Versão Digital - UFRJ

24
That is why collections outside Italy have proven so important. The archives of
the Marinsky theater in St. Petersburg is one important location. Another is the Paris
Opéra, which has always had a saving mentality (in English we talk about “pack rats” as
saving everything, so that it is still possible today to examine performing materials from
operas that were given at the Opéra from the eighteenth century and the nineteenth
centuries. For some operas, such as Le comte Ory, for which practically no autograph
manuscripts exist, the new critical edition of the opera depends on the original performing
materials (especially on a score prepared by copyists at the Opéra, but also on the early
performing parts, which must be carefully differentiated from later materials). 24 The same
was true for Guillaume Tell and it will undoubtedly be true for the other operas by Rossini
written for the Paris Opéra. For the Donizetti and Verdi operas prepared for the Opéra, we
have – by and large – the original autograph manuscripts, so the materials at the Opéra´have
slightly less importance, but they nonetheless continue to answer many questions that
the autograph manuscripts leave unanswered (what some of these are I will discuss in a
few moments).
The scholar M. Elizabeth C. Bartlet, who died tragically of breast cancer a few
years ago, knew more about French archives than anyone else in the world. She herself
did critical editions of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Platée and Rossini’s Guillaume Tell. 25 She
also was certain that materials must have still existed from the archives of the Opéracomique
and the Théâtre Italien, despite the fire that consumed much of the Italian theater
in 1837. Beth, who was a very strong and persistent scholar, made such a pain-in-the-neck
of herself during the 1970s that the staff of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Départment de la
Musique, finally allowed her access to uncatalogued parts of the collection. It was there
that Dr. Bartlet discovered the performing materials pertaining to Rossini’s Il viaggio a
Reims, the first traces we had seen for this unknown and unpublished opera. From her
discoveries, the effort to reconstruct that masterpiece of Rossini’s maturity took wing. 26
Another significant collection of this kind existed for many years in the archives
of Covent Garden in London. Although the theater often insisted that they had nothing, it
wasn’t true: they had a remarkable collection of performing materials, now deposited at
the British Library. The person who particularly insisted that these be made public was
Will Crutchfield, who found important original Donizetti manuscripts in the archive. But
the original performing parts of Verdi’s I masnadieri, which had its first performance at
Covent Garden, were used extensively by Roberta Marvin when she prepared the critical
edition of that opera. These parts showed, for example, that the original prima donna,
Jenny Lind, ornamented the repetition of the cabaletta theme so extensively that it was
necessary to cancel Verdi’s instrumental parts doubling the melody for that repetition.
Since the opera had been performed at Covent Garden only in that original season, there
was no question about the proper dating of these annotations. 27
Still, with all of these discoveries, nothing prepared me for what I would find in
the conservatory library at Rio de Janeiro. Although some of the materials do come from
...........................................................................
24 This edition is being prepared by Damien Colas for Works of Gioachino Rossini (Bärenreiter-Verlag: Kassel,
etc., in preparation). It is hoped that the Colas edition, which has already been successfully performed in Zürich,
with Cecilia Bartoli as the Comtesse Adele, will be in print before the end of 2011.
25 The editions appeared, respectively, in the Opera Omnia of Jean-Philipp Rameau, Series 4, vol. 10 (Bonneuil-
Matours, Socieìteì Jean-Philippe Rameau: France, 2005) and the Edizione critica delle opere di Gioachino Rossini,
Series I, vol. 39 (Fondazione Rossini: Pesaro, 1992).
26 For further information about the discovery and reconstruction of Il viaggio a Reims, see Divas and Scholars,
152-8. A critical edition of the opera, Janet Johnson, ed., was published as Series I, vol. 35 in the Edizione critica
delle opere di Gioachino Rossini (Fondazione Rossini: Pesaro, 1999).
27 This history is described in the Preface to the critical edition of I masnadieri, Roberta Montemorra Marvin, ed.
(see Note 9).
Atualidade da Ópera - Série Simpósio Internacional de Musicologia da UFRJ