Pocket Opera North Beach, through nearly two decades of presenting a weekly chamber music series (1960-1978) at the Old Spaghetti Factory, to his present-day fame as the creator of one of San Francisco's most popular operatic institutions. Pippin's first translation came in 1968, in the course of preparing Mozart's one-act opera "Bastien und Bastienne" for performance as part of his chamber music series. The opera, and his singing translation of it, were immediate successes with San Francisco audiences. From that point on, Pippin has dedicated himself to the task of producing literate English versions of both well-loved classics and lesser-known gems of
Zar und Zimmermann Zar und Zimmermann Zar und Zimmermann ("Tsar and Carpenter") is a comic opera in three acts, music by Albert Lortzing, libretto by the composer after Georg Christian Römer's "Der Bürgermeister von Saardam, oder Die zwei Peter", itself based on the French play "Le Bourgmestre de Saardam, ou Les deux Pierre" by Anne-Honoré-Joseph Duveyrier de Mélésville, Jean-Toussaint Merle, and Eugène Centiran de Boirie. Ultimately, it goes back to the historical Grand Embassy of Peter the Great. Gaetano Donizetti had set the same story in his 1827 opera "Il borgomastro di Saardam". The opera was first performed at the Stadttheater in Leipzig,