Il piccolo Marat

Il piccolo Marat is a dramma lirico or opera in three acts by the Italian composer Pietro Mascagni from a libretto by Giovacchino Forzano.

Performance history

The opera was first performed on 2 May 1921 at the Teatro Costanzi, Rome and then many times in Italy and South America, with at least 450 individual performances documented. Though Mascagni was slated to perform the opera in the United States in 1926, logistics proved too difficult for rehearsal, and the North American premiere waited until 13 April 2009, when Teatro Grattacielo performed the opera at Avery Fisher Hall in New York.

Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere cast, 2 May 1921 (Conductor: Pietro Mascagni)
Mariella	soprano	Gilda dalla Rizza
La principessa di Fleury	mezzo-soprano	Agnese Porter
Il piccolo Marat	tenor	Hipólito Lázaro
Il soldato	baritone	Benvenuto Franci
Il carpentiere	baritone	Ernesto Badini
L'orco	bass	Luigi Ferroni
Il capitano		Augusto Beuf
La spia		Gino De Vecchi
Il portatore		Arturo Pellegrino
Il ladro		Michele Fiore
La tigre		Mario Pinheiro
Una voce		Luigi Nardi

Recordings

Several recordings exist of the complete work, the most widely distributed of which features the husband and wife team of Virginia Zeani and Nicola Rossi-Lemeni with tenor Giuseppe Gismondo; this live 1962 recording from San Remo was issued on the Italian Cetra label as a 3-LP set and, later, a 2-CD set. A live concert performance from the Netherlands, 1992, starring Susan Neves and Daniel Galvez-Vallejo, was issued on the Bongiovanni label.

Among significant recordings of selections of the opera are Hippolito Lazaro's 1926 recording (with soprano Mafalda de Voltri) of approximately 14 minutes of the opera beginning at "Sei tu? Che cosa vieni a fare?... Va nella tua stanzetta".