biography
pronunciation:
[goldohnee]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1707–93)
|
| biography:
| Playwright, born in Venice, NE Italy. He studied for the law, and practised intermittently (1731–48), but his real interest was drama. He discovered he had a talent for comedy, and wrote over 250 comic plays in Italian, French, and the Venetian dialect. He was greatly influenced by Molière and the commedia dell'arte, but replaced the commedia dell'arte's stereotyped characters with ‘real’ ones, creating a language that was vivid and immediate. His best-known plays are Il servitore di due padroni (1746, The Servant of Two Masters), Il teatro comico (1750, The Comic Theatre), La locandiera (1753, Mine Hostess), I Rusteghi (1760, which provided the plot for The School for Fathers, produced in London in 1946), Le baruffe Chiozzotte (1762, Quarrels at Chioggia), and Il ventaglio (1766, The Fan). He also wrote librettos for the comparatively new musical form of opera buffa. In 1762 he undertook to write for the Italian theatre in Paris, and was attached to the French court until the revolution. He wrote a number of his last plays in French, including Le Bourru bienfaisant (1771, The Beneficent Bear). |
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