New Page 1 Bellini, Vincenzo . Comparisons between the Ricordi published piano-vocal scores and Bellini's autograph copies show a number of discrepancies.
Considerable evidence points to the piano-vocal versions as having preceded the autographs.
Not necessarily, since changes in them often simply reflected the immediate requirements of a given singer or Bellini's moving along of the dramatic action at the expense of his original expansiveness and lyricism. Thus today's performers might well return to the orginal piano-vocal socres and consider them as equally valid to the composer's subsequent revisions. Bellini's arias were decorated variously, and often profusely, depending on the original singers. Much of this art is now lost, but some of the embellished versions were written out at the time, by Cinti-Damoreau, for instance, and have come down wo us. These might be taken as models by the modern vocal artist, with the proviso thast the original spontaneity of adding ornaments or cadenzas be retained.