Conte Carlo Gozzi

Carlo Gozzi, Conte , 1720-1806, Italian dramatist. A defender of traditional Italian culture, he wrote comedies based on the old commedia dell'arte. To show the potential of the old forms and to ridicule Goldoni, their adversary, he conceived the idea of dramatizing the tales of Basile's Pentamerone. Thus he founded the fable play in Italy. His Fiaba dell'amore delle tre melarance (1761; set to music by Prokofiev as The Love for Three Oranges ) was followed by more plays of the type, among them Re Turandot (1762), made into an opera by Puccini. Written in Venetian dialect, these were very popular in their day.

Bibliography: See Gozzi's memoirs (1797; tr. with a critical essay by J. A. Symonds, 1890).

Gozzi, Carlo (1720–1806), Italian dramatist, who tried to reform the moribund commedia dell'arte in the mid-18th century by using its characters and methods, but not its subject-matter, for a new type of play which he called fiabe—a mixture of fantasy and fooling in a set text which nevertheless allowed plenty of room for improvisation. In opposition to the realistic and bourgeois comedies of his contemporary and rival Goldoni, Gozzi used stories of magicians, fabulous animals, and fairy-tale characters, and wrote in ‘pure Tuscan’ as a counterblast to Goldoni's use of local Italian dialects. The best were L'amore delle tre melarance (The Love of Three Oranges) and Il corvo (The Raven) (both 1761), Il re cervo (King Stag, 1762), Turandot (based on a Chinese fairy-tale and Gozzi's best work), and L'augellino belverde (The Beautiful Green Bird) (both 1765). Perhaps because his vein of fantasy became a more general preoccupation (he anticipated Pirandello in his use of myth and the working of the subconscious), there were some notable 20th-century productions, particularly of Turandot directed by Vakhtangov in Moscow (1922) and King Stag directed by George Devine for the Young Vic in London (1946). A good deal of incidental music was written for the plays, and two were used as opera libretti: The Love of Three Oranges by Prokofiev (1921) and Turandot by Puccini (1926).