Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today, we are
opening up a file that at first glance looks
like a pretty standard biography of an 18th century
playwright. Right. But once you start reading
the source material, you realize we are actually
looking at the blueprint for a cultural revolution.
It's so much more than just one man's life story.
Exactly. We are heading to the canals, the piazzas,
and the bustling, chaotic theaters of Venice
to talk about Carlo Azzaldo Goldoni. It is a
massive story. And Goldoni is such a fascinating
figure because he didn't just write plays. He,
I mean, he fundamentally rewired how an entire
nation understood comedy. That's a huge claim.
It is, but it's true. You often hear him referred
to as the Italian Moliere, although, and we'll
get into this, he was actually quite humble about
that comparison. Oh, I'm sure. I mean, Moliere
is, that's a high bar. It's the highest bar.
But the title itself really hints at the scale
of his impact. He is, and I don't think this
is an exaggeration, the architect of Italian
comedy as we know it today. And when you use
a word like architect, it implies he had to build
something from the ground up. Or maybe that he
had to bulldoze something that was already there.
Precisely. That's a perfect way to put it. I
mean, if we set the scene, we are in the Republic
of Venice in the early 1700s. It's a time of
decadence, of carnival, of masks. The Venice
we all picture. Exactly. And the dominant form
of entertainment was something called commedia
dell 'arte. And we're going to spend a lot of
time unpacking that. But in short, it was improvised.
It was raucous. It relied on stock characters
and slapstick. So not exactly highbrow literature.
Not at all. It was brilliant in its own way,
don't get me wrong. But by the time Goldoni came
along, it had become, well, often vulgar, repetitive,
and just plain chaotic. Goldoni looked at this
creative mess and decided he wanted to discipline
it. He wanted to take that raw energy and channel
it into scripted, character -driven works that
reflected real life. And that is the mission
we are exploring today. How one man took the
masks off the actors to show the real human faces
underneath. But what I love about this story
and what really jumped out from the sources is
that Goldoni's own life was arguably more dramatic
than anything he ever put on stage. It really,
really was. The man lived about five different
lives. I mean, looking at the source material,
which is primarily his own memoirs, so we'll
have to take that with a grain of salt, and historical
records, we have everything. We have expulsion
from school for writing a libelous poem. A classic.
We have him burning his own manuscripts in a
fireplace in a fit of absolute rage. We have
a bitter citywide rivalry that essentially drives
him into self -exile. And then just to cap it
all off, a truly tragic ending amidst the chaos
of the French Revolution. It's an incredible
arc. It is. It's a life of constant reinvention.
He was a lawyer who didn't want to be a lawyer,
a diplomat who wanted to be a playwright, and
a revolutionary who was actually quite conservative
in his personal values, a man of contradictions.
So let's unpack this life, starting from the
very beginning, or I guess what Goldoni claims
was the beginning, because we have a bit of an
unreliable narrator. situation here don't we
we certainly do this is one of the most interesting
things about him much of what we know about goldoni's
early life comes from his autobiography his memoirs
which he wrote late in life in french right and
by that point he's had a lifetime to craft his
own myth exactly and goldoni true to his profession
was a storyteller first and a historian a distant
second he paints this picture of himself as a
born comedian in his own words he describes himself
as careless light -hearted and resilient against
fate. So he wants us to see him as this charming,
happy -go -lucky figure who was just destined
for this stage from the moment he was born. That's
the narrative. But when you dig into the actual
records, the public documents, the facts don't
always line up with the story he tells about
himself. So where does this story start to fray?
What's the first big discrepancy? Well, it starts
with something small but telling. For example,
in his memoirs, he claims his father, Giulio
Goldoni, was a physician. Okay, a doctor. Respectable
profession. Very respectable. Physician sounds
prestigious, university educated, but historical
sources, parish records and the like, they suggest
Giulio was actually an apothecary. Basically
a pharmacist. Right. Still a skilled and necessary
trade, but it doesn't carry quite the same status
as a physician in 18th century Italy. So he's
polishing the family crest a little bit, you
know. A resume enhancement. A little bit. But
the biggest fact check moment, the one that really
makes you question everything else, comes with
his grandfather, Carlo Alessandro Goldoni. Ah,
his namesake. The very same. In the memoirs,
Goldoni writes this incredibly touching, formative
narrative about how his grandfather introduced
him to the theater. He describes his grandfather
building a little puppet theater in the house,
putting on plays, and how he sparked that initial
flame of passion for the stage. Which is a beautiful
origin story. It gives him this artistic lineage.
