changes to the score. For some of these he altered his manuscript, but for others musicologists have had to rely on the numerous full and piano scores put out by Ricordi. Further changes were made for the Paris premiere in 1894, which are also inadequately documented. Ricordi attempted to keep up with the changes, issuing new edition after new edition, but the orchestral and piano scores were often mutually contradictory. The Verdi scholar James Hepokoski considers that a definitive score of the opera is impossible, leaving companies and conductors to choose between a variety of options. In a 2013 study Philip Gossett disagrees, believing that the autograph is essentially a reliable source, augmented by contemporary Ricordi editions for the few passages that Verdi omitted to amend in his own score. The first performances outside the Kingdom of Italy were in Trieste and Vienna, in May 1893. The work was given in the Americas and across Europe. The Berlin premiere of 1893 so excited Ferruccio Busoni that he drafted a letter to Verdi, in which he addressed him as "Italy's leading composer" and "one of the noblest persons of our time", and in which he explained that "Falstaff provoked in me such a revolution of spirit that I can ... date [to the experience] the beginning of a new epoch in my artistic life." Antonio Scotti played the title role in Buenos Aires in July 1893; Gustav Mahler conducted the opera in Hamburg in January 1894; a Russian translation was presented in St Petersburg in the same month. Paris was regarded by many as the operatic capital of Europe, and for the production there in April 1894 Boito, who was fluent in French, made his own translation with the help of the Parisian poet Paul Solanges. This translation, approved by Verdi, is quite free in its rendering of Boito's original Italian text. Boito was content to delegate the English and German translations to William Beatty-Kingston and Max Kalbeck respectively. The London premiere, sung in Italian, was at Covent Garden on 19 May 1894. The conductor was Mancinelli, and Zilli and Pini Corsi repeated their original roles. Falstaff was sung by Arturo Pessina; Maurel played the role at Covent Garden the following season. On 4 February 1895 the work was first presented at the Metropolitan Opera, New York; Mancinelli conducted and the cast included Maurel as Falstaff, Emma Eames as Alice, Zélie