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Opera Rara Records
Opera Rara is a London-based opera company and recording label which specialises in recording and performing forgotten operatic repertoire from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Founded in 1970 by bel canto enthusiasts Patric Schmid and Don White, Opera Rara's recordings are internationally distributed by Warner Classics. In September 2019, Italian conductor Carlo Rizzi succeeded Sir Mark Elder as artistic director. History Opera Rara launched in the 1970s with a series of concerts of 19th-century operatic arias performed at the Southbank Centre, St John's Smith Square and Wigmore Hall in London. The company presented its first complete opera – Meyerbeer's ''Il crociato in Egitto'' – in 1972 at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, marking the first performance of the opera for more than 100 years. It subsequently performed at the Bath Festival, Camden Festival (where its first staged production was Donizetti's ''Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali'') and Sadler's Wells. A rise i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bel Canto
, )—with several similar constructions (, , , pronounced in English as )—is a term with several meanings that relate to Italian singing, and whose definitions have often been misunderstood. ''Bel canto'' was not only seen as a vocal technique, but also as a source of national pride for Italians, specifically in how the musical qualities aligned with their identity. However, this pride was often complicated by political circumstances. The phrase was not associated with a "school" of singing until the middle of the 19th century, when writers in the early 1860s used it nostalgically to describe a manner of singing that had begun to wane around 1830. Nonetheless, "neither musical nor general dictionaries saw fit to attempt definition f ''bel canto''until after 1900". The term remains vague and ambiguous in the 21st century and is often used to evoke a lost singing tradition. History of the term and its various definitions As generally understood today, the term ''bel canto'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Janet Price
Janet Price (born 5 February 1938) is a Welsh soprano particularly associated with the 19th-century Italian bel canto repertory. Born in Pontypool, Wales, she studied piano and singing at Cardiff University with Olive Groves, Isobel Baillie and Hervey Alan. She also studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. She made her debut in 1964 with BBC Wales. In 1971, she appeared at London Town Hall in a concert performance of Haydn's ''La fedeltà premiata''. She then specialized in 19th-century Italian bel canto and French repertoire and began an association with Opera Rara, appearing in concert and staged performances of long neglected works by composers such as Meyerbeer, Mercadante, Donizetti, Auber, etc. She also appeared with the Handel Opera Society, Welsh National Opera, the Glyndebourne Festival, and Kent Opera. She sang Fiordiligi in ''Così fan tutte'' at the Opéra-Comique in 1974, and also appeared at the Festival of Flanders and the San Antonio Grand Opera Festival, Te ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ambroise Thomas
Charles Louis Ambroise Thomas (; 5 August 1811 – 12 February 1896) was a French composer and teacher, best known for his operas ''Mignon'' (1866) and ''Hamlet (opera), Hamlet'' (1868). Born into a musical family, Thomas was a student at the Conservatoire de Paris, winning France's top music prize, the Prix de Rome. He pursued a career as a composer of operas, completing his first opera, ''La double échelle'', in 1837. He wrote twenty further operas over the next decades, mostly comic, but he also treated more serious subjects, finding considerable success with audiences in France and abroad. Thomas was appointed as a professor at the Conservatoire in 1856, and in 1871 he succeeded Daniel Auber as director. Between then and his death at his home in Paris twenty-five years later, he modernised the Conservatoire's organisation while imposing a rigidly conservative curriculum, hostile to modern music, and attempting to prevent composers such as César Franck and Gabriel Fauré fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gioachino Rossini
Gioachino Antonio Rossini (29 February 1792 – 13 November 1868) was an Italian composer of the late Classical period (music), Classical and early Romantic music, Romantic eras. He gained fame for his 39 operas, although he also wrote many songs, some chamber music and piano pieces and some Church music, sacred music. He set new standards for both comic and serious opera before retiring from large-scale composition while still in his thirties, at the height of his popularity. Born in Pesaro to parents who were both musicians (his father a trumpeter, his mother a singer), Rossini began to compose by the age of twelve and was educated at music school in Bologna. His first opera was performed in Venice in 1810 when he was 18 years old. In 1815 he was engaged to write operas and manage theatres in Naples. In the period 1810–1823, he wrote 34 operas for the Italian stage that were performed in Venice, Milan, Ferrara, Naples and elsewhere; this productivity necessitated an alm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giovanni Pacini
