Music highlights include a composing manuscript of one of Gustav Mahler’s song Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder! in which the composer sets to music a poem warning the listener not to look too closely at the process of creation. Also featured is a previously unpublished autograph letter by Giuseppe Verdi on his plans for a second staging of his opera La Traviata, the autograph working manuscript of Edward Elgar's orchestration of Henry Purcell's Motet Jehova, Quam Multi Sunt Hostes Mei, and a manuscript of Italian arias containing a rare autograph annotation by George Frideric Handel.
Among the lots in the arts section are:
* an affectionate letter addressed to Michelangelo by his protégé, the painter Antonio Mini, reporting confidently on his life as an artist in Lyons
* a letter by Monet discussing fellow French painter Manet’s Olympia
* an autograph letter by Paul Gaugin to fellow artist Camille Pissarro
* the only recorded example in private hands of the first prospectus for Robert Blair’s The Grave (1808), announcing the designs for which William Blake was best known in his lifetime
Highlights will be on public display at Christie’s in Paris until November 21 and Christie’s King Street, London December 9 - 12.
