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  • Goldoni’s England and England’s GoldoniAppendix: Goldoni’s Comic Opera libretti in English Translation and Adaptation
  • Jackson I. Cope

I

“Loin de prétendre restituer de façon réaliste une rue de Londres, le décor se présente plutôt comme une sorte de no man’s land théatralisé.” 1 So Jacques Joly acutely observed in distinguishing Il filosofo inglese from Carlo Goldoni’s other “campiello” plays, early and late. In probing for the cause of this anomaly in scenografic spaces, one arrives at the perception of another space of richer significance for Goldoni than we have yet suspected. It is the British Consul Joseph Smith’s palazzo on the Grand Canal, described in the preface to Il filosofo inglese, which Goldoni dedicated to Smith, as a site where one finds “l’unione più perfetta di tutte le Scienze e di tutte le Arti.” Its magnificent collection of books had been catalogued in 1755 as the Bibliotheca Smithiana published by Smith’s partner Giambattista Pasquali who, half a dozen years later, would become the publisher of the most ambitious edition of Goldoni’s work. But already the earliest Bettinelli edition had been listed in the public catalogue of Smith’s library, and Goldoni was proudly aware of this when, mentioning the Bibliotheca in his play’s dedication to Smith, he opined that “la rarità di alcune vostre edizioni può molto contribuire alla [End Page 101] Repubblica letteraria.” He continued by assuring Smith that “la Pittura, l’Architettura, il disegno regnano a gara fra le vostre pareti.” 2 Here was no exaggeration: Smith’s collection, gathered over several decades, contained hundreds of drawings, etchings, and paintings by, among others, Antonio Visentini, Mario and Sebastiano Ricci and, above all, Canaletto. The collections, which passed into England through royal purchase by 1763, were preponderantly Venetian because Smith spent his entire mature life in Venice. Nonetheless, Smith was an English merchant entrepreneur and, as such, continued to be well-connected in his home islands. He entered into a long relationship with Canaletto early in the painter’s career, playing a role that can only be described as something between patron and agent because we know so little of so many of the details. 3 Thus most of Canaletto’s early Venetian paintings came to be purchased by English travellers and collectors, eventually to be housed, like Smith’s own collection, in Britain. And it was through this complex of English associations in Venice that Canaletto himself came to make two extended working visits to that country in the forties and fifties, visits that resulted in a large number of drawings and painted vedute of London and other notable loci in England.

The relevance of Canaletto’s views of England to Goldoni will become evident later, but one may first recall another Venetian who had importance for both Consul Smith and Goldoni. The printer Giambattista Pasquali, who issued a book of Antonio Visentini’s engravings of Canaletto’s views of the Grand Canal commissioned by Smith, had formed a publishing partnership with Smith in the mid-thirties. So intimate was this association that both the printinghouse and Pasquali’s residence were in Smith’s own palazzo near Santi Apostoli, the repository of that cultural treasury that one has heard Goldoni describe in his dedication. 4 Not only would Pasquali eventually publish a deluxe edition of Goldoni’s commedie from this establishment; but also the publisher earlier had been intimate enough with Goldoni’s affairs to serve as his representative before the Riformatori in the literary property litigation the author had with [End Page 102] Medebach and Bettinelli in the summer of 1754, just months after the premiere of Il filosofo inglese. 5

Goldoni, then, despite that ignorance of its language confessed in the dedication of his play, 6 had a closer, more continuous contact with English culture than most of the sufferers from faddish Italian anglomania in the mid-century. This realisation is borne out by the detailed circumstances surrounding his dedication to Smith. Il filosofo inglese had been premiered at San Luca in 1754, but its publication was reserved for the first volume of the Venetian Pitteri edition, issued...

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