Turandot (Gozzi)
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Turandot (1762) is a commedia dell'arte play by Count Carlo Gozzi after a supposedly Persian story from the collection Les Mille et un jours (1710–1712) by François Pétis de la Croix (not to be confused with One Thousand and One Nights). Gozzi's Turandot was first performed at the Teatro San Samuele, Venice, on 22 January 1762.
Gozzi's play has given rise to a number of subsequent artistic endeavours, including combinations of: versions/translations by Schiller, Karl Vollmoeller and Brecht; theatrical productions by Goethe, Max Reinhardt and Yevgeny Vakhtangov; incidental music by Weber, Busoni and Wilhelm Stenhammar; and operas by Busoni, Puccini and Havergal Brian.
Original play and performance
[[File:Teatro San Samuele.jpg|thumb|Painting of the Teatro San Samuele by Gabriel Bella (1730-1799)]]
Turandot was deliberately written in the Commedia dell'arte style by Gozzi, as part of a campaign in his literary war against the bourgeois, realistic works of Pietro Chiari and Carlo Goldoni.Template:Sfn Gozzi was intimate with the out-of work theatre troupe of Antonio Sacchi, an inveterate commedia Truffaldino. Template:Sfn It was first performed by Sacchi's troupe at the Teatro San Samuele in Venice on 22 January 1762, and received seven subsequent performances.Template:Sfn The choice of theatre itself was a pointed attack on Goldoni, since he had been the theatre's director between 1737–1741. In the end, Gozzi won his literary war: according to his Memoirs, "Chiari stopped writing when he saw that his dramas ceased to take. Goldoni went to Paris, to seek his fortune there, whereof we shall be duly informed in his Memoirs." Template:Sfn
Friedrich Werthes
The poet and playwright Friedrich Werthes (Buttenhausen, 12 October 1748–Stuttgart, 5 December 1817) made a translation of Gozzi's complete plays, employing prose rather than verse for the characters' lines. Template:Sfn Schiller's Turandot (see below) is partly based on Werthes' version.
