Guido Paduano

Guido Paduano, born in Venice in 1944, has been Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Pisa. He wrote monographic studies and essays on tragedies and comedies of the ancient theatre, both Greek and Latin. He has also studied classical epics and published the translation of Homer’s Iliad for the Pléiade of Einaudi-Gallimard and the first Italian translation of The Argonautics by Apollonius Rodius for Rizzoli. Among his fields of interest are the theory of literature, the persistence of classical elements in modern literatures, the thematic study of musical dramaturgy within operas.

Among his books: Il teatro antico. Guida alle opere (Laterza 2005); La nascita dell’eroe. Achille, Odisseo, Enea: le origini della cultura occidentale (Rizzoli 2008); Edipo. Storia di un mito (Carocci 2008); Il testo e il mondo. Elementi di teoria della letteratura (Bollati Boringhieri 2013).

He has written several books on opera and melodrama, particularly the nineteenth-century tradition: Noi facemmo ambedue un sogno strano (Sellerio 1982), Il giro di vite (Florence 1992), Se vuol ballare. Le trasposizioni in musica dei classici europei (Utet 2009) and TuttoVerdi (EDT 2013).