Carlo Pedrotti was an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

  conductor

Conducting

Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble...

, administrator and composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

, principally of 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...

. An associate of Giuseppe Verdi

Giuseppe Verdi

Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...

's, he also taught two internationally renowned Italian operatic 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...

s, Francesco Tamagno

Francesco Tamagno

Francesco Tamagno was an operatic tenor from Italy who sang with enormous success throughout Europe and America. On 5 February 1887, he cemented his place in musical history by creating the role of Otello in Giuseppe Verdi's masterpiece of the same name...

 and Alessandro Bonci

Alessandro Bonci

Alessandro Bonci was an Italian lyric tenor known internationally for his association with the bel canto repertoire. He sang at many famous theatres, including New York's Metropolitan Opera, Milan's La Scala and London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.-Career:A native of Cesena, Romagna, Bonci...

.

Early life

Pedrotti was born in Verona

Verona

Verona ; German Bern, Dietrichsbern or Welschbern) is a city in the Veneto, northern Italy, with approx. 265,000 inhabitants and one of the seven chef-lieus of the region. It is the second largest city municipality in the region and the third of North-Eastern Italy. The metropolitan area of Verona...

, where he studied music with the composer Domenico Foroni

Domenico Foroni

Domenico Foroni was an Italian composer, conductor, and music educator. He was born in Valeggio sul Mincio into a family of landowners. On 7 November 1818 he married Teresa Zovetto with whom he had five children, two of whom became famous: the operatic soprano Antonietta Foroni-Conti and the...

. He composed two operas which were never performed, but his opera semiseria

Opera semiseria

Opera semiseria is an Italian genre of opera, popular in the early and middle 19th century.Related to the opera buffa, opera semiseria contains elements of comedy but also of pathos, sometimes with a pastoral setting. It can usually be distinguished from tragic operas or melodramas by the presence...

 Lina was successfully given at Foroni's Teatro Filarmonico in 1840, and his next opera, Clara di Mailand, was performed there later that year. This was followed by four seasons as conductor of the Italian Opera in Amsterdam

Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

, where a further two operas were composed and premiered.

Operatic success

He returned to Verona in 1845. During the next 23 years, he taught, conducted at the Teatro Nuovo as well as the Teatro Filarmonico and composed a further 10 operas. Fiorina (1851), another opera semiseria, was a success in Italy and beyond, and the commedia lirica Tutti in maschera

Tutti in maschera

Tutti in maschera is an opera by Carlo Pedrotti. The libretto is by Marco Marcelliano Marcello, based on the 1759 comedy L'impresario delle Smirne by Carlo Goldoni...

(1856), his best-known work, was later taken up in Vienna and Paris. It has been successfully revived in recent years in Savona

Savona

Savona is a seaport and comune in the northern Italian region of Liguria, capital of the Province of Savona, in the Riviera di Ponente on the Mediterranean Sea....

, Piacenza

Piacenza

Piacenza is a city and comune in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Piacenza...

 and Rovigo

Rovigo

Rovigo is a town and comune in the Veneto region of North-Eastern Italy, the capital of the eponymous province. -Geography:...

 and at the Wexford Festival

Wexford Festival Opera

The Wexford Festival Opera is an opera festival that takes place in the town of Wexford in South-Eastern Ireland during the months of October and November.-Festival origins under Tom Walsh, 1951 to 1966:...

.

Turin and Pesaro

In 1868, Pedrotti moved to 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...

, where he had been appointed director of the Liceo Musicale and conductor and director of the Teatro Regio. At the Liceo, his pupils included the composer and orchestral musician Raffaello Squarise

Raffaello Squarise

Raffaello Squarise , also known as Raphael Squarise, was an Italian violinist, teacher, conductor, and composer, who settled in Adelaide, South Australia, and Dunedin, New Zealand...

 and the heroic tenor Francesco Tamagno

Francesco Tamagno

Francesco Tamagno was an operatic tenor from Italy who sang with enormous success throughout Europe and America. On 5 February 1887, he cemented his place in musical history by creating the role of Otello in Giuseppe Verdi's masterpiece of the same name...

, who later created the title role in Verdi's penultimate masterpiece, Otello

Otello

Otello is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on Shakespeare's play Othello. It was Verdi's penultimate opera, and was first performed at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan, on February 5, 1887....

. At the Regio, as well as improving the quality of opera performances, he inaugurated a series of popular concerts.

