Paolo Pinamonti (1958) graduated in Philosophy from the University of Venice in 1983. He completed his musical studies at the “C. Pollini” Conservatory in Padua (piano, 1981) and at the “B. Marcello” Conservatory in Venice (composition, 1982). From 1986 to 1992, he taught History of Music at the music conservatories of Adria, Vicenza, and Venice. Since 1992, he has been a researcher in Musicology and History of Music at the “Ca’ Foscari” University in Venice, where he currently teaches History of Music for Film and History of Contemporary Music, among others.
He was artistic director of Teatro la Fenice (1997-2000), and in 1999 he received three Abbiati awards from the National Association of Music Critics (Associazione Nazionale Critici Musicali): one for the best original work for Italy (Mauricio Kagel’s Aus Deutschland, directed by Herbert Wernicke), a second award for the best staging of Janacek’s La Piccola Volpe Astuta, directed by David Poutney, and a third for the best initiative in the field of theatrical experimentation with L’altra scena. As artistic director of La Fenice, he collaborated on Giorgio Brunetti’s book I Teatri Lirici Da Enti Autonomi A Fondazioni Private (Milan, Etas, 2000). He was superintendent and artistic director of Teatro São Carlos in Lisbon (2001-2007), of Festival Mozart in La Coruña, in Spain (2007-2010), and of the festival of sacred music “Terras sem Sombra” in the Lower Alentejo, in Portugal (2011-2014). He was the first foreign artistic director of Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid (2011-2015), where he won two Teatro Campoamor de Oviedo awards from Spanish music critics for El Gato Montes by M. Pennella, directed by Jose Carlos Plaza in 2012, and for Curro Vargas by R. Chapi, directed by Graham Vick in 2014. Francisco Asenjo Barbieri’s production of Los Diamantes De La Corona was nominated for the London Opera Awards in 2015. From November 2015 to March 2020, he was artistic director of Fondazione Teatro di San Carlo, in Naples.
In his research, he has mainly dealt with issues concerning music and musicology in the 20th century. On behalf of UTET, he carried out a critical survey on systematic musicology, which has resulted in musicological entries for the volumes Gli Strumenti del Sapere Contemporaneo. As a scholar of Manuel de Falla, he organized the international conference Manuel De Falla tra la Spagna e l’Europa (Florence, Olschki 1989) and published Manuel de Falla’s music for Calderón de La Barca’s El Gran Teatro Del Mundo; he also edited the first Italian edition of Manuel De Falla, Scritti sulla Musica e i Musicisti (Milan, Ricordi-Mucchi, 1994) and the first critical monograph on Falla written by Jaime Pahissa (Jaime Pahissa, Manuel de Falla, Milan, Ricordi, 1996). He has dealt with a number of issues concerning the relationship between music and cinema by reconstructing Gian Francesco Malipiero’s unpublished score for Walter Ruttmann’s film Acciaio or Malipiero’s collaboration with Francesco Pasinetti. He also dealt with opera music by editing some practical editions of 19th century melodramatic scores, such as the restoration of the 1833 Venetian premiere version of Bellini’s Beatrice di Tenda, or that of Donizetti’s Le Convenienze Ed Inconvenienze Teatrali. Still in the field of 19th-century theatre music and the history of production systems, he has carried out various research projects on Rossini’s Venetian years, on the remake of Maometto II (1822) for La Fenice, on Il Crociato in Egitto by Meyerbeer, the master of Parisian grand opera, presented in Venice in March 1824, and on some ‘minor’ authors, such as Antonio Buzzolla. He edited the critical edition of Rossini’s opera Sigismondo (1814) for the Rossini Foundation in Pesaro and the Ricordi publishing house in Milan. He contributed to the rediscovery of the manuscript score of Gaetano Pugnani’s La Betulia Liberata (1773), preserved at the Ajuda Library in Lisbon, which then received its first performance in modern times in 2012, in Castro Verde (Portugal).
Since June 2007, he has been a member of the Conselho Editorial of the Babel Publishing House in Lisbon (Portugal) and from 2012 to 2015, he was a member of the Board of Directors of the Centro Cultural de Belem (Lisbon).
Since January 2009, he has been a member of the Patronato de la Fundación Archivo Manuel de Falla in Granada (Spain).
On 13 February 2006, he was awarded the rank of Commander of the Order of the Infante D. Enrique by the President of the Portuguese Republic.
On 24 June 2014, he was awarded the decoration of Knight Officer of the Order of the Star of Italy by the President of the Italian Republic.
On 10 November 2015, he was awarded the Order of Alfonso X el Sabio Encomenda Con Placa by the King of Spain.
