Carlo, Count Gozzi (13 December 1720 – April 4, 1806) was an Italian playwright. Born in Venice, he came from an old Venetian family from the Republic of Ragusa. His father's debts forced him to look for a means of supporting himself, and at the age of sixteen, he joined the army in Dalmatia; three years later he returned to Venice, where he soon made a reputation for himself as the wittiest member of the Granelleschi society, to which the publication of several satirical pieces had gained him admission. This society, nominally devoted to conviviality and wit, had serious literary aims, and was especially zealous to preserve Tuscan literature from foreign influence. The displacement of the old Italian comedy by the dramas of Pietro Chiari and Carlo Goldoni's works, modelled on French examples, threatened to defeat the society's efforts; in 1757 Gozzi came to the rescue by publishing a satirical poem, La tartana degli influssi per l'anno 1756, and in 1761 by his comedy, The Love of Three Oranges or Analisi riflessiva della fiaba L'amore delle tre melarance, a parody of the manner of the other two poets, founded on a fairy tale. To perform it, he obtained the services of the Sacchi company of players, who, thanks to the popularity of the comedies of Chiari and Goldoni—which offered no scope for the display of their peculiar talents—had been left without employment. Their satirical powers thus sharpened by personal enmity, the play was an extraordinary success. Struck by the effect produced on the audience by the introduction of the supernatural or mythical element, which he had merely used as a convenient medium for his satirical purposes, Gozzi produced a series of dramatic pieces based on fairy tales, which were briefly popular, but after the breaking up of the Sacchi company were completely disregarded. They were much praised by Goethe, Schlegel, Madame de Staël and Sismondi; and one of them, Turandot or Re Turandote, was translated by Friedrich Schiller. In his later years Gozzi began to produce tragedies in which the comic element was largely introduced; as this innovation proved unacceptable to the critics he turned to the Spanish drama, from which he obtained models for various pieces; these had minor success. His brother, Gasparo Gozzi, was also a well-known writer of the time. His collected works were published under his own superintendence, at Venice, in 1792, in 10 volumes. A number of twentieth-century stage works were inspired by Gozzi's plays. These include treatments of Turandot by Karl Vollmöller and Bertolt Brecht, operas based on the same story by Busoni and most famously Puccini and Prokofiev's The Love of Three Oranges. ----------------------------------- Turandot (1762) is a commedia dell'arte play by Carlo Gozzi after a supposedly Persian story from the collection Les Mille et un jours (1710–1712) by François Pétis de la Croix. The play provides the plot for the homonymous opera by Puccini (and also the earlier work by Busoni), although it was Friedrich Schiller's adaptation Turandot, Prinzessin von China (1801) which initially interested Puccini in the material. Another adaptation of the story comes from the German playwright Karl Vollmoeller. The twentieth-century dramatist Bertolt Brecht also adapted Gozzi's play, as Turandot, or the Whitewashers' Congress (1953–4). Plot The story, set in ancient China, involves prince Calaf who falls in love with the cold princess Turandot. To obtain permission to marry her, a suitor must solve three riddles; any false answer results in death. Calaf passes the test, but Turandot still hesitates to marry him. He offers her a way out, agreeing to die should she be able guess his real name. Comparison of Gozzi's and Schiller's versions Gozzi's play has a “light, sarcastic tone” whereas Schiller transforms it into a symbolic epic with an idealised moral attitude. Gozzi, although he also uses both elements of drama and comedy, puts them side by side as independent parts; Schiller combines them and makes them the result of each other. This interaction of dramatic and comical, their interdependence and the fact of their being equally matched, embodies the Romantic principle of universalism. Gozzi's main character, the princess Turandot, seems to act out of a mood and cruelty whereas Schiller's Turandot is a person who resolutely follows her moral and ethical attitude. Also prince Calaf, who is a kind of lost soul and philanderer in Gozzi's version, becomes a kind lover who surrenders to his deep and true love for Turandot. The classical commedia dell’arte characters in the play, especially Pantalone and Brighella, whose language is rather colloquial in Gozzi's version, lose their naive nature and even speak in well-formed verses in Schiller's work; they also contribute to the more severe and moralistic atmosphere in Schiller's adaptation.