The King Stag

Carlo Gozzi was an eighteenth-century Venetian playwright, poet, and essayist. A fierce and skillful defender of the traditional Italian commedia dell'arte form, his dramatic works were popular in Italy and throughout Europe, particularly in Germany. His play, TURANDOT, was used as the basis for Giacomo Puccini's opera of the same name. He died in Venice in 1806 at the age of 85.

Natalya Baldyga is a scholar, educator, and theatre maker whose adaptations include I HAVE SEEN HORIZONS: RUTH MOORE'S STORIES OF MAINE (written with Meg Taintor) (Opera House Arts) and Henrik Ibsen's THE LADY FROM THE SEA (Opera House Arts). She is also the author of BLOOD, BREATH, AND BONE: MEDITATIONS ON THE BODY DURING A TIME OF PLAGUE. In 2018, she and colleagues Wendy Arons and Sara Figal received the Excellence in Digital Scholarship Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) and the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) for the online edition of their new, complete, and annotated translation of G. E. Lessing's HAMBURG DRAMATURGY (Routledge 2019). Her scholarship focuses on the eighteenth-century theatre, and she has taught theatre history, theory, literature, and performance at the Savannah College of Art and Design, Gustavus Adolphus College, the Florida State University, and Tufts University. She holds a Ph.D. in Theatre Historiography from the University of Minnesota—Twin Cities.