Boosey & Hawkes announces new Cherubini Edition(July 2004) Boosey & Hawkes / Simrock is pleased to announce the launch of a new critical edition of Cherubini’s works, including modern publications and performing materials of his youthful Italian operas from the 1780s. The project, under the editorial direction of Helen Geyer, has been made possible thanks to the new-found access to vital manuscript sources. The composer’s Italian operas were thought to have been lost in the second world war when the scores were evacuated from the Prussian State Library in Berlin, but they were rediscovered in the Jaggelonian Library in Cracow and made available again to scholars.
Luigi Cherubini (1760-1842) became a celebrity composer in his own lifetime, famed for his stageworks of the 1790s such as Medea, for his central role in Parisian cultural circles, and for the power he wielded as director of the Conservatoire for twenty years. His engagement with modern trends towards Romanticism and his original instrumentation were enormously influential on contemporaries and the next generation of composers, including Spontini, Beethoven, Weber and Donizetti, yet it has not always been clear how his radical experimentation evolved. This makes an exploration of his earlier Italian operas, thanks to the new critical edition, crucial to understanding the composer and tracing the development of 19th century opera. The first stagework in the new Cherubini edition is Lo Sposo di tre e marito di nessuna (Betrothed to three, yet husband of none), also known as Don Pistacchio, which was premiered at the Theatre of San Samuele in Venice in 1783. The composer finds a musical match for the satirical spirit of Goldoni’s Il Caffe della Campagna, and creates a highly original blend of opera buffa, dramma giocoso, burlesque and commedia dell’arte. Full score, vocal score and performing materials for Lo Sposo di tre e marito di nessuna will be released by Simrock later this year, enabling stage revival of this attractive opera in 2005. For further information on the work, and for details of other publications planned in the Cherubini edition, visit www.boosey.com/cherubini. > Further information on series: Cherubini Edition > News Search |
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