SPONTINI GASPARE: (1774-1851)

SPONTINI GASPARE: (1774-1851) Italian Opera Composer. An excellent A.M.Q.S., `Spontini´, one page, oblong folio, Berlin, 8th January 1842, with written text in French. The bold and very carefully penned musical quotation, is entitled `Prière de Vestale´, (''Pray of Vestale''), and contains twenty five bars on three staves, and is marked by Spontini as `Andantino Espressivo´. Beneath the musical notes Spontini has added the lyric, in French, stating in part `Listen to my pray, my last wish will wither you. Deign, before I fall, listening from my tomb…´ The page has been neatly removed from a musical album. Extremely small stain to the left border, otherwise EX £1000-1500 During the 20th century, Spontini's operas were only rarely performed, but the most famous modern production was the revival of La Vestale (1807) with Maria Callas at La Scala at the opening of the 1954 season, to mark the 180th anniversary of the composer's birth. The stage director was cinema director Luchino Visconti, and that premiere was also the La Scala debut of tenor Franco Corelli. Callas recorded the arias ''Tu che invoco'' and ''O Nume tutelar'' from La vestale in 1955.