Mirandola
In 1727, a 20-year-old law student named Carlo Goldoni was so traumatized one day by the torture of a “sinful monk” in the town of Modena that he wanted to renounce the world. But his father, a country doctor, proffered an unusual prescription for his son’s melancholia: visits to the theater. After attending a few productions, young Carlo was hale and hearty. Even at that time Goldoni manifested two beliefs that would define his career: a passion for the common people (of which he was one) and an unwavering belief that theater could transform the human heart. When he gave up the law at age 26, only a year after being admitted to the Venetian bar, these dual passions helped make him one of the greatest innovators in the history of Italian theater.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The ideas of Voltaire and Rousseau were in the air, and Goldoni took the bold step of turning commedia types into real people. In 1749 he wrote A Girl of Honor, giving common folk equal footing with aristocrats on the Italian stage for the first time. A year later he banished masks from the actors in The Gentleman and the Lady and began to make his views clear: for the most part commoners were plucky and industrious while aristocrats were dissipated and self-serving. (A full decade after The Gentleman and the Lady debuted, the nobility were still in a furor; in 1761 the Marchese Albergati moaned to Voltaire that Goldoni had “exposed the secrets of the gallantry to the profane eyes of the rabble.”)
The lion’s share of the credit goes to the gracious and spirited Karen Janes Woditsch in the title role: she also acts as a charming hostess who ushers us through Goldoni’s vibrant world. Saddled with Ranjit Bolt’s vernacular-heavy translation, further slummed down with Americanisms added by the company, Woditsch walks a delicate line between the 18th and 21st centuries, carrying herself with old-world dignity yet never betraying any Masterpiece Theatre pretense. In her numerous asides, letting the audience in on every step of her plan to deliver Ripafratta the coup de grace, she makes it clear that she’s speaking to us today in this very room (a reality that’s hard to avoid given the cramped intimacy of this new space) while inviting us to pretend that the rules of 18th-century courtship still apply.
As a democratizing wind began to blow apart Europe’s vestigial aristocracy, Gozzi clung to dying traditions, even ridiculing the study of mathematics and science as “one of the vilest plots against humanistic learning and the sanctity of traditional lore.” For him Goldoni epitomized everything new and horrid, so he picked up his pen in retaliation. Portraying the other playwright as a three-headed monster, drunk, and dolt, Gozzi offered unyielding harangues that in 1761 drove Goldoni from his home country; he died penniless in Paris 33 years later. Paradoxically, Gozzi’s fervent attempts to keep the art form from changing had the opposite effect; his own fantastical, exotic commedia fables helped pave the way for romanticism.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Collett Powell, Dave Brennan.
