Around 1870, Stefano Gobatti had a period of great popularity, when his first opera I Goti, prémièred in Bologna in December 1873, met with such enthusiastic success that it was recorded by historians as one of the most resounding successes of the whole history of serious opera. Gobatti was awarded the Bolognese honorary citizenship when he was only 21, but after I Goti had been staged successfully in the most important Italian theatres, his following operas, Luce (1875) and Cordelia (1881) were less successful, while his last work Massias was never staged. Gobatti spent the final period of his life as a guest at the Osservanza Convent in Bologna. He is buried at the Certosa of Bologna.
The Archive of the Liszt Institute Foundation of Bologna keep a small handwritten sheet of paper with a fragment of the “In queste sale splendide” duet between Amalasunta and Gualtiero, from the second scene of the second act of Stefano Gobatti’s I Goti. The manuscript, one of the oldest in the whole collection of the Liszt Institute, is one of a packet purchased at an auction with other materials. The musical fragment consists of four bars, pen-written on a hand-drawn up stave: they are arranged for the piano and bear some slight rhythmic changes and the accompaniment in halved values in comparison with the original one.
Key words: Stefano Gobatti, I Goti, a nineteenth century opera.