Amilcare Ponchielli | Autograph manuscript draft relating to the opera "Il figliuol prodigo", c.1880 or later

Amilcare Ponchielli.

Autograph manuscript draft relating to the opera Il figliuol prodigo

a complete ensemble scene with chorus, 124 bars in all, beginning 'Trovarlo e perderlo', notated in short score in black ink, for the most part on a single 12-stave system per page (pp.4ff.), with parts for Ruben, Jeftele, Amenofi, Nefte, Azaele, priests, priestesses and people, the keyboard reduction of the accompaniment incomplete or lacking in some bars, with a pencil heading in an unidentified hand ("Il Figliuol Prodigo Ponchielli autografo"), with a few cancellations, corrections and erasures

28 pages, folio (32 x 23cm), 14-stave paper, modern pencil pagination, modern half vellum boards, red morocco label gilt to upper cover ("Amilcare Ponchielli / Trovarlo e perderlo / dall' opera Il figliol prodigo / autografo"), no place or date [c.1880 or later], light browning to first page

A marvellously fluent manuscript by the composer of the 'Dance of the Hours' from the opera La Gioconda.

Although the characters included here are those in Ponchielli's opera Il figliuol prodigo ("The prodigal son"), premiered at the Teatro all Scala, Milan, on 26 December 1880, this music does not occur in the score. It is also apparently unrecorded in Licia Sirch's 1989 Catalogo tematice delle musiche di Amilcare Ponchielli.