ABSTRACT
The temporary decline in quality (undeniable, though by no means catastrophic) seen in most of Malipiero’s theatre works of the 1930s was adumbrated as early as 1930–31 by the composition of an opera with which he was so dissatisfied that he decided (at least in part) to scrap it. In later life he was hardly less evasive and cagey when speaking of this mysterious missing link in the chain of his operatic development than he was when referring to his repudiated early music: in May 1963 he told me little more than that between Torneo notturno and La favola del figlio cambiato he had written ‘an unspeakable opera, an obscenity’ (‘Un’opera innominabile, una porcheria’) which it was best to pass over in silence. He did hint, however, that the failure of this work to satisfy him may have had a direct connection with his subsequent decision to cease, for the time being, to devise his own idiosyncratic libretti, and to turn instead to more conventional texts in dialogue.
