Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)
Autograph music manuscript, a variant ending for Act 2 of Un ballo in maschera, [1859]
A lost variant ending to Act 2 of Un ballo in maschera.

Full score. In brown ink on 24-stave paper, one leaf, approx. 240 x 155mm (originally the inner portion of a larger leaf), the recto 3½ bars, the verso 8½ bars, ending with the indications 'Cala il sipario' (the curtain falls) and 'Fine dell' atto', a number of erasures and emendations, especially to the recto, a few other pencil markings.

Provenance:
(1) Albi Rosenthal [of Otto Haas, London], acquired in 1970s from a private US collection (according to pencil note on accompanying description).

(2) Schøyen Collection, MS 5408.

The music on the recto comprises the vocal lines for Samuel, Tom and the chorus, 'Ah ah ah e che baccan', marked 'molto lontani' (approximately bars 11-14 after letter 46 in the Ricordi full score, pp.355-6); the music on the verso comprises the vocal lines for Amelia ('[...] morte la sua voce al cor mi [va] ... oh ciel [sic] pietà') and Renato ('andiam, andiam') (approximately bars 6-8 in the same place, p.354) and the orchestral conclusion. Act 2 of Un ballo in maschera ends with the remarkably contrasting emotions of the anguished Amelia and her implacably vengeful husband, Renato, set against the distant mocking laughter ('Ah! ah! ah!') of the conspirators. Whereas in the published version, the act concludes with Amelia and Renato's last words ('pietà' / 'andiam') followed by the mocking offstage 'laughing chorus' and then an orchestral fortissimo in accented quavers, in the present earlier version the laughing chorus preceded Amelia and Renato's last words, and the orchestral conclusion was originally in sustained semibreves and minims.

Un ballo in maschera ('A Masked Ball') had a somewhat complicated gestation: it was originally a commission for the 1858 carnival season at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, but its plot, based on the assassination of King Gustav III of Sweden whilst attending a masked ball in 1792, attracted unwelcome attention from the censors, a problem significantly amplified by the attempted assassination of Napoleon III in Paris by three Italian conspirators in January 1858. Ultimately a court case freed Verdi from his contract with the San Carlo, and the action was transposed to Boston during the British colonial period, with Gustav III morphing into Riccardo, Earl of Warwick, governor of Boston. The opera was an immediate success after its first performance at the Teatro Apollo in Rome on 17 February 1859.