A Message from our Chief Executive

I hope this message finds you and those close to you, wherever you are in the world safe, well, healthy and that you are surviving, even thriving, as best you can in these challenging circumstances.

Like all opera companies, the effect of Covid 19 on Opera Rara has been enormous. We’ve had to take some tough decisions. We’ve done this because we want our brilliant and unique organisation to emerge from this strong, resilient and able to face the future with confidence.

This September, we will be releasing Ermonela Jaho’s debut recital recording of arias by among others Verdi, Puccini, Leoncavallo and Mascagni championed by the great 19^th century singer, Rosina Storchio. Watch this space for more information.

We were set to promote our latest Donizetti rediscovery Il Paria next month. It’s a recording that we’re all proud of. We’ve decided to postpone the release to January 2021. We will be in touch with you with more details as we get closer to that date.

This summer we were poised to start our studio opera recording of Donizetti’s Il furioso all’ isola di San Domingo with our new Artistic Director: Carlo Rizzi. We’ve assembled a stellar cast including Albina Shagimuratova following her acclaimed performance of Il Paria at the Barbican last summer. The recording and concert at the Barbican on 22^nd June has been postponed. We are determined to bring this piece brilliantly and thrillingly to life at the earliest opportunity. As soon as we have confirmed new dates for the project, we will let you know.

During these weeks of confinement, may I suggest that there’s never been a better time to explore the amazing range of wonderful operatic masterpieces that we have rediscovered in the last fifty years? From Donizetti’s Rosmonda d’Inghilterra when a young Renée Fleming made her first recording in 1994 with us, to the charming comedy of Offenbach’s Fantasio in 2015, or the searing drama of Zazà with Ermonela Jaho in 2016 or the beauty of our acclaimed interpretation of Rossini’s Semiramide in 2018, there’s never been a better time to enjoy the incredible range of recordings from the comfort and safety of your own home. All our titles can be downloaded at opera-rara.com or streamed on all the usual platforms. For now, we continue to take CD orders from our shop and we will get these to you as soon as we can.

This year is Opera Rara’s 50^th Birthday. Whether you are a major donor, or a Friend, an industry partner or a buying customer, thank you so much for your support which is crucial to our work. Your help is going to be more important than ever to secure our future. We’re a charity and we don’t receive public funding. Every pound we spend on our artistic programme needs to be raised privately. You can become a Friend for as little as £100 a year. Please use the ‘Donate’ button to make a contribution. Thank you.

Since 1970, Opera Rara has built a reputation for artistic excellence based on a single-minded ambition to bring rare operatic jewels for current and future audiences to enjoy. All of us are resolved to continue our pioneering work. With your help and partnership, we will succeed.

With our very best wishes

Henry

Henry Little
Chief Executive

One of the unfortunate consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic for Opera Rara has been on our plan to release Il Paria on 15th May.  As you can imagine, the Coronavirus crisis has had a massive effect on supply chains as well as customer buying habits, not just here in Europe but across the world. We’ve been talking at length with our partner, Warner Classics, who distributes our recordings worldwide and we’ve taken the hard decision to postpone the release until January 2021.

We feel that this will be the most productive and hopefully the safest time to bring the recording out. By then, we hope that restrictions in place all around the world will have been lifted and a sense of ’normality’ will have returned to our lives. We were looking forward to sharing this great masterpiece with our colleagues, friends, and supporters and we are sorry that we won’t have the chance to do that for some time. We hope you understand that the decision to delay the release is taken because we want it to be a great success it deserves to be.

We will share the exact release date in due course. Until then, the most important thing is to keep safe, well and healthy. These are quite extraordinary, challenging and disruptive times that we’re living through. And, in this climate of uncertainty, we must all look after ourselves and each other in as caring a way that we can.

Le Willis has been nominated for a BBC Music Magazine Award!

Public voting ends on 19 February and the Awards ceremony will take place in London on 22 April at Kings Place. . If you want to support Opera Rara’s recording of Puccini’s first opera, please do cast your vote and share this link with as many as people as possible:

https://musicmagawards.awardsplatform.com/entry/vote/ORnenlop

Many congrats to our friends and colleagues at Bru Zane for the nomination of their recording of Gounod’s Faust, to Signum Classics for Purcell’s King Arthur and to all the other nominees.

