Abandoned Liszt opera brought to life

A great Italian opera by Franz Liszt – which was left incomplete and has lain largely forgotten in a German archive for nearly two centuries – will be given its world premiere this summer after being resurrected by a Cambridge academic.
David Trippett, Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Music at the University of Cambridge, first discovered the opera languishing in an archive in Weimar more than ten years ago.
Known only to a handful of Liszt scholars, the manuscript – with much of its music written in shorthand and only one act completed – was assumed to be fragmentary, often illegible and consequently indecipherable.
However, after Trippett spent the last 2 years working critically on the manuscript, a ten-minute preview will now be performed for the first time in public as part of the world-famous BBC Cardiff Singer of the World contest in June.

Filming by kind permission of the Master and Fellows of Christ's College, Jesus College and St. John's College, University of Cambridge.

Credits: Anush Hovhannisyan (soprano), Samuel Sakker (tenor), and Arshak Kuzikyan (bass-baritone), film maker Tom Andrews (https://www.tom-andrews.co.uk) and sound engineer Myles Eastwood - https://www.eastwoodrecords.co.uk