Carlo Gozzi

[8] This society was dedicated to preserving Tuscan literature from the influence of foreign culture; it was particularly interested in handing down traditional Italian comedic performance: the Commedia dell'arte.

[9][10] Pietro Chiari and Carlo Goldoni, two Venetian writers, were moving away from the old style of Italian theatre, which threatened the work of the Granelleschi Society.

[6] In 1757 Gozzi defended Commedia dell'arte by publishing a satirical poem, La tartana degli influssi per l'anno 1756; and in 1761, in his comedy based on a fairy tale, The Love for Three Oranges or Analisi riflessiva della fiaba L'amore delle tre melarance, he parodied Chiari and Goldoni.

[5] These fairy tales were much praised by Goethe, Schlegel brothers, Hoffmann, Madame de Staël, Sismondi and Ostrovsky.

[11] In the last years of Gozzi's life he had begun to experiment by producing tragedies with largely comical influences, but these endeavors were met with harsh critical response.

These include treatments of Turandot by Karl Vollmöller and Bertolt Brecht, operas based on the same story by Ferruccio Busoni, and, more famously, Giacomo Puccini, Sergei Prokofiev's The Love of Three Oranges, Alfredo Casella's La donna serpente and Hans Werner Henze's König Hirsch.