Mozart manuscript set to notch half-a-million euros

The first draft of music Mozart wrote for the last act of his opera “The Marriage of Figaro” is expected to sell for half-a-million euros ($578,000) when it goes under the hammer in Paris.

The “exceptional” manuscript from 1786, which will be auctioned on Wednesday in the French capital, comes from the peak of the composer’s career in Vienna, the auction house Ader Nordmann said. 

Called “Scena con Rondo”, Mozart wrote the music initially as a recitative to be sung by Figaro’s bride, Susanna, before rejecting it for the now legendary aria, “Deh vieni non tardar.” “These four pages are particularly important because they reveal Mozart at work, struggling to rethink a scene in the final act of the opera,” expert Thierry Bodin said. 

It will be sold along with another Mozart manuscript, a fragment of a serenade to youth written by young Wolfgang Amadeus when he was only 17. 

It was shut down in scandal three years ago, taking 850 million euros ($1 billion) of its investors’ money with it.