Briefs / Feuilletons

Abstract

Briefs / Feuilletons Dr. Karl Traugott Goldbach, Jan Dewilde, José González Ribot, and Hyun Kyung Chae An online edition of the correspondence of the German composer and violinist Louis Spohr (1784–1859), sponsored by the Internationale Louis Spohr Gesellschaft e.V. and the Spohr Museum, has been made available. The letters are dated from December 1804 to June 1859, and a chronological list of the letters may be found at http://www.spohr-briefe.de/nc/spohr-briefe/. When possible, the edition links the transcripts and comments to the digital copies of the letters in the repositories of the owning libraries, archives, and museums. Dr. Karl Traugott Goldbach Spohr Museum Internationale Louis Spohr Gesellschaft e.V Unique Discovery in the Library of Castle d’Ursel, Hingene, Belgium. Recently four scores, presumed lost, by Italian composer Gaspare Spontini (1774–1851) were rediscovered in the library of Castle d’Ursel in Hingene. The find consists of four autograph manuscripts of three operas and a cantata which had been considered by specialists to be definitively lost: – Il quadro parlante (melodramma buffo, 1800, Palermo) – Il geloso e l’audace (drama giocoso, 1801, Rome) – Le metamorfosi di Pasquale ossia Farsa (farsa giocosa, 1802, Venice) – L’eccelsa gara (cantata, 1806, Paris) It seems very likely that these scores have ended up in the ducal library via the descendants of Céleste Erard (1790–1878), Spontini’s wife and member of the renowned family of piano and harp makers. Sabine Franquet de Franqueville (1877–1941), the wife of Robert, Duke d’Ursel (1873–1955), was descended on her mother’s side from the Erards and the Spontini scores must have come into the possession of the d’Ursel family in this way. Gaspare Spontini (1774–1851) is one of the great names in opera history. He was much admired by Hector Berlioz and Richard Wagner and his work remains relevant today, as witnessed by the recent DVD recording of his opera La fuga in maschera (2014) and the performances of La vestale at the Monnaie Opera House in Brussels (2015), and of Olimpie at the Champs-Elysées Theatre in Paris (2016). These four newly-discovered works date from a period in Spontini’s life that has been less studied for want of available sources, namely the transition between his early career in Italy and his activities in Paris, where he was supported by the Empress Josephine. Spontini specialist Anselm Gerhard writes of this period in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians: “At least 12 of his operas had their first performances in Italy, and it seems that he must have visited Rome, Florence, and perhaps Venice between 1796 and 1802—although little research has been done into the details of his early career or the dates of performance of several of his works (many of the scores are not preserved)”. These four rediscovered works therefore help us fill a gap in Spontini’s biography and artistic production. While the three operas are important missing links in his opera output, the cantata L’eccelsa gara divulges more information about Spontini’s close contacts with Napoleon and Josephine. Spontini composed this cantata with a text by Rossini’s librettist Luigi Balocchi, to celebrate Napoleon’s victory at the Battle of Austerlitz. [End Page 299] The importance of this discovery can thus hardly be overestimated: it consists of four works presumed quite lost from a less-documented but crucial period of the life of one of the most important opera composers of the early nineteenth-century. These scores are not only of great international musicological and artistic importance, but a fascinating fragment of the history of the d’Ursel family and therefore of the Castle of Hingene itself. The castle library, formed from the eighteenth century onwards, was, with part of the original furniture, placed by the Duke d’Ursel on long-term loan to the Province of Antwerp in 2009, so that everything may be seen in situ in the castle. The Province of Antwerp has come to an arrangement with a research group from the Royal Antwerp Conservatory to enable the scores to be further studied and prepared for eventual performance and recording. The research...