Bodleian launches appeal to save the mauscript of Erismena

"If the Bodleian can raise the funds to buy it now, the acquisition would mean the music manuscript returning home to Oxford."




The Bodleian Library is appealing to the public to help raise £85,000 by 6 January 2009, so it can conserve the manuscript of Erismena – the earliest surviving score of an opera in the English language.

Written by Pietro Francesco Cavalli (1602-1676), the leading Italian opera composer of the mid 17th century, Erismena dates from the 1670s – 30 years before any other Italian operas were performed in Britain.

The manuscript has been part of a private collection, and has been studied by only a small number of scholars in the past 50 years. It is one of the most significant British 17th-century music manuscripts to have appeared in recent decades.

In August 2008, the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Cultural Goods placed an export bar on Erismena’s sale to an institutional buyer abroad. This was because of the manuscript’s ‘outstanding significance for the study of the history of music in the UK’. This may be the only opportunity for a British institution to acquire this vital part of musical and British history.

During recent research, Dr Harry Johnstone, retired Music Faculty lecturer at the University of Oxford discovered that Erismena was sold in 1797 at the auction of the library of William and Philip Hayes, who had been successive Professors of Music at the University of Oxford.

If the Bodleian can raise the funds to buy it now, the acquisition would mean the music manuscript returning home to Oxford. If acquired, this precious manuscript would sit alongside the earliest and finest manuscript of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, along with an unparalleled range of English 17th- and 18th-century opera and theatre music.

This appeal has been adopted as a key component of Oxford Thinking: The Campaign for the University of Oxford, launched in May to raise a minimum of £1.25bn. The Bodleian, the world-renowned research library of the University, is seeking new funding to build its historic collections, and make them more accessible to students, researchers and scholars globally.

Eric Clarke, Heather Professor of Music, University of Oxford said: ‘The Erismena manuscript is a unique link in the history of operatic influence between Italy and England. The substantial manuscript is rare in being complete, and is of great historical significance in an area of research in which the University of Oxford has an international reputation. I give my full support for this appeal and I hope we will be able to save the manuscript for the future generations of researchers.’

Emma Kirkby, DBE, Honorary Doctor of Music, University of Oxford, said: ‘I am tremendously excited to hear that an entire Cavalli opera manuscript has survived - in an English translation, decades before Handel came to this country, and that there is a chance for the Bodleian Library to acquire this landmark of our musical history. I earnestly hope the means can be found to achieve this.’

Those wishing to support the Library in securing this important manuscript can go to the Erismena Manuscript Appeal website.

http://www.giving.ox.ac.uk/libraries/erismena_appeal/erismena.html

http://www.campaign.ox.ac.uk/news/news/erismena.html