It makes his destiny seem preordained. It is
beautiful. It's a perfect opening act for his
life. It's also completely impossible. grandfather
died four years before Carlo was even born. Get
out of here. Really? The records are clear. The
man was dead. Okay, so he's literally writing
a character into his own backstory to make it
more compelling. That's a very playwright thing
to do. Exactly. And I think that tells us something
profound about Goldoni. He wasn't just documenting
his life. He was crafting a narrative. He was
a dramatist through and through. He understood
that a hero needs an origin story, so he gave
himself one. And it also tells you he had a bit
of an ego. To put himself at the center of a
story that starts before he's even born. Oh,
absolutely. But even if the grandfather story
is complete fabrication, the obsession with theater
itself was very, very real. The sources are clear
on that. Even his parents couldn't stop it. Right.
The sources mentioned that while they tried to
steer him toward more serious pursuits, law,
medicine, what have you. His toys were puppets
and his books were plays. He was just completely
consumed by it. And that obsession led to some
very rebellious behavior early on. We absolutely
have to talk about the Rimini incident. Please.
This sounds like something out of a coming -of
-age movie. It really does. So he's a teenager,
maybe 13 or 14. His father, trying to give him
a solid education, places him under the care
of a philosopher named Caldini in the city of
Rimini. A philosopher. Okay, so we're talking
logic, rhetoric. The serious stuff. The idea
is to give him a grounded, respectable education.
But Goldoni, he's bored out of his mind. He's
restless. He finds the philosophy dry and just...
Life draining. And then a company of strolling
players, essentially a traveling theater troupe,
comes through town. And he runs away to join
the circus. Effectively, yes. He completely abandons
his studies with the philosopher, finds the acting
troupe, and hops on their boat to get back to
his mother in Kyutsu. It's this magnetic pull
of the stage. He just couldn't stay away. Imagine
the scene. A young boy supposed to be studying
Aristotle, instead floating down the Adriatic
coast with a bunch of probably very loud and
rowdy actors. It's the first great act of rebellion
in a life full of them. But his father didn't
give up on the whole serious education plan.
Not by a long shot. In 1723, he manages to get
Carlo into the Collegio Ghislieri in Pavia. And
this place sounds intense. What was it like?
Intense is the right word. It was a stern, almost
monastic institution. They imposed the tonsure
on students, meaning they had to shave the crowns
of their heads like monks, and they were required
to wear monastic habits. Wow. So it was basically
a religious boarding school meant to beat the
worldliness out of you. It was a place designed
to suppress worldly distractions and enforce
strict discipline, which, knowing Goldoni, seems
like a recipe for absolute disaster. Total mismatch.
You're trying to contain a firecracker. A total
mismatch. And Goldoni relates in - his memoirs
that instead of studying theology or law as intended,
he spent a considerable part of his time hiding
in his room, devouring Greek and Latin comedies.
He was physically in a monastery, but mentally
he was in the Roman Colosseum watching Plautus.
He was studying. Just not the curriculum they
designed. He was analyzing plot structures while
everyone else was praying. Exactly. And this
all comes to a head with the great scandal of
1725. This is the moment that gets him kicked
out for good. This is the Colosso incident, right?
This is the infamous Colosso incident. So in
his third year at the college, Goldoni decides
to flex his writing muscles. But he doesn't write
a hymn or a legal brief. He writes a satirical,
libelous poem called Il Colosso. And who was
the target of this satire? This is where he really
messes up. The targets were the daughters of
specific, prominent local families in Pavia.
He ridiculed them. He used all his wit and cleverness
to mock their social standing, their behaviors,
maybe even their looks. Oof. In a strict religious
boarding school environment, attacking the daughters
of the local elite families is... that's bold.
