My colleagues at Opera Rara join me in sending you our very best wishes for a happy, healthy and opera-filled new year!
We would like to begin 2013, a year which marks the 35th anniversary of Opera Rara’s first release (Donizetti’s Ugo, conte di Parigi) by sharing with you some of our exciting plans for the year ahead.
Our first release of 2013 is a live recording from the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. We have always been passionate about supporting young singers and the February release features a double bill of Massenet’s Le Portrait de Manon and Berlioz’s song cycle, Les Nuits d’été, with singers and conductors from the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme and the Southbank Sinfonia.
June sees the release of Donizetti’s Caterina Cornaro. The first in our new series of studio recordings and performances partnering with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the opera features an all star cast, including Carmen Giannattasio, Colin Lee, Troy Cook, Loïc Félix, Vuyani Mlinde, Sophie Bevan and Graeme Broadbent. The award-winning David Parry conducts.
Later in the year, we will release a studio recording of Donizetti’s Belisario, again with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. Opera Rara and the BBCSO presented a semi-staged concert performance of the opera at the Barbican last October. One of the critical highlights of 2012, the work was conducted by Sir Mark Elder with a wonderful cast including Sicilian baritone, Nicola Alaimo, rising Canadian star, Joyce El-Khoury, Welsh soprano, Camilla Roberts, young American tenor, Russell Thomas and internationally celebrated bass, Alastair Miles.
Our 2013 recording plans include Offenbach’s Fantasio and we are delighted to be teaming up once more with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment both for a studio recording and subsequent concert at the Royal Festival Hall on 15 December. Conducted by our Artistic Director, Sir Mark Elder, the cast includes Marlis Petersen, Sarah Connolly and Russell Braun. We are particularly delighted to introduce the Opera Rara Chorus, directed by the Royal Opera House’s Renato Balsadonna.
As most of our supporters are aware, we rely largely on trusts, corporate and individual help to fund our recordings, concerts and administration. Opera Rara is committed to rediscovering the “forgotten” operatic heritage of the 19th century, produces more world première recordings than any other label and regularly presents concert performances of the works it records.
For more information on all our recordings, please visit our new website at www.opera-rara.com and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
Finally, I would like to offer enormous thanks to all those who continue to support us.
Opera Rara’s autumn 2012 release, Aureliano in Palmira, has received some fantastic reviews. Here’s what the critics have to say:
‘Opera Rara’s performance is a fine one, conducted with stylistic assurance by Maurizio Benini and sung by a good cast, able to rise above the music’s considerable technical challenges to achieve real expressive distinction. In the title role, tenor Kenneth Tarver reminds us of his excellent Rossinian credentials, with a light and airy tone and fluent top register. Spanish mezzo Silvia Tro Santafé is also fluent as Aureliano’s military and amorous rival, Arsace. Scottish soprano Catriona Smith equals her colleagues’ skills as Zenobia.’ – George Hall, BBC Music Magazine
‘The music is very fine, with a minimal amount of secco recitative. Musch of the momentus is generated by triplet figures in the accompaniment. The sheer variety is striking: resolution, love, defiance, supplication are vividly conveyed. There’s a canonic trio and a ‘vaudeville’ finale. There are solos for horn and, in a charming pastoralo chorus, for violin. The LPO play beautifully for Maurizio Benini. Kenneth Tarver makes an accomplished Aurelian, a touch of steel in his tone emphasising his authority. In Zenobia’s aria ‘Là pugnai’, Catriona Smith colours her voice with both assertiveness and wistfulness before dazzling the listener with her coloratura. And the forthright tones of Silvia Tro Santafé are a first-rate substitute for those of the castrato Velluti. The recording is well balanced, with a nice sense of perspective when Zenobia enters in Act 2 at the top of the staircase; and, as always with Opera Rara, the booklet containing the libretto is admirable.’ – Richard Lawrence, Gramophone magazine
