Fregoli or Carnival. Theatre and Popular Culture. The Italian illusionist Leopoldo Fregoli (1867-1936) was always, alongside Joan Miró and Richard Wagner, one of Brossa's great mythic heroes. In 1969, Brossa published, with Tąpies, the bibliophile book Frčgoli. Brossa adopted as his motto Fregoli's celebrated dictum: "Art is life, and life, transformation". More than any other author, actor or dramatist, Fregoli embodied the speed that the modern age demands of its art and entertainment, and at the same time condenses the Heraclitean perception of continual metamorphosis. The carnivalesque 'cosmovision' of Fregoli is the very essence of Brossa's metaphorical and transgressive poetics. Brossa's familial and literary origins are rooted in ordinary popular culture, and all of his work dialogues with, recreates and transforms the language, the forms and the objects of popular culture.