Socrate immaginario. Commedia per musica

Ferdinando Galiani (1728-1787) was an eccentric man, endowed with a lively intelligence and an unconstrained attitude towards history and politics, which both enabled him to make an original contribution to the Age of Enlightenment. His cultural and intellectual interests were really wide, ranging from the economical treatises (which made him renowned throughout Europe) to the speeches, from the reflections about the Neapolitan dialect to the "literaly jokes", even up to a comedy for musik, the "Socrate immaginario", destined to have a great success and to mark a deep change in the coeval theatrical production of Southern Italy. This volume offers the test of the "Socrate immaginario" - which was perfoned for the first time in Neaples at the theatre Nuovo in the fall of 1775 and published only five years later, in 1788 - and traces the events surrounding its composition and attribution, highlighting its traits of originality, due essentially to an act of deep theatrical reform of tradition and to a refined lingustic operation.