Giovanni Battista Casti

Scholar and writer, born in Acquapendente, Latium, Italy. An abbot, he exercized his versatile talents in Florence, Vienna, Paris, and St Petersburg, satirizing the latter in his Poema tartaro (1797). He wrote light melodramas, such as Novelle galanti (1778–1802), and mocked contemporary politics in the poem Gli animali parlanti (1794–1801).

Giovanni Battista Casti (29 August 1724 - 5 February 1803) was an Italian poet, satirist, and author of comic opera librettos, born in Montefiascone. In 1782, on the death of Metastasio, he was appointed Poeta Cesario, or poet laureate of Austria, in which capacity he applied himself with great success to the opera bouffe; Casti is best known as the author of the Novelle galanti, and of Gli Animali parlanti, a poetical allegory, over which he spent eight years (1794-1802), which excited so much interest that it was translated into French, German and Spanish, and (very freely and with additions) into English, in W. Written during the time of the Revolution in France, it was intended to exhibit the feelings and hopes of the people and the defects and absurdities of various political systems. The Novelle Galanti is a series of poetical tales, in the ottava rimaa metre largely used by Italian poets for that class of compositions.