An excerpt from an opera that Franz Liszt began in 1849 will receive its premiere later this year. The manuscript, which has lain in a Weimar archive for nearly 170 years, was assumed to be fragmentary, illegible and indecipherable. Much of its music is written in shorthand, and only one act was completed.
Dr David Trippett, senior lecturer in music at the University of Cambridge, first came across the manuscript a decade ago, and has spent the last two years working to decipher the music: ‘It was always assumed to be impossible to piece together, but after examining the notation in detail, it became clear Liszt had notated all the cardinal elements for Act I,’ Trippett explained. ‘The music that survives is a unique blend of Italianate lyricism and harmonic innovation. There is nothing else quite like it in the operatic world. It is suffused with Liszt’s characteristically mellifluous musical language, but was written at a time that he was first discovering Wagner’s operas.’
Trippett has worked alone on rescuing the music that Liszt notated, while Francesca Vella, also at Cambridge University, worked on deciphering the Italian text alongside musicologist David Rosen, from Cornell University in US, whose principal role was to translate the libretto into English.