It was incredibly foolish. You have to remember,
these were powerful families. You just didn't
do that. Now, there's also an alternative or
perhaps additional theory mentioned in some sources
that suggests the expulsion wasn't just about
the poem. There's more to this story. There might
be. There's a mention of a visit to a local brothel
with some of his schoolmates. So it might have
been a combination of literary rebellion and
good old fashioned moral transgression. It was
likely both. The poem was the public offense.
The other stuff might have been the final straw.
Whatever the exact cause, the result was decisive.
He was expelled from the Collegio Ghislieri and
forced to leave the city of Pavia entirely. It
was a humiliating exit. He was, for all intents
and purposes, run out of town on a rail. So he's
kicked out of school. He's run away from a philosopher.
At this point, you'd think he would just commit
to the theater full time. But he doesn't, does
he? He pivots again. He does. And this begins
the phase of his life we can call the reluctant
lawyer. Despite everything, he goes back to his
studies. He feels the pressure of social expectation,
of his family. He studies law at Udun and eventually
manages to take his degree at the University
of Modena. And he wasn't just a student. He actually
practiced law. He got a job. He did. And he was
successful at it. He worked as a law clerk in
Kyoja and Felcher. He held what the sources call
lucrative positions as a secretary and counselor.
By all accounts, he had settled down. He was
building a respectable bourgeois life for himself,
the kind of life his father always wanted for
him. But the universe, or maybe just his own
restless nature, kept pulling him back. It's
the classic tension, isn't it? The civility and
respectability of the law versus the passion
and chaos of the stage. An unexpected summons
to Venice eventually pulled him back into the
orbit of the theater for good. But before that,
we have to touch on his romantic life because
that was just as chaotic as his academic one.
The outline mentions an unwanted marriage in
1732. What happened there? Yes. So shortly after
his father died in 1731, Goldoni found himself,
let's say, cornered into a marriage proposal
he really did not want. An arranged marriage
situation. It seems like it. And in true Goldoni
fashion, he didn't just say no or have a difficult
adult conversation. He fled. He literally left
the town in the middle of the night, escaped
to Milan, and then on to Verona. He really deals
with conflict by running away, doesn't he? Runs
away from Rimini, gets kicked out of Pavia, flees
a marriage. Avoidance was definitely a key strategy
for him in his youth. But that flight to Verona
turned out to be pivotal because there he met
a man named Giuseppe Eimer, who was a prominent
theater manager. And Eimer sees his potential.
He sees something in Goldoni, the wit, the charm,
the knowledge of plays. He helps him become a
comical poet for his troupe and perhaps most
importantly, introduces him to a young woman
from Genoa named Nicoletta Conio. Who would become
his wife. Yes. Unlike his previous romantic entanglements,
this one stuck. They returned to Venice together
and she became a constant stabilizing partner
in his very unstable life. She provided the anchor
he needed. But professionally, Goldoni was about
to face one of his biggest and most dramatic
humiliations. We are talking about the tragedy
of Amala Sunta. The infamous Amala Sunta. So
Goldoni wanted to make a big splash in the Milan
theater scene. He decided to write a tragedy,
a serious, grand musical drama. So he's aiming
for the highest form of art at the time. Exactly.
He poured his heart into it. He meticulously
followed all the classical rules, the rules of
Aristotle and Horace that he'd studied. He thought
he'd written a structurally perfect masterpiece.
He submits it to Count Prada, the director of
the opera in Milan. And what was the feedback?
It was devastatingly polite, but... absolutely
brutal. Count Prada sat him down and told him
essentially, my dear Goldoni, your play is perfect
according to the ancient Greek and Roman rules,
but it completely fails the Italian rules. What
on earth does that mean, the Italian rules? It
meant that Goldoni had written a play for textbook,
not for a living breathing stage. Prada explained
that in Italy, you don't just write a play in
a vacuum. You have to account for the specific
actors you have. You have to write for the composer
who's setting it to music. You have to consider
the stage. So it's like a director today telling
a screenwriter, great script, but our star actress
refuses to say that line. We can't afford that
explosion. And the composer hates the rhythm
of that speech. That is the perfect modern analogy.