‘Opera Rara, as ever, does it proud with excellent engineering and an informative booklet. Maurizio Benini leads an authoritative performance, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra play with style. Kenneth Tarver takes the title role, and his sweetly elegant tenor surmounts its coloratura difficulties with seeming ease. Likewise the travesti role of Arsace (created by the great castrato Velluti) is dispatched with panache and thrilling tone by Silvia Tro Santafé. Catriona Smith’s Zenobia is sweetly sung with some moments of shrillness; but her duets with Tro Santafé are rather delicious highlights of bel canto grace. A rarity worth investigating.’ – Francis Muzzu, Opera Now
‘There is much to be enjoyed here. The two Zenobia-Arsace duets are meltingly beautiful and show how the youthful Rossini was able to crate emotional landscapes that reflected the development of character. There is also stirring and patriotic music, including Aureliano’s cavatina, which begins with a gloriously playe dhorn obbligato. Kenneth Tarver employs his light lyric tenor to great effect in the title role. He tosses off the high-flying role with ease and purity of tone, though one might wish for a bit more vocal heft in his jealous rages. Without question the vocal honours here go to the Arsace, mezzo Silvia Tro Santafé, who contributes a fearless and virtuoso performance that is both firey and passionate, finding many vocal colours and nuances that illuminate character and emotion. Maurizio Benini leads the London Philharmonic Orchestra in a sensitive yet propulsive reading.’ – Henson Keys, Opera News
‘Somehow or other Opera Rara keeps pulling magnificent bel canto singers out of some magic hat. In this polyphonic multinational cast there are well-known and unknown voices; not one is duff. It must seem like a miracle to find a replacement for the soprano cast as Zenobia and then to get as replacement a Scotswoman who is a Kammersängerin of the Stuttgart State Opera. She had to step into the gap late in the day and sings with a firmness of tone and pleasing capacity for characterisation that nearly matches the other two outstanding principals. Of these Kenneth Tarver is a delight. He sings with good unforced open tone and without undue stress to create a full and convincing Aureliano in his many moods. Pleasing as those two are, the biggest surprise, and the biggest success, is the singing and overall performance of the Spanish mezzo Silvia Tro Santafé as Arsace, originally written for a castrato. Her voice is flexible to meet the demands of the coloratura with her vocal centre and lower tones being the best I have heard from a mezzo for some time. Despite some of the quality singers Opera Rara have cast in various recordings over the past few years Santafé is one of the best. She is a singer who in this recording uses her considerable vocal capacities and quality to convey the emotions, drama and characterisation of a role in a manner I have not heard in a young singer for a long time. The recording comes with Opera Rara’s usual lavishly illustrated book, including a complete libretto with an English translation by Jeremy Commons. Add to this an article and synopsis by Richard Osborne.’ – Robert Farr, MusicWeb International
OPERA RARA ANNOUNCES CHARLES ALEXANDER AS NEW CHAIRMAN
London 7 December 2012
Stephen Revell, Opera Rara’s Managing Director, today announced that Charles Alexander has been appointed as the new Chairman of the company.
Charles Alexander formerly served as President of GE Capital Europe and was a director and Deputy Chairman of English National Opera. He replaces Patrick Griggs, who held the position since 2004.
Stephen Revell says, “I am thrilled that Charles Alexander has agreed to take on the chairmanship of the company. His appointment comes at a critical time and I know we couldn’t be in better hands. Over the past year alone, we have made significant appointments which have taken Opera Rara to a new level: one of the world’s leading conductors, Sir Mark Elder, came on board as Artistic Director and Roger Parker and John Fisher were appointed repertoire and casting consultants respectively. With Charles as Chairman, Sir Mark at the artistic helm and the enormous groundswell of support for Opera Rara, we could not be better positioned for the years to come”.
Of the appointment, Artistic Director, Sir Mark Elder, comments, “This is a very exciting time for Opera Rara; it may be small, but the company continues to make an enormous contribution to the opera world and I couldn’t be more delighted that Charles will be taking on this vital role with the organisation in the years ahead“.
Says Charles Alexander, “Opera Rara is a unique cultural institution, a shining star in the operatic galaxy. Its fundamental raison d’être, the rediscovery and revival of neglected operatic masterpieces, is based on sound scholarship, exhaustive detective work and brilliance of production, whether recorded or live in concert and I look forward to helping with the next phase of its growth”.
