Carlo Goldoni

Lore & Background

Goldoni was born in Venice on 25 February 1707, the son of Margherita Salvioni (or Saioni) and Giulio Goldoni. In his memoirs, he describes his father as a physician, but in reality Giulio was an apothecary. He claims he was introduced to theatre by his grandfather Carlo Alessandro Goldoni, but the grandfather had died four years before Carlo's birth. His toys were puppets, and his books were plays.

His 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. In 1723 his father matriculated him into the stern Collegio Ghislieri in Pavia, which imposed the tonsure and monastic habits on its students. In his third year, he composed a libellous poem (Il colosso) ridiculing the daughters of certain Pavian families. As a result of that incident (and/or a visit with some schoolmates to a local brothel), he was expelled and had to leave the city (1725).

He studied law at Udine and eventually took his degree at the University of Modena. He was employed as a law clerk at Chioggia and Feltre, then returned to Venice and began practising. Following an unexpected summons to Venice after an absence of several years, he changed his career and devoted himself to writing plays and managing theatres. His father died in 1731. In 1732, to avoid an unwanted marriage, he left for Milan and then Verona, where theatre manager Giuseppe Imer helped him become a comical poet and introduced him to his future wife, Nicoletta Conio.

He returned with her to Venice, staying until 1743. Goldoni entered the Italian theatre scene with a tragedy, Amalasunta, produced in Milan. It was a critical and financial failure. Submitting it to Count Prata, he was told that in Italy it is the actors and actresses whom you must consult, as well as the composer of the music and the stage decorators.

Goldoni went back to his inn and threw the manuscript into a fire. His next play, Belisario, written in 1734, was more successful, though he afterwards professed himself ashamed of its success. He wrote librettos for opera seria and served as literary director of the San Giovanni Grisostomo, Venice's most distinguished opera house.

Adopting Molière as his model, he produced his first real comedy, L'uomo di mondo ('The Man of the World'), in 1738. He also wrote Momolo Cortesan in 1738. By 1743, he had perfected his hybrid style, typified in La Donna di garbo, the first Italian comedy of its kind. After 1748, Goldoni collaborated with composer Baldassare Galuppi, making significant contributions to opera buffa.

Move to France and death

Galuppi composed the score for more than twenty of Goldoni's librettos. His operatic works include Il filosofo di campagna (The Country Philosopher), set by Galuppi (1752), and La buona figliuola (The Good Girl), set by Niccolò Piccinni (1760). In 1753, he defected to the Teatro San Luca of the Vendramin family, where he performed most of his plays to 1762. In 1757, he engaged in a bitter dispute with playwright Carlo Gozzi, which left him utterly disgusted with the tastes of his countrymen.

In 1761 he moved to Paris, where he received a position at court and was put in charge of the Théâtre-Italien. He spent the rest of his life in France, composing most of his plays in French and writing his memoirs in that language. Among the plays he wrote in French, the most successful was Le bourru bienfaisant, dedicated to Marie Adélaïde, a daughter of Louis XV. It premiered on 4 February 1771.

In 1769, when he retired to Versailles, the King gave him a pension. He lost this pension after the French Revolution. The Convention eventually voted to restore his pension the day after his death. It was restored to his widow at the pleading of the poet André Chénier, who urged: 'She is old, she is seventy-six, and her husband has left her no heritage save his illustrious name, his virtues and his poverty.'

From Law Clerk to Comedy's Architect

Goldoni's path to the stage was anything but direct. After studying law at Udine and earning his degree at Modena, he worked as a clerk in Chioggia and Feltre before returning to Venice to practice. For a time he held lucrative positions as secretary and counsellor, seemingly content with a legal career.

But an unexpected summons back to Venice after years away shattered that trajectory, and he committed himself fully to playwriting and theatre management. His early attempts at tragedy faltered, yet by 1738 he had identified comedy as his true calling, taking Molière as his guiding model. Over the following years he refined a distinctive hybrid form that wove together French classical structure, the physical vitality of Commedia dell'arte, and his own sharp observational wit.

By 1743, works like La Donna di garbo exemplified this synthesis. After 1748, his partnership with composer Baldassare Galuppi extended the same principles into opera buffa, with Galuppi setting more than twenty of his librettos to music. His most celebrated operatic comedies—Il filosofo di campagna and La buona figliuola—remain landmarks of eighteenth-century musical theatre.

The Burning of Amalasunta and Other Turning Points

Goldoni's theatrical debut in Milan was a humbling experience. His tragedy Amalasunta failed both critically and financially, and when he submitted it to Count Prata, the opera director, the verdict was cutting: the piece followed the rules of Aristotle and Horace but ignored the conventions of Italian drama. Prata explained that in Italy one must consult actors, composers, and stage decorators, not merely the audience. Goldoni thanked his critic, returned to his inn, lit a fire, and fed the manuscript to the flames.

