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A
news, dating back last springtime, has kept in my memory and went on
stimulating me even months later. I read on a newspaper that the three
well-known comedies by Carlo Goldoni (“Le baruffe chiozzotte”, “Sior
Todero Brontolon” and “Arlecchino servitore di due padroni”) were to
be put on stage and drawn to become strips. It was as opening a window
on memories.
By
the means of strips Goldoni would have reached boys' imagination, and
also me, when I was a boy, was reached by Goldoni's world. I studied
him at high school and one day a composition was assigned to me: “Outline
the figure of Goldoni”.
I was so fascinated, I read him with so much passion that, being from
Veneto, I dare to write the composition in dialect, putting myself in
a Venetian gondolier shoes speaking to the famous fellow-citizen calling
him “sior” and “paron”.
But
it is not enough. As it results in the “Mémoires”, in 1739 Goldoni guest,
as a lawyer, the Lion family, owner of the medieval castle of the village
I was born in, Sanguinetto, in the Low Veronese. The Lion countess offered
the countrywomen chocolate they have never tasted. After a beginning
distrust due to the colour of the drink, the offer had a great success.
And Goldoni reminded that experience, by setting in the Sanguinetto
castle the comedy “Il feudatario”, wrote in 1752. But let's talk only
about him now. Carlo Goldoni was born on February 25th 1707 in Venice:
the last days of Carnival, and there could not be a more happily meaningful
coincidence to mark the birth of the greatest Italian comic author.
The family is from Modena (that's why the Emilian second name), the
grandfather Carlo was notary, his father Giulio is a physician, and
his mother is Margherita Salvioni. Carlo studies in Perugia where his
father works, then at Rimini at the Dominicans. It's 1721.
The fourteen years old boy flies away from the college and goes to Chioggia
by a ship of comedians, the Florindo de' Maccheroni's company, fascinated
by the adventure life the theatre actors spend. Got back to family,
they enrol him at the Ghislieri college of Pavia, where he attends the
jurisprudence courses.
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