Debonnaire and elegantly dressed in knee breeches, coat and flowing cape, a tricorner hat in one hand and a book in the other, the bare-headed but smartly wigged statue of playwright, Carlo Goldoni looks down on Ponte alla Carraia and over the Arno from the piazza named after him. Placed there in 1873 by the municipality of Florence in recognition of Goldoni’s contribution to theatre, the statue was carved from white Carrara marble by Florentine artist Ulisse Cambi (1807-1895).
Before Goldoni, Italian theatre was dominated by the hugely popular commedia dell’arte (comedy of professional actors), in which the actors wore masks and played such stock and traditional characters as Pantalone, a Venetian merchant, or Arlechino, the fool. Because the actors cleverly improvised the dialogue, the playwright simply provided a story outline for them to work from.
Goldoni changed all this. He gradually eliminated the stultifying masks and added fast-moving plots, building intrigue into his comedies by representing real life and manners, especially those of the new middle class, with dialogue in everyday language, particularly the Venetian dialect. Influenced by Moli?re but with a kindlier take on his fellow men, Goldoni poked fun at the arrogant and pompous, something that still pleases audiences more than two centuries after his death.
Born in Venice on February 25, 1707, the son and grandson of theatre lovers, Goldoni tells us in his romanticised Memoirs that he wrote the first of his 250-plus works (comedies, tragicomedies, tragedies, operas and poetry) when he was just eight years old. After studying with the Jesuits in Perugia, in 1723, he was enrolled in the strict, religious Ghilisieri College in Pavia, but in his third year, he was expelled for writing a satirical poem attacking members of the local nobility, and for visiting a brothel. To his doctor father’s disappointment, he did not enjoy studying medicine. Instead, he took a law degree in Padua in 1731 and worked briefly as an attorney in Venice. However, in 1734, he began his playwriting career in earnest, writing for theatre troupes in and around Venice. While living an itinerant existence as a member of a theatre company, Goldoni married the 19-year-old daughter of a notary, Nicoletta Connio, in Genoa in 1736. He returned with her to Venice in 1740, where he became Genoese consul in Venice until 1744.
With Goldoni keen to study the literary Tuscan dialect that was increasingly used on the stage, the couple came to Florence for the first time in 1742. Their stay was brief, only four months, but in 1751, Goldoni used the city as the backdrop for one of his most famous comedies, La locandiera (?The Mistress of the Inn’). In 1753, Goldoni came to Florence again to have 50 of his plays printed (at his own expense) in 10 fine volumes. However, he had returned to Tuscany in the meantime: on the run from his numerous creditors, as usual, Goldoni settled in Pisa, where, for the next three years, he again practised law. But a chance meeting with Girolamo Medebac, an impresario, in Livorno in 1747 led him to abandon the law forever and return to Venice. There, he wrote first for the Sant’Angelo theatre, then for the comic opera composer Baldassare Galuppi, and finally for the San Luca theatre, where most of his of plays were performed until he went into self- imposed exile.
Jealous of his success and fame, other playwrights, among them Carlo Gozzi, attacked Goldoni for ?robbing Italian theatre of poetry and imagination.’ Embittered by the criticism, in 1761, Goldoni left Italy for France, never to return. Popular at court there, he was put in charge of the Theatre Italien, writing and producing plays in French, including the Le bourru bienfaisant (?The Benevolent Curmudgeon’), written in celebration of Louis XVI’s marriage to Marie Antoinette in 1771. On retiring, he received a pension from the king, but of course lost it after the French Revolution. Blind and extremely poor, Goldoni died in Paris on February 6, 1793.
Goldoni is perhaps as relevant today as he was in his time. Today’s economic crisis, paradoxically, seems to be filling Europe’s theatres. Maybe people want to escape the gloom of recession. Whilst such musicals as Mamma Mia and Sister Act entertain and distract audiences, plays about power, money and greed-themes close to Goldoni’s heart-remind us that these perennial vices have caused many of today’s financial woes. So stop by Goldoni’s statue overlooking the Arno and tell him he was right.
