Canaletto. Octave Uzanne
were all Venetian subjects, by either birth or adoption. The use of verse was therefore constant; indeed every public ceremony or family event provided an excuse to write several stanzes, which made up a large part of each of these authors’ works.
Meetings between the finest minds of the time were set up to reform taste, maintain the purity of Italian style and defend national spirit. One such academy was degli Animosi, established in 1691, whose founder Apostolo Zeno[5] was no less famous for his dramatic works than for his erudition. Its members were the Magliabecchis, the Salvinis and the Redis. There was also the Granelleschi company, less serious but no less active, formed under the auspices of the Gozzi brothers, of whom Gaspard, the fervent elder brother, drew his inspiration from Dante and Petrarch, while the younger Charles, who had a more aggressive personality, preferred to focus on the comic aspect of things. They were surrounded by the splendid amateurs, Joseph and Daniel Farsetti, the latter of whom, a bailiff for the Order of Malta, turned out some very elegant verses, the Abbot Natale Lastesio, one of the most knowledgeable savants of his time, Forcellini and the two patricians, Crotta and Balbi, all of whom made up an elite group in which each member distinguished himself by a liveliness of spirit and a depth of knowledge. At their meetings, these unique academicians only approached their work after they had exhausted every extravagant thought. To get more out of their group, they brought in an absurdly pretentious person named Secchellari. They sent a delegation to him after which they promoted him to the position of president of their group. It was precisely out of this mixture of buffoonery and serious work that a national character surfaced, whose epigrams, subdued and cynical, never lost their place. In reality the heavy-handed joking around did not stop this group from passionately defending the Venetian literary tradition, nor from gaining attention by the accuracy of its critiques, at times marked by malice or violence. Very conscious of his own elegance and style, Charles Gozzi relentlessly fought against Chiari’s[6] and Goldoni’s successes. Reproaching the latter for having ruined Italian theatre and for his harshly unrefined use of language, he made him the object of a biting satire entitled La Tartane, filled with references to recent events. This defence, published in 1757, scathingly ridiculed other playwrights and may have contributed to Goldoni’s departure for France.
21. Reception of the French Ambassador in Venice, c. 1740.
Oil on canvas, 181 × 259.5 cm.
The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.
Although similar academies were open to only a small circle of men of letters, there was a general passion for theatre. Important houses had private stages; thus one could see Goldoni’s grandfather staging plays and operas at a country house six leagues from Venice. Likewise, Gozzi’s father put on plays in his palace in which his children of both sexes appeared, who were fortunately endowed with talent. On the other hand, there were also many improvised, open-air theatres, operated almost continuously. To build two stages into a wall, some boards were the only expenses. Sometimes the platform was roofed with a lightweight cover. A single, painted canvas served as the scenery. Its dimensions closely resembled those of marionette theatres. Before a curious crowd, Canaletto, Marieschi and Tiepolo mimed in these makeshift theatres constructed near bell towers or other public places. Among the most important stages, three were especially reserved for plays. And the nobles did not feel that managing a theatre diminished their respectability. Gaspard Gozzi accepted this task until financial ruin and the dispersion of his troupe relieved him of his duty. Initially affiliated with the Saint Angelus Theatre, which was the most frequented but least conspicuous, Goldoni established himself with the Saint Luke’s theatre in 1748. It was there that he undertook, in spite of the conspiracies and sarcasm that were directed against him, a revolution in theatre, replacing masked characters with bare-faced actors, farces and gesticulatory plays with morality plays.
