Newly discovered sketches for Puccini's Turandot at The Pierpont Morgan Library

Abstract

Among the Puccini materials at The Pierpont Morgan Library in New York (hereafter NYpm), there is a single folio that contains three previously unknown sketches for Puccini's final opera, Turandot. No doubt the sketches have escaped notice up to now because the folio on which they appear had inadvertently been included with a large series of sketches and drafts devoted to another of Puccini's operas, La fanciulla del West. The folio was included in the collection catalogued as Koch 989, where it stood as Item No. 8 among a series of twenty other folios and/or bifolios (forty-five pages of music in all) that transmit both preliminary sketches and more fully developed short-score continuity drafts for La fanciulla. Now, thanks to J.