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Preparation for publication of a critical edition of Pietro Mascagni’s Italian opera Cavalleria rusticana (1890), with historical introduction and commentary.

Cavalleria rusticana, an iconic Italian opera that launched operatic verismo, exists only in corrupt editions. In performance, these editions have prevented the exploration of the opera's full musical and dramatic potential; and in scholarship, they have led to unresolved questions about the work's dramatic conception. This project will produce the opera's first critical edition. Following the most advanced principles and methods, it will make Cavalleria rusticana available not only in its final version but also its original version, which restores in an appendix the last-minute cuts (amounting to over 13% of the score) and allows for the return to the original keys. The original version recovers music never heard in public and a tonal conception more coherent than that of the final version. Finally, the edition resolves longstanding editorial problems, not least those pertaining to an accurate and consistent Sicilian dialect in the opening number.