(Schizzi e abbozzi autografi della Manon Lescaut di Puccini: tra torre del Lago e Bologna) Autograph Sketches of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut: between Torre del Lago and Bologna, in Florilegium Musicae. Studi in onore di Carolyn Gianturco, a cura di Patrizia Radicchi e Michael Burden, Pisa, ETS 2004, pp. 239-256.

The musical sketches of Giacomo Puccini's Manon Lescaut and Madama Butterfly, found in the Archives of the Accademia Filarmonica of Bologna in 1995 have remarcably relevance. The recovery  had a large echo among the most famous Puccinian researchers and the maestro’s niece Simonetta Puccini, on that occasion hoped that a part of the Puccinian manuscripts held in Bologna could be somehow replaced in their original place, that is in Torre del Lago. In 2003, after a friendly agreement, the manuscripts relative to Manon Lescaut, Le Villi and Crisantemi were handed to Simonetta Puccini, while the whole corpus relative to Madama Butterfly remained at the Archives of the Accademia Filarmonica.
The manuscripts of the  Manon Lescaut consist of thirty six pages irregularly arranged in twenty pages: thirty one pages form a inique corpus about the  central section of the first act, three are clearly separate from the rest and are part of an outline of the final part of the same act, while another two, on a single 24-staff-page, bear scarcely readable notes, full of erasures, with joking sentences also handwritten by the composer.

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