For over 40 years, Opera Rara has been bringing back to life the forgotten operas of the 19th Century through performances, recordings and the creation of critical new editions.
As a charity, Opera Rara must raise 70% of its income through grants and donations from individual opera lovers, alongside Trusts and Foundations, to enable its work to continue.
It is no secret that Opera Rara’s major long time supporter, the Peter Moores Foundation, is ending its funding programmes; concentration on fundraising has therefore become central to Opera Rara’s operation. To that end, Revell has also set about redeveloping the organisation and creating a fundraising team, emphasising, “always, of course, at its heart the original vision of our founders, the late Patric Schmid and Don White.”
See notes below on Charles Alexander and Opera Rara
OPERA RARA CHAIRMAN CHARLES ALEXANDER
BIOGRAPHY
Charles Alexander’s career spanned 25 years at NM Rothschild & Sons and then at General Electric, where he was President GE Capital Europe. He was a director and Deputy Chairman of English National Opera, a period which included the company’s purchase of the London Coliseum in 1992 and its final restoration in the first years of the Millennium.
Charles has served on boards of companies listed in London, Paris, New York, Istanbul and Santiago. In addition to his love of opera, he is a linguist (Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese), a lover of cricket, has three adult children and lives in London and the Isle of Wight.
A NOTE ON OPERA RARA
Over the past four decades,Opera Rara, the brainchild of Patric Schmid and Don White, has been in the business of bringing back to life the forgotten operatic repertoire of the 19th-century. Operas once threatened with extinction have now been brought vividly back to life through Opera Rara performances, editions and recordings.
In a world in which recording companies are finding it increasingly difficult to survive, let alone expand their activities, the continuing achievement of Opera Rara is a remarkable success story. The secret of this success is that the company has always remained a highly specialised venture founded on the conviction that there is an inexhaustible mine of fascinating, yet undeservedly forgotten, 19th-century Italian and French operatic music.
In the early days, if its recordings were to be commercially viable, Opera Rara could not venture beyond a ‘popular’ composer like Donizetti (its first release, in 1978, was Donizetti’s Ugo conte di Parigi, a totally unknown work at the time). If it risked recording such composers as Mercadante and Pacini, sales would immediately suffer. This situation is now a thing of the past. As more and more people have discovered these recordings, Mercadante, Pacini, Meyerbeer and Mayr have become increasingly ‘safe territory’, while impressive sales can also be expected for even lesser-known composers. More than ever, Opera Rara is now a shaper of taste.
Opera Rara has been quick to seize opportunities to capture live performances and has recorded rarely performed works with, amongst others, the Teatro Verdi Trieste, The Royal Opera House Covent Garden and The Edinburgh International Festival. The celebrated concert series with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, at London’s Royal Festival Hall, helped to promote its studio recordings. In a new departure for Opera Rara, the company joined forces with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment to create a studio recording of Donizetti’s Imelda de’ Lambertazzi, featuring Nicole Cabell (Cardiff Singer of the World) in the title role. The recording sessions were followed by a concert performance, another critical triumph.
Earlier this year, Opera Rara released Bellini’s Il pirata and Rossini’s Aureliano in Palmira to rave reviews and, this autumn, returned to the studio to record Donizetti’s Rita; for this recording, the Opera Rara team travelled north to the home of the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester. This was its first recording with the Hallé and Opera Rara’s Artistic Director, Sir Mark Elder, conducted his orchestra magnificently. The recording will be released in early 2014.
In October, Opera Rara headed to the BBC Maida Vale studios to record Donizetti’s Belisario with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Again, with Sir Mark at the helm, Opera Rara topped off the studio recording with a hugely successful concert staging of the work at London’s Barbican Hall, a co-production between Opera Rara and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. One of Britain’s critically acclaimed highlights of the opera year, the studio recording is due for release in 2013.
Opera Rara aims, through its catalogue of recordings, to continue to encourage, inform and delight with its tireless exploration of rare 19th-century music.
