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Calandrino
Calandrino is a character from Giovanni Boccaccio's the ''Decameron'', in which he appears in four stories. In these tales he is the victim of the pranks of Bruno and Buffalmacco. He becomes a recurring character in Renaissance literature, especially in Italy. Appearances in The Decameron In each of the tales in which Calandrino is a character (VIII, 3; VIII, 6; IX, 3; IX, 5), he is portrayed as a simpleton who believes in the folk magic of the time period. In the first tale (VIII, 3), the three painters hunt for heliotropes, and Calandrino believes that by finding one he is rendered invisible. Bruno and Buffalmacco, his friends and fellow painters, pretend they don't see him and kick rocks at him all the way back to Florence, where he arrives bruised. In the second tale (VIII, 6) Bruno and Buffalmacco subject him to a medieval version of a polygraph test. According to common belief at the time, a person who is lying wouldn't be able to swallow the prepared bread and cheese wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Summary Of Decameron Tales
This article contains summaries and commentaries of the 100 stories within Giovanni Boccaccio's ''The Decameron''. Each story of the ''Decameron'' begins with a short heading explaining the plot of the story. The 1903 s:Author:James McMullen Rigg, J. M. Rigg translation headings are used in many of these summaries. Commentary on the tale itself follows. First day Before beginning the story-telling sessions, the ten young Florence, Florentines, seven women and three men, referred to as the ''Brigata'', gather at the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, Basilica di Santa Maria Novella and together decide to escape the Black Death by leaving the city to stay in a villa in the countryside for the next two weeks. Each agrees to tell one story each day for ten days. The stories are told in the garden of the first villa that the company stays at, which is located a few miles outside the city. Under the rule of Pampinea, the first day of story-telling is open topic. Although there is no a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buonamico Buffalmacco
Buonamico di Martino, otherwise known as Buonamico Buffalmacco (active c. 1315–1336), was an Italian Renaissance painter who worked in Florence, Bologna, and Pisa. Although none of his known work has survived, he is widely assumed to be the painter of a most influential fresco cycle preserved in the Campo Santo of Pisa, featuring ''The Three Dead and the Three Living'', the ''Triumph of Death'', the ''Last Judgement'', the ''Hell'', and the ''Thebais'' (several episodes from the lives of the Desert Fathers). Painted some ten years before the Black Death spread over medieval Europe in 1348, the cycle enjoyed an extraordinary success after that date, and was often imitated throughout Italy during the Renaissance. The youngsters' party enjoying themselves in a beautiful garden while Death piles mounds of corpses all around is likely to have inspired the setting of Giovanni Boccaccio's literary masterpiece ''The Decameron'', written a few years after the spread of the Black Dea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernardo Dovizi
Bernardo Dovizi of Bibbiena (4 August 1470 – 9 November 1520) was an Italian cardinal and comedy writer, known best as Cardinal Bibbiena, for the town of Bibbiena, where he was born. Biography He received a substantial literary training, and became a preceptor and boon companion of Giovanni dei Medici, the future Pope Leo X (from 1513 to his death in 1521). In November 1494, when the Medici were banished, he supported them. Soon afterwards he was rewarded with the protection of Julius II and many honours at the Roman court. In 1513 his arduous efforts on behalf of his lifelong patron secured the election of Giovanni dei Medici to the pontifical throne. Leo X repaid such services by naming him a Cardinal in the Consistory of 23 September 1513, and appointing him Cardinal Deacon of S. Maria in Porticu. Leo continued to show his favor by appointing Bibbiena his treasurer and entrusting him with many important missions, among them the command of the Papal army in the War o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Calandro
''Calandro'' is an ''opera buffa'' in three acts composed by Giovanni Alberto Ristori to a libretto by Stefano Benedetto Pallavicino. The libretto was based on the comedy '' Il Calandro'' by Bernardo Dovizi (Cardinal Bibbiena). In turn, Dovizi's play borrowed elements of the plot from Plautus's ''Menaechmi'' and the character Calandro from Boccaccio's ''Decameron'' It was first staged on 2 September 1726 in Dresden. Background and performance history ''Calandro'' premiered on 2 September 1726 in the court theatre at the Schloss Pillnitz (Pillnitz Castle) near Dresden at the request of Maria Josepha of Austria to celebrate the return of her husband, Crown Prince Frederick Augustus, from Warsaw. It was probably Germany's first opera buffa, and after hearing a performance during the 1728 Carnival season in Dresden, Frederick Augustus' father August II asked for a copy of the score. Three years later, in 1731, it became the first Italian opera presented in Russia. There it was given ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Decameron
''The Decameron'' (; it, label=Italian, Decameron or ''Decamerone'' ), subtitled ''Prince Galehaut'' (Old it, Prencipe Galeotto, links=no ) and sometimes nicknamed ''l'Umana commedia'' ("the Human comedy", as it was Boccaccio that dubbed Dante Alighieri's ''Comedy'' "''Divine''"), is a collection of short stories by the 14th-century Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375). The book is structured as a frame story containing 100 tales told by a group of seven young women and three young men; they shelter in a secluded villa just outside Florence in order to escape the Black Death, which was afflicting the city. Boccaccio probably conceived of the ''Decameron'' after the epidemic of 1348, and completed it by 1353. The various tales of love in ''The Decameron'' range from the erotic to the tragic. Tales of wit, practical jokes, and life lessons contribute to the mosaic. In addition to its literary value and widespread influence (for example on Chaucer's ''Canterbury Ta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Domenico Cimarosa
