Organization

Festival del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino

Conductor

Riccardo Frizza

Stage director

Set designer

Gary McCann

Costume designer

Lighting designer

Daniele Naldi

Chorus master

Lorenzo Fratini

Singer

Tenor

Charles Castronovo

Fritz

Soprano

Salome Jicia

Suzel

Mezzo-soprano

Teresa Iervolino

Beppe

Baritone

Massimo Cavalletti

David

Dave Monaco

Federico

Bass

Francesco Samuele Venuti

Hazel

Caterina Meldolesi

Caterina

Others

Coro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino

Orchestra

Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino

L'amico Fritz -  (The Friend Fritz)

Piacenza

Italy

Auditorium

L'amico Fritz Mascagni

Public

The Friend Fritz

Approved

After the success of Cavalleria rusticana , Pietro Mascagni is already thinking of new subjects to set to music. The initial project of I Rantzau , inspired by a novel by Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian, is temporarily set aside for L'amico Fritz,a sentimental comedy by the same authors supported by the publisher Sonzogno who had already ordered the librettist reduction from Angelo Zanardini. But the libretto prepared by Zanardini does not please the composer at all and so the intervention of the scholar Angelo Daspuro is necessary first, and then the trusted Guido Menasci and Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti. Mascagni began working on the opera in the winter of 1891, completing it in time for its debut at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 31 October of the same year. The success of the first performance, however, does not save L'amico Fritzfrom an uneven fate made up of conflicting opinions and judgments. First of all that of Giuseppe Verdi, who blamed the too many dissonances and the continuous changes of tempo in the score and bluntly broke the libretto. In truth Mascagni had deliberately chosen the subject of Amico Fritz, where the action is almost inconsistent, precisely to make his music stand out. A fresh music, with affectionate tones and suitable for the kind-hearted - as the author himself defined it - which lightly outlines the little love idyll of Fritz Kobus, unrepentant bachelor of the country, and of the enchanting Suzel, daughter of his farmer who it will make him fall in love.

English

The Friend Fritz by Mascagni, From (2022/2022), Directed by Riccardo Frizza,, Conductor Riccardo Frizza, Auditorium, Piacenza, Italy

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Cast

Crew

Ensemble

Program, About & Synopsis

Photos

Further reading

Performance Dates & Venues

Venues