Following the death of Gioachino Rossini in November 1868, Pedrotti was one of the composers invited by Verdi to contribute to the Messa per Rossini

Messa per Rossini

The Messa per Rossini is a Requiem Mass composed to commemorate the first anniversary of Gioachino Rossini's death. It was a collaboration between 13 Italian composers, initiated by Giuseppe Verdi...

 that was to be performed on the anniversary of Rossini's death. He composed the Tuba mirum section of the Dies Irae

Dies Irae

Dies Irae is a thirteenth century Latin hymn thought to be written by Thomas of Celano . It is a medieval Latin poem characterized by its accentual stress and its rhymed lines. The metre is trochaic...

, for solo 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...

 and chorus, but for various reasons the work was never performed in public during his lifetime.

Pedrotti composed only two operas while in Turin, both near the beginning of his tenure. They were Il favorito (1870) and Olema la schiava (1872). The turned out to be his last operas.

During his 14 years in Turin, the Teatro Regio became one of the most important opera house

Opera house

An opera house is a theatre building used for opera performances that consists of a stage, an orchestra pit, audience seating, and backstage facilities for costumes and set building...

s in Italy. Pedrotti introduced Turin audiences to a number of new French and German operas. These included Meyerbeer

Giacomo Meyerbeer

Giacomo Meyerbeer was a noted German opera composer, and the first great exponent of "grand opera." At his peak in the 1830s and 1840s, he was the most famous and successful composer of opera in Europe, yet he is rarely performed today.-Early years:He was born to a Jewish family in Tasdorf , near...

's L'Africaine

L'Africaine

L'africaine is a grand opera, the last work of the composer Giacomo Meyerbeer. The French libretto was written by Eugène Scribe. The opera is about fictitious events in the life of the real historical person Vasco da Gama...

in 1868, Flotow

Friedrich von Flotow

Friedrich Adolf Ferdinand, Freiherr von Flotow was a German composer. He is chiefly remembered for his opera Martha, which was popular in the 19th century....

's Martha

Martha (opera)

Martha, oder Der Markt zu Richmond is a 'romantic comic' opera in four acts by Friedrich von Flotow, set to a German libretto by Friedrich Wilhelm Riese and based on a story by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges....

in 1869, Ambroise Thomas

Ambroise Thomas

Charles Louis Ambroise Thomas was a French composer, best known for his operas Mignon and Hamlet and as Director of the Conservatoire de Paris from 1871 till his death.-Biography:"There is good music, there is bad music, and then there is Ambroise Thomas."- Emmanuel Chabrier-Early life...

's Mignon

Mignon

Mignon is an opéra comique in three acts by Ambroise Thomas. The original French libretto was by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, based on Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. The Italian version was translated by Giuseppe Zaffira. The opera is mentioned in James Joyce's The Dead,...

in 1876 and his Hamlet

Hamlet (opera)

Hamlet is an opéra in five acts by the French composer Ambroise Thomas, with a libretto by Michel Carré and Jules Barbier based on a French adaptation by Alexandre Dumas, père and Paul Meurice of Shakespeare's play Hamlet.- Ophelia mania in Paris:...

in 1881, Massenet

Jules Massenet

Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet was a French composer best known for his operas. His compositions were very popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and he ranks as one of the greatest melodists of his era. Soon after his death, Massenet's style went out of fashion, and many of his operas...

's Le roi de Lahore

Le roi de Lahore

Le roi de Lahore is an opera in five acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Louis Gallet. It was first performed at the Palais Garnier in Paris on 27 April 1877....

in 1878, Karl Goldmark

Karl Goldmark

Karl Goldmark, also known originally as Károly Goldmark and later sometimes as Carl Goldmark; May 18, 1830, Keszthely – January 2, 1915, Vienna) was a Hungarian composer.- Life and career :...

's Die Königin von Saba

Die Königin von Saba

Die Königin von Saba is an opera in four acts by Karl Goldmark. The German libretto by Hermann Salomon Mosenthal, sets a love triangle into the context of the Queen of Sheba's visit to the court of King Solomon, recorded in First Kings...

in 1879, Bizet

Georges Bizet

Georges Bizet formally Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, was a French composer, mainly of operas. In a career cut short by his early death, he achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, became one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertory.During a...

's Carmen

Carmen

Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...

in 1881 and Gounod

Charles Gounod

Charles-François Gounod was a French composer, known for his Ave Maria as well as his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette.-Biography:...