The theater was a collaborative, practical, and
often ego -driven machine, not an abstract literary
exercise. Goldoni had ignored all the practical
realities of production. And Goldoni's reaction
to this critique is one of my favorite details
in his entire biography. He doesn't argue. He
doesn't go back and rewrite it. No. His reaction
is pure theater. He goes back to his inn. He
orders a fire to be built in the brazier. And
he throws the entire manuscript of Malasanta
into the flames one page at a time. That is so
incredibly dramatic. It's theatrical. Even in
his moment of failure, he's a dramatist. But
it was a purging. It was a symbolic act. He realized
the old way, or rather his purely academic approach,
wasn't going to work. He needed to adapt to the
real world of the stage. And he did adapt pretty
quickly. He wrote a play called Bellisario in
1734, which was a huge hit. It was very successful,
yes. Though interestingly, Goldoni later claimed
in his memoirs to be ashamed of it. Why, if it
was a hit? I think because it was still playing
by the old rules of melodrama and spectacle,
it was a success with the audience, but perhaps
it didn't meet the high artistic standards he
was starting to develop for himself. He was beginning
to see that he didn't just want to participate
in Italian theater, he wanted to fix it. This
brings us right to the core of our deep dive,
the theatrical revolution. To really understand
what Goldoni did, we have to understand what
he was fighting against. You mentioned Commedia
dell 'arte earlier. Let's really break down what
that was, the status quo he was trying to tear
down. Okay, so Commedia dell 'arte, which means
comedy of the artists or comedy of the profession,
was the dominant form of comedy. It had been
around since the 16th century. It wasn't based
on scripts. It was based on canovacci, which
were basically loose plot outlines. So there
was no dialogue written down? Very little, if
any. The canovaccio might say, Arlechino enters,
sees Pantalon's money bag, and devises a plan
to steal it. And that's it. The actors would
have to improvise the entire scene. Wow. So every
performance was different. Every single night
was different, and the actors played stock characters.
These weren't unique individuals, they were archetypes.
You had Arlecchino, the foolish, acrobatic servant.
Harlequin, in English. Right. Then you had Pantalone,
the old, greedy Venetian merchant. Il Dottore,
the pompous, know -it -all academic from Bologna
who spouts fake Latin. The boastful soldier,
Il Capitano. The young lovers, the innamorati,
who were the only ones who didn't wear masks.
So if you went to see a show, You knew exactly
who these characters were before they even opened
their mouths? Just by their costumes and their
masks? Exactly. And the humor came from their
interactions in a lot of physical comedy called
latsy pre -rehearsed comic bits. An actor playing
Arlecchino might have a famous lasso of the fly
where he'd spend five minutes trying to swat
a fly. It sounds kind of like a live action cartoon.
That's a great way to think about it. But by
Goldoni's time, the tradition was getting tired.
The improvisation often descended into repetitive
gags, lazy and vulgar jokes, and the plots were
these incredibly convoluted situations. It was
what they called a comedy of an intrigue, focused
on ridiculous situations rather than recognizable
human behavior. And Golgoni looked at this and
thought, what? We can do better. He thought,
this isn't life. His great revolutionary goal
was to supersede the comedy of masks with representations
of actual life and manners. He believed that
Italian life, the real interactions of shopkeepers,
gondoliers, noblewomen, and servants in Venice,
was worthy of art. He wanted to put a mirror
up to society. He wanted to show real behaviors,
not just these cartoonish caricatures. Precisely.
But he was incredibly smart about it. He knew
he couldn't just destroy a comedian overnight.
The audience loved the masks. The actors had
built their entire careers on them. So he developed
a kind of hybrid style to ease them into his
new vision. How did that work? What was the first
step? He started by taking the stock characters
that everyone knew and loved like Arlecchino
and Pantalone, but he began writing down their
lines. He would write out just the main character's
part at first and let the others improvise around
it. So he's slowly introducing the idea of a
script. He's slowly taking control. Then he started
giving them psychological depth. He'd give Pantalone
a reason for his greed or Arlecchino a moment
of cleverness. He forced the actors to memorize
speeches rather than just making up jokes on
the fly. That must have been a huge battle with
the actors. I mean, imagine telling a brilliant
improv comic that from now on they have to stick
to a script. It was a massive struggle. The actors
resisted constantly. They felt constrained. They
felt he was taking away their creative freedom.
