Sakùntala

La leggenda di Sakùntala is a three-act opera by Franco Alfano, who wrote his own libretto based on Kālidāsa's 5th-century-CE drama Shakuntala. It was completed in 1920. When the score was believed lost in wartime bombing, Alfano reconstructed it, in 1945, now titling it simply Sakùntala, but in 2006 a copy of the original was found.

==Premiere, loss and rediscovery== La leggenda di Sakùntala was first performed on 10 December 1921 at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna. The full score and orchestral materials were believed destroyed when an Allied bomb hit the archives of Alfano's publisher, Ricordi, during World War II, so Alfano reconstructed the opera in 1945, shortening its name, and a second "premiere" followed at the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome on 5 January 1952. Decades later, during preparations for a revival in Rome in 2006, the original 1920 score was found in the Ricordi archives, and so the opera was performed once again in its original form and with its original title.