VERDI, Giuseppe 1813-1901

Ernani Dramma lirico in quattro parti di Francesco Maria Piave Posto in musica e dedicato alla Nobilissima Contessa Clementina Mocenigo-Spaur distinta cultrice della musica italiana ... Riduzione per Canto con accompagnamento di Pianoforte del maestro L. Truzzi ... N. 16221 al 41 ... Fr. 34. [Piano-vocal score]

Milano: Giovanni Ricordi [PNs 16221-16241], [ca. 1844].

Oblong folio. Full modern marbled paper boards with printed title label to spine. 1f. (recto title printed within decorative light green borders, verso blank), 1f. (recto table of contents with plate and page numbers, verso named cast list), 3-229, [i] (blank) pp. Title, table of contents, and cast list typeset. Each number with its own plate number, price, and secondary pagination; p. 56 blank and unpaginated. Music engraved.

Named cast list includes Carlo Guasco (Ernani), Antonio Superchi (Don Carlo), Antonio Selva (Don Ruy Gomez de Silva), Sofia Löwe (Elvira), Laura Saini (Giovanna), Giovanni Lanner (Don Riccardo), and Andrea Bellini (Jago).

Milanese bookseller's blindstamp to upper outer corner of front free endpaper; early handstamp of G. Cattaneo in Turin to lower margin of title; publisher's blindstamp to lower margins of initial leaves.

Occasional cuts and annotations in contemporary and modern hands in pencil and black ink.

Corners of binding slightly bumped. Cropped, affecting publisher's handstamp, upper margin, secondary pagination, and a slur; lower corners soiled, several creased; title, table of contents, cast list, and final leaf soiled and stained, with some tears and loss, repaired; occasional minor tears and repairs to margins and lower corners; extensive repairs to first two leaves with loss just touching decorative title border professionally repaired.

First complete edition, an unrecorded(?)variant of the first version of the opera. Not recorded by Hopkinson but see 41A(a) for possible first issue. Chusid p. 63. Catalogo Ricordi online.

The differences between the present variant and Hopkinson 41A(a) include the following:

- the title border is printed in green rather than blue and the design is somewhat different
- the plate numbers at the lower left of the title are given as "N.16221 al 41" not "N. 16221 al 16241"
- there is a slight difference in the spacing of the text within the imprint
- there is no titling below the word "INDICE" on the index page
- a different type face is used for the headings to each act
- the music is engraved by different engravers with resulting differences as evidenced by the letters on either side of the plate numbers and differences in the layout of the musical text

Ernani, to a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave after Victor Hugo's play Hernani, was first performed in Venice at the Teatro La Fenice on 9 March 1844. The opera "quickly became immensely popular, and was revived countless times during its early years. ...

As Verdi himself stated more than once, Ernani represents an important change of direction in his early career. His two earlier successes, Nabucco and I Lombardi, had both been written for La Scala, one of the largest stages in Italy and well suited to the grandiose choral effects of those works. For the more intimate atmosphere of La Fenice, he created an opera that instead concentrated on personal conflict, carefully controlling the complex sequence of actions necessary to bring characters into intense confrontation. This new format brought about a fresh consideration of the fixed forms of Italian opera, in particular an expansion and enrichment of the solo aria and duet, together with a more flexible approach to the musical sequences that bind together lyrical pieces. Most important, however, was Verdi’s gathering sense of a musical drama’s larger rhetoric, his increasing control over the dynamics of entire acts rather than merely of entire numbers. In this respect, the third act of Ernani sets an imposing standard of coherence, one that is rarely equalled until the operas of the early 1850s." Roger Parker in Grove Music Online.

Item #25940

Price: $1,500.00  other currencies