Translated from Italian and Venetian, articles and notes by:

Abstract: 

The theatrical season lasting from October 1750 to February 1751 turned out to be a decisive achievement in Goldoni’s work. During this year Goldoni composed and presented on the Venetian stage twice as many new works as he was contracted to produce; however, the main reason for this year to stand out was the playwright’s open determination to fundamentally reform comedy — expressed in his dramatic manifesto “The Comical Theater” (Il teatro comico), which was put on stage and marked the beginning of the Fall season, — as well as his strides in that direction, which affected the entire course of that reform. In the plays written during this theatrical year, Goldoni sheds light on his concern with the Сommedia dell’arte, enjoys rivalry with the French comedy, all the while testing new generic modes and tapping into new ways of painting characters. The body of works produced by Goldoni during “The Year of Sixteen Comedies” has never been published in its entirety, not even in Italy. Of those, five comedies have never been rendered into Russian before; three are actually unavailable, and the rest translated earlier receive a new translation here. The texts of the comedies are followed by the fragments of early editions. The theoretically important dedications and forewords by Goldoni, with which he prefaced his editions of comedies, are being published in Russian for the first time.

Keywords: Carlo Goldoni, drama, theater, comedy, commedia dell’arte.