But Goldoni persisted. And by 1743, with the
play La Donna di Garbo, The Woman of Grace, he
had perfected it. This is considered the first
true Italian comedy of this reformed kind. The
actors were all speaking his words and the characters
were three -dimensional people. He had finally
taken off the masks, metaphorically speaking.
We keep mentioning Molière. It's clear Goldoni
saw him as the gold standard. He openly adopted
him as a model, right? He did. Molière was the
benchmark for literary comedy in Europe. Goldoni
used to whisper to himself, according to his
memoirs, whenever one of his plays succeeded,
good, but not yet Moliere. He was constantly
chasing that level of literary respectability
and psychological insight. But there is a distinction
between them. The sources are careful to point
out that Goldoni wasn't just copying Moliere.
No, not at all. The expert consensus, and Goldoni's
own work really bears this out, is that Goldoni's
tone was gentler, more... More humane, maybe.
Moliere's comedy can be incredibly biting, cynical,
sometimes deeply misanthropic. He really exposes
the darkness in human nature. He can be quite
cruel to his characters. He can. Goldoni, on
the other hand, was more optimistic. He genuinely
seemed to like people, even with all their flaws.
He satirized their foolishness, their vanity,
their greed, but he rarely condemned them entirely.
There's a warmth and a fundamental sunniness
in Goldoni that you don't always find in Moliere.
Let's talk about the work itself, the sheer volume
of it is staggering it is absolutely immense
we are talking about over 200 works tragedies
tragic comedies comedies and over 50 opera librettos
not to mention poetry and other writings he was
a machine how is he so prolific well he had to
be He wasn't a nobleman with a patron. He was
a professional writer who lived off his pen.
He worked with different theater managers, first
Girolamo Medebac in Venice and Livorno, and later
the powerful Vendraman family who ran the T -Trust
San Luca. And they demanded new material constantly.
And he had to churn these plays out to make a
living. This wasn't a hobby. Not at all. There
was one famous or infamous season 1750 to 1751
where he got into a kind of public bet. with
his audience and promised to deliver 16 new comedies
in a single year. 16 brand new plays. That's
more than one a month. That sounds completely
impossible. And everyone thought it was. But
he did it. He delivered all 16. It's an unimaginable
level of output for a playwright today. And what's
more, some of them were masterpieces that are
still performed. Okay, let's highlight some of
those specific masterpieces. The one everyone
has probably heard of, even if they don't know
it's Goldoni, is The Servant of Two Masters.
Il Servatore di Due Padroni, written in 1745.
This is the perfect example of that hybrid style
we were just discussing. It features the character
Trufaldino, who is a version of Orlechino, the
classic zanny or servant character. He's perpetually
hungry, he's not the brightest, and he ends up
getting hired by two different masters at the
same time without either of them knowing. It's
a classic farce setup. How does he keep them
from finding out about each other? Through a
series of increasingly frantic and hilarious
schemes, he's constantly running back and forth,
mixing up letters, serving two dinners at once.
It's a masterclass in physical comedy and intricate
plotting. But what Goldoni does is elevate it
with brilliant, witty dialogue and a scripted
structure that keeps the pacing absolutely relentless.
This is the play that's been adapted so many
times. So many. Listeners might know the hit
play One Man, Two Governors, which was a huge
success at the National Theatre in London and
then on Broadway. That is a direct modern adaptation
of Goldoni. That's incredible. From 1745 Venice
to modern Broadway, the core jokes still land.
They do. Another key work which shows a different
side of him is The Mistress of the Inn or La
Locandiera from 1751. This is less about slapstick
and more about character. Who is the mistress?
The protagonist is a woman named Miranda Lena.
