54. Mentìa l'avviso

The composition sets to music a scene from Felice Romani’s melodrama La Solitaria delle Asturie ossia La Spagna ricuperata. Romani (1788–1865) was the librettist of numerous operas by Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and many others. The parts requiring music for the melodrama itself have frequently been set to music since 1838 (for further details, see Kaye 1987).
As confirmed by the manuscripts, this composition was written in full, from the first to the last measure, including sketches, during Puccini’s final examination at the Milan Conservatory. Together with Capriccio sinfonico (55,) it constituted the portion of the exam in the form of free composition —“ideale”, according to the terminology used at the Milan Conservatory (see 54.A.1). 53 was the contrapuntal part of the same exam. The existence of the lithographed copies (54.C.1) in the Milan Conservatory library is remarkable, suggesting that the conservatory itself considered publishing the work. Furthermore, despite clear wording in the autograph manuscripts — and probably due to the copyist’s error in 54.C.1— the first words of the text have often incorrectly been spelled and even sung as “Menti all’avviso”.
The presence of the autograph indication “violini 2^a volta col canto sempre” in 54.A.1 substantiates the possibility mentioned by Magri and Kaye that Puccini at least considered orchestrating the accompaniment.
The theme of the brief aria (from bar 83 on) was reused by Puccini some years later for Des Grieux’s aria, “Donna non vidi mai”, in Act 1 of Manon Lescaut (64).