Pietro il Grande zar di tutte le Russie or Il falegname di Livonia (The Livonian Carpenter) also known as Pietro, il grande, tsar delle Russie (Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia) is a comic melodrama (opera buffa) in two acts (1819) by Gaetano Donizetti to a libretto by Gherardo Bevilacqua-Aldobrandini.
Pietro il Grande or Il falegname di Livonia was premiered at the opening of the 1819-1820 Carnival season at the Teatro San Samuele in Venice. The premiere took place on 26 December 1819. It was the fourth of Donizetti’s operas to be performed during his lifetime and the first to achieve "more than one production"[1]. It had about seven stagings until 1827, when its last known performance in the 19th century took place.
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The opera was neglected until 2003 when it was given a performance in St Petersburg, thanks to the artistic director of the St Petersburg Chamber Opera, Yuri Alexandrov, who spent three years in search of the score for the opera, which, so it appeared, had been lost forever. The painstaking work yielded results: the score was restored fragment by fragment. The Russian premiere took place on 27 May 2003 at the St Petersburg Chamber Opera, with staging by Yuri Alexandrov and the Russian and Italian versions of the libretto by Yuri Dimitrin.
In 2004, the opera was presented by the Festival della Valle d'Itria in Martina Franca. Those performances were recorded.
| Role | Voice type | Premiere Cast, 26 December 1819 (Conductor: - ) |
|---|---|---|
| Pietro il Grande (Peter the Great) | bass | Pio Botticelli |
| Caterina (Catherine I of Russia, his wife) | soprano | Adelaide Raffi |
| Madama Fritz, innkeeper | mezzo-soprano | Caterina Amati |
| Annetta Mazepa, innkeeper | soprano | Angela Bertozzi |
| Carlo Scavronski, carpenter of Livonia | tenor | Giovanni Battista Verger |
| Ser Cuccupis, magistrate | bass | Luigi Martinelli |
| Firman Trombest, in the role of the usurer | bass | Giuseppe Guglielmini |
| Hondediski, muscovite captain | baritone | Gaetano Rambaldi |
| Mayors, couriers, followers of the Czar | ||
The action takes place in some unnamed town in Livonia (now Latvia and Estonia), which was that time under Russian rule. Carlo, a carpenter is in love with the orphan Annetta. Carlo claims to be of noble origin and shows that he has a bit of a temper when the tsar and his wife, Catherine, arrive, both travelling incognito. They are looking for the tsarina’s lost brother, and have reason to suspect that it might be Carlo. The tsar asks the hotelier, Madame Fritz, about this carpenter, when Carlo enters. Carlo, who doesn’t know who the stranger is, is rather insolent to him, and an argument ensues, with Peter threatening Carlo with dire consequences. The town magistrate, Ser Cuccupis, also gets into an argument with Peter. This magistrate has pretensions of grandeur. He goes so far as to threaten him with his friend, the tsar. Peter decides to pull rank on the magistrate, and tells him that he is Menshikov, a high officer of the tsar. The magistrate has Carlo imprisoned. The latter is about to be convicted when Madame Fritz runs in with some documents proving that he is Catherine’s brother.
Carlo is not told this until Act 2, at which time he introduces his girl (Annetta) to the imperial couple. He warns them that the tsar must never see her since she is the daughter of the traitor hetman Ivan Mazepa. When told that Mazepa is dead, the false Menshikov pardons the girl. The captain of the troops tells the magistrate that Menshikov is actually the tsar. The magistrate sees an opportunity to advance himself, but since the tsar has already recognized him for what he is, he fires him from his position of authority and orders him to pay a fine. Peter, Catherine, Carlo and Annetta leave happily for St Petersburg.
| Year | Cast (Pietro il Grande, Caterina Madame Fritz, Annetta, Carlo) |
Conductor, Opera House and Orchestra |
Label[3] |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | Vito Priante Eufemia Tafuro, Rosa Anna Peraino, Rosa Sorice, Alessandro Codeluppi |
Marco Berdondini, Orchestra Internazionale d’Italia and the Coro da Camera di Bratislava (Recorded at performances in the Atrio di Palazzo Ducale, Martina Franca as part of the Festival della Valle d'Itria. There were performances on 27, 28 July) |
Audio CD: Dynamic Cat: CDS 473-1/2 |
Note: The Act 2 sextet is included in A Hundred Years of Italian Opera, 1810-1820,(Opera Rara; Cat: ORCH103).