Dan Turello wrote this article on my research at The Library of Congress, during my Kluge Fellowship. He describes my quest to reconstruct the entire score of Paisiello’s La Serva Padrona, which Ottorino Respighi orchestrated for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1920, but was not staged and considered lost.
Short excerpt from the article by Dan Turello:
Sometimes a few missing pages can make it a challenge to reconstruct an entire work. This was exactly the case when current Kluge Fellow Elia Corazza discovered the autographed orchestration of La Serva Padrona, an 18th century opera written by Giovanni Paisiello and then adapted by Ottorino Respighi for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1920.
Corazza, a composer, conductor, and musicologist, with training in piano, composition and orchestral conducting, as well as a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Bologna (Italy), became interested in La Serva Padrona as a part of his broader effort to rediscover some of Respighi’s lost works. Respighi became popular in Italy after the First World War, just as Fascism was taking hold in the country. During these years, Respighi transcribed various works of pre-romantic music created by Italian composers including Monteverdi, Paisiello, Cimarosa, and Rossini, that had long since been forgotten and seldom, if ever performed.
You can read the entire interview on The Library of Congress’ blog.