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century, and still found in collections around the world. Many of these collections are
very important and quite well known. Thus, King Frederick VI of Denmark, in approximately
1820, ordered a significant collection of Italian manuscripts sent to him as representative
of works that could be performed in his realm: this collection is still found in the Royal
Library in Copenhagen. And the collection includes many works that are known from very
few other sources, since it features works popular during the 1810s. In some cases these
manuscripts have textual importance: they include, for example, some little known works
by Rossini, such as Ciro in Babilonia, Adelaide di Borgogna, and Edoardo e Cristina. No
one has yet made a complete study of these sources, so we cannot say very much about
their significance as a group, but the Rossini operas, at least, have all been photocopied
and are being used currently for textual work on these titles. 15
In Russia, on the other hand, there has been relatively little study of Italian
manuscripts, even though we know that several important Italian composers spent
considerable periods of time working with Russian theaters, composers such as Giovanni
Paisiello, Domenico Cimarosa, Alessandro Nini, and Giuseppe Verdi. In many cases
important sources (some of them autograph) exist in the archives of the Marinsky Theater
and in other Russian libraries. Indeed in the case of an opera first performed at the Marinsky
Theater, such as Verdi’s La forza del destino of 1861-1862, the theater’s well-known
tendency to have kept everything has proven invaluable. 16 On many of the performing
parts we find entries in Verdi’s own hand, annotations written while he was rehearsing
the music with individual singers. 17 It is only from these performing materials, for example,
that we learn that the famous Prayer that forms part of the Scena Osteria in Act II was
originally accompanied only by an arpeggiating clarinet and by pizzicato bass notes in the
violoncelli and contrabbassi. In the printed edition of the opera and the autograph
manuscript, however, there are also wind parts duplicating the choral material of the
Prayer. Because of the nature of the parts, we know for certain that these doubling wind
parts were added during the rehearsal period, presumably to keep singers in tune on
what is a long passage with very little accompaniment. 18 This clearly has significant
ramifications for today’s editions and for possible interpretations of them in contemporary
performance.
Unfortunately, few collections of this importance exist in Italy itself. That lack is
in part a product of the conditions that prevailed in opera archives and of the many fires
that destroyed whatever collections might have once existed, but it is also in part related
to the nature of the social structures that grew up around the performance of opera in
nineteenth-century Italy. One of the ways in which publishers succeeded in rendering
their calling economically viable during this period was to make available performing
materials exclusively by rental agreements, whereby theaters needed to work through
publishers to obtain materials from which to perform. 19 During the first two decades of
the nineteenth century Italian publishers did not even print entire vocal scores of operas.
When it became clear that foreign publishers, particularly those working in Germany,
Austria, and France, were dominating this market, Italian publishers soon began to catch
up. While during the 1810s they published only favorite extracts from new operas, by the
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15 Let me thank Knud Arne Jürgesen, who facilitated my work with these sources.
16 My use of the library was considerably assisted by the kind permissions obtained from the musical director,
Valery Gergiev. I also wish to thank the staff of the Archive for its many kindnesses.
17 Thus, Verdi himself added the revised cabaletta of Don Carlos’ third-act aria, “Urna fatal,” in the vocal part of
Don Carlos. Originally the vocal part had only an earlier version of this cabaletta.
18 The wind parts originally had rests in these measures. The doubling wind parts were added by means of
collettes in the parts, some of which were pasted in on all four sides, so that it is impossible to read what was
originally present, but some of which were pasted in on only two sides, so that it is simple to read the rests that
were originally in the parts.
19 The process is well described in Claudio Sartori, Casa Ricordi 1808-1858 (Ricordi: Milan, 1958).
Atualidade da Ópera - Série Simpósio Internacional de Musicologia da UFRJ