Nuovo Teatro Comico Dell’Avvocato Carlo Goldoni Poeta Di S. A. R. Il Serenissimo Infante di Spagna Don Filippo Duca Di Parma, Piacenza, Guastalla, ec. [New Comic Theater of the Lawyer Carlo Goldoni].

GOLDONI, Carlo.

$2,000.00

Item Number: 129035

Venezi: Francesco Pitteri, 1753-1755.

Rare complete set of Pitteri’s 1757 printing of Goldoni’s works of comic theater. Octavo, ten volumes bound in full vellum with gilt tooling to the spine, engraved frontispiece portrait of Goldoni by Pitteri after Piazetta. In good condition. Armorial bookplates. A rare complete set of this scarce printing published during the author’s lifetime.

The first of sixteen comedies commissioned by Gerolamo Medebach early in 1750, Goldoni's Teatro Comico marked an innovation in Goldoni's production. Goldoni entered the Italian theatre scene with a tragedy, Amalasunta, produced in Milan. The play was a critical and financial failure and after several other unsuccessful attempts at tragedy, he turned to comedy. In his Memoirs, Goldoni amply discusses the state of Italian comedy when he began writing. At that time, Italian comedy revolved around the conventionality of the Commedia dell'arte, or improvised comedy. 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. He rightly 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.