Lucia di Lammermoor. [Excerpts in piano-vocal score] by DONIZETTI, Gaetano 1797-1848 - 1837

Milano: Gio. Ricordi, 1837. 5 numbers. Oblong folio. Disbound. Engraved.

- Cavatina nell'Introduzione: Cruda funesta smania [PN 8986]. 8 pp.
- Cavatina: Regnava nel silenzio [PN 8987]. 9, [1] (blank) pp.
- Duetto: Il pallor funesto orrendo [PN 8989 / 10083]. 16 pp.
- Aria: Ah cedi, o piu seiagure [PN 8990]. 6 pp.
- Recit e Cavatina: Regnava nel silenzio [PN 10079]. 11, [1] (blank) pp. A revised edition of PN 8987.

From the collection of Italian conductor, vocal coach, and close associate of Puccini and Mascagni, Luigi Ricci (1893-1981).

Slightly worn and soiled; spines frayed; "Il pallor..." more heavily worn. From the plates of the first edition. Inzaghi IN. 55, pp. 173.

Lucia di Lammermoor, to a libretto by Salvadore Cammarano after Walter Scott's novel The Bride of Lammermoor (1819), premiered in Naples at the Teatro San Carlo on 26 September 26 1835.

"Both historically and artistically, Lucia deserves its reputation. When it was new it was regarded as the apogee of high Romantic sensibility. The clear plot, which trims away much of Scott's accessory detail, possesses the stark tautness of a tale by Poe. It is no coincidence that Flaubert employed it as an important point of reference in the downward course of Emma Bovary, that quintessential victim of Romantic illusions."

"Although all the principal roles are vocally challenging, their music is uniformly grateful. The score contains scant sign of the unevenness that afflicts a number of Donizetti's works. Cammarano's libretto moved him deeply and, inspired by his recent first exposure to Paris, Donizetti produced what is certainly his masterpiece." William Ashbrook in Grove Music Online.