\n<\/p>\n
In fall 2000, Cox and Danielson traveled to Peyrotte\u2019s house outside Paris, where they chatted over wine and cheese. Then Danielson spent a few hours there reviewing Peyrotte\u2019s scores and quickly made a determination. \u201cThe collection,\u201d she said, \u201cwas absolutely worth having.\u201d Harvard made an offer, funded by John Milton Ward IV, a longtime music professor, and his wife, Ruth Neils Ward, and the collection began to make its way across the ocean to Cambridge, Mass.<\/p>\n
It was a process that would take years. It wasn\u2019t until 2008 that Andrea Cawelti, the Ward music cataloger at the Houghton Library at Harvard, opened a box that would change things for Edmond D\u00e9d\u00e9.<\/p>\n
Inside, she found the two hulking books of \u201cMorgiane.\u201d<\/p>\n
CAWELTI EASILY COULD <\/strong>have missed the significance of this moment. She had a mountain of scores to catalog and she had never heard of D\u00e9d\u00e9. But the lengthy manuscript, filled with handwriting that seemed to belong to the composer, stopped her. She took a moment to look him up, finding a broad sketch of his life in an encyclopedia.<\/p>\n \u201cI immediately thought, Oh, wow,\u201d Cawelti said, \u201cthis is something special.\u201d<\/p>\n A year earlier, she had attended a conference that included a talk about Black opera in 19th-century New Orleans \u2014 its vibrant scene, its musical importance, and its connection to what was coming next in the city: jazz. Now, she felt as if she was holding in her hands a tangible connection to that past: D\u00e9d\u00e9\u2019s opera.<\/p>\n \u201cI was honestly thrilled,\u201d Cawelti said, \u201cbecause I\u2019ve made it my life\u2019s work to discover things and get them out into the world.\u201d And she knew what had to happen next: This score needed to be digitized. \u201cI wanted to get this information out there.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n