She's strong. She's clever. She's an independent
business owner running an inn in Florence. And
she is surrounded by men account, a marquee,
a cynical knight who are all trying to win her
affection. And how does she handle them? She
masterfully manipulates all of them. She plays
on their vanity, their class pretensions, their
egos, all to teach them a lesson about the nature
of women and love. It's a brilliant character
study, a masterpiece of feminist wit, long, long
before that term even existed. And we can't forget
his contribution to music. He wasn't just writing
plays. He was a major force in opera. Specifically,
opera buffa, or comic opera. This is a crucial
part of his legacy that sometimes gets overlooked.
He collaborated extensively with the composer
Baldassare Gallupi. Gallupi, that's a big name
in Baroque music. A huge name. They were like
the Rodgers and Hammerstein of 18th century Venice.
They produced over 20 librettos together. And
Goldoni brought his same reforming zeal to opera.
What was comic opera like before him? Before
Goldoni, comic opera was often just silly little
interludes performed between the acts of a grand,
serious opera. They were trifles. Goldoni took
them seriously. He integrated elements of commedia
with recognizable local and middle class realities.
And characters singing about real life problems,
money, love, social climbing. Exactly. Not just
gods and ancient kings. Their biggest hit was
Il Filosofo di Campagna, The Country Philosopher.
It was a massive success all over Europe. It
showed that opera could be funny, it could be
musically sophisticated, and it could be socially
relevant. He helped create a whole new genre.
Speaking of social relevance, let's dive deeper
into the themes of his plays. You mentioned he
wanted to show real life. In 18th century Venice,
that meant dealing with class. Absolutely. Goldoni
is, in many ways, the first great dramatist of
the emerging middle class, the bourgeoisie. His
plays are filled with merchants, shopkeepers,
lawyers, and their families. He dramatizes their
lives, their values, their conflicts. And what
were those values that he seemed to champion?
Rationality, civility, humanism, a strong sense
of honor, and above all... honesty. Goldoni championed
the very bourgeois idea that a person's worth
wasn't defined by their noble title, but by their
character and their behavior. So he was taking
shots at the old aristocracy. He was, but very
carefully. He really disliked arrogance, intolerance,
and the abuse of power. So he would often poke
fun at the arrogant nobility, showing them as
out of touch or vain or obsessed with their lineage.
But, and this is very important, he also poked
fun at the pauper who lacks dignity. So he wasn't
a radical trying to overturn the whole social
order? Not at all. He was a humanist criticizing
bad behavior wherever he saw it, whether it was
in a palace or in the street. He believed in
a well -ordered society where everyone knew their
place but also acted with decency and respect.
His characters aren't monsters of vice or saints
of abstract virtue. No, and that's the key to
their realism. They occupy the middle ground
of human temperament. They are flawed, but fundamentally
relatable people trying to get by. There's also
a fascinating linguistic aspect to his work.
We're reading this in English, obviously, but
the original language he used on stage was a
kind of battleground. It absolutely was. You
have to remember, Italy wasn't a unified country
yet. The language varied wildly from region to
region. The proper literary language was Tuscan,
the language of Dante. But in Venice, people
spoke the Venetian dialect. And Goldoni used
this on stage. He used it brilliantly. His characters
spoke based on their station in life. The local
Venetians, the gondoliers, the servants, the
shopkeepers, they all spoke in a lively, authentic
Venetian dialect. The educated characters, or
characters from other parts of Italy, would speak
in the more formal literary Tuscan. So he was
basically code switching on stage. Yes. And in
doing so, he helped legitimize the use of vernacular
in high art. He showed that the everyday language
of the people could be beautiful and expressive
and worthy of the stage. Although it is interesting
to note that later on, for the printed editions
of his plays, he often translated the Venetian
parts into Tuscan to reach a wider national audience.
What about religion? Venice was a staunchly Catholic
state. Did that feature heavily in his plays?
Surprisingly, almost not at all. It's one of
the most striking things about his work in Italy.
