MERCADANTE, Saverio 1795-1870

Il bravo [Piano-vocal score]

Melodramma tragico in tre atti di G. Rossi ... Riduzione con accompagnamento di Pianoforte ... L'opera intera D. 7.50

Napoli: B. Girard e Ci. [PNs 4383-97, 5098-5114], [ca. 1850].

Oblong folio. Vellum-backed and edged dark brown cloth boards, initials "C.G." gilt to upper, titling to spine stamped in black, original publisher's dark yellow wrappers bound in, series title "Opere teatrali intere" and catalogue to upper. 1f. (recto title and contents, verso named cast list, contents), 3-290 pp. Each number with separate caption title and secondary pagination. Engraved.

Named cast list includes performers from the premiere as well as two different stagings in Naples.

From the collection of Italian conductor, vocal coach, and close associate of Puccini and Mascagni, Luigi Ricci (1893-1981).

Binding somewhat worn, rubbed,and bumped; minor paper loss to upper left corner. Very minor signs of wear; occasional light foxing and browning.

First Naples edition, later issue, with alternative numbers.

Il Bravo, to a libretto by Gaetano Rossi and Marco Marcelliano Marcello after James Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Bravo (1831) and Auguste Anicet Bourgeois’s play La Vénitienne (1834), was first performed in Milan at the Teatro alla Scala on 9 March 1839.

"Il Bravo is one of Mercadante’s most interesting and successful operas. The musical structures show a real attempt to fuse the varied elements of early 19th-century Italian opera into a more continuous dramatic texture. It had a prodigious success at La Scala at the time when the young Verdi had just arrived in Milan, and anyone interested in Mercadante’s influence on his great successor can hardly miss the overtones of Sparafucile, and indeed Rigoletto, in the chief character." Michael Rose in Grove Dictionary of Opera.

Item #33496

Price: $275.00  other currencies