La Princesse de Trébizonde wins OPER! Award

Last night, Opera Rara won the OPER! Award for Best Opera Recording for its studio release of Offenbach’s La Princesse de Trébizonde (ORC63). This is the company’s second OPER! Award having won in 2019 for its world premiere recording of Donizetti’s L’Ange de Nisida. Representing the company in Amsterdam was Opera Rara’s Chief Executive Henry Little, together with conductor Paul Daniel, who said: “Opera Rara’s relationship with Jacques Offenbach stretches back over fifty years… Thank you to Jean Christophe Keck, editor of the Offenbach Edition Keck, whose tireless and dedicated championship of this most appealing composer has helped to bring pieces like our Trébizonde back for 21st century audiences to enjoy.” We also celebrate our Artist Ambassadors, Ermonela Jaho and Michael Spyres, who both won Best Singer of the Year.

While the golden age of opera recordings may be over as the big labels have pulled out, Opera Rara continues to release many of today’s most important opera and operetta titles. In La Princesse de Trébizonde, Paul Daniel and the London Philharmonic Orchestra discover their humorous side. With Virginie Verrez, Anne-Catherine Gillet and Antoinette Dennefeld, strict attention is paid to idiomatic expression. Josh Lovell is a discovery in a class of his own. All in all, a great moment of the “Offenbachiade”.
OPER! Awards Jury Statement

To celebrate, the recording is now available at 25% off on the Opera Rara website with the code OPER25 until midnight, Sunday 4 February.

Recorded with London Philharmonic Orchestra, Opera Rara’s September 2023 release of Offenbach’s comic operetta marked the premiere studio recording of musicologist Jean-Christophe Keck’s new critical edition of the three-act Paris version from December 1869. The recording also includes previously unpublished extracts from the original two-act Baden-Baden version first heard in July 1869 which were found fortuitously by Keck one ‘magic wardrobe’ within the Offenbach family estate.

Working with French opera specialist Paul Daniel, Opera Rara’s hand-picked cast of singers – Virginie Verrez, Anne-Catherine Gillet, Antoinette Dennefeld, Christophe Mortagne, Josh Lovell, Christophe Gay, Loïc Félix and Katia Ledoux – came together in September 2022 to give a one-off performance of La Princesse de Trébizonde at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall following a week in the recording studio. Since its release, the studio recording has been nominated for a 2024 International Classical Music Award, and voted Critics’ Choice and Recording of the Month by an array of international publications including Classica, Limelight, Opera, Gramophone, Opéra Magazine and Crescendo. Gramophone also picked the recording as one of its best albums of 2023.

Opera Rara, best known for its restoration and revival of bel canto operas, has also been a champion of Offenbach’s works since its founding in 1970. In February 2023, the company brought out its latest Classics boxset: Celebrating Offenbach (ORB3) featuring remastered studio recordings of Robinson Crusoe (ORC7) and Vert-Vert (ORC41), alongside Entre Nous (ORR243), a selection of rare arias, duets and ensembles from more than twenty of the composer’s lesser-known works. Further Opera Rara recordings of Offenbach include Christopher Columbus (ORC2) and Fantasio (ORC51) which won an International Opera Award in 2015.