Did Carolina Uccelli have a room of her own? Composing was no occupation for an aristocrat of the Romantic Age, nor yet for a woman. Yet Uccelli not only succeeded in completing the opera Anna di Resburgo, but she also saw it produced—in cosmopolitan Naples, in the same year, 1835, and by the same company as Donizetti’s immortal Lucia di Lammermoor, with the same top-flight diva in the starring role. Uccelli’s music was known to Rossini and the German transplant Giovanni Simone Mayr, who taught Donizetti, and they praised her talent sincerely. Yet Anna di Resburgo vanished after a handful of performances, to be revived only now that Teatro Nuovo’s artistic and general director Will Crutchfield has snatched the score from the jaws of archival oblivion. Hype-averse as he is, Crutchfield hesitates to tout his find as a “masterpiece,” but his observations on Uccelli’s craft, originality, and sure dramatic pacing are intriguing to the max, and the plot, which involves thunderous payback for betrayals committed in a previous generation, sounds like a corker and a half. We’re guessing the major houses will take note. —Matthew Gurewitsch