Beschreibung:
<p>The question of external collaboration in the working out of Ferenc Erkel's operatic scores had been raised as early as 1861, after the premiere of Bánk bán, but only one hundred years later were the autographs subjected by László Somfai to a critical assessment. His findings induced him to determine Act 2 of the celebratory opera Erzsébet, premiered in 1857, as the first work in which Erkel in part delegated the task of orchestration to his friend Franz Doppier. Dezső Legánÿ later attempted to date the beginning of the "Erkel Workshop" into the year 1844 when Erkel first tried his hand at the then new genre of népszínmű (folk-play). The present paper invalidates Legánÿ's surmise and on the basis of a meticulous analysis of newly discovered drafts illuminates to which degree and with what method Erkel, then as always pressed for time, was helped out by Doppler in the orchestration of Erzsébet.</p>