Autographed Score of Donizetti's LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR Comes to the MET for New Production

Lucia di Lammermoor is undoubtedly, together with L'elisir d'amore, the most famous opera by Gaetano Donizetti and the most performed throughout the world. Thanks to a 1985 donation by the Perolari family, the city of Bergamo was able to acquire the autograph score of this opera, which was first performed at the San Carlo Theatre in Naples in 1835. The score is preserved in the Mai Library. In a few weeks, this precious manuscript will travel across the ocean for the first time to be exhibited at the Italian Cultural Institute in New York directed by Fabio Finotti on the occasion of the new, highly anticipated production of Lucia di Lammermoor at the Metropolitan Opera. The production will be conducted by Riccardo Frizza, who is also the music director of the Donizetti Opera Festival in Bergamo.

"Lucia di Lammermoor is a masterpiece - remarks Fabio Finotti, director of the ICI in New York - both in the original novel by Walter Scott and in Donizetti's adaptation. It confronts us with extremely topical issues: women, their silences, their suffering, and the censorship they have inflicted on themselves for centuries. Lucia di Lammermoor somehow is Freud before Freud. The Italian Cultural Institute in New York is therefore proud to host the token of a universal masterpiece."

"Thanks to this invitation from the ICI - says Nadia Ghisalberti, Councillor for Culture of the Municipality of Bergamo - the autograph manuscript of the score of Lucia di Lammermoor, a precious heritage of the city of Bergamo, preserved with care, expertise, and love in the Civic Library, will fly to New York, and become a concrete testimony to the great music of Gaetano Donizetti and an ambassador of the world of melodrama, a side of Italian culture for which we are universally praised. And by being exposed, this ancient document will also tell the story of the city of the great composer, which in 2023 will be the Italian Capital of Culture."

"This is an extraordinary occasion, - says Maria Elisabetta Manca, head of the "Angelo Mai" Civic Library and Historical Archives in Bergamo - because Donizetti's manuscript, which is seldom exhibited in the city, is on its first international loan. The Library has preserved it since 1985, when the Perolari family from Bergamo generously gifted it, and it represents one of the most precious specimens of our huge music collection which includes over 50,000 manuscripts and prints, several hundred music librettos and sound documents as well as a wide bibliography on music."

On 21 April, at the ICI premises on Park Avenue, a round table will be organized with the participation of Riccardo Frizza, musical director of the Donizetti Opera Festival, and the contribution of some videos prepared in Bergamo showing Bergamo and the treasures of the "Angelo Mai" Library.

It will also be an opportunity to present the critical edition of Lucia di Lammermoor edited by Gabriele Dotto - who will be at the ICI - and Roger Parker, published a few months ago by Ricordi as part of the National Edition created with the collaboration and contribution of the Municipality of Bergamo and the Fondazione Teatro Donizetti.

The manuscript, consisting of 181 bound sheets in a volume measuring 370x270 mm, will be placed on display inside a special air-conditioned showcase specially created by Arterìa - a leading company in Italy for the packaging, transport and installation of works of art - in full compliance with the prescriptions for the protection of the property.

The new production of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor at the Metropolitan Opera premieres Saturday 23 April, with an additional eight performances through Saturday 21 May. The Saturday 21 May performance will also be transmitted live to cinemas across the world as part of The Met: Live in HD series and broadcast live over the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network. Australian director Simon Stone makes his Met debut with a staging that sets the classic opera in modern-day America, starring soprano Nadine Sierra in the title role opposite tenor Javier Camarena-well-known to the audience of the Donizetti Opera Festival-as Edgardo.

The documentation of the exhibition of the manuscript score of Lucia di Lammermoor in New York, as well as the textual contributions that are being prepared, together with some videos and in-depth studies, will also be available on the stanzeitaliane.it platform, which has been the virtual museum of the ICI for a year: a way of making the whole documentary work available to scholars and audience who cannot be in New York.

Gaetano Donizetti, Lucia di Lammermoor. Tragic drama for the Regio Teatro di San Carlo, Naples, summer 1835; text by Salvatore Cammarano. Autograph score of 181 bound sheets - (Cassaf. 6.12).

