Giovanni Battista Casti

Giovanni Battista Casti (born Aug. 29, 1724, Acquapendente, Papal States—died Feb. 5, 1803, Paris) was an Italian poet, satirist, and author of comic opera librettos, chiefly remembered for the verse satires Poema tartaro (1787; “Tartar Poem”) and Gli animali parlanti (1802, “The Talking Animals”; Eng. trans. The Court and Parliament of Beasts, 1819).

Casti took holy orders at the seminary of Montefiascone but soon abandoned the church to be a pleasure-seeking poet at the courts of Germany, Austria, and Russia. Already widely travelled, Casti left Florence for Vienna with his patron, the emperor Joseph II, in 1769. He then accompanied a minister of Maria Theresa to many European cities. Between 1778 and 1802 he wrote his witty society verse Novelle galanti (“Amatory Tales”), first published in a critical edition in 1925. In 1778 Casti visited the court of Catherine the Great in St. Petersburg; though he was treated well, his Poema tartaro mocked the adulation shown the Empress. Returning to Vienna, he was named poet laureate in 1790. After a time in Italy, he settled in Paris, where he lived for the rest of his life. There he wrote his other major work, Gli animali parlanti, which personifies the European nations as animals in order to contrast the monarchical concept with the republican spirit generated by the French Revolution. In addition to his society verse and his satires, he wrote comic opera librettos to the music of Antonio Salieri and Giovanni Paisiello.