Domenico Cimarosa (; 17 December 1749 – 11 January 1801) was an Italian composer of the Neapolitan school and of the Classical period. He wrote more than eighty operas, the best known of which is ''Il matrimonio segreto'' (1792); most of his operas are comedies. He also wrote instrumental works and church music. Cimarosa was principally based in Naples, but spent some of his career in various other parts of Italy, composing for the opera houses of Rome, Venice, Florence and elsewhere. He was engaged by Catherine II of Russia as her court composer and conductor between 1787 and 1791. In his later years, returning to Naples, he backed the losing side in the struggle to overthrow the monarchy there, and was imprisoned and then exiled. He died in Venice at the age of 51. Life and career Early years Cimarosa was born in Aversa, a town near Naples. His family name was Cimmarosa, which is how he is recorded on his baptismal record. He appears to have been an only child. His fath ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giuseppe Gazzaniga
Giuseppe Gazzaniga (5 October 1743 – 1 February 1818) was a member of the Neapolitan school of opera composers. He composed fifty-one operas and is considered to be one of the last Italian opera buffa composers. Biography Born in Verona, Gazzaniga was initially intended for the priesthood at the urging of his devout parents. He eventually convinced his father to allow him to pursue a career in music and began studies first in Venice and then at the Conservatorio di Sant'Onofrio a Porta Capuana in Naples. While there, he was a pupil of Niccolò Piccinni and Nicola Porpora. Gazzaniga presented his first opera, '' Il barone di Trocchia'', at the Teatro di San Carlo in 1768. He would spend the next several decades writing mostly operas in Italy with the exception of a few trips to Dresden, Vienna, and Prague. His most successful opera was his ''Don Giovanni Tenorio'' written in 1787 to a libretto by Giovanni Bertati, possibly an inspiration for the libretto of Mozart's ''Don Gi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antonio Sacchini
Antonio Maria Gasparo Gioacchino Sacchini (14 June 1730 – 6 October 1786) was an Italian composer, best known for his operas. Sacchini was born in Florence, but raised in Naples, where he received his musical education. He made a name for himself as a composer of serious and comic opera in Italy before moving to London, where he produced works for the King's Theatre. He spent his final years in Paris, becoming embroiled in the musical dispute between the followers of the composers Gluck and Niccolò Piccinni. His early death in 1786 was blamed on his disappointment over the apparent failure of his opera '' Œdipe à Colone''. However, when the work was revived the following year, it quickly became one of the most popular in the 18th-century French repertoire. Life Childhood and education Sacchini was the son of a humble Florentine cook (or coachman), Gaetano Sacchini. At the age of four, he moved with his family to Naples as part of the entourage of the infante Charles of B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio (, , ; 16 June 1313 – 21 December 1375) was an Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist. Born in the town of Certaldo, he became so well known as a writer that he was sometimes simply known as "the Certaldese" and one of the most important figures in the European literary panorama of the fourteenth century. Some scholars (including Vittore Branca) define him as the greatest European prose writer of his time, a versatile writer who amalgamated different literary trends and genres, making them converge in original works, thanks to a creative activity exercised under the banner of experimentalism. His most notable works are ''The Decameron'', a collection of short stories which in the following centuries was a determining element for the Italian literary tradition, especially after Pietro Bembo elevated the Boccaccian style to a model of Italian prose in the sixteenth century, and ''On Famous Women''. He wrot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plautus
Titus Maccius Plautus (; c. 254 – 184 BC), commonly known as Plautus, was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest Latin literary works to have survived in their entirety. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by the innovator of Latin literature, Livius Andronicus. The word Plautine refers to both Plautus's own works and works similar to or influenced by his. Biography Not much is known about Titus Maccius Plautus's early life. It is believed that he was born in Sarsina, a small town in Emilia Romagna in northern Italy, around 254 BC.''The Concise Oxford Companion to Classical Literature'' (1996) Ed. M.C. Howatson and Ian Chilvers, Oxford University Press, Oxford Reference Online According to Morris Marples, Plautus worked as a stage-carpenter or scene-shifter in his early years. It is from this work, perhaps, that his love of the theater originated. His acting talent was eventually discovered; and he adopted the names "Maccius" (a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simpleton (folklore)
__NOTOC__ In folklore, a simpleton is a person whose foolish actions are the subject of often-repeated stories. Simpletons are also known as noodles, fools, and gothamites. Folklore often holds, with no basis in fact, that certain towns or countries are thought to be home to large numbers of simpletons. The ancient Greeks told tales of stupid populations in Abdera and other cities; in Germany, men of Schilda are conspicuous in these stories; in Spain hundreds of jokes exist about the supposed foolishness of the people from Lepe; and in England, the village of Gotham in Nottinghamshire is reputed to be populated by simpletons. In Sri Lanka whole districts in the central, southern, and western provinces are credited with being the abode of foolish people. Tales of simpleton behavior have often been collected into books, and early joke books include many simpleton jokes. In ancient Greece, Hierokles created such a collection. In England, the famous ''Joe Miller's Jests'' is highly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Italian Renaissance
The Italian Renaissance ( it, Rinascimento ) was a period in Italian history covering the 15th and 16th centuries. The period is known for the initial development of the broader Renaissance culture that spread across Europe and marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity. Proponents of a "long Renaissance" argue that it started around the year 1300 and lasted until about 1600. In some fields, a Proto-Renaissance, beginning around 1250, is typically accepted. The French word ''renaissance'' (corresponding to ''rinascimento'' in Italian) means 'rebirth', and defines the period as one of cultural revival and renewed interest in classical antiquity after the centuries during what Renaissance humanists labelled as the "Dark Ages". The Renaissance author Giorgio Vasari used the term ''rinascita'' 'rebirth' in his '' Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects'' in 1550, but the concept became widespread only in the 19th century, after the work of schola ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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