Last few tickets for Ermonela Jaho’s recital at the Wigmore Hall on February 2nd! 

The acclaimed soprano Ermonela Jaho, making an exclusive London concert appearance as well as her Wigmore Hall recital debut, explores music championed by the renowned Italian soprano Rosina Storchio, creator of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, Leoncavallo’s Zazà and Mascagni’s Lodoletta. As well as recreating Storchio’s operatic repertoire for today’s audience, she will explore the salon pieces of the period, including rare but beautiful songs by Bellini, Verdi, Toscanini and Tosti.

Book here for Ermonela Jaho’s recital at the Wigmore Hall on Sunday 2 February, 19.30

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Come to Ermonela Jaho’s Q&A at the Foyles bookshop on Charring Cross road on Saturday 23 November at 17.30!

Get an exclusive insight into the artistic life of an opera lead as soprano star Ermonela Jaho joins us for an evening celebrating her new recording of Puccini’s first opera Le Willis in association with Opera Rara and Warner Classics.

In a talk hosted by Gramophone Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief James Jolly, Jaho will discuss her unique take on Pucini’s supernatural melodrama, as well as her upcoming performance as Desdemona in Verdi’s Otello at the Royal Opera House—opening up on what it means to be an international opera singer.

Jaho will sing a live extract from Le Willis and the event will be followed by a Q&A and signing.

Book here for Ermonela Jaho’s Q&A on Saturday 23 November, 17.30

We have a fantastic news!

L’Ange de Nisida won the awards for “Best Recording” at the 2019 OPER! Awards. The prize was presented on Saturday 21 September, during a ceremony at the Konzerthaus Berlin.

Here is a short report of the jury’s verdict: BEST COMPLETE OPERA RECORDING for Gaetano Donizetti: L’ange de Nisida

“Musical excavations are not that uncommon anymore, but even the baroque period now rarely yields truly worthwhile pieces or ground-breaking discoveries. Which makes the achievement of the label Opera Rara all the more noteworthy: L’ange de Nisida is nothing less than a chief work by Gaetano Donizetti, brought to light again and brought to resounding life too in this enthusiastic live recording.”

Congratulations to all the fantastic people involved in the recording ! In particular, to Sir Mark Elder, Joyce El-Khoury, David Junghoon Kim, Vito Priante, Laurent Naouri, Evgeni Stavinsky, the orchestra of the Royal Opera House and the Royal Opera Chorus.

Opera Rara had given the world premiere of this lost Donizetti masterpiece in July 2018 at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Written in 1839 for the Théâtre de la Renaissance in Paris, the theatre went bankrupt and the opera was left unperformed until 2018! Restored and brought thrillingly back to life, this is a fascinating and passionate drama, full of exciting vocal writing, composed by Donizetti near the end of his life.

Click here to listen to some extracts and read the synopsis of Donizetti’s L’Ange de Nisida

We are very honored to announce that Opera Rara’s recording of Rossini’s Semiramide with Albina Shagimuratova, Daniela Barcellona, Mirco Palazzi, Barry Banks, Gianluca Buratto and Sir Mark Elder conducting the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Opera Rara chorus has been awarded by the OPUS KLASSIK competition in the category “19th Century Operatic Work”.

Other recipients include Bryn Terfel for his album ‘Dreams and Songs’ and Joyce di Donato as “Singer of the Year”.

The awards, 45 in total across 24 categories, will be presented on October 13th at the Konzerthaus Berlin. The gala ceremony will be broadcasted from 22:15 (German time) on ZDF. 

Watch Henry Little, Opera Rara Chief Executive, about the Opus Klassik Many thanks to the Opus Klassik Jury to have awarded our Semiramide!

More info at www.opusklassik.de (in German)

Opera Rara is delighted to announce the appointment of Carlo Rizzi as Opera Rara’s Artistic Director to succeed Sir Mark Elder who will be stepping down in September 2019.

Speaking about his work with Opera Rara since 2012, Sir Mark Elder said: “My years as Artistic Director of Opera Rara have been enormously rewarding and I have now decided that it is time to hand on the baton. Bringing so many unknown operas to life has been challenging, but there is certainly an appetite for discovery among artists as much as the public. Opera Rara has an important role to play in that discovery, and I am so happy that my distinguished colleague, Carlo Rizzi, will continue the work of this remarkable organisation.”

