La "Montanina": Melodrama in 3 atti. New York: [typescript], [1930s].

This libretto was gift to me from the late Gloria Iodice, a friend whose much older husband (Gloria's music teacher) composed the operatic score to this libretto.

Though he sometimes also composed music, Picchianti (b. Florence, 1871 - d. New York, 1935), a Florentine who had published in Italy before immigrating to the United States in the early 20th century, also wrote libretti or melodramas on commission from composers such as Salvatore Iodice.

Although the libretto for La “Montanina” was written in the 1930s, Iodice set the work to music about twenty years later for a competition in Rome, long after Picchianti's death. Unfortunately, the work was withdrawn from competition before the submission could be made, according to Gloria Iodice; thus, it was never performed.

Picchianti dedicated himself to musical theatre in America, preferring plots about exiled families, middle-class interiors, and stories of love and adultery. But he did not omit the patriotic and social muse, nor musical comedy and poetry. He wrote in both standard Italian and Florentine dialect.

La “Montanina,” named for the city’s curfew bell at that time, takes place in mid-15th century Florence on the feast of Calendimaggio (the first of May), a kind of Carnevale or Mardi Gras, and involves a jealous husband and a despondent but murderous lover. 

Two of Picchianti's dramati productions at the Teatro Italiano of 14th Street - Alma Mater and Il Grande Detective - are reviewed in the December 15, 1925 issue of Ernesto Valentini's Zarathustra, q.v.

Iodice (b. Naples, 1900 - d. New York, 1966), whose bios are in both Flamma and Schiavo, came to New York at an early age, studying piano with the aging Hungarian pianist, Rafael Joseffy, and Riccardo Rasori (harmony and counterpoint).

In 1919, he went to Paris to study composition with Camille Saint-Saëns, returning to New York in 1922. He made several lengthy trips back to Naples, where he gained some fame as a composer. The great Italian tenor, Tito Schipa, sang one of his songs at its debut performance. In 1933, he organized the Sildac Music Publishing Company of which he was director and manager. Later he started the Children's Toy Theatre, a collection of piano music for children.