The Donizetti Theatre Foundation of Bergamo and the “Alessandro Scarlatti” Conservatory of Palermo have discovered the autograph manuscript of Gaetano Donizetti’s opera “Alahor in Granata,” composed between 1825 and 1826 precisely for Palermo.

The discovery was made thanks to the library of the Sicilian institution and work of researcher Edoardo Cavalli of the Centro Studi donizettiano.

The research activities that led to the discovery of this autograph are part of the #Donizetti200 program, a project thanks to which every year the Donizetti Opera Festival stages a title composed by Donizetti two hundred years before. This discovery was made during the research on the compositions for the 2023-2027 period, and it will be the object of further studies and scientific investigation with a view to future staging.

The opera “Alahor in Granata” went on stage – after a series of organizational difficulties – on Jan. 7, 1826, and enjoyed lukewarm success. To date, the only identified copy of the score is the one for the 1830 staging, which was used for the contemporary revival in 1998 at the Teatro de la Maestanza in Seville and was recorded.

In a statement, Giorgio Berta, president of the Donizetti Theatre Foundation said, “We are very happy and proud for the scientific results collected in recent months by the Centro Studi donizettiano: Edoardo Cavalli has identified the precious manuscript of Alahor in Granata, Candida Mantica is working on the reconstruction of the score of Mayr’s Il piccolo compositore, and our scholars are studying and working on many other operas. All these efforts have a positive impact on the activities of the Donizetti Opera festival directed by Francesco Micheli, as they testify more and more to Donizetti’s relevance in the musical life of the nineteenth century in an international perspective, even outside the most renowned centres. Donizetti is still offering us little-known pages and allowing us to create new paths and new networks to make people know his operas and Bergamo.”