Chinese-American composer, baritone saxophonist, activist, and Marxist Fred Ho's avant-garde jazz opera Warrior Sisters (1998), written with librettist Ann Greene, imagines a time-and-space bending rescue mission by three feminist revolutionaries—Fa Mu Lan, Nana Yaa Asantewa, and Sieh King King—who arrive in the 1970s to rescue the jailed Black Liberation Army leader Assata Shakur. Shown here is an excerpt from \"Black Revolutionary Love,\" from Act 2, Scene 2 (a duet between Shakur and fellow BLA member Sundiata Acoli), accompanied by a publicity photograph taken by Rainer Fehringer.
Geolocation: Ho's longtime apartment in Brooklyn, New York.
Fred Ho. Warrior Sisters: The New Adventures of African and Asian Womyn Warriors.
Fred Ho manuscript scores, performance programs, and other material: 1991-2011. Ms. Coll. 142
La poétique de la musique, a 700-plus page treatise on aesthetics by French naturalist and amateur composer Bernard Germain de la Cépède, was first published in 1785. This abridged edition was published in 1787 in the Bibliotheque Universelle des Dames, a subscription series intended to provide well-to-do women with a general education appropriate to their gender and role in society; la Cépède’s treatise is the only work on the arts in the 156-volume set.
Geolocation: The publishing house in Paris where the abridged version of La poétique de la musique was produced.
M. le comte de la Cépède (Bernard Germain Etienne de La Ville sur Illon). La poétique de la musique (A Paris: Rue Hôtel Serpente, 1787).
Merritt Room ML3845.L3 1787
An early manuscript copy in several hands of Mozart's 1786 opera Le Nozze di Figaro (the unusual misspelling “nozzi” on the cover is repeated on the title page). This copy, with text in both Italian and German, probably pre-dates Simrock’s 1819 first edition of the German-language full score. Shown here is the climactic moment of the opera's finale, when the Countess forgives the Count for failing her test of his faithfulness.
\r\nThis manuscript omits the recitatives and Susanna and Cherubino’s breathlessly frenetic Act II duettino, “Aprite presto aprite,” but includes Marcellina and Basilio’s original Act IV arias and the 43-measure fandango near the end of Act III (performed in both the Vienna premiere and the 1787 Prague revival, but absent from many early Viennese copyists’ manuscripts). Further comparison with other early exemplars is necessary to trace this manuscript's provenance and possible performance history.
See the full score here.
Geolocation: The Burgtheater in Vienna, where The Marriage of Figaro was premiered in 1786.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. La nozzi di Figaro: opera in due atti del Sigr. W.A. Mozart. Copyist's manuscript, (late 18th or early 19th century).
Merritt Room Mus 745.1.639.14
French soprano Laure Cinti-Damoreau (1801-1863) and Spanish mezzo-soprano Maria Malibran (1808-1836), two of opera’s most admired bel canto singers of their day, appear here in a lithograph reproducing portraits by Friedrich Elias.
Malibran wrote over 40 pieces of salon music, many published in multiple editions during her lifetime; this song, “Au bord de la mer,” sets a text by French Romantic poet Émile Deschamps, who later wrote the libretto for Hector Berlioz's opera Romeo and Juliette. Dedicated to Baron Paul Pérignon, the song was first published in the 1820s, then reprinted as part of the posthumous series Dernières pensées, album lyrique faisant suite aux Matinées musicales.
Geolocation: The King's Theatre in London, where Malibran made her operatic debut in Rossini's The Barber of Seville in 1825.
Maria Malibran. “Au bord de la mer: romances nouvelles paroles d'Emile Deschamps; musique de Ma. Garcia de Beriot” (Paris: E. Troupenas & Cie., Rue Neuve Vivienne, 40, [1835?]).
Merritt Room Mus 742.36.713