Already at the time of the opera's first performance at the Teatro San Carlo on 26 September 1835, the autograph score of Lucia di Lammermoor was acquired by the Neapolitan publisher Guglielmo Cottrau, a partner of Giuseppe Girard. At that time, the Neapolitan publisher owned all the operas performed in the Neapolitan Teatro San Carlo and Teatro Nuovo, since it was also the contractor for the typing office responsible for copying the parts for the performers. For a century, therefore, the score of Donizetti's opera remained in the possession of the publishing house. In 1866, a handwritten annotation and a stamp placed on the front of the first sheet of paper was used to certify the authenticity of the work for copyright purposes. This followed the law of 20 June 1865 (the first unitary Italian law on copyright) and Royal Decree No. 2439 of 29 July 1865. The central administration body responsible for this matter was the Ministry of Agriculture and Trade, within which a special "Literary Property Office" operated. In 1935, Giovanni Treccani degli Alfieri bought the precious manuscript from the heirs of the publishers Girard and Cottrau, through the antiquarian bookseller Casella in Naples, before it went to America, as we can read in Giovanni Treccani's own handwritten note on the front cover. Treccani degli Alfieri, an industrialist in the textile sector and a Senator of the Kingdom in 1924, founded in the following year the Giovanni Treccani Institute for the publication of the Italian Encyclopaedia and the Biographical Dictionary of Italians. This great patron subsequently promoted an elegant facsimile edition of Donizetti's score, which was published in 1941, with a limited edition of 300 copies, by the Milanese publisher Bestetti, with introductory notes by Guido Zavadini (Parma, 1868 - Bergamo, 1958), musicologist and first curator of the Donizetti Museum in Bergamo.

On the verso of the front plate of the score is the pre-printed ex libris of Giovanni Treccani degli Alfieri; on his death in 1961, the score remained in the possession of his descendants. In 1985 the Perolari family financed its purchase by the Municipality of Bergamo, which took possession of it on 19 March of that year, as can be seen from another autograph note by Aldo Perolari. Since then, the score has been preserved in the vault of the Mai Library. In 2006, thanks to funding from the Ministry of Culture, the entire score was digitized, and it can now be browsed on the "Internet Culturale" portal.

The 82 Italian Cultural Institutes (ICI) in the world are part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MAECI). They promote the image of Italy and its humanistic and scientific culture abroad and collaborate with the main cultural institutions of the country in which they operate. They support Italian language and culture courses; manage an efficient network of libraries; create contacts between Italian and foreign cultural operators; facilitate dialogue between cultures based on the principles of democracy.

The ICI in New York was officially established in 1961, but its roots go back to 1956 with the cultural activities promoted by the Consulate. It is housed in a 1919 neo-Georgian building at 686 Park Avenue. The building, designed by architects W.A. Delano & C.H. Aldrich, is connected by a terrace to the Italian Consulate. The Institute's library, dedicated to Lorenzo Da Ponte, currently holds more than thirty thousand volumes.

From an idea of the director of the ICI of New York Fabio Finotti (who also authored the texts on the platform), "Stanze italiane" is a project produced by the Italian Cultural Institute of New York - Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation in collaboration with Malina Mannarino (Management Secretary) and Floriana Tessitore (Programming and Production); the website and social media are managed by "Cultura e digitale", the art direction is by Venti caratteruzzi. Emanuele Cammarata is the director of the videos - shot in various locations, thanks to a rich network of collaborators remotely coordinated. The press office is managed by Simonetta Trovato.

About the Metropolitan Opera

Under the leadership of General Manager Peter Gelb and Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Metropolitan Opera is one of America's leading performing arts organizations and a vibrant home for the world's most creative and talented artists, including singers, conductors, composers, orchestra musicians, stage directors, designers, visual artists, choreographers, and dancers. The company presents more than 200 performances each season of a wide variety of operas, ranging from early masterpieces to contemporary works. In recent years, the Met has launched many initiatives designed to make opera more accessible, most prominently the Live in HD series of cinema transmissions, which dramatically expands the Met audience by allowing select performances to be seen in more than 2,200 theaters in more than 70 countries around the world.

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