Opera Rara and the BBC Symphony Orchestra received stunning reviews for the concert performance of Donizetti’s Belisario at the Barbican on Sunday 28 October 2012. Here’s what the critics had to say:
‘Donizetti’s Belisario proved a revelation. Written just before Lucia di Lammermoor (and containing a similar sextet), it’s a muscular, martial melodrama about a Byzantine general whose honour is besmirched by a scheming wife..In the title role, Nicola Alaimo presented an impressive old-school Italian baritone, forthright in style and big in vocal and physical presence. The fluently musical young American tenor Russell Thomas was nothing short of sensational as Belisario’s lost son, while Joyce El Khoury (WNO’s Violetta earlier this year) brought fluent coloratura and viperish intensity to the insidious music for Belisario’s vengeful wife.’ – Rupert Christiansen, The Telegraph
‘This semi-staged rendering from the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Opera Rara, the recording company, had the smack of a triumph from the overture’s urgent first chords. Warning phrases, martial brass, festive clamour and beautifully balanced winds pitchforked us into the drama, and the screw kept tightening during the powerful first act.’ – Geoff Brown, The Times
‘Elder delivered a performance of inexorable momentum and considerable power. The soloists were tremendous, though you could argue that the men were fractionally stronger than the women. Joyce El-Khoury’s Antonina dispatched her arias with thrilling precision. Camilla Robert’s Irene was short on innate nobility, though the lustre in her tone is remarkable. There was singing of extraordinary beauty and insight, however, from Nicola Alaimo’ss Belisario, while tenor Russell Thomas brought the house down as Alamiro.’ – Tim Ashley, The Guardian
OPERA RARA is proud to announce that its new recording of one of Rossini’s rarest scores, Aureliano in Palmira, will be available in September 2012. The dramma serio was written during Rossini’s miraculous 21st year (1813), when he produced in total an incredible four operas. The other three (the comedies, Il signor Bruschino and L’italiana in Algeri plus the tragedy Tancredi) indicate not only the fertility of his inventive powers but also the staggering quality of his youthful composition. Rossini fans will recognise the overture to Aureliano, recycled in three other scores, most notably Il barbiere di Siviglia!
The opera is set in 272 AD in the ancient city of Palmyra (modern Syria), where the queen, Zenobia (Catriona Smith), and her lover, the Persian general, Arsace (Silvia Tro Santafé), are defeated in battle by the Roman Emperor Aureliano (Kenneth Tarver). Aureliano agrees to free Arsace if Zenobia will give herself to him but she refuses, Eventually, he is won over by the lovers’ devotion, freeing them when they pledge loyalty to Rome. On the way to this happy ending, there is plenty of extreme emotion to fire-up some of Rossini’s most exciting vocal writing.
Opera Rara and the London Philharmonic produced a concert performance at the Royal Festival Hall in October 2010 immediately after the work was recorded. Tim Ashley, of the Guardian, wrote in his review, ‘The star turn came from Silvia Tro Santafé as Arsace, technically impeccable and generous of tone. Aureliano, however, gets the best music: Kenneth Tarver captured his mix of dignity, waspishness and deprecating self-awareness to perfection.’
This studio recording, on 3 CDs, comes with Opera Rara’s usual lavishly illustrated book, including a complete libretto with an English translation by Jeremy Commons and an article and synopsis by Richard Osborne.
A great success in its day, Aureliano promises to thrill another generation of listeners in this new studio recording under Maurizio Benini!
Cast includes: Kenneth Tarver; Catriona Smith; Silvia Tro Santafé; Ezgi Kutlu; Andrew Foster-Williams; Vuyani Mlinde, Geoffrey Mitchell Choir (under Opera Rara Chorus Director, Renato Balsadonna) London Philharmonic Orchestra. Conducted by Maurizio Benini
SIR MARK ELDER & OPERA RARA RECEIVE PRESTIGIOUS FRENCH AWARDS
Opera Rara is proud to announce that the label and its Artistic Director, Sir Mark Elder, have been presented with awards by the prestigious French Académie du Disque Lyrique. An Orphée d’Or (Prix Bruno Walter) was awarded to Sir Mark for his conducting of both Linda di Chamounix and Maria di Rohan and Opera Rara received an Orphée d’Or for its recording of Maria di Rohan.
