Original 'Figaro' score to go on sale

An original manuscript of the finale of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro is to be sold by Sotheby's in London next month.

The score for woodwind, brass and timpani, expected to fetch up to £900,000, is virtually complete and is thought by Sotheby's experts to be one of very few operatic manuscript by Mozart to have been offered at auction.

The score for the final scene of Act 4 is notated without any obvious break in the brown ink. Stephen Roe, of Sotheby's, said: "These features point to the music's having been written down 'at one go', a scarcely credible feat when one bears in mind the complexity of the score, and the fact that Mozart may not have had his manuscript with the vocal and other instrumental parts in front of him."

He said the 10-page script, composed in 1786, indicated Mozart's "phenomenal capacity for retaining entire compositions in his head".

The inks that the composer used to write Figaro suggest that this section of music, offered for sale by a private buyer, was among the last sections composed.

Also in the sale, which will be held on 7 December, are more than 230 letters by the composer Rossini, written to his parents between 1812 and 1829 and estimated to fetch about £150,000. A complete manu-script of Ravel's orchestral version of Mussorgsky's original piano work, Pictures at an Exhibition, is expected to be sold for about £900,000.