Giambattista Giusti

Giambattista Giusti (* 1758 in Lucca , † 1829 in Bologna ) was an Italian engineer and translator .

Life

Giusti worked as an engineer in Bologna and made a name for himself as a translator of classically ancient literature from Greek and Latin into Italian.

His translation of the tragedy Oedipus by Sophocles , for which he asked his friend, the composer Gioachino Rossini , to compose music in 1814, is particularly famous . The opera "Edipo Coloneo" or "Edipo a Colono" is of course one of the lesser-known works of the famous opera composer.

Inspired by reading and translating the classical texts, Giusti also wrote some of his own poems, which were printed in the esteemed edition of the Versi by Giambattista Bodoni in Parma ( 1801 in two editions: one in quart , one in Sedez , each with 67 pages, the the former with an aquatint portrait by Francesco Rosaspina after Felice Giani ). It contains poems with titles such as All'amica , Gli abbigliamenti , Le grazie , Il pudore , Il cocchio , Il rossetto , La chitarra , Il primo bacio , La luna , Il gioco with mostly harmless, sometimes elegiac, sometimes slightly piquant diction, respectively in several quatrains.

literature

• Giuseppe de Lama: Vita del Cavaliere Giambattista Bodoni. Tipografo italiano e catalogo chronologico delle sue edizioni . Parma 1816 (2nd vol., P. 145)
• Antiquariat Weiss: Giambattista Bodoni. Opera typographica 1769-1839 . Weiß, Munich 1926, p. 354.
• Hugh C. Brooks: Saggi di caratteri di Giambatista Bodoni sinora non pubblicati . Gonnelli, Florenz 1929, pp. 817 and 818.