After the Metropolitan Opera’s season ends in early June, local opera lovers patiently bide their time until late July when Teatro Nuovo again offers a pair of Italian bel canto operas at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater. Following last year’s semi-staged productions of Donizetti’s Poliuto and Ricci’s Crispino e la Comare, Teatro Nuovo this summer offered New Yorkers the modern premiere of Anna di Resburgo by Carolina Uccelli and the first local outing in several decades of I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Vincenzo Bellini’s take on Romeo and Juliet.

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If the revival of a rare full-length opera from the mid-19th Century by a woman composer didn’t reveal a hidden masterpiece, Anna did provide a fascinating glimpse into what might have been had Uccelli continued her opera career. And Capuleti provided clues as to why this work by one of Italy’s greatest composers has never been taken up by the Met.

Several days before its Rose Theater date, Anna received its first performance since 1835 at Teatro Nuovo’s other home, New Jersey’s Montclair State University. Will Crutchfield, the group’s founder who for two decades led Opera at Caramoor where he began his exploration of neglected works of the first half of the nineteenth century, had carefully prepared a new performing edition of the second opera composed by the prodigious Uccelli. Following the publication of a group of songs when she was still a teenager, Saul, Uccelli’s first opera, premiered in Florence when she was just twenty years old. It attracted the notice of Gioachino Rossini whose support helped smooth the way for Anna’s only production in Naples five years later.

Uccelli, then a widow with a young daughter, had the bad luck to produce her opera just a month after the hugely successful first performance of Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor which, like Anna, takes place amid warring clans in Scotland and ends with a tomb scene. After its second show, Anna, like similarly named Donizetti operas like Emilia di Liverpool, Maria di Rohan, Gianni di Parigi and Gemma di Vergy, disappeared until Crutchfield unearthed it. Uccelli wrote no more operas but enjoyed a modest career giving concerts throughout Europe with her accomplished pianist-daughter until her death in 1858 at age 48.

Gaetano Rossi’s tangled Anna libretto revolves around sons in conflict over the sins of their fathers. Anna’s........

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