Opera Rara announces two new international partnerships

We’re delighted to announce today two new international partnerships at the start of our 55th season. The first is with London-based Bloomsbury Publishing and the second with the Donizetti Opera Festival, based in the composer’s home-town of Bergamo.

Reflecting on the two new partnerships, our Chief Executive Henry Little said: “ At Opera Rara, we are rewriting operatic history by bringing lost and forgotten masterpieces back to life for global audiences to enjoy. These new collaborations with Bloomsbury Publishing and the Donizetti Opera Festival build upon our valued and ongoing international partnerships with Warner Classics and Ricordi. Together they will extend the reach and impact of our work even further, particularly reaching a younger generation of students, emerging artists and enthusiasts. As we approach our 60th anniversary in 2030, these partnerships exemplify our unwavering commitment to discovery, education, and artistic excellence – ensuring that the brilliance of Opera Rara’s 55 years of live operatic archaeology continues to inspire, captivate, and endure for generations to come.”

From the 2026/27 season, our entire recording catalogue – over 120 recordings in total – will be made available via the Bloomsbury Video Library platform, serving a global community of students, scholars, instructors and librarians. Also included will be our recording booklets featuring essays by leading musicologists and cultural historians specialising in 19^th– and early 20^th-century opera, as well as video material including interviews with artists who have worked with the charity over the past half-century to bring lost and forgotten operas back to life. The initial partnership is set to last for 10 years.

Of the new partnership, Managing Director of Bloomsbury’s Digital Portfolio Kathryn Earle said: “Bloomsbury is delighted to be partnering with Opera Rara to bring its outstanding catalogue to researchers, musicologists and new generations of students throughout the world. The work Opera Rara does – rediscovering and recording lost masterpieces – is not just vitally important, it’s inspirational. Repertoire is affected by changing tastes, performers’ preferences and abilities, costs, and the sweep of history. Many jewels would have been lost to posterity without the painstaking research Opera Rara undertakes to rediscover and raise visibility. But the impact doesn’t stop there. Lost and lesser-known works are recorded to exacting standards, as reflected in Opera Rara’s numerous awards. We believe that enabling access to this invaluable content through our educational outreach will help drive awareness of these lesser-known or unknown works, open up new musical journeys and ultimately enrich performance history for future generations.”

The 2025/26 season also launches our new partnership with Bergamo’s Donizetti Opera Festival. Over the course of six concerts across three years, all of Donizetti’s solo songs – nearly 200 in total – will be performed by young artists from the Bottega Donizetti programme led by pianist Giulio Zappa. Zappa, who coordinates the Bottega Donizetti project and features on our Donizetti Songs Volume 4 release,  has come together with our Repertoire Consultant Roger Parker to curate these programmes. On 16 and 30 November this year, six young artists will present a selection of the solo songs as well as a number of Donizetti’s recently discovered ensembles, three of which will receive their world premieres. These concerts are part of the Sunday morning concert series which will be held in the prestigious “Ridotto Gavazzeni” at the Teatro Donizetti in Bergamo, a foyer dedicated to the renowned conductor Gianandrea Gavazzeni, who is credited with initiating the so-called “Donizetti Renaissance”. The concerts are part of the 2025 Donizetti Opera Festival organised by the Fondazione Teatro Donizetti, that will take place between 14-30 November at the Teatro Donizetti and the Teatro Sociale in Bergamo.

Of the new partnership, Donizetti Opera Festival’s Artistic and Music Director Riccardo Frizza said: “Greater internationalization and centrality of the figure of Gaetano Donizetti as a composer are two of the key guidelines I envisioned for the Donizetti Opera Festival, and this new collaboration with Opera Rara fits perfectly within that vision. Thanks to the significant joint efforts between the Festival team of the Fondazione Teatro Donizetti in Bergamo and the British cultural institution, rare and sometimes forgotten vocal works by Donizetti will be rediscovered and brought to the public. Over the course of three years, as part of our Sunday morning concert series, audiences will get to hear the complete collection of Romanze by the great composer from Bergamo, including several world premieres. Moreover, this joint project carries even greater value because these works will be performed by the young artists of the Bottega Donizetti, a Teatro Donizetti initiative: a programme for young opera singers that offers them the opportunity to deepen and refine their vocal, dramatic and stage skills within the Donizettian and bel canto repertoire.”