Opera Rara is a British record label, founded in the early 1970s by Americans Patric Schmid[1] and Don White[2] to promote concerts of rare and/or forgotten operas by Giacomo Meyerbeer and Donizetti and such other "bel canto" composers as Giovanni Pacini, Saverio Mercadante, and Federico Ricci.[3]
The label's activities were later expanded to include the "Verdi Originals" series, which included the BBC's presentations of original versions of operas by Giuseppe Verdi which are better known in later, revised versions.
For many years Opera Rara was sponsored heavily by the Peter Moores Foundation. In 2011 Stephen Revell, the managing director of Opera Rara announced that conductor Mark Elder would join as new artistic director with lawyer Ian Rosenblatt as president.[4]
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The label's first "complete" opera, Meyerbeer's Il crociato in Egitto, was performed in concert in 1972 and featured the soprano Janet Price. It was the work's first revival in over 100 years, and was of such great interest to record collectors that it was almost immediately issued by several "pirates". Donizetti's Maria Padilla (again featuring Price) followed soon afterwards.
Other early concerts included Maria de Rudenz, Torquato Tasso, and Rosmonda d'Inghilterra (Donizetti), L'Etoile du Nord (Meyerbeer)), as well as two Mercadante operas:Orazi e Curiazi and Virginia. All of these represented the first performances of these works in many years. Concert performances, leading to the issuance of recordings by the company, continue to be given at London's Southbank Centre with orchestras such as the London Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonia Orchestra. Prominent amongst conductors of these works is David Parry and Mark Elder.
In 1977, Opera Rara issued its first recording of Donizetti's Ugo, conte di Parigi, with a cast including Janet Price, Yvonne Kenny, Della Jones, and Christian du Plessis.
Other singers who have participated in Opera Rara's recordings include Renée Fleming, Jennifer Larmore, Nelly Miricioiu, Vesselina Kasarova, Chris Merritt, Marco Lazzara, Mark Stone, James Westman, Bruce Ford, and Anthony Michaels-Moore.
The label's biggest contribution to classical recordings is the large number of "world premiere recordings" in their catalogue. Listed by composer, these include:
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Donizetti |
Mercadante |
Pacini |
The recordings indicated by one asterisk (*) are excerpts.
The recordings indicated by two asterisks (**) are technically not world premiere recordings, since they had been performed earlier by Opera Rara, and these earlier performances were issued by pirates. However, they are included in this list since the world premiere recording is still an Opera Rara performance.