This study addresses the critical reconstruction of La Esclava (1921) by José Mauri Esteve as a central case for understanding the emergence of a national operatic language in Cuba and the processes of textual transmission within Cuban lyric theatre. Preserved in a fragmentary condition and dispersed across orchestral parts, piano reductions, and divergent vocal copies, the work must be examined from the perspective of the continuing archive, understood as the critical articulation of heterogeneous material testimonies