Carlo Osvaldo Goldoni was an Italian playwright and librettist from the Republic of Venice. His works include some of Italy's most famous and best-loved plays. Audiences have admired the plays of Goldoni for their ingenious mix of wit and honesty. His plays offered his contemporaries images of themselves, often dramatizing the lives, values, and conflicts of the emerging middle classes. Though he wrote in French and Italian, his plays make rich use of the Venetian language, regional vernacular, and colloquialisms. Goldoni also 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, Count Gozzi was an Italian (Venetian) playwright and champion of Commedia dell'arte.
San Polo is the smallest and most central of the six sestieri of Venice, northern Italy, covering 86 acres (35 hectares) along the Grand Canal. It is one of the oldest parts of the city, having been settled before the ninth century, when it and San Marco formed part of the Realtine Islands. The sestiere is named for the Church of San Polo.
Ca' Foscari, the palace of the Foscari family, is a Gothic building on the waterfront of the Grand Canal in the Dorsoduro sestiere of Venice, Italy.
The Boors, also known as The Cantankerous Men, is a comedy by Carlo Goldoni. It was first performed at the San Luca theatre of Venice towards the end of the Carnival in 1760. It was published in 1762. The 'boors' are four merchants of Venice, who represent the old conservative, puritanical tradition of the Venetian middle classes, who are pitted against Venice's "new frivolity".
The Museo Correr is a museum in Venice, northern Italy. Located in St. Mark's Square, Venice, it is one of the 11 civic museums run by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia. The museum extends along the southside of the square on the upper floors of the Procuratorie Nuove. With its rich and varied collections, the Museo Correr covers both the art and history of Venice.
The House of Grimani was a prominent Venetian patrician family, including three Doges of Venice. They were active in trade, politics and later the ownership of theatres and opera-houses.
Caffè Florian is a coffee house situated in the Procuratie Nuove of Piazza San Marco, Venice. It was established in 1720 and is the oldest coffee house in continuous operation in Italy, and one of the oldest in the world.
The Teatro Malibran, known over its lifetime by a variety of names, beginning with the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo after the nearby church, is an opera house in Venice which was inaugurated in 1678 with a production of the premiere of Carlo Pallavicino's opera Vespasiano. By 1683, it had quickly become known as "the biggest, most beautiful and richest theatre in the city" and its operatic importance throughout the 17th and 18th centuries led to an even grander description by 1730:
The House of Vendramin was a rich merchant family of Venice, Italy, who were among the case nuove or "new houses" who joined the patrician class when the Libro d'Oro was opened after the battle of Chioggia. Andrea Vendramin served as the sole Vendramin Doge from 1476–78, at the height of Venetian power, though in 1477 an Antonio Feleto was imprisoned, then banished, for remarking in public that the Council of the Forty-One must have been hard-pressed to elect a cheesemonger Doge. In his youth, Andrea and his brother Luca, in joint ventures, used to ship from Alexandria enough goods to fill a galley or a galley and a half, Malipiero recorded in retrospect: even his factors grew rich managing his affairs. At this period, mentions of Vendramins in various fields of business occur; Luca Vendramin (d.1527) founded a successful bank on the still-wooden Rialto Bridge with three Capelli brothers in 1507, but in his will of 1524 forbade his sons from continuing in banking. An early text on accounting mentions that the Vendramins' soap is so reliably good that you can buy it without inspecting it. Later they owned an important theatre.
Venetian literature is the corpus of literature in Venetian, the vernacular language of the region roughly corresponding to Venice, from the 12th century. Venetian literature, after an initial period of splendour in the sixteenth century with the success of artists such as Ruzante, reached its zenith in the eighteenth century, thanks to its greatest exponent, dramatist Carlo Goldoni. Subsequently, the literary production in Venetian underwent a period of decline following the collapse of the Republic of Venice, but survived nonetheless into the twentieth century to reach peaks with wonderful lyrical poets such as Biagio Marin of Grado.
The Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo was a theatre and opera house in Venice located on the Calle della Testa, and takes its name from the nearby Basilica of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice. Built by the Grimani family in 1638, in its heyday it was considered the most beautiful and comfortable theatre in the city. The theatre played an important role in the development of opera and saw the premieres of several works by Francesco Cavalli, as well as Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria and L'incoronazione di Poppea.
The Teatro Goldoni is one of the opera houses and theatres of Venice. Today it is the home of the Teatro Stabile del Veneto. The modern theatre is located near the Rialto Bridge in the historic center of Venice.
The Teatro San Angelo or Teatro Sant' Angelo was once a theatre in Venice which ran from 1677 until 1803.
Teatro San Samuele was an opera house and theatre located at the Rio del Duca, between Campo San Samuele and Campo Santo Stefano, in Venice. One of several important theatres built in that city by the Grimani family, the theatre opened in 1656 and operated continuously until a fire destroyed the theatre in 1747. A new structure was built and opened in 1748, but financial difficulties forced the theatre to close and be sold in 1770. The theatre remained active until 1807 when it was shut down by Napoleonic decree. It reopened in 1815 and was later acquired by impresario Giuseppe Camploy in 1819. In 1853 the theatre was renamed the Teatro Camploy. Upon Camploy's death in 1889, the theatre was bequeathed to the City of Verona. The Venice City Council in turn bought the theatre and demolished it in 1894.
The Palazzo Erizzo, also known as the Palazzo Erizzo a San Martino, is a palace located in the sestiere of Castello, adjacent to the south with the Palazzo Grandiben Negri, and across a Rio from the church of San Martino in Venice, Italy. A second Palazzo Erizzo alla Maddalena is located on the Grand Canal of Venice.
The Palazzo Donà or Donà Brusa is a Venetian Gothic style palace located in Campo San Polo in the Sestiere of San Polo in Venice.
Sebastiano Biancardi, known by the pseudonym Domenico Lalli, was an Italian poet and librettist. Amongst the many libretti he produced, largely for the opera houses of Venice, were those for Vivaldi's Ottone in villa and Alessandro Scarlatti's Tigrane. A member of the Accademia degli Arcadi, he also wrote under his arcadian name "Ortanio". Lalli was born and raised in Naples as the adopted son of Fulvio Caracciolo but fled the city after being implicated in a bank fraud. After two years wandering about Italy in the company of Emanuele d'Astorga, he settled in Venice in 1710 and worked as the "house poet" of the Grimani family's theatres for the rest of his career. In addition to his stage works, Lalli published several volumes of poetry and a collection of biographies of the kings of Naples. He died in Venice at the age of 62.
The Venice State Archive, or State Archive of Venice, is located at Campo dei Frari, San Polo Venice.
