Giovanni Pindemonte

Portrait from 1771

Giovanni Pindemonte (born December 4, 1751 in Verona ; † January 23, 1812 there) was a Veronese politician , dramaturge and poet .

Life

Born as the eldest son of Marchese Luigi (1718–1765) and Lodovica Maria alias Dorotea Maffei († 1800), he came from a family that immigrated from Pistoia in the 14th century . This family had already achieved the rank of Marchese in 1654 ; In 1782 they became members of the Venetian nobility.

On the initiative of Bartolomeo Lorenzi (1732-1822), Pindemonte and his younger brother Ippolito entered the Collegio dei Nobili di Modena on September 24, 1765 and learned poetry from masters such as Lazzaro Spallanzani , Francesco Barbieri, Giuliano Cassiani and Luigi Cerretti with Maurizio Gherardini, the two Lucchesini, Girolamo and Cesare . On the occasion of the birthday of Francesco III. d'Este he published Talestri regina delle Amazoni in 1771 . Returning to Verona with Ippolito, Giuseppe Torelli became his preceptor , but there he soon got into conflict. For example, a betrayed husband named Francesco Garavetta sued him and was charged in court with 'indecent customs, low religion and a very violent character'.

Around 1780 he moved to Venice , where he lived in a palazzo near Santa Marina. After the cancellation of a marriage project with a Dolfin, he married Vittoria Maria Gasparina Widmann-Rezzonico on October 7, 1782, the sister of the Proveditore generale da mar Carlo Aurelio. He had four children with her. On September 22 of the same year he was admitted to the Grand Council.

In the meantime Pindemonte had made his debut as a librettist , because in 1772 the musical drama Il genio della Sassonia in riva all'Adige was written for Maria Antonia of Bavaria , Electress of Saxony, which was set to music by Count Pietro dal Pozzo ; by professional composers such as Giuseppe Gazzaniga and Domenico Cimarosa , on the other hand, the score of two libretti with the Arcadian name Eschilo Acanzio for the Philharmonic Theater of Verona and Isola di Calipso , respectively , was published by Télémaque di Fénelon in Venice in 1777, as well as Junius Brutus (1781, from Brutus by Voltaire ).

The melodrama was soon superseded by tragedy , because after Mastino I dalla Scala (around 1774) he celebrated a resounding success with I baccanali , which was performed in S. Giovanni Grisostomo in 1787 and printed in Florence the following year . A scandal provoked I coloni di Candia , which came on stage in the same theater in January 1785, and which dealt with the revolt of the Venetian settlers in Crete (1363-1366) . The colony of Venice officially protested, and an anonymous Dissertazione critica was published against the tragedy (Coira 1785). The Council of Ten had the performance prohibited.

However, this did not affect his political career. In 1784 he was confirmed as a member of the Dieci Savi and rose to the Podestà of Verona in June 1788 , an office he held until October 20, 1789. The State Inquisitors, however, let him oversee a sonnet that celebrated the French Revolution : Raggio di libertà splende e lampeggia .

After his return to Venice, he attacked a betrayed husband, the noble Giacomo Martinengo, on St. Mark's Square in May 1790 . The court sentenced him to eight months of imprisonment. He was released on January 31, 1791, but his wife left him. He then retired to his Villa del Vo near Isola della Scala , where he translated Ovid's Remedia Amoris (published in Vicenza in 1791 and, revised, in Venice in 1801).

Full of Jacobean enthusiasm, he wrote sonnets such as Contro il moderno filosofismo , and in September 1793 he recited an eulogy in the Accademia degli Eccitati di Este for Thomas Aquinas , which was published in Verona in 1809. He returned to Venice again, openly criticizing the government and maintaining secret relationships with the Jacobins. When these were blown up, his brother Ippolito saved him, who helped him to escape to France in April 1795.

He stayed in Paris for a few months. When the Republic of Venice was dissolved in 1797 , he wrote a trattatello on the decadence of government. From December 1797 to February 1798 he stayed in Milan , between March and July in Bologna , where he published an ode to the Cisalpina . From September he was a member of the Consiglio degli Iuniori in Milan . Before the Austrian attack on Milan, he fled again to France in April 1799, first to Grenoble , then to Paris, where he dedicated one of the two great poems of exile to the Italian refugees: La Repubblica Cisalpina and Le ombre napoletane . He was arrested in October 1800 on suspicion of participating in Giuseppe Ceracchi's anti-Bonapartist conspiracy and detained by the French police until the end of January 1801, but released thanks to Ferdinando Marescalchi , the Cisalpina's agent at the first consul. Between the summer and autumn of 1801, Pindemonte stayed in Verona, after moving to Milan on June 2, 1802, he became a member and then president of the legislature. Between 1804 and 1805 the only approved edition of the Componimenti teatrali for Sonzogno was published in Milan . The four volumes contain twelve dramas.

In early 1806 he suffered a first stroke . At the end of the year he was back in Milan, where he suffered a second attack in May 1807. Although he was elected elector for the Antichi dipartimenti , he no longer took part in the opening meeting. In September 1808 he finally returned to Verona.

In his will , he saw his sons Luigi († March 14, 1814, at the age of 28) and Carlo as universal heirs. The other two children, Dorotea and a first Carlo, had died in 1784 and 1787. He entrusted his own compositions to Luigi, and all of the houses to his brother Ippolito. He died of a last stroke on January 23, 1812. Only his son Carlo (1790–1834), the sole heir from 1814, had descendants.

Works (selection)

• Componimenti teatrali di Giovanni Pindemonte Veronese , Milan 1804–1805, Vol. I – IV (again Milan 1827, Vol. I – II). Digital copies: Vol. 1 , Vol. 2
• Posthumous editions of individual dramas:
  • Enrico VIII , in: Anno nuovo teatrale, Turin 1816, Vol. I, pp. 9-81.
  • Orso Ipato , in: Milena Montanile: I giacobini a teatro. Segni e strutture della propaganda rivoluzionaria in Italia , Naples 1984, pp. 27-93.
  • L'atto di fede , in: Pietro Themelly: Il teatro patriotico tra Rivoluzione e Impero , Rome 1991, pp. 271–351.
  • Elena e Gerardo , in: Enrico Mattioda (ed.): Tragedie del Settecento , Modena 1999, Vol. II, pp. 442-524.

literature

• Corrado Viola:  Pindemonte, Giovanni. In: Raffaele Romanelli (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 83:  Piacentini – Pio V. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2015.
• Giuseppe Biadego (ed.): Poesie e lettere di Giovanni Pindemonte , Bologna 1883, Introduzione (still the most profound biography).

Web links

Commons : Giovanni Pindemonte  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

1. ↑ Giuseppe Biadego (ed.): Poetry e lettere di Giovanni Pindemonte , Bologna VIII 1883, p.
2. ↑ Biadego, 1883, pp. 325-350.