The Garden of Mystery: Libretto by Woman Librettist Nelle Richmond Eberhart for American Opera Premiered at Carnegie Hall (1925)

Item #1497

There are twenty-six typewritten pages in this libretto, with scattered pencil corrections throughout. Housed in original blue two-hole punched paper binder, front cover missing, fasteners intact.

Typed title page reads:

“The Garden of Mystery. A Grand Opera in One Act and Three Scenes.
Libretto by Nelle Richmond Eberhart
(After ‘Rappaccini’s Daughter’ by Nathaniel Hawthorne.)
Music by Charles Wakefield Cadman.”

Eberhart’s Brooklyn address and telephone number (Sterling 10342) appear at the bottom of the title page. This typescript libretto adapts Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” a gothic allegory of beauty, danger, and isolation. Eberhart’s collaboration with Cadman—best known for his opera Shanewis (1918), the first American opera to be performed at the Metropolitan Opera for two consecutive seasons—was among the most prolific American librettist-composer partnerships of the early 20th century.

The Garden of Mystery premiered in concert at Carnegie Hall in 1925, with a full staging delayed until 1996; this draft likely predates or relates to its premiere and contains pencil edits in Eberhart’s hand.

A rare find by a woman Librettist.

Price: $1,200.00