"Lost" Donizetti Opera Debuts;

Stolen Cello returned.

It’s “This Week in Classical Music”, an update on what’s happening in the classical Music world; I’m Randy Kinkel.

Lost Opera

A lost opera by one of the great Italian composers is to have its world premiere in London almost 180 years after it was written.

Gaetano Donizetti was a leading figure in 19th-century Italian music. His most famous works are Lucia di Lammermoor and the Elixir of Love.

But there’s one composed in the late 1830s that never saw the light of day. Scholars knew it had been written but had no clue if it still existed somewhere. It was written for an opera company that went bankrupt before it was premiered. It’s called “the Angel of Nisida”

The opera was thought to have been lost until musicologist Dr Candida Mantica painstakingly located and deciphered the score’s fragments over eight years. she found some pages in Paris’s Bibliothèque Nationale, but the total reconstruction involved archive research across Europe and the US.

The work will be premiered on 18 July at Covent Garden by Opera Rara, which performs and records rare and forgotten 19th-century operas. 

King’s College Music Professor Roger Parker said: “the musical quality is as good as anything he did. When operas are discovered, quite often you find they were undiscovered for good reason. But this one really is amazing music. It’s some of the best music that you’ll hear from Donizetti.”

Stolen cello returned to French musician

A Stolen 18th-century cello worth more than $1.6 million has been returned to a French musician.

An attacker held French soloist Ophelie Gaillard at knifepoint outside her home earlier in the week, forcing her to hand over the cello before fleeing on foot in the Paris suburb of Pantin. After the robbery, Gaillard appealed for help from the public on Facebook, sharing pictures of the instrument.

"I received an anonymous call late in the morning saying that my cello was inside a car in front of my house. I found it in the back seat." the musician said she quickly grabbed the Cello, describing it as being "in good condition," before notifying police.

Made by Francesco Goffriller, Venetian master cello maker in Udine, Italy, in 1737, it is among the more valuable string instruments in the world.   It’s on loan to the soloist from A French Bank that owns it.

For more on these and other items and events, go to the website, K-B-A-C-H dot org; Be listening each week at this time for another update. Follow us on Facebook and twitter, and also listen every weekday at Noon for the Most Wanted Hour with Linda Cassidy, playing your top 100 classical hits.  I’m Randy Kinkel for KBACH’s “This Week in Classical Music”; Member supported 89.5 KBAQ Phoenix and HD, a service of Rio Salado College and Arizona State University.