30 Facts About Carlo Goldoni

Carlo Osvaldo Goldoni was an Italian playwright and librettist from the Republic of Venice.

Carlo Goldoni's works include some of Italy's most famous and best-loved plays.

Carlo Goldoni's plays offered his contemporaries images of themselves, often dramatizing the lives, values, and conflicts of the emerging middle classes.

Carlo Goldoni wrote under the pen name and title Polisseno Fegeio, Pastor Arcade, which he claimed in his memoirs the "Arcadians of Rome" bestowed on him.

Carlo Goldoni was born in Venice in 1707, the son of Margherita Salvioni and Giulio Carlo Goldoni.

Carlo Goldoni's father placed him under the care of the philosopher Caldini at Rimini but the youth soon ran away with a company of strolling players and returned to Venice.

Carlo Goldoni had already begun writing at this time and, in his third year, he composed a libellous poem in which he ridiculed the daughters of certain Pavian families.

Carlo Goldoni studied law at Udine, and eventually took his degree at University of Modena.

Carlo Goldoni was employed as a law clerk at Chioggia and Feltre, after which he returned to his native city and began practicing.

Carlo Goldoni returned with her to Venice, where he stayed until 1743.

Carlo Goldoni entered the Italian theatre scene with a tragedy, Amalasunta, produced in Milan.

Carlo Goldoni thanked his critic, went back to his inn and ordered a fire, into which he threw the manuscript of his Amalasunta.

Carlo Goldoni wrote other tragedies for a time, but he was not long in discovering that his bent was for comedy.

Carlo Goldoni had come to realize that the Italian stage needed reforming; adopting Moliere as his model, he went to work in earnest and in 1738 produced his first real comedy, L'uomo di mondo.

Carlo Goldoni was employed by Medebac to write plays for his theater in Venice.

Carlo Goldoni worked for other managers and produced during his stay in that city some of his most characteristic works.

Carlo Goldoni spent the rest of his life in France, composing most of his plays in French and writing his memoirs in that language.

Carlo Goldoni enjoyed considerable popularity in France; in 1769, when he retired to Versailles, the King gave him a pension.

Carlo Goldoni took to himself the task of superseding the comedy of masks and the comedy of intrigue by representations of actual life and manners through the characters and their behaviors.

Carlo Goldoni maintained that Italian life and manners were susceptible of artistic treatment such as had not been given them before.

Carlo Goldoni's works are a lasting monument to the changes that he initiated: a dramatic revolution that had been attempted but not achieved before.

Carlo Goldoni's importance lay in providing good examples rather than precepts.

Carlo Goldoni gave to his country a classical form, which, though it has since been cultivated, has yet to be cultivated by a master.

Carlo Goldoni's plays that were written while he was still in Italy ignore religious and ecclesiastical subjects.

Carlo Goldoni was inspired by his love of humanity and the admiration he had for his fellow men.

Carlo Goldoni wrote, and was obsessed with, the relationships that humans establish with one another, their cities and homes, the Humanist movement, and the study of philosophy.

The moral and civil values that Carlo Goldoni promotes in his plays are those of rationality, civility, humanism, the importance of the rising middle-class, a progressive stance to state affairs, honor and honesty.

Carlo Goldoni had a dislike for arrogance, intolerance and the abuse of power.

Carlo Goldoni maintains an acute sensibility for the differences in social classes between his characters as well as environmental and generational changes.

Carlo Goldoni pokes fun at the arrogant nobility and the pauper who lacks dignity.