Opera Rara announce 55th season

We’re delighted to announce our 55^th season of live operatic archaeology featuring performances and record releases celebrating the past made new. Our new season launches on 26 September with the release of Donizetti Songs Volumes 5 and 6, featuring Opera Rara’s Artistic Director Carlo Rizzi and Artist Ambassador Ermonela Jaho. Our Donizetti Song Project, launched in September 2023, will culminate this season with the further releases of Volume 7 with Rosa Feola and Volume 8 with Nicola Alaimo. The latter will also feature in Opera Rara’s final ‘Donizetti & Friends’ recital at Wigmore Hall in June 2026.

Spearheaded by Rizzi and curated by Repertoire Consultant Roger Parker, our multi-year Donizetti Song Project has seen the charity collaborate with some of the world’s greatest singers to record and perform Donizetti’s entire corpus of solo songs, nearly 200 in total, many of which have never been heard before. Volumes 3 and 4, released in February this year, feature Artist Ambassador Michael Spyres and Marie-Nicole Lemieux. In November, we will aunch a new partnership with the Donizetti Festival in the composer’s hometown of Bergamo where, over the course of three years, all the songs will be performed as part of the festival’s young artist programme Bottega Donizetti.

Rizzi and Jaho will also lead our 55^th season full-scale opera production: the final, 1921 version of Puccini’s La rondine. The version of the opera we know today is that created in 1917; yet this is in fact the version with which Puccini was least satisfied. Following its premiere in Monte-Carlo, the composer made two further revisions. Our revival is based on a new performing edition of the third version (1921), created by Ditlev Rindom. For the first time ever, this third version will be heard publicly in its entirety and recorded in the studio; new material from the second version (1920) will be included in an appendix. This will be our second Puccini project, following the revival of the original version of his first opera, Le Willis (ORC59), also featuring Jaho.

The concert performance on 5 December at London’s Barbican Centre will see Carlo Rizzi conduct the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Singers with Ermonela Jaho as Magda de Civry. Iván Ayón-Rivas, Nicola Alaimo, Joanna Harries, David Shipley and William Thomas return to Opera Rara, whilst Juan Francisco Gatell, Ellie Neate, Jessica Robinson, Julieth Lozano and Robert Lewis make their main-stage debuts with us. The studio recording of La rondine, created a week before, will mark the recording debuts for Neate, Robinson, Lozano and Lewis.

Our work with emerging artists also continues this season with our Salon Series of recitals providing public performing opportunities in venues across London. Starting on 10 October, baritone Germán Enrique Alcántara will present a recital featuring rare Donizetti songs with pianist Anna Tilbrook. Alcántara made his studio opera recording debut as the title role of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra in its original 1857 version, released last month (ORC65). Alcántara will be followed by two further recitals featuring soprano Julieth Lozano, winner of the 2023 Cardiff Singer of the World Audience Prize; and tenor Robert Lewis, a member of the ensemble at Opéra National de Lyon, together with soprano Soraya Mafi, a graduate of the English National Opera Harewood Artist scheme.

Named Gramophone magazine’s Label of the Year in October 2024, we appointed Carlo Rizzi as Artistic Director in 2019 and he will remain in post through to our 60^th anniversary in the 2030/31 season. Committed to its mission not only to restore, record and perform but actively to promote the forgotten operatic heritage of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, our latest initiative is Lives in Song, a livestream podcast series exploring musicians’ biographies through their music. For the 55^th season Lives in Song will turn its focus from Donizetti to Puccini; it is hosted by Flora Willson, who will be joined by Puccini experts and musicians specialising in his music.