2022/23 Season Announced
2 recordings and performance, 3 new releases, and so much more…
We are delighted to announce our 2022/23 Season of restorations as we resume our schedule of two recording and performance projects a year. The 2021/22 Season saw the launch of a new strand of releases, Opera Rara Classics, as well as our return to the stage for the first time since early 2020 with the performance and recording of Leoncavallo’s Zingari. This celebratory event featured Carlo Rizzi in his first major recording and concert project as our Artistic Director, and as we look ahead to the 2022/23 Season, there is much more to celebrate.
The 2022/23 Season includes two full opera recordings. On Tuesday 28 June 2022, we present Mercadante’s Il proscritto at the Barbican in London marking the first performance of this work since its Naples première in 1842. Opera Rara’s Artistic Director Carlo Rizzi conducts Britten Sinfonia in our second collaboration with the company following Donizetti’s Il Paria in June 2019. Mercadante’s original autograph score was discovered in the Naples Conservatory Library by Rizzi who spearheaded its full restoration by Opera Rara. A week prior to the Barbican performance, Il proscritto will be recorded under studio conditions, and for the first time ever.
On Friday 16 September 2022, we return to the works of Offenbach with the performance of La Princesse de Trébizonde at the Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. In collaboration with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor Paul Daniel, a French repertoire specialist, will lead an all-star cast in the UK premiere of Jean-Christophe Keck’s critical edition of the score. Recorded in studio the week before the performance, this delightfully comic opera marks the company’s first Offenbach recording project since the release of Fantasio in 2014.
Three recordings are planned for release in the upcoming season. First, Leoncavallo’s Zingari will be available in September 2022. Zingari is a tale of passion, jealousy and crime in a camp on the banks of the Danube. This one-act opera was a huge success immediately after its creation in London in 1912. Marking Leoncavallo’s return to the verismo style of Pagliacci, Opera Rara’s version of Zingari showcases rich, colourful orchestral music with powerful choral moments and seductive arias sung by a stunning cast including the great Bulgarian soprano Krassimira Stoyanova, tenor Arsen Soghomonyan and baritone Stephen Gaertner.
We continue our Opera Rara Classics series of releases with a boxset of Offenbach recordings including Robinson Crusoe, Vert-Vert and Entre Nous. This boxset features two acclaimed full opera recordings and a celebrated compilation, Entre Nous, which includes selections of Offenbach rarities. This set will be available in January 2023 followed by the release of Mercadante’s Il proscritto in Spring of 2023. All three releases will be bundled in a new subscription package. Sales of Opera Rara’s new-release subscriptions will begin from 2 May 2022.
In addition to the company’s mainstage concert productions and recordings, Opera Rara will present a series of Opera Insider events and Salon concerts. The Opera Insider Series will feature musicologists in talks on subjects surrounding Opera Rara’s mainstage concert projects. This series will offer a chance for opera aficionados to learn more about the art form and expand their enjoyment of Opera Rara’s work. The first of the 2022/23 events will be held on the 26th of April at London’s Fidelio Cafe featuring Drs Flora Willson and Katy Hamilton in an evening exploring French operetta and the works of Jacques Offenbach. With a similar mission in mind, the Opera Rara Salon Series will highlight the emerging, UK-based artists featured in Opera Rara’s recording projects in intimate concerts of songs and arias. Tenor Alessandro Fisher, winner of a 2022 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship and featured on Opera Rara’s upcoming recording of Mercadante’s Il proscritto, is joined by pianist Anna Tilbrook on the 10th of May at the historic Grade II* listed Stone House in a concert curated by Opera Rara’s Artistic Dramaturg Roger Parker.
If you would like to support our work of bringing to life lost and forgotten masterpieces, please click here.