Pimpinone, TWV

Telemann-Werke-Verzeichnis

The Telemann-Werke-Verzeichnis , abbreviated TWV, is the numbering system identifying compositions by Georg Philipp Telemann, published by Martin Ruhnke....

 21:15, is a comic opera

Comic opera

Comic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...

 by the German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 composer Georg Philipp Telemann

Georg Philipp Telemann

Georg Philipp Telemann was a German Baroque composer and multi-instrumentalist. Almost completely self-taught in music, he became a composer against his family's wishes. After studying in Magdeburg, Zellerfeld, and Hildesheim, Telemann entered the University of Leipzig to study law, but eventually...

 with a 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 Johann Philipp Praetorius. Its full title is Die Ungleiche Heirat zwischen Vespetta und Pimpinone oder Das herrsch-süchtige Camer Mägden (The Unequal Marriage Between Vespetta and Pimpinone or The Domineering Chambermaid). The work is described as a Lustiges Zwischenspiel ("comic intermezzo

Intermezzo

In music, an intermezzo , in the most general sense, is a composition which fits between other musical or dramatic entities, such as acts of a play or movements of a larger musical work...

") in three parts. It was first performed at the Theater am Gänsemarkt, Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

 on 27 September 1725 as light relief between the acts of Telemann's adaptation of Handel

George Frideric Handel

George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...

's 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...

 Tamerlano

Tamerlano

Tamerlano is an opera in three acts written for the Royal Academy of Music , with music by George Frideric Handel to an Italian text by Nicola Francesco Haym, adapted from Agostin Piovene's Tamerlano together with another libretto entitled Bajazet after Nicolas Pradon's Tamerlan, ou La Mort de...

. Pimpinone was highly successful and pointed the way forward to later intermezzi, particularly Giovanni Battista Pergolesi

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi was an Italian composer, violinist and organist.-Biography:Born at Iesi, Pergolesi studied music there under a local musician, Francesco Santini, before going to Naples in 1725, where he studied under Gaetano Greco and Francesco Feo among others...

's La serva padrona

La serva padrona

La serva padrona is an opera buffa by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi to a libretto by Gennaro Antonio Federico, after the play by Jacopo Angello Nelli. The opera is only 45 minutes long and was originally performed as an intermezzo between the acts of a larger serious opera...

.

Roles

Cast	Voice type Voice type A voice type is a particular kind of human singing voice perceived as having certain identifying qualities or characteristics. Voice classification is the process by which human voices are evaluated and are thereby designated into voice types...	Premiere cast
Pimpinone	bass Bass (voice type) A bass is a type of male singing voice and possesses the lowest vocal range of all voice types. According to The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, a bass is typically classified as having a range extending from around the second E below middle C to the E above middle C...	Johann Gottfried Riemschneider
Vespetta	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...	Margaretha Susanna Kayser

Plot

Vespetta the chambermaid wheedles her way into marrying her employer, old Pimpinone. Once married she shows her waspish nature (the name Vespetta means "little wasp") and completely dominates her husband.

Recordings

• Pimpinone Mechtild Bach, Michael Schopper, La Stagione, conducted by Michael Schneider
  Michael Schneider (conductor)
  Michael Schneider is a German flautist, recorder player, conductor and academic teacher. He is especially connected with later baroque repertoire such as the works of Telemann, and founded the orchestra La Stagione to perform that repertoire.-Professional career:Schneider studied flute and...
  
   (Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, 1993)
• Pimpinone oder Die ungleiche Heirat Erna Roscher, Reiner Süss, Staatskapelle Berlin
  Staatskapelle Berlin
  The Staatskapelle Berlin is a German orchestra, the orchestra of the Berlin State Opera .The orchestra traces its roots to 1570, when Joachim II Hector, Elector of Brandenburg established an orchestra at his court...
  
  , conducted by Helmut Koch (Berlin Classics)

Sources

• The Viking Opera Guide ed. Holden (Viking, 1993)
• Magazine de l'opéra baroque (in French)