Carlo Pedrotti

Carlo Pedrotti (12 November 1817 – 16 October 1893) was an Italian conductor, administrator and composer, principally of opera. An associate of Giuseppe Verdi's, he also taught two internationally renowned Italian operatic tenors, Francesco Tamagno and Alessandro Bonci.

Pedrotti was born in Verona, where he studied music with the composer Domenico Foroni. He composed two operas which were never performed, but his opera semiseria Lina was successfully given at Foroni's Teatro Filarmonico in 1840, and his next opera, Clara di Mailand, was performed there later that year. This was followed by four seasons as conductor of the Italian Opera in Amsterdam, where a further two operas were composed and premiered.

He returned to Verona in 1845. During the next 23 years, he taught, conducted at the Teatro Nuovo as well as the Teatro Filarmonico and composed a further 10 operas. Fiorina (1851), another opera semiseria, was a success in Italy and beyond, and the commedia lirica Tutti in maschera (1856), his best-known work, was later taken up in Vienna and Paris. It has been successfully revived in recent years in Savona, Piacenza and Rovigo and at the Wexford Festival.

In 1868, Pedrotti moved to Turin, where he had been appointed director of the Liceo Musicale and conductor and director of the Teatro Regio. At the Liceo, his pupils included the composer and orchestral musician Raffaello Squarise and the heroic tenor Francesco Tamagno, who later created the title role in Verdi's penultimate masterpiece, Otello. At the Regio, as well as improving the quality of opera performances, he inaugurated a series of popular concerts.

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