Giovanni Pacini (11 February 17966 December 1867) was an Italian composer, best known for his operas. Pacini was born in Catania, Sicily, the son of the buffo Luigi Pacini, who was to appear in the premieres of many of Giovanni's operas. The family was of Tuscany, Tuscan origin, living in Catania when the composer was born. He served as the Florence Conservatory's first director from 1849 through 1862. His first 25 or so operas were written when Gioachino Rossini dominated the Italian operatic stage. But Pacini's operas were "rather superficial", a fact which, later, he candidly admitted in his ''Memoirs''.Rose 2001, in Holden, p. 650 For some years he held the post of "director of the Teatro San Carlo in Naples." Later, retiring to Viareggio to found a school of music, Pacini took time to assess the state of opera in Italy and, during a five-year period during which he stopped composing, laid out his ideas in his Memoirs. Like Saverio Mercadante, who also reassessed the strengt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saverio Mercadante
Giuseppe Saverio Raffaele Mercadante (baptised 17 September 179517 December 1870) was an Italian composer, particularly of operas. While Mercadante may not have retained the international celebrity of Vincenzo Bellini, Gaetano Donizetti or Gioachino Rossini beyond his own lifetime, he composed as prolifically as either and his development of operatic structures, melodic styles and orchestration contributed significantly to the foundations upon which Giuseppe Verdi built his dramatic technique. Biography Early years Mercadante was born illegitimate in Altamura, near Bari in Apulia; his precise date of birth has not been recorded, but he was baptised on 17 September 1795. Mercadante studied flute, violin and composition at the conservatory in Naples, and organized concerts among his compatriots.Michael Rose, "Mercadante: Flute Concertos", booklet accompanying the 2004 RCA CD recording with James Galway and I Solisti Veneti under Claudio Scimone. The opera composer Gioachino Ro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simon Mayr
Johann(es) Simon Mayr (also spelled Majer, Mayer, Maier), also known in Italian as Giovanni Simone Mayr or Simone Mayr (14 June 1763 – 2 December 1845), was a German composer. His music reflects the transition from the Classical to the Romantic musical era. In 1805 he founded the Bergamo Conservatory. He was an early inspiration to Rossini and taught and advocated for Donizetti. Life He was born in Mendorf near Altmannstein, Landkreis Eichstätt, Bavaria, and studied theology at the University of Ingolstadt, continuing his studies in Italy from 1787. He was closely associated with the Illuminati of Adam Weishaupt while a student in Ingolstadt, and the ideals of the French Enlightenment were a strong influence on his philosophy as a musician as corroborated by his famed ''Zibaldone'' or "Notebooks" compiled toward the end of his career. Shortly thereafter, he took music lessons with Carlo Lenzi, and later with Ferdinando Bertoni. He moved to Bergamo in 1802 and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jules Massenet
Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet (; 12 May 1842 – 13 August 1912) was a French composer of the Romantic music, Romantic era best known for his operas, of which he wrote more than thirty. The two most frequently staged are ''Manon'' (1884) and ''Werther'' (1892). He also composed oratorios, ballets, orchestral works, incidental music, piano pieces, songs and other music. While still a schoolboy, Massenet was admitted to France's principal music college, the Paris Conservatoire. There he studied under Ambroise Thomas, whom he greatly admired. After winning the country's top musical prize, the , in 1863, he composed prolifically in many genres, but quickly became best known for his operas. Between 1867 and his death forty-five years later he wrote more than forty stage works in a wide variety of styles, from opéra-comique to grand-scale depictions of classical myths, romantic comedies, Drame lyrique, lyric dramas, as well as oratorios, cantatas and ballets. Massenet had a g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vincenzo Bellini
Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini (; ; 3 November 1801 – 23 September 1835) was an Italian opera composer famed for his long, graceful melodies and evocative musical settings. A central figure of the era, he was admired not only by the public, but also by many composers who were influenced by his work. His songs balanced florid Ornament (music), embellishment with a deceptively simple approach to lyric setting. Born to a musical family in Sicily, he distinguished himself early and earned a scholarship to study under several noted musicians at Music conservatories of Naples#Conservatorio di San Sebastiano, Naples' Real Collegio di Musica. There he absorbed elements of the Neapolitan School's style and was inspired by performances of Donizetti's and Rossini's operas, among others, in more modern idioms. He wrote his first opera, ''Adelson e Salvini'' (1825), for the conservatory, and his next, ''Bianca e Fernando'' (1826), on a Teatro di San Carlo-affiliated commiss ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bergamo
Bergamo ( , ; ) is a city in the Alps, alpine Lombardy region of northern Italy, approximately northeast of Milan, and about from the alpine lakes Lake Como, Como and Lake Iseo, Iseo and 70 km (43 mi) from Lake Garda, Garda and Lake Maggiore, Maggiore. The Bergamo Alps () begin immediately north of the city. With a population of 120,580 as of 2025, Bergamo is the fourth-largest city in Lombardy. Bergamo is the seat of the province of Bergamo, which counts more than 1,115,037 residents as of 2025. The metropolitan area of Bergamo extends beyond the administrative city limits, spanning over a densely urbanized area with slightly fewer than 500,000 inhabitants. The Bergamo metropolitan area is itself part of the broader Milan metropolitan area, home to more than 8 million people. The city of Bergamo is composed of an old walled core, known as ('Upper Town'), nestled within a Parco dei Colli di Bergamo, system of hills, and the modern expansion in the plains below. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House (ROH