Opera Rara hosted a lunch to celebrate its new release – Bellini’s Il pirata on Thursday 19th April 2012
During the event, we announced our forthcoming world première studio recording of Donizetti’s Belisario.
Belisario, a triumph on stages during the 19th century, marks the second in our ongoing series of recordings with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and we were delighted that the two sopranos starring in the recording, Joyce El-Khoury and Camilla Roberts, were on hand to entertain guests with excerpts from this rarely-performed opera. Discover how to support our restoration of Belisario. Not only will we produce the long-overdue first ever studio recording of this wonderful work, but we will also provide a rare opportunity for audiences to hear the opera live in concert on Sunday 28th October 2012 at the Barbican Hall, London.
More Information
Please contact the Development Department on +44 (0)20 7613 2858 or info@opera-rara.com
We recently collaborated with the Royal Opera House’s Jette Parker Young Artists Programme and recorded live, in the Linbury Studio Theatre, their performances of Massenet’s rarely heard opera Le Portrait de Manon and Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’été. This is an exciting project for all concerned and we’re delighted to be able to give these young singers, and orchestral musicians from the Southbank Sinfonia, the chance to create a professional recording at the start of their careers.
Opera Rara is delighted to announce that the label has been presented with Gramophone Magazine’s coveted Opera of the Year Award for Rossini’s Ermione.
Ermione is without doubt one of the greatest operas by Rossini; but the work was greeted with incomprehension at its one performance in 1819 and was never revived in Rossini’s lifetime. The composer was resigned: ‘It is my little Guillaume Tell in Italian,’ he said, ‘and will not see the light of day until after my death.’
Since its first stage revival in Pesaro in 1987, Ermione has been recognised as a lost masterpiece. Set in the aftermath of the Trojan War, the opera’s novelties begin with an overture interrupted by a choral lament of Trojan prisoners. Tension and staggering originality are maintained right to the very end.
With its fabulous cast (including Carmen Giannattasio, Patricia Bardon, Paul Nilon, Colin Lee, Bülent Bezdüz, Graeme Broadbent and Rebecca Bottone) accompanied by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Geoffrey Mitchell Choir, the work is conducted by David Parry. The 2 CD set (ORC42) features Opera Rara’s usual beautiful packaging, including a complete libretto with an English translation and article/synopsis by eminent 19th-century musical scholar, Jeremy Commons.
The award was collected by soprano, Carmen Giannattasio and Opera Rara’s managing director, Stephen Revell. In his acceptance speech, Revell said, “This is a very happy and proud day for Opera Rara…I would like to thank the Peter Moores Foundation for its very generous support of our work over many years. Opera Rara is a charity and cannot survive on CD sales alone. We love what we do and I believe that we are doing something very worthwhile. We rely on sponsorship to fund our recordings and, each time we look to record another forgotten masterpiece, we wonder where our funding will come from. We thank all those opera lovers who continue to support our work….I would also like to remember our beloved Patric Schmid, the co-founder of Opera Rara, who sadly did not live to see this day….finally, let me thank Gramophone for giving us this great award, the wonderful artists who made this beautiful recording and my hardworking and dedicated Opera Rara team who made it possible.”
Ms Giannattasio added, “For me, working on Ermione has been what you call a labour of love and, to bring this forgotten glorious music of Rossini to life again, makes me incredibly happy. Working with Opera Rara is like belonging to a warm and loving family and I hope that I can be a member of this family for many years to come. Grazie Mille and Viva Rossini”.
Our recording of Linda di Chamounix received great critical acclaim in the press with Editor’s choice in Gramophone magazine, CD of the Month in BBC Music Magazine and Opera magazine and sensational reviews in all the major publications, here’s what the critics have to say:
‘This opera has been recorded before, but not to this standard. It’s hard to imagine this set ever being replaced or even rivalled’. – Michael Tanner, BBC Music Magazine
‘All in all the strongest possible case for reviving this unjustly neglected piece’ – Hugh Canning, Sunday Times Culture
‘It’s an outstanding release, not least for the obviously painstaking musical preparation, resulting in exceptional fidelity to the composers wishes and careful yet heartfelt interpretations of the music by the whole cast’ – Rodney Milnes, Opera magazine
