The three pintos

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Work data
Title: The three pintos
Original language: German
Music: Carl Maria von Weber and Gustav Mahler
Libretto : Carl Maria von Weber , Theodor Hell . Text revision: Carl von Weber
Literary source: The bride fight by Carl Seidel
Premiere: January 20, 1888
Place of premiere: Leipzig
Playing time: about 2 hours
Place and time of the action: Madrid and the surrounding area in the 19th century.
people
  • Don Pantaleone de Paccheco ( bass )
  • Clarissa, his daughter ( soprano )
  • Gaston, student
  • Don Gomez de Freiros, Clarissa's lover ( tenor )
  • Laura, Clarissa's maid ( mezzo-soprano )
  • Don Pinto de Fonseca, young country nobility ( bass )
  • Ambrosio, Don Pinto's servant ( baritone )
  • The host ( bass )
  • Inez, landlady's daughter ( soprano )
  • Noble ones, guests, servants and people

The three pintos ( Jähn's list of works, Appendix 5) is an opera by Carl Maria von Weber and is called: Joking opera in three acts . The text comes from Theodor Hell based on the novel Der Brautkampf by Carl Seidel . The opera remained unfinished and was later edited and completed posthumously by Gustav Mahler .

action

first act

Don Pantaleone and his friend Don Anselmo Fonseco want to marry off their two children Clarissa and Don Pinto. Don Pinto doesn't know Clarissa and so he goes to Madrid to meet her. On the way there, Don Pinto passes a restaurant where he takes a rest. The farewell of the student Gaston is being celebrated in the restaurant. Don Pinto takes part in the feast and after a while lies drunk under a table and sleeps off his intoxication. Gaston has spent all his money and decides to steal from the drunken Don Pinto. In addition to the money, he also takes his papers and travels to Madrid in place of Don Pinto.

Second act

Don Pantaleone has gathered with his relatives and friends in the ancestral hall of his castle. One waits for Don Pinto to welcome him. Clarissa is sad. She secretly loves Don Gomez de Freiros and does not want to marry Don Pinto. Clarissa's maid Laura knows about her love for Don Gomez and comforts Clarissa.

Third act

In the meantime "Don Pinto", who is actually Gaston, has arrived at the castle and is reported. Before he can enter, he is intercepted by Don Gomez, who explains to Gaston that Clarissa is actually his bride. Gaston no longer wants to marry Clarissa and consults Don Gomez on how to proceed. It is decided that Don Gomez should impersonate Pinto. He is warmly welcomed by the assembled guests as “Don Pinto”.

Meanwhile the real Don Pinto arrives. He steps into a faux pas and is immediately thrown out of the hall. When the truth about the "three pintos" finally comes to light, it is already too late. Don Gomez and Clarissa have already tied the knot.

Origin and performance history

Whether Weber's manuscript of the entire opera was stolen after his death by one of the mourners from Weber's house in London in 1826, as the English music writer John Warrack suspects in his Weber biography, can no longer be proven today. What is certain is that Weber left a very detailed composition plan for the three-act opera.

Weber began the composition in 1820, his last work on it is dated September 20, 1824. Only seven musical numbers of the opera are originally from Weber's hand. After Weber's death, Weber's wife first gave the score sketches to Giacomo Meyerbeer for editing and completion. But he left the manuscripts unheeded for twenty years. In 1847 it was returned to Weber's son Max Maria. The composer's grandson, Captain Carl von Weber, inherited these manuscripts. At that time he was in the garrison in Leipzig , where he made the acquaintance of the young Gustav Mahler . Mahler, who was very interested in Carl von Weber's wife, received the opera sketches and a text revision of the libretto that he had written himself. The young composer set up a new plan for the three acts of the opera and, based on Weber's motifs and themes from other compositions, composed the entire opera anew in the summer of 1887, largely in the spirit of the composer. The premiere took place on January 20, 1888 in the New City Theater in Leipzig, in which Emanuel Christian Hedmondt sang in the role of Don Gaston de Viratos and Therese Rothauser .

reception

Even contemporaries found the libretto problematic, even in the revised version: “The material borrowed from a novella would be suitable for a game of intrigue, but it is not particularly made for a comic opera; for it lacks the delicacy that is so attractive in Mozart's 'Marriage of Figaro'; he is more of unsteady coarseness. (…) Perhaps the editors could have spiced up the text if they hadn't kept to Weber's relics too piously: the intensification is missing; The second act is dramatically devoid of content and contains only lyrical numbers, so its success was by far less successful than that of the first act; the whole thing tolerated finer connections and quick-witted humor. "

Weber's music as well as the arrangement received the unanimous applause of the audience: “Weber's musical relics come from the time in which he had composed the 'Freischütz', so they belong to an era of fresh and joyful upswing. This is especially true of the songs and the trio of the first act; but also the trio of the third act and the song of Ambrosio, whether they come from Weber or have been composed after him, are graceful and appealing. The aria of Clarissa and the song of Laura in the second act are reminiscent of the heartbeats of Agathe and Aennchen: both are composed according to other unpublished themes by the master. The introduction to the second act is very cleverly put together by Mahler, just as the whole arrangement appears to be a respectable test of talent on the part of the young composer. Most of the melodies themselves are said to have been taken from Weber's estate, even if they were not composed for the three Pinto's. "

Discography

Sheet music / libretto

literature

  • "The three pinto's" . In: The Gazebo . Volume 6, 1888, pp. 100 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).
  • Eveline Bartlitz and Frank Ziegler: "It's a special thing with the pintos ...". The fate of Carl Maria von Weber's unfinished opera The Three Pintos from 1826 to 1852 from the perspective of his family , in: Weberiana. Announcements from the International Carl-Maria-von-Weber-Society e. V., Issue 27 (2017), pp. 43–92.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Karl-Josef Kutsch , Leo Riemens : Large singer lexicon . Third edition, Berlin 2000, p. 2084
  2. ↑ a b "The Three Pinto's" . In: The Gazebo . Volume 6, 1888, pp. 100 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).