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Carlo Gozzi

Princess Turandot, performance by Yevgeny Vakhtangov (1922).

Carlo, Count Gozzi (13 December 1720, Venice – 4 April 1806, Venice) was an Italian playwright.

Born in Venice, he came from an old Venetian family from the Republic of Ragusa. His father's debts forced him to look for a means of supporting himself, and at the age of sixteen, he joined the army in Dalmatia; three years later he returned to Venice, where he soon made a reputation for himself as the wittiest member of the Granelleschi society, to which the publication of several satirical pieces had gained him admission. This society, nominally devoted to conviviality and wit, had serious literary aims, and was especially zealous to preserve Tuscan literature from foreign influence.

The displacement of the old Italian comedy by the dramas of Pietro Chiari and Carlo Goldoni's works, modelled on French examples, threatened to defeat the society's efforts; in 1757 Gozzi came to the rescue by publishing a satirical poem, La tartana degli influssi per l'anno 1756, and in 1761 by his comedy, The Love for Three Oranges or Analisi riflessiva della fiaba L'amore delle tre melarance, a parody of the manner of the other two poets, founded on a fairy tale. To perform it, he obtained the services of the Sacchi company of players, who, thanks to the popularity of the comedies of Chiari and Goldoni—which offered no scope for the display of their peculiar talents—had been left without employment. Their satirical powers thus sharpened by personal enmity, the play was an extraordinary success.

Struck by the effect produced on the audience by the introduction of the supernatural or mythical element, which he had merely used as a convenient medium for his satirical purposes, Gozzi produced a series of dramatic pieces based on fairy tales, which were briefly popular, but after the breaking up of the Sacchi company were completely disregarded. They were much praised by Goethe, Schlegel, Madame de Staël and Sismondi; and one of them, Turandot or Re Turandote, was translated by Friedrich Schiller.

In his later years Gozzi began to produce tragedies in which the comic element was largely introduced; as this innovation proved unacceptable to the critics he turned to the Spanish drama, from which he obtained models for various pieces; these had minor success.

His brother, Gasparo Gozzi, was also a well-known writer of the time.

His collected works were published under his own superintendence, at Venice, in 1792, in 10 volumes.

A number of twentieth-century stage works were inspired by Gozzi's plays. These include treatments of Turandot by Karl Vollmöller and Bertolt Brecht, operas based on the same story by Busoni and most famously Puccini and Prokofiev's The Love of Three Oranges.

Plays[link]

• L'amore delle tre melarance (1761)
• The Crow (1762)
• The Stag-King (1762)
• Turandot (1762)
• The Serpent Woman (1763)
• Zobeda (1763)
• The Fortunate Beggars (1764)
• Il mostro turchino (1764)
• The Green Bird (1765)
• Zeim, King of Genies (1765)
• Marfisa bizzarra (1766)
• The Elixir of Love (1775/1776)

References[link]

• The Memoirs of Count Carlo Gozzi at gutenberg.org
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

External links[link]

• Works by Carlo Gozzi at Project Gutenberg

Renato Simoni (September 5, 1875 in Verona – July 5, 1952 in Milan) was an Italian journalist, playwright, writer and theatrical critic noted for his collaboration work with Giuseppe Adami for Giacomo Puccini's Turandot.

Simoni's career was entirely devoted to theater. His first job was as an editor and a critic at L'Adige, a local Veronese newspaper company in his hometown. In 1902, he wrote one of his best comedies, La Vedova, followed by Carlo Gozzi (1903), Tramondo (1906), Congedo (1910) and Il matrimonio di Casanova.^[1][2]

In 1914, he succeeded John Pozza as an author and critic at Corriere della Sera newspaper. He worked for the company until the end of his life. He also held a position as a director for a weekly magazine, La Tradotta.^[3]

All his writings and critics were collected in volumes by Lucio Ridenti in 1951 under the title Trent'anni di cronaca drammatica and was published in 1960.

In 1952, Simoni donated 40,000 volumes of his writings and reviews to the Museum of La Scala and dedicated them to his mother, Livia.^[4] The museum library was named Biblioteca Livia Simoni, after his mother’s name.

Simoni died in Milan on July 5, 1952.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Simoni short biography
• Livia Simoni Library
• One of Simoni’s collaboration work

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Mariella Devia

Mariella Devia (April 12, 1948) is an Italian soprano, well known for performing many roles in the bel canto repertoire.

Born in Chiusavecchia, Devia trained at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome with Iolanda Magnoni. She made her stage debut in Treviso, as Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor, in 1973, and quickly sang throughout Italy, making her debut at La Scala in Milan in 1987, as Giulietta in I Capuleti e i Montecchi.

On the international scene, she appeared at the Metropolitan Opera from 1979 to 1994 as Lucia, Gilda and Constanze, and at Carnegie Hall, as Lakmé, in 1979. She made her debut at the Paris Opera and the Aix-en-Provence Festival in 1987, and at the Royal Opera House in London, in 1988.

She was a regular at the Pesaro Festival and at the Festival della Valle d'Itria in Martina Franca, where she won great acclaim in the exhumation of long neglected operas by Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini and other bel canto composers. She is also admired in Mozart operas, especially as Constanze in Abduction from the Seraglio, as well as Verdi's Gilda and Violetta.

Repertory[link]

• Auber: Manon Lescaut - Manon
• Bellini: Beatrice di Tenda - Beatrice; I Capuleti e i Montecchi - Giulietta; Il Pirata - Imogene; I Puritani - Elvira; La Sonnambula - Amina
• Berlioz: Benvenuto Cellini - Teresa
• Bizet: Les Pecheurs des Perles - Leila
• Cherubini: Lodoïska - Lodoïska
• Cimarosa: Il Matrimonio Segreto - Elisabetta
• Donizetti: Adelia - Adelia; Anna Bolena - Anna; Don Pasquale - Norina; Elisabetta al castello di Kenilworth - Elisabetta; L'Elisir d'Amore - Adina; La Fille du Regiment - Marie; Linda di Chamounix - Linda; Lucrezia Borgia - Lucrezia; Lucia di Lammermoor - Lucia; Maria Stuarda - Maria; Marino Faliero - Elena; Parisina - Parisina
• Delibes: Lakmé - Lakmé
• Gounod: Faust - Marguerite; Roméo et Juliette - Juliette
• Mozart: Cosí fan tutte - Despina and Fiordiligi; Die Entführung aus dem Serail - Kostanze; Don Giovanni - Donna Anna; Idomeneo - Ilia and Elettra; Le Nozze di Figaro - Contessa; Die Zauberflöte - Pamina and Königin der Nacht
• Puccini: Gianni Schicchi - Lauretta
• Rossini: Adelaide di Borgogna - Adelaide; Il Barbiere di Siviglia - Rosina; Le Comte Ory - Adele; Mosè - Anaide; Mosè in Egitto - Elcia; Otello - Desdemona; Semiramide - Semiramide; Il Signor Bruschino - Sofia; Tancredi - Amenaide; Il Turco in Italia - Fiorilla; Zelmira - Zelmira
• Rota: Cappello di Paglia di Firenze - Elena
• Satie: Geneviève de Brabant - Genèvieve
• Verdi: Falstaff - Nannetta; Giovanna D'Arco - Giovanna; Rigoletto - Gilda; La Traviata - Violetta

References[link]

• Le guide de l'opéra, les indispensables de la musique, R. Mancini & J-J. Rouveroux (Fayard, 1986) ISBN 2-213-01563-5