Commenting on his new role at Opera Rara, Carlo Rizzi said: “Opera is my passion and I strongly believe in its future. Just as it is important to present known masterpieces afresh and to commission new works, I believe that finding and bringing back to life the hidden jewels of this endlessly enriching art form is equally vital to excite modern audiences. Throughout my career, I have conducted many opera(s) rara(s) and the journey that I am starting here with this unique organisation will allow me to go even further in exploring many strands of less well-known repertoire. I am looking forward to it!”

Charles Alexander, Chairman and Henry Little, Chief Executive said: “For us, Carlo is an obvious choice as our new Artistic Director. His extensive and acclaimed work in 19th- and 20th- century operatic repertoire is a perfect match for our promotion of unknown operatic masterpieces to a global public. We welcome Carlo and in Opera Rara’s 50th anniversary year, we look forward to our collaboration with him with considerable enthusiasm and excitement. We extend our profound thanks to Sir Mark under whose outstanding artistic leadership, Opera Rara has enjoyed an era of unprecedented success and recognition.”

Opera Rara first collaborated with Carlo Rizzi in 2017 when he conducted two discs of bel canto arias with Joyce El-Khoury and Michael Spyres titled Écho and Espoir. Recorded with the Hallé and featuring a selection of mainly French arias first made famous by Gilbert Duprez and Julie Dorus-Gras, two of the operatic stars of the day, the discs were described by Gramophone as “a must for lovers of the repertoire.”

Carlo Rizzi enjoys regular and long-standing relationships at the most distinguished operatic addresses including the Metropolitan Opera New York, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Opéra National de Paris and Deutsche Oper Berlin, as well as maintaining a significant career as a symphonic conductor, working with orchestras including the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Netherlands Philharmonic, Antwerp Symphony, Atlanta Symphony and Hong Kong Philharmonic. He made his UK debut at Buxton Festival in 1988 conducting Donizetti’s Torquato Tasso and future engagements are notable for displaying his commitment to rare and under-appreciated titles, including a new production this summer of Rossini’s L’equivoco stravagante at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, and a return to his native Milan for Montemezzi’s L’Amore di Tre Re at Teatro alla Scala. He holds the title of Conductor Laureate at Welsh National Opera, where he was Music Director from 1992-2001 and again from 2004-2008, and additionally retains ties with Cardiff as Honorary Fellow and International Chair in Conducting at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama – the new home of The Foyle Opera Rara Collection.

Since 2011, Opera Rara – under Sir Mark Elder’s leadership – has renewed its commitment to 19th-century French repertoire with operas by Gounod and Offenbach including Fantasio which won the 2015 International Opera Award and explored its first verismo operas including Leoncavallo’s Zazà and most recently, Puccini’s first stage work Le Willis, which is to be released in September. Le Willis will be the third Opera Rara title to be distributed internationally by Warner Classics.

The brain-child of Patric Schmid and Don White, Opera Rara has been in the business of bringing back forgotten operatic repertoire since its conception in the early 1970s, with a special focus on the bel canto repertory. Opera Rara’s recording of Rossini’s Semiramide conducted by Sir Mark Elder won the 2019 International Opera Award for best “Recording (Complete Opera)”. Its latest release is the world première studio recording of L’Ange de Nisida – its 25th Donizetti title – also conducted by Elder, whose most recent collaboration with Opera Rara was the UK première of Donizetti’s Il Paria, following a studio recording to be released in 2020, at the Barbican which was described by Classical Source as “a winning evening… another Donizetti restored to the repertoire”.

Read about our Future Plans here.

The booking is open for our concert performance of Donizetti’s Il Paria!

Conducted by Sir Mark Elder, it features a stellar cast gathering Albina Shagimuratova as Neala, René Barbera as Idamore, Misha Kiria as Zarete and Marko Mimica as Akerabare with the Britten Sinfonia and the Opera Rara Chorus. Supporting cast includes Kathryn Rudge and Thomas Atkins.

Set in ancient India, the opera tells the story of Neala, daughter of the high priest of the Brahmins Akebare and herself a priestess in the cult of the sun, who has fallen in love with Idamore, the leader of the army. They are about to get married but the pariah Zarete reveals that Idamore is his lost son. The marriage can no longer happen because the Pariahs and the Brahmins hate each other. As Zarete breaks into the Brahma temple, he is condemned to death by Akerabe, who also condemns Idamore (who tries to defend his father) and then his own daughter who tries to defend Idamore. The ending sees them all awaiting their fate.

