MUSIC

The missing second act of an opera by Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti has been found in the cellar of the Royal Opera House, four years after an American musicologist discovered its first and third acts there, the Times of London reported Sunday. The lost portion of the three-act “Elisabeth” was discovered last week by Australian conductor Richard Bonynge, who told the Times he made the discovery “absolutely by chance, in an old stack of ballet rubbish.” The opera first surfaced four years ago when musicologist Will Crutchfield found the first and third acts. It isn’t known how the score of the music got to Covent Garden. However, the singed pages indicate the piece may have been near a fire, possibly one that broke out at the opera house in 1856 or one 11 years later at Her Majesty’s Theater, to which Donizetti had unsuccessfully offered the work. Donizetti, who was born in 1797 and died in 1848, composed the work in 1838. The opera, set in Russia, tells the story of a young woman’s walk from Siberia to Moscow to try to win her father’s freedom from exile.