94 [on La buona figliuola]

Studi goldoniani:Venice 1957, ed. V. Branca and N. Mangini (Venice, 1960)

N. Mangini: Bibliografia goldoniana 1908–1957 (Venice, 1961) [with sequels in Studi goldoniani, 1968–]

G. Ortolani: La riforma del teatro nel Settecento e altri scritti (Venice, 1962)

H. Wirth: ‘Carlo Goldoni und die deutsche Oper’, Hans Albrecht in memoriam, ed. W. Brennecke and H. Haase (Kassel, 1962), 160–67

N. Mangini: La fortuna di Carlo Goldoni e altri saggi goldoniani (Florence, 1965)

P. Weiss: Carlo Goldoni, Librettist: the Early Years (diss., Columbia U., 1970)

P. Weiss: ‘Goldoni poeta d’opere serie per musica’, Studi goldoniani, iii (1973), 7–40

R. Strohm: Die italienische Oper im 18. Jahrhundert (Wilhelmshaven, 1979)

M. Kaindlstorffer: Die Drammi Giocosi Carlo Goldonis: ein Beitrag zur Librettistik des 18. Jahrhunderts (diss., U. of Vienna, 1981)

F. Fido: Da Venezia all’Europa: prospettive sull’ultimo Goldoni (Rome, 1984)

P. Weiss: ‘Venetian Commedia dell’Arte “Operas” in the Age of Vivaldi’, MQ, lxx (1984), 195–217

F. Fido: ‘Riforma e “contrariforma” del teatro: i libretti per musica di Goldoni fra il 1748 e il 1753’, Studi goldoniana, vii (1985), 60–72

N. Mangini: ‘I teatri veneziani al tempo della collaborazione di Galuppi con Goldoni’, Galuppiana: Venice 1985, 133–42

L. Cosi:  ‘Due oratori goldoniani’, NRMI, xx (1986), 515–38

M. Metzeltin: ‘Appunti sulla poetica dei drammi giocosi goldoniani’, Oper als Text: romanistische Beiträge zur Libretto-Forschung, ed. A. Gier (Heidelberg, 1986), 55–64

A.L. Bellina: Introduction to A. Palomba and G. Cocchi: La maestra, DMV, xix (1987), pp.vii–lxiv

T.A. Emery: ‘Goldoni’s Pamela from Play to Libretto’, Italica, lxiv (1987), 572–82 [on La buona figliuola]

D.N. Marinelli: Carlo Goldoni as Experimental Librettist: the drammi giocosi of 1750 (diss., Rutgers U., 1988)

D. Heartz: ‘The Poet as Stage Designer: Metastasio, Goldoni and Da Ponte’, Mozart’s Operas, ed. T. Bauman (Berkeley, 1990), 89–105

T. Emery: Goldoni as Librettist: Theatrical Reform and the drammi giocosi per musica (New York, 1991)

N. Messima, ed.: Carlo Goldoni: vita, opere, attualità (Rome, 1993)

Musica e poesia: celebrazioni in onore di Carlo Goldoni: Narni 1993

U. Ronfani, ed.: Goldoni vivo: 1793–1993 Bicentenario Goldoniano (Rome, 1994)

Carlo Goldoni: Venice 1994, ed. C. Alberti and G. Pizzamiglio (Venice, 1995)

D. Pietropaolo, ed.: Goldoni and the Musical Theatre (New York, 1995)