Tenor Lawrence Brownlee and Opera Rara’s Artistic Director and pianist Carlo Rizzi in an exclusive London concert appearance featuring songs by Gaetano Donizetti and his contemporaries. Known for its award-winning exploration of Donizetti, Opera Rara has reshaped the way the musical world views this composer, bringing to light many of his lost or forgotten operas. Now, as part of a celebration of the 225th anniversary of Donizetti’s birth, Brownlee and Rizzi will launch an exploration of the composer’s song repertoire, which has been rarely performed in modern times.

Promoted by Opera Rara, the present recital launches the multi-year Donizetti Song Project, which will see the recording and performance of the composer’s nearly 200 solo songs. Donizetti is currently known for a mere 10-15 solo songs with piano. These are frequently performed and enjoyed; but recent research by Roger Parker, Opera Rara’s Repertoire Consultant and an internationally known expert on Donizetti, has revealed that the composer wrote nearly 200 such songs, a great many of them completely unknown. In the Donizetti Song Project, Opera Rara plans to create a new edition of the songs and then record them in eight individual albums. This ambitious programme will include live performances by the internationally renowned artists featured on each album, as well as a “salon” series for emerging artists. The Donizetti Song Project, one of the most ambitious in Opera Rara’s 50-year history, aims to add a substantial body of work to the solo song repertoire through recordings and performances, making a claim that Donizetti is one of the genre’s most significant composers in the nineteenth century.

PROGRAMME:

Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848)
“Lungi ne vai”
“Non v’è piu barbaro”
“Malvina”
“Non giova il sospirar”
“Sovra il remo”
“O anime” (unfinished)

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Vier Canzonen, D.688
“Non t’accostar all’urna”
“Guarda che bianca luna”
“Da quel sembiante”
“Mio ben ricordati”

Gaetano Donizetti
“Ella riposa”
“Lamento”
“V’era un dì”
“Me voglio fà ‘na casa”

Donizetti’s Contemporaries
Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868)
La lontananza
Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835)
Ricordanza
Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)
Lo spazzacamino
Brindisi

Gaetano Donizetti
“L’ora del ritrovo”
“Tu porgesti”
Il sospiro
“Corri destrier”

Opera Rara’s Donizetti Patron: His Excellency The Italian Ambassador

The Donizetti Song Project is supported by the Opera Rara Donizetti Syndicate, Colwinston Charitable Trust, Cockayne Grants for the Arts and London Community Foundation.