He later expressed shame over the modest success of his next tragedy, Belisario, in 1734. A far more bitter chapter arrived in 1757, when a fierce dispute with fellow playwright Carlo Gozzi left him profoundly disillusioned with Italian theatrical tastes. That disillusionment culminated in 1761, when he departed for France, carrying with him a body of work that would reshape the Italian stage. His relationship with theatre managers was equally turbulent: he served as literary director at Venice's San Giovanni Grisostomo, worked under Medebac in Livorno and Venice, and in 1753 defected to the Teatro San Luca of the Vendramin family, where he staged most of his plays until 1762.

A Mirror for the Middle Class

What set Goldoni apart from his predecessors was his insistence on portraying the world as it actually was. His comedies offered Venetian and Italian audiences a vivid reflection of their own lives, values, and social tensions, particularly those of the emerging middle classes. Rather than relying on the abstract stock characters of pure Commedia dell'arte, he grounded his dramas in recognizable local settings and everyday conflicts. His language was equally distinctive: while he wrote in both French and Italian, his plays are saturated with Venetian vernacular, regional colloquialisms, and the rhythms of spoken speech.

Audiences across generations have praised this blend of sharp wit and unflinching honesty. By 1743, his hybrid approach—marrying Molière's structural discipline with the physical energy of masked comedy and his own moral clarity—had crystallized in works like La Donna di garbo, widely regarded as the first Italian comedy of its kind. His opera buffa librettos carried the same principle into music, integrating Commedia dell'arte conventions with the textures of local and middle-class reality, a formula that produced two of the eighteenth century's most successful musical comedies.

The Man Behind the Masks

Behind the celebrated playwright was a restless, theatrical child. Born in Venice in 1707 to Margherita Salvioni and Giulio Goldoni—an apothecary, though Carlo's memoirs elevated him to physician—Goldoni was consumed by performance from the start. His toys were puppets; his reading was exclusively plays. Every attempt to steer him toward a conventional path failed: he ran away from his tutor in Rimini with a troupe of strolling players, and at the austere Collegio Ghislieri in Pavia he spent his hours devouring Greek and Latin comedies.

His expulsion in 1725, triggered by a libellous poem mocking local families and possibly a visit to a brothel with classmates, sent him on a winding road through law studies at Udine and Modena. In 1732 he fled an unwanted marriage to Milan and Verona, where theatre manager Giuseppe Imer became his mentor and introduced him to Nicoletta Conio, his future wife. Goldoni also adopted the pen name Polisseno Fegeio, Pastor Arcade, which he claimed the Arcadians of Rome had bestowed on him. His memoirs, while rich in anecdote, contain numerous factual errors, particularly about his earliest years.

Reader's Guide

Goldoni's significance lies in his reform of Italian comedy. At the time he began writing, Italian comedy revolved around the conventionality of the Commedia dell'arte, or improvised comedy. Goldoni took on the task of superseding the comedy of masks and the comedy of intrigue with representations of actual life and manners through the characters and their behaviours.

He maintained that Italian life and manners were susceptible of artistic treatment such as had not been given them before. His works are a lasting monument to the changes that he initiated: a dramatic revolution that had been attempted but not achieved before. Goldoni's importance lies in providing good examples rather than precepts. He says that he took for his models the plays of Molière and that whenever a piece of his own succeeded he whispered to himself: 'Good, but not yet Molière.' Goldoni's plays are gentler and more optimistic in tone than Molière's.

This very success was the object of harsh critiques by Carlo Gozzi, who accused Goldoni of having deprived the Italian theatre of the charms of poetry and imagination. The great success of Gozzi's fairy dramas so irritated Goldoni that it led to his self-exile to France. Goldoni gave to his country a classical form, which, though it has since been cultivated, has yet to be cultivated by a master.

Themes

Goldoni's plays that were written while he was still in Italy ignore religious and ecclesiastical subjects. After his move to France, his plays took on a clear anti-clerical tone and often satirized the hypocrisy of monks and of the Church. Goldoni was inspired by his love of humanity and the admiration he had for his fellow men. He wrote about the relationships that humans establish with one another, their cities and homes, and the study of philosophy.

The moral and civil values he promotes are those of rationality, civility, humanism, the importance of the rising middle class, a progressive stance on state affairs, honour and honesty. Goldoni had a dislike for arrogance, intolerance and the abuse of power. His main characters occupy the middle ground—no abstract examples of human virtue, nor monstrous examples of human vice.