Gozzi, Carlo

Carlo Gozzi was the sixth of eleven children of the impoverished Venetian Count Jacopo Antonio Gozzi and his wife, Angola Tiepolo. In search of a livelihood at the age of 16, he enlisted in the army operating in Dalmatia. Three years later he returned to Venice. He wrote several satirical works (poems and pamphlets) that made him famous and opened the way to the literary society (Academy) of Granelleschi. This society advocated the preservation of Tuscan literary traditions and against the new-fangled realistic plays of such playwrights as Pietro Chiari and Carlo Goldoni . With his plays, fairy tales, Gozzi tried to compose an aesthetic opposition to new literature.

Gozzi began his literary work with the writing of poems that fully corresponded to the spirit of Pulchi (“The Whore of Marfiz”, etc.) and an essay in which he argued with Goldoni, who was then conducting his famous theater reform. A great connoisseur and ardent admirer of comedy del arte , Gozzi believed that Goldoni's comedies indulge plebeian tastes first of all, and not comedy del arte, as claimed. Gozzi considered the comedy of masks the best that Venice gave theatrical art.

Legend has it that Gozzi wrote his first play, arguing with Goldoni (who was then at the zenith of fame) that he would write the play on the most unpretentious plot, having achieved tremendous success. Soon the Love of Three Oranges appeared. Her appearance Gozzi created a new genre - Fiabu, or a tragicomic tale for the theater. The fiab is based on fabulous material , where the comic and the tragic are mixed up wonderfully, and the source of the comic is, as a rule, collisions involving masks ( Pantalone , Truffaldino , Tartaglia , Brigella and Smeraldina ), and the tragic is the conflict of the main characters. The story of this tale was used by S. S. Prokofiev for his 1919 opera Love for Three Oranges .

Love for Three Oranges was written specifically for the troupe of Antonio Sacchi, a great improvisational actor. Sakki, along with his troupe, carried out Gozzi's ideas in the best possible way - the success of “Love for Three Oranges” was amazing, as well as the success of 9 subsequent fyabs.

Love for Three Oranges was almost entirely improvisational. The nine subsequent fyabs preserved improvisation only where the action was associated with masks of comedy del arte, the roles of the main characters are written in a noble and expressive white verse.

Fiab Gozzi are very famous. Goethe , the brothers August and Friedrich Schlegel , E. T. A. Hoffmann , Madame de Stael , A. N. Ostrovsky and many others highly appreciated them. Conquered by Gozzi's talent, Schiller reworked for the stage of the Weimar Theater “Turandot” - one of Gozzi's best plays, the plot of which was later composed by the music of Carl Maria von Weber and Puccini's opera .

Leaving the Fyab writing around 1765 , Gozzi did not leave the pen. However, 23 plays in the manner of a comedy of a cloak and a sword brought him incomparably less fame than the fyabs and the famous “Useless Memoirs” written at the end of his life. He was buried in the Venetian church of San Cassiano .

His fiabs to this day go around the world, causing admiration for the viewer.

The asteroid (530) Turandot , discovered in 1904 by the German astronomer Max Wolf at the Heidelberg-Königstul Observatory , is named after the name of Carlo Gozzi’s play “Turandot”.

• Love for Three Oranges (L'amore delle tre melarance, 1761)
• Raven (Il Corvo, 1761)
• Deer King (Il Re cervo, 1762)
• Turandot (Turandot, 1762)
• Snake Woman (La donna serpente, 1762)
• Zobeide (La Zobeide, 1763)
• Happy Beggars (I Pitocchi fortunati, 1764)
• Blue Monster (Il mostro turchino, 1764)
• Green Bird (L'Augellino belverde, 1765)
• Jayim, king of the genies (Zeim, re de 'geni, 1765)
• Useless memoirs about the life of Carlo Gozzi, written by himself and published with humility (Memorie inutili della vita die Carlo Gozzi, scritte da lui medesimo, e da lui publicate per umilita, 1797). First translated into Russian by L. M. Chachko in 2013.

• “ Deer King ” - USSR, “ M. Gorky Film Studio ”, 1969 , director Pavel Arsenov
• “ Love for Three Oranges ” - USSR, Mosfilm - Bulgaria, Sofia Studio, 1970, directors Viktor Titov and Yuri Bogatyrenko
• " Raven " - USSR, 1986, director Valentin Pluchek
• “ Turandot ” - USSR, “ Georgia-Film ”, 1990 , director Otar Shamatava .

• Gozzi K. Tales for the theater / Entry. Art., comment. and ed. per. S. Mokulsky. - M .: Art, 1956. - 889 p.
• Gozzi K. Tales for the theater / Entry. Art. N. Tomashevsky. - M .: True, 1989.
• Tomashevsky N. Italian theater of the XVIII century // K. Goldoni. Comedy C. Gozzi. Tales for the theater. V. Alfieri. Tragedy. - M .: Fiction, 1971.
• Gozzi K. Useless Memoirs / Per. L. M. Chachko - M .: Bureau Lighthouse, 2013 .-- ISBN 978-5-518-35036-6

• Fiaba K. Gozzi
• Gozzi K. The king of the genies, or faithful slave . / Per. T. L. Schepkina-Kupernik
• Gozzi, Carlo // Encyclopedia " Around the World ."
• Gozzi, Carlo // Literary Encyclopedia : 11 vol. - [ M. ], 1929-1939.