You can soon hear Matilde in Albuquerque, courtesy of Opera Southwest, in a unique type of world premiere. It’s not a bio-opera about Harry Belafonte and his famous calypso song from the 1950s but an 80-minute piece by little-known Italian composer Carlo Coccia receiving what Artistic Director and Principal Conductor Anthony Barrese describes as its “New World” premiere.

“Nobody alive has heard this music,” he says, “which makes it very exciting to perform.” An indefatigable sleuth of less-famous bel canto operas, Barrese discovered Matilde during a pandemic-induced online search of Venice’s musical archives. He describes the music as a hybrid of Mozart and Rossini, “with lots of Rossini’s rhythmic infectiousness.”