Giovanni Battista Casti (1724 – 1803), Italian satiric poet and author of comic opera libretti notably for Antonio Salieri and Giovanni Paisiello. The satirical verse fable Gli animali parlante (Talking animals) is one of Casti’s major works. Written in France where Casti spent his last years and first published there in 1802, this versified beast fable of twenty-six cantos in sesta rima alludes to the contemporary revolutionary spirit and the inability of either despotic or liberal regimes to establish a form of stable government. Spurious editions appeared in Italy. It has been called the Animal Farm of its day and both Goya for some of his animal scenes in his Disasters in War series and Giacomo Leopardi for his satirical poem Paralipomeni della Batracomiomachia (The war of the mice and the crabs), may have been inspired by Casti’s Gli Animali.