One of Opera Rara’s most ambitious projects in its more than fifty-year history is to record the complete solo songs of Gaetano Donizetti.
A handful of these songs have been long known and often performed; many more were listed in specialist catalogues but very rarely if ever performed; others still were completely unknown or thought lost and have now come to light.
Listen and watch on…
The story continues…
Recent research connected with this project has made clear that, in total, Donizetti wrote some 200 solo songs over the course of his thirty-year career. Making modern editions of this vast corpus has been challenging: the songs are dispersed in European libraries and beyond, often having been casually given away at the time of composition (typically as a present to the dedicatee).
In their totality, these compositions make a powerful case for Donizetti as a key figure in nineteenth-century domestic music-making: someone whose achievements in this area deserve to be better known; a body of work that, single-handedly, makes a powerful argument for the importance of the Italian “school” in a field long dominated by German and French composers.
The Donizetti Song Project is based on a new edition of the composer’s complete solo songs, undertaken by Roger Parker and Ian Schofield.
Artists
Explore further
For our supporters
The Donizetti Song Collection
Every opera and song recorded is years in the making
- 66 Opera's restored
- 125+ Acclaimed recordings
- 56 Years of Opera Rara
