About the work
Il piccolo Marat is a three-act dramma lirico by Pietro Mascagni to a libretto by Giovacchino Forzano, set during the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution. It premiered on 2 May 1921 at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome, where it was received with as many as fifty curtain calls.
Plot
A young aristocrat poses as an ardent revolutionary to win the trust of the tyrannical committee chairman L'Orco and free his mother from prison. Mariella, L'Orco's niece, falls in love with the supposed 'little Marat' and helps him carry out his plan. In the final scene L'Orco is overpowered and the rescue succeeds.
Cultural significance
Despite its triumphant premiere, the opera soon disappeared from the repertoire; its obscurity is sometimes blamed on librettist Forzano's later association with Fascism, though the text itself argues for freedom from tyranny. With more than 450 documented performances into the 1930s, it was nonetheless a success in its own time.