front cover of Attila
Attila
Dramma lirico in a Prologue and Three Acts
Giuseppe Verdi
University of Chicago Press, 2013
 

Verdi’s Attila, his ninth opera, had its premiere at Venice’s Teatro La Fenice in March 1846. Based on the German play Attila, King of the Huns, the libretto has its own storied history: as Verdi fell seriously ill before the work’s completion, the main librettist moved permanently to Madrid, leaving the last act of Attila only a sketch. It was then that Verdi called upon Francesco Maria Piave, the librettist for two of his earlier works, who at the composer’s behest scratched plans for a large choral finale and decided instead to concentrate on the dramatic roles of the protagonists.

In years since, Attila has become one of Verdi’s most popular and oft-staged early works. The composer's inimitable vitality, soaring arcs of melody, grand choruses, and passion are here amply apparent. This critical edition, based on Verdi’s autograph full score preserved at the British Library, restores the opera’s original text and accurately reflects the composer's colorful and elaborate musical setting, while Helen M. Greenwald’s masterful introduction discusses the opera’s origins, sources, and performance questions, and her critical commentary details editorial problems and their solutions.

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front cover of The Coast of Illyria
The Coast of Illyria
A Play in Three Acts
Dorothy Parker
University of Iowa Press, 1990
Dorothy Parker is a figure of legendary literary reputation, a fabled member of the Algonquin Round Table, and a highly visible literary personality of the twenties and thirties. Brendan Gill called her "a writer whose robust and acid lucidities were much feared and admired." This play, long forgotten and unpublished until now, will bring new attention to her stirring work.
The Coast of Illyria may represent Parker's most mature writing. Based on the story of Charles and Mary Lamb, this play shares the deeply felt theme of abandonment which gives Parker's poetry its haunting quality, along with the rich understanding of despair that characterizes her stories and other plays. Here these issues are explored with a depth, a sensibility, and a subtlety unlike anything else she wrote.
As Arthur Kinney describes in his detailed introduction, when Parker and her putative coauthor, Ross Evans, sat through rehearsals revising the script, it was generally felt that Parker saw herself, at least potentially, as the tragic Mary Lamb. "I am Mary Lamb," she told the actress who played the role, "do you see that?"
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Il corsaro
Melodramma tragico in Three Acts, Libretto by Francesco Maria Piave
Giuseppe Verdi Edited by Elizabeth Hudson
University of Chicago Press, 1998
Although Verdi began sketching the music for Il corsaro in 1846, a lengthy illness forced him to postpone further work. He finally completed the score in early 1848, but the revolutions of that year delayed its first performance. When it finally premiered on 25 October at the Teatro Grande of Trieste Verdi was in Paris and did not participate as usual in the production, which was poorly received. Though more successful in subsequent stagings, Il corsaro was soon eclipsed by the operas of the noted "trilogy" and fell from the repertory.

The full score of Il corsaro, published here for the first time, as well as recent revivals based on pre-publication proofs of this critical edition, reveal the work to be far more rewarding than even Verdi himself would later admit. Showing the gradual consolidation of Verdi's mature style through his contacts with French opera, Il corsaro well repays the renewed attention it is receiving.
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front cover of La traviata
La traviata
Melodramma in Three Acts, Libretto by Francesco Maria Piave
Giuseppe Verdi
University of Chicago Press, 1997
Now one of Verdi's most beloved works, La traviata was initially far from a success. Verdi declared its 1853 premiere a "fiasco," and later reworked parts of five pieces in the first two acts, retaining the original setting for the rest. The first performance of the new version in 1854 was a tremendous success, and the opera was quickly taken up by theaters around the world.

This critical edition presents the 1854 version as the main score, and also makes available for the first time in full score the original 1853 settings of the revised pieces. For this edition Fabrizio della Seta used not only the composer's autograph and many secondary sources, but also Verdi's previously unknown sketches. These sketches helped corroborate the original readings and illuminate the work's compositional stages. The editor's wide-ranging introduction traces the opera's genesis, sources, performance history and practices, and a detailed critical commentary discusses source problems and ambiguities.
 
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front cover of Rusalka
Rusalka
A Lyrical Fairy-tale in Three Acts
Jaroslav Kvapil
Karolinum Press, 2020
Famous as the libretto for Antonín Dvorák’s opera of the same name, Jaroslav Kvapil’s poem Rusalka is an intriguing work of literature on its own. Directly inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s famous “The Little Mermaid,” Kvapil’s reinterpretation adds an array of nuanced poetic techniques, a more dramatic tempo, and dark undertones that echo the work of eminent Czech folklorist Karel Jaromír Erben. All of these influences work in tandem to create a poetic work that is familiar yet innovative.
 
Transposed into the folkloric topos of a landlocked Bohemia, the mermaid is rendered here as a Slavic rusalka—a dangerous water nymph—who must choose between love and immortality. Thus, Rusalka, while certainly paying homage to the original story’s Scandinavian roots, is still a distinct work of modern Czech literature. Newly translated by Patrick Corness, Kvapil’s work will now find a fresh group of readers looking to get lost in one of Europe’s great lyrical fairy tale traditions.
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