This opera is, as all the commentators say, an important breakthrough for Donizetti. It was his first tragic finale, and all the way through the opera there’s evidence of him trying to avoid the usual solutions. Also novel is the use of the chorus, the constant diving into arioso and a highly inventive orchestral palette all the way through. Il Paria marks an important moment in Donizetti’s career and it went on record as saying that he was especially proud of the piece.

Tickets are selling fast – don’t miss out!

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Tickets: £15-£40* (Young Barbican concessions available)
Web: www.barbican.org.uk
Tel: +44 (0)20 7638 8891

*booking fee applies

OPERA RARA AND THE ROYAL WELSH COLLEGE OF MUSIC & DRAMA announce THE FOYLE OPERA RARA COLLECTION

Opera Rara is delighted to announce the transfer of The Opera Rara Music Library to a permanent home at The Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama (RWCMD). This has been made possible by The Foyle Foundation, which has generously provided its biggest ever grant in Wales to enable the library currently based in London – soon to be called The Foyle Opera Rara Collection – to be transferred to RWCMD.

Comprising of more than five thousand volumes, The Foyle Opera Rara Collection ranks as one of the most impressive and comprehensive collections of first and early editions of 19th-century Italian opera scores in Europe. Amongst the works included are both the masterpieces and rarer works by Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi and Puccini, in addition to those of less-known composers such as Mayr, Mercadante, Pacini, Ponchielli, Leoncavallo and Mascagni, to name but a few. Also of note are autograph manuscripts in the hands of Donizetti, Mercadante and Pacini.

Reflecting the specialist interests of Patric Schmid and Don White who founded Opera Rara fifty years ago, RWCMD will make this world class collection of unique operatic material publicly accessible for the first time. Of the new partnership with the College, Henry Little, Chief Executive of Opera Rara, said: “I am delighted that our unique and iconic collection will be going to the Royal Welsh College, where scholars, students, and the wider public can consult and enjoy this inspiring body of extraordinary 19th-century operatic material. Opera Rara is especially grateful to the Foyle Foundation, whose generosity has made this special partnership between us and the College possible.”

Of the transfer of The Opera Rara Music Library to RWCMD, David Hall, Chief Executive of The Foyle Foundation said: “The Foyle Foundation is delighted to safeguard the Opera Rara archive for long-term public benefit by enabling its acquisition by the Royal Welsh College. Not only will this enhance the profile and research capability of the College’s Opera School but it will contribute essential funds to sustain the mission and work of Opera Rara into the future.” RWCMD’s Principal, Professor Helena Gaunt, added: “We’re hugely grateful to the Foyle Foundation in allowing us to provide The Foyle Opera Rara Collection with its new home in Wales at the Royal Welsh College, which will be available for academic and public access later next year. This generous gift is an important confirmation of the College’s continuing development, and brings with it an extensive and high quality collection of historical scores and research material relating to opera, which will benefit generations of students and staff here, as well as the international academic community in this field.”

For Opera Rara, the acquisition funding will allow the company to invest in a five year plan continuing their work in bringing the best of unfairly neglected operas back to life at the highest levels possible. Tomorrow (Wednesday 21 November) marks the first hearing in 120 years of the original one-act version of Puccini’s first stage work Le Willis (later called Le Villi in its two-act form) at the Royal Festival Hall; Opera Rara’s Artistic Director Sir Mark Elder conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Ermonela Jaho, Arsen Soghomonyan, Brian Mulligan and the Opera Rara Chorus. The studio recording of Le Willis will be released in September 2019 and will be preceded by the world première recording of Donizetti’s L’Ange de Nisida – the company’s 25th Donizetti title – in March 2019. Both releases will be distributed internationally by Warner Classics as part of their recently announced joint partnership with Opera Rara. In between these releases, Opera Rara will present a concert performance, following a studio recording, of the rarely heard Il Paria, also by Donizetti, at the Barbican on 8 June with the Britten Sinfonia conducted by Sir Mark Elder and starring Albina Shagimuratova, Celso Albelo and Davide Luciano.