DONIZETTI, Gaetano 1797-1848

Don Pasquale. Opera Bouffe in 3 acts. [Copyist manuscript full score, with Italian provenance]

1843-1860.

3 volumes. Oblong quarto (217 x 290 mm). Volumes I and II in dark brown leather-backed marbled boards with decorative cut paper printed title label to uppers, Volume III disbound, sewn. Notated in black ink on 16-stave rastrum-ruled paper. Watermarks including the letters "M" and "P" separately to several leaves.

Vol. I [Act 1]: [i] (title), [2]-[236], supplemental parts: [237]-[243], [i] (blank) pp.
Vol. II [Act 2]: [i] (title), [2]-[152], supplemental parts: [153]-[176] pp.
Vol. III [Act 3]: [i] (title), [2]-[185], [i] (blank), supplemental parts: [187]-[199], [iii] (blank) pp.

With "Di Jacopo Mancinelli" in manuscript to title of Vol. 2, perhaps identifying the copyist. Very occasional corrections and cancellations; monogram on p. 71 of Vol. 2 incorporating treble clef with initials LMN.

Bindings of Vols. 1 and 2 worn, rubbed, and bumped; Vol. 3 disbound, with several signatures loose. Some internal wear; minor staining to approximately 35 leaves toward the beginning and 10 leaves toward the end of Vol. I; occasional small ink stains throughout; some leaves slightly trimmed, occasionally just touching notation; minor paper losses to blank corners, none affecting music.

The present manuscript may have been executed by a copyist at Ricordi either to facilitate a performance or to aid in the preparation of parts. At the conclusion of each volume, the copyist includes supplemental parts for percussion (timpani and bass drum), bassoon, and trombones. Those instruments appear infrequently enough over the course of the opera that the decision to include them at the end of each volume allowed the copyist to save space and paper. The full score was first published in ca. 1920.

The autograph (1843) is held at the Biblioteca della Casa Ricordi (Milan). Angeloni records a copyist full score at the Conservatorio di Musica S. Pietro a Majella (Naples), with other full score copyist manuscripts at the Conservatorio G. Verdi (Milan); the Biblioteca del Conservatorio G.B. Martini (Bologna); the Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv (Wolfenbüttel); the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin; the Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg Opern-Archiv (Vienna); the Opernarchiv (Dresden); and the Universidad Complutense (Madrid).

Don Pasquale, a dramma buffo in three acts to a libretto by Giovanni Ruffini and the composer after Angelo Anelli’s libretto for Stefano Pavesi’s Ser Marcantonio (1810), was first performed in Paris at the Théâtre Italien on 3 January 1843.

"The première of Don Pasquale ... (which happened to be a day after the first performance of Richard Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer), marked the climax of Donizetti's life as a composer. Giuseppe Verdi's brilliant star now was climbing rapidly over the Italian peninsula, but Donizetti remained the most famous of active living operatic composers there, as he certainly was in Vienna and several other European centers - and perhaps even in Paris. He was becoming increasingly popular in both North and South America. His financial condition and prospects were excellent. Although his health intermittently was bothersome, he still had available his huge resources of energy and, except at infrequent intervals, all his mental acuity. He had traveled a very long road indeed from his subterranean birthplace in Borgo Canale little more than forty-five years before. And now the latest of his nearly seventy operas had become an established success in Paris." Weinstock: Donizetti and the World of Opera in Italy, Paris, and Vienna in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century, p. 194.

"This three-act opera buffa is unquestionably the most familiar and the most frequently performed of all Donizetti's many operas." Ashbrook: Donizetti and his Operas (2), p. 487.

Item #39494

Price: $3,500.00  other currencies