He virtually ignores religious and ecclesiastical
subjects. Despite his very Catholic upbringing
and education, you don't see themes of death,
sin, repentance, or theology. No priests or monks
as main characters. That seems like a very conscious
choice. It almost certainly was. He wanted to
focus on the social world, the here and now,
the human comedy, not the divine one. However,
and this is a fascinating shift, later in his
life when he moved to France, his tone changed.
In France, he took on a much more direct anti
-clerical stance. He wrote plays that openly
satirized the hypocrisy of monks and the institutional
church. It's as if leaving Italy freed him to
address topics that were too sensitive back home.
Okay, so Gildoni is at the height of his powers
in Venice. He's reformed the theater. He's writing
hit after hit. But success, as we know, often
breeds jealousy and backlash. And in the late
1750s, a major challenger appears on the scene.
This rivalry is legendary. Carlo Gazzi versus
Carlo Goldoni. It sounds like a heavyweight title
fight for the soul of the Nietzschean theater.
That's exactly what it was. It was an ideological
war. Gazzi was a nobleman, an intellectual, and
he was a fierce, passionate defender of the traditional
commedia dell 'arte. He hated what Goldoni was
doing to it. What was his specific accusation?
Why did he hate Goldoni's new realism so much?
Gazzi's argument, which he made very publicly
and very aggressively, was that by removing the
masks and focusing on the mundane realities of
middle -class life, Goldoni was depriving the
theater of the charms of poetry and imagination.
He thought Goldoni was making theater boring.
He thought Goldoni was making it pedestrian.
Too realistic. Gazzi believed that theater should
be about magic, fantasy, poetry, and the bizarre.
He wanted spectacle, not sociology. So in response,
Gazzi doubles down on the fantasy. He does, in
the most spectacular way possible. As a direct
challenge to Goldoni, Gazzi started writing these
fiabe, titatrali, theatrical fables, or fairy
dramas. These were wild, magical plays based
on children's fairy tales, filled with monsters,
talking animals, sorcerers, and epic journeys.
And the painful part for Goldoni was, they were
Hugely successful. They were massive, sensational
hits. The Venetian audience, which had been lapping
up Goldoni's realism, suddenly went crazy for
Gazzi's escapist fantasies. So the public taste
just shifted on a dime. They started drifting
away from Goldoni's realism and flocking to Godsey's
magic. Yes. And Goldoni took this very, very
personally. He was, in his own words, utterly
disgusted with the tastes of his countrymen.
He felt betrayed. He felt that he had worked
for decades to elevate their theater, to give
them truth and art. And in the end, they just
wanted cheap fairy tales. And this bitterness,
this feeling of rejection. led to a pretty drastic
decision. It did. In 1761, Goldoni had had enough.
He packed his bags. He accepted an invitation
to work in Paris. He left Venice, a city he had
defined for two decades. He left Italy for good.
That is such a huge move. He was in his mid -50s
at this point, right? To start over completely
in a new country, a new language. It was an incredibly
bold and probably heartbreaking move. But Paris
was the cultural capital of Europe, and he saw
an opportunity. And initially, it went very well
for him. He received a position at court. He
was put in charge of the Teatro Italian in Paris.
And he even had to switch languages professionally.
Yes, he started composing plays in French. And
he wrote his famous memoirs in French. Imagine
the incredible skill that takes to be the absolute
master of Italian and Venetian dialect comedy
and then to pivot and try to conquer the French
stage in French. Did he have any big hits in
France? Did he succeed? He did. His play Le Bourou
Bienfaisant, which translates to something like
The Beneficent Bear or The Grumpy Saint, was
a major success in 1771. It was even performed
at the celebrations for the royal wedding. Which
royal wedding? The marriage of the Dauphin, the
future Louis VI, to a certain Austrian archduchess
named Marie Antoinette. Wow. So Goldoni was right
there at the very center of the French royal
circle just before everything fell apart. Right
at the peak of the Ancien Régime. And he was
rewarded for it. He got royal patronage. He retired
to Versailles in 1769 with a generous pension
from the king. He was even teaching Italian to
the royal princesses. It really seemed like the
perfect, comfortable, prestigious end to a very
tumultuous life. But history had one more massive,
brutal twist in store. The French Revolution.
