Pinotta is an idillio or opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 in 2 acts by Pietro Mascagni

Pietro Mascagni

Pietro Antonio Stefano Mascagni was an Italian composer most noted for his operas. His 1890 masterpiece Cavalleria rusticana caused one of the greatest sensations in opera history and single-handedly ushered in the Verismo movement in Italian dramatic music...

 from an Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

 libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

 by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti

Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti

Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti was an Italian librettist, best known for his friendship and collaboration with the composer Pietro Mascagni...

. The opera received its first performance on March 23, 1932 at the Teatro del Casinò in San Remo

Sanremo

Sanremo or San Remo is a city with about 57,000 inhabitants on the Mediterranean coast of western Liguria in north-western Italy. Founded in Roman times, the city is best known as a tourist destination on the Italian Riviera. It hosts numerous cultural events, such as the Sanremo Music Festival...

.

Pinotta is based on two youthful works of Mascagni: his cantata In Filanda (1881) which was combined with the song La tua stelle (1882). The libretto was written by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti

Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti

Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti was an Italian librettist, best known for his friendship and collaboration with the composer Pietro Mascagni...

, a long-time collaborator of the composer, and tells the love story of Baldo, a worker, and Pinotta, a young hand-spinner of the Andrea's workshop. In the end, Baldo and Pinotta get married. The opera was successful and had several other performances in Italy (Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

, Naples

Naples

Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...

, Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

, Turin

Turin

Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...

). Today, Pinotta is rarely performed.

Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere cast, 23 March 1932 (Conductor: Pietro Mascagni )
Pinotta	soprano Soprano A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...	Mafalda Favero Mafalda Favero Mafalda Favero was an Italian operatic soprano.Mafalda Favero was born in Portomaggiore, near Ferrara. When she was 17, she started studying with Alessandro Vezzani at the Conservatory in Bologna and attracted the notice of Franco Alfano...
Baldo	tenor Tenor The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...	Alessandro Ziliani
Andrea	baritone Baritone Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...	Ernesto Badini Ernesto Badini Ernesto Badini was an Italian opera singer that sang in the baritone range . He was trained at Milan Conservatory and made his debut as Figaro in San Colombano al Lambro...

Recordings

There exist only two live recordings of Pinotta:

• 1974 : Maria Luisa Cioni (Pinotta), Giuseppe Vertechi (Baldo), Lino Puglisi (Andrea) - RAI Orchestra, Gennaro D'Angelo - Unique Opera Records Co.
• 1995 : Gloria Guida Borelli (Pinotta), Antonio De Palma (Baldo), Thomas Mürk (Andrea) - Orchestra Festival di Bruxelles, Dirk de Caluwé - Bongiovanni

Sources

• Casaglia, Gherardo, "23 Marzo 1932", Almanacco Amadeus, 2005. Accessed 16 January 2010 (in Italian).