''La donna serpente'' is a fable by

Carlo Gozzi __NOTOC__ Carlo, Count Gozzi (; 13 December 1720 – 4 April 1806) was an Italian ( Venetian) playwright and champion of Commedia dell'arte. Early life Gozzi was born and died in Venice; he came from a family of minor Venetian aristocracy, the T ...

which premiered at the

Teatro Sant'Angelo The Teatro San Angelo (in Venetian dialect) or Teatro Sant' Angelo (in Italian) was once a theatre in Venice which ran from 1677 until 1803. It was the last of the major Venetian theatres to be built in the 1650s–60s opera craze following Teat ...

, Venice, in 1762. The play was adapted as a children's TV film, broadcast Rete 1, 26 March 1976, directed by :it:Alessandro Brissoni, starring

Ave Ninchi Ave Maria Ninchi (14 December 1914 – 10 November 1997) was an Italian supporting actress who played character roles on stage, television, and in over 98 feature films that included ''Tomorrow Is Too Late'' (1949) and Louis Malle's ''Murmur ...

Carlo Bagno Carlo Bagno (21 March 1920 – 19 January 1990) was an Italian actor. Life and career Born in Lendinara, Rovigo, Bagno studied acting at the Accademia Nazionale di Arte Drammatica Silvio D'Amico, graduating in 1941. Bagno was mainly active on ...

, Enrico Osterman and Gianni Bortolotto.

Plot

The plot concerns a

fairy A fairy (also fay, fae, fey, fair folk, or faerie) is a type of mythical being or legendary creature found in the folklore of multiple European cultures (including Celtic, Slavic, Germanic, English, and French folklore), a form of spirit, ...

princess, Cherestani, whose marriage to a mortal Farruscad was opposed and given a curse-like condition by her father the fairy king Demogorgon. Farruscad is made to swear never to curse his wife Cherestani, no matter what she does. If he does, she will be transformed into a snake for 200 years.

Opera settings

The fable was the basis for Wagner's ''

Die Feen ''Die Feen'' (, ''The Fairies'') is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. The German libretto was written by the composer after Carlo Gozzi's ''La donna serpente''. ''Die Feen'' was Wagner's first completed opera, but remained unperformed in h ...

'' (1833) and Casella's ''La donna serpente'' (1932), but not—as sometimes incorrectly reported— Friedrich Heinrich Himmel's 1806 opera ''Die Sylphen'', which is based on another Gozzi fable, ''La Zobeide''. Wagner's interest in Gozzi was probably influenced by his uncle Adolph Wagner's translation of another Gozzi fable ''Il corvo'' in 1804. Wagner altered and selected from Gozzi's plot, changing the names of Princess Cherestani and Farruscad to Ada and Arindal. The influence of other sections of ''La donna serpente'' not used by Wagner in ''Die Feen'' on the second act of Wagner's ''

Parsifal ''Parsifal'' ( WWV 111) is an opera or a music drama in three acts by the German composer Richard Wagner and his last composition. Wagner's own libretto for the work is loosely based on the 13th-century Middle High German epic poem ''Parzival'' ...

'' has been noted.

William Kinderman William Andrew Kinderman (born 1 November 1952) is an American author and music scholar who plays the piano. Life Born in Philadelphia, Kinderman studied music and philosophy at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania and later the same subjects at ...

, ''Wagner's Parsifal'', 2018: "As Syer observes, prominent features of the second act of Parsifal—a part of the drama lacking extensive models in medieval sources—evince Gozzi's aesthetic framework, involving transformations between two incompatible worlds: the incompatible worlds: the immortal realm of ... Ada in Die Feen), on the one hand, and the mortal realm of prince Farruscad (prototype for Wagner's Arindal), on the other..." Casella likewise changed the names of the protagonists to Miranda and Altidòr.

References

1762 plays Plays adapted into operas Italian plays adapted into films Plays by Carlo Gozzi Fairies and sprites in popular culture Works about princesses Fiction about curses Fiction about shapeshifting Snakes in popular culture {{18thC-play-stub