CASTI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA. – Born at Acquapendente on 29 August 1724; he studied at the seminary of Montefiascone and remained there to teach eloquence after taking holy orders. He was enrolled in the Arcadia; in 1762 he revealed himself as a facetious poet with a collection of jocose sonnets against creditors, entitled I tre giuli.
A bizarre and adventurous spirit, he traveled among the courts of Europe (Paris, Rome, Florence, Vienna).
At the court of Maria Theresa he became popular for his Novelle, tales in ottava rima on licentious subjects. In 1778 he went to Saint Petersburg, and the cordial welcome extended by Catherine II did not prevent him from writing the Poema tartaro (XII cantos in ottava rima), in which he ridicules the customs of the Russian court and the empress’s frivolities.
In Vienna C.’s fame increased with the performance of several of his melodramas: Teodoro in Venezia (1784); La Grotta di Trifonio (1786); Cublai Gran Can dei Tartari (1788), and others.
Expelled from the court of Vienna because of the ill feeling aroused in Russia by the Poema tartaro, he was in Venice, Constantinople (1788), and Milan. In 1790 he returned to Vienna as imperial poet, successor to Metastasio. In 1796 he returned to Italy, and in 1798 moved to Paris, where he remained until his death on 5 February 1803. There he composed Gli animali parlanti (1802), a zoopoeia of XXVI cantos in sesta rima, which alludes to the conflict between absolute monarchy and the new republican forms.
The Novelle amene (decree of 2 July 1804) and Gli animali parlanti (decree of 26 August 1805) are on the Index because of their irreligious impropriety and intolerable licentiousness (cf. G. Casati, Dizionario degli scrittori d'Italia, II, Milan n. d., pp. 93–94).