This week, the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World will see the world premiere of part of a rediscovered opera by Franz Liszt. Music Fellow David Trippett has worked over the past two years to decipher, edit and orchestrate the opera, which has never been heard before, and was abandoned by Liszt after only one act had been completed. Liszt’s opera came to worldwide attention in March 2017, as news of the Italian opera spread from CNN to China’s Global Times, as well as the London Times, New York Times, Telegraph and BBC. The music survives in only a single manuscript, a hybrid piano-vocal / short score, that is very scruffy and was assumed by previous scholar to be de facto illegible. In tandem with an editorial team comprising Francesca Vella (libretto editing) and David Rosen (text translation), Trippett worked to create the first edition of the music that survives. This will be published with Editio Muscia (Budapest) in 2018.
A research documentary on the project is available here; the world premier took place on Thursday 15 June; it will be broadcast on BBC 4 at 7:30pm on Friday 16 June.