The success of these reforms could have ruined the celebrated Sacchi, a famous Harlequin who incarnated, so to speak, the old national genre. Once settled in Venice, and with a strong connection to Goldoni, Sacchi had assembled a troupe that had already begun to break up when Charles Gozzi became affiliated with it. The latter, who didn’t want to overlook anything that might make it possible for him to triumph over Goldoni, offered his collaboration for free. He lavished advice on his interpreters. He soon started to live among them as their good friend, and was most warmly applauded at the 1761 Carnival. Nowadays, we have lost our ability to appreciate these bizarre themes lifted from fairy tales and children’s stories, allowing the fanciful genius of these players to come alive in comic buffoonery. The following year, a wild farce, Il Re Cervo, occasioned a new success for the four main masked actors, one of whom was Signora Ricci. Although these follies caused Venetian audiences to forget about more serious-minded spectacles for a moment, they were unable to gain an upper hand over a genre that drew its inspiration from nature and which was based on a more genuine form of analysis. Not expecting to be able to impose his reforms without a process of transition, Goldoni kept the mask for improvised plays and reserved the noble comic for subjects that had been more thoroughly studied. He carried all this out so well that his theatrical taste was, once and for all, adopted throughout Italy. His memoirs include an exposé of his plays, as well as a narrative of his successes and trials and tribulations. When one leafs through these chapters that go on, one after the other, with a spicy kind of variety, one is astonished by the extent of the dramatist’s productivity and cannot help but admire his genius. They weren’t all excellent works, as much as they needed to be, perhaps because of their great quantity. Pure gold is rarely found anywhere without an alloy. And although Gozzi used a dialect other than Venetian, the style he used sometimes justified, because of its lack of elegance and lucidity, his sarcastic expression. Moreover, those who demand that comedy conceal its irony with hearty, genuine laughter are tempted to reproach the Italian writer for too much sentimentality, for not being scrupulous enough with the methods he used, while disapproving of them, and for sometimes resorting to depictions of poisoning that never shocked his regular audience, but which any person who was of a delicate disposition would find repugnant. In spite of his works’ weak points, he depicted, in a very true to life form, specific kinds of characters borrowed from Venetian society, and it would be unfair to dispute his gift for invention.
22. Venice: the Feast Day of Saint Roch, c. 1735.
Oil on canvas, 147.7 × 199.4 cm.
The National Gallery, London.
23. Campo San Angelo, c. 1732.
Oil on canvas, 46.5 × 77.5 cm.
Private Collection.
24. Piazza San Marco Looking South and West, 1763.
Oil on canvas, 56.5 × 102.9 cm.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles.
Unlike the citizens of Athens, who crowned Aristophanes with roses, even though he had just punished them with his biting satires, Goldoni’s countrymen never knew how to appreciate their poets’ value, and they let the most interesting one get away. On the occasion of the revival of Harlequin’s Child Lost and Found, a play written at the request of Cacchi by an Italian theatre that had been established in Paris, Goldoni went to France for a two-year engagement for which he would receive a respectable remuneration. A passionate admirer of Molière, whom he considered the greatest comic among the ancients and moderns, he always wanted to learn of France, its men of letters, and Parisian society so highly praised for its wit and from which he hoped to gain great praise for his talent. He was soon bound in service to Mesdames, the king’s daughters, as their Italian tutor. Though no real position in the court was available, in exchange for some lessons he gave to the unmarried Madame Adelaide, he was able to secure lodgings at Versailles. He took part in every voyage and attended the court’s shows. In the end, his protectors provided him with a payment of four thousand pounds and released him from all of his duties. Goldoni turned a deaf ear to requests sent to him from London, Portugal and his fellow countrymen, remaining in Paris. During 1771, the success
Apostolo Zeno, born in 1668, was not a noble, in the least, because his grandfather was not registered in the
Chiari, a comedic poet, originally from Brescia, settled in Venice and unsuccessfully tried his hand at novels and tragedies. Like Goldoni, for whom, at times, he was a lucky rival, he had adopted fourteen-syllable Martellian verse. The former inspired by the works of Terence, the latter endeavoured to stage the works of Plautus; both had their fanatic supporters. The sixty plays written by Chiari, in a style devoid of both conviction and elegance, at least did justice to the fecundity of his imagination.