's Le tribut de Zamora

Le tribut de Zamora

Le tribut de Zamora is an opera in four acts by Charles Gounod, his last work for the stage. The libretto by Adolphe d'Ennery was offered to Gounod after negotiations with Verdi stalled, and involves a young couple on their wedding day, a forced tribute of twenty virgins, a slave auction at which...

in 1882. In preparation for the first Turin performances of Lohengrin

Lohengrin (opera)

Lohengrin is a romantic opera in three acts composed and written by Richard Wagner, first performed in 1850. The story of the eponymous character is taken from medieval German romance, notably the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach and its sequel, Lohengrin, written by a different author, itself...

in 1876, Pedrotti visited Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

 in Munich

Munich

Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

; the production proved to be a success.

In 1882, Pedrotti moved to Pesaro

Pesaro

Pesaro is a town and comune in the Italian region of the Marche, capital of the Pesaro e Urbino province, on the Adriatic. According to the 2007 census, its population was 92,206....

 as the first director of the Liceo Musicale

Conservatorio Statale di Musica "Gioachino Rossini"

The Conservatorio Statale di Musica "Gioachino Rossini" is a music conservatory in Pesaro, Italy. Founded in 1869 with a legacy from the composer Gioachino Rossini, the conservatory officially opened in 1882 with 67 students and was then known as the Liceo musicale Rossini...

, for the foundation of which Rossini had left money in his will. Among his students there was the young Alessandro Bonci, who went on to achieve a career as a prominent lyric tenor in Europe and America. He organised the Rossini Centenary celebrations in 1892 but he retired to Verona, citing ill-health, in 1893. In October of that year, he committed suicide

Suicide

Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

 by drowning in the Adige

Adige

The Adige is a river with its source in the Alpine province of South Tyrol near the Italian border with Austria and Switzerland. At in length, it is the second longest river in Italy, after the River Po with ....

.

List of operas by Pedrotti

Year staged	Name of work	Type of work	Librettist
unstaged	Antigone	opera seria Opera seria Opera seria is an Italian musical term which refers to the noble and "serious" style of Italian opera that predominated in Europe from the 1710s to c. 1770...	M M Marcello
unstaged	La sposa del villagio	opera semiseria Opera semiseria Opera semiseria is an Italian genre of opera, popular in the early and middle 19th century.Related to the opera buffa, opera semiseria contains elements of comedy but also of pathos, sometimes with a pastoral setting. It can usually be distinguished from tragic operas or melodramas by the presence...	M M Marcello
1840	Lina	opera semiseria	M M Marcello
1840	Clara di Mailand	opera seria
1841	Matilde	opera seria
1844	La figlia dell'arciere	opera semiseria	Felice Romani Felice Romani Felice Romani was an Italian poet and scholar of literature and mythology who wrote many librettos for the opera composers Donizetti and Bellini. Romani was considered the finest Italian librettist between Metastasio and Boito.-Biography:Born Giuseppe Felice Romani to a bourgeois family in Genoa,...
1846	Romea di Montfort	opera seria	Gaetano Rossi Gaetano Rossi Gaetano Rossi was an Italian writer who wrote opera libretti for several composers including Mayr, Rossini, Donizetti, Mercadante, Pacini, and Meyerbeer.-Biography:...
1851	Fiorina, o La fanciulla di Glaris	opera semiseria	L Serenelli Honorati
1852	Il parrucchiere della reggenza	opera comica	Gaetano Rossi
1853	Gelmina, o Col fuoco non si scherza	opera semiseria	Giovanni Peruzzini
1854	Genoveffa del Brabante	opera seria	Gaetano Rossi
1856	Tutti in maschera Tutti in maschera Tutti in maschera is an opera by Carlo Pedrotti. The libretto is by Marco Marcelliano Marcello, based on the 1759 comedy L'impresario delle Smirne by Carlo Goldoni...	commedia lirica	M M Marcello
1859	Isabella d'Aragona	opera seria	M M Marcello
1861	Guerra in quattro	opera buffa Opera buffa Opera buffa is a genre of opera. It was first used as an informal description of Italian comic operas variously classified by their authors as ‘commedia in musica’, ‘commedia per musica’, ‘dramma bernesco’, ‘dramma comico’, ‘divertimento giocoso' etc...	M M Marcello
1861	Mazeppa	tragica	Achille de Lauzières
1865	Marion de Lorme	opera seria	M M Marcello
1870	La vergine di Kermo	melodramma Melodramma Melodramma is an Italian term for opera, used in a much narrower sense by English writers to discuss developments in the early 19th century Italian libretto...  romantica	Francesco Guidi
1870	l favorito	tragedia lirica	G Bercanovich
1872	Olema la schiava	opera seria	Francesco Maria Piave Francesco Maria Piave Francesco Maria Piave was an Italian opera librettist who was born in Murano in the lagoon of Venice, during the brief Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy. His career spanned over twenty years working with many of the significant composers of his day...