The original score for Enrique Granados’s three-act opera Maria del Carmen has been found and restored by musicologist Walter Clark.
The opera, which premiered in 1898 to such great acclaim that Queen Maria Christina awarded Granados the Charles III Cross for it, has only been performed in its original version once.
Granados had the only copy of the score with him when he travelled on the fatal sea crossing from New York to Spain that claimed his life, along with that of his wife. The score survived the torpedo attack on their ship and in 1938 it was sold to a publishing company that reported it destroyed in 1970 after a warehouse fire.
‘I wondered if it was really destroyed,’ Clark said. ‘No one had done a proper inventory after the fire.’
When researching for his Granados biography, Clark contacted the grandson of the publisher who had purchased the score and he eventually found the manuscript.
The original version of the opera has been restored and is due to be published for the first time by Tritó. It will be recorded and released on the same label at a later date.