Goldoni is living this comfortable retirement
on a pension from the king. And then the king
is overthrown and the entire system that supports
him is dismantled. Exactly. The new revolutionary
government saw his pension as a relic of royal
extravagance. The revolution stripped him of
his royal pension. He was seen as a dependent
of the old corrupt regime. And so suddenly in
his 80s. Goldoni was plunged into poverty. Complete
poverty. It is absolutely heartbreaking. The
man who championed the values of the rising middle
class and the importance of honesty ends up a
penniless victim of a revolution that claimed
to support those very things. The ironies are
just devastating. It gets worse. He died in poverty
on February 6, 1793. But the tragic irony gets
even sharper, even more painful. How so? The
day after he died, the National Convention, the
revolutionary government, actually voted to restore
his pension. A motion was brought to the floor.
They recognized his immense artistic contribution
to France and Italy. That's incredible. They
voted to restore it on February 7th, the day
after his death. Oh, wow. A day too late. One
day too late for him. However, the story has
a small, bittersweet coda. The pension was restored
to his widow, Nicoletta. The poet, André Chenier,
who would himself be guillotined a year later,
by the way, pleaded her case to the convention.
And his words are haunting. They're quoted in
the sources. What did he say? He said, she is
old. Her husband has left her no heritage, save
his illustrious name, his virtues, and his poverty.
His illustrious name, his virtues, and his poverty.
That is a powerful and perfect epitaph. It really
sums up his entire life. He gave everything to
his art. He enriched the culture of Italy and
France beyond measure. But he didn't enrich himself.
He died with nothing but his name. So as we wrap
up this deep dive, how do we summarize the incredible
legacy of Carlo Goldoni? What was the lasting
impact? I think most fundamentally, Goldoni gave
Italy a classical form of comedy. He took a tradition
that was based on improvisation, which is wonderful,
but also fleeting. It disappears once the show
is over. And he turned it into literature. He
created plays that could be read, studied, translated,
and performed for centuries. He moved theater
from being just a momentary performance to being
a lasting text. Exactly. And in doing that, he
proved that comedy could be about real people
in real life. He paved the way for modern sitcoms,
for domestic dramas, for any kind of storytelling
that finds the humor and the pathos in the everyday
struggles of normal people. Without Goldoni,
we don't get that crucial shift toward realism
in Italian culture. And as we've seen with things
like One Man, Two Governors, his jokes, his situations,
they still land. 250 years later, people are
still laughing at the comic predicaments he constructed.
That is the ultimate test of a great comedian,
isn't it? Does it still play? With Goldoni, the
answer is a resounding yes. It just makes you
think about the cost of that innovation. We discussed
it. He achieved his artistic revolution. He changed
the art form forever. but he ended his life in
exile, feeling rejected by his home city and
died poor, caught in the gears of a political
storm he had absolutely nothing to do with. It's
the tragedy often hidden behind the comedy. The
so -called Italian Moliere had a life that was,
in the end, far more tragic than many of his
plays. So here is a final thought for you to
chew on as we finish. Goldoni spent his entire
career trying to remove the masks from the actors
on stage. He wanted to show real life with all
its imperfections, all his flaws. He fought against
the stylized fake personas of the Comedia dell
'Art. Right. His whole project was about authenticity.
So in today's world, a world where we are all
obsessed with curating our identities with social
media filters, edited photos, carefully crafted
online personas that show only our best side.
Are we just? putting the masks back on? That
is a very provocative question. You're saying
we've created a kind of digital commedia dell
'arte for ourselves. Maybe. I think Goldoni might
argue that true comedy, and maybe true humanity,
only happens when we show our actual faces. When
we let the audience and each other see the flaws,
the awkwardness, that middle ground of human
temperament you mentioned. Maybe what we need
is a new Goldoni to come along and remind us
that the most interesting and funniest character
we could ever play is just ourselves. i think
he would absolutely agree the mask whether it's
made of leather or pixels hides the truth and
for goldoni truth was the only thing worth watching
thank you for joining us on this deep dive into
the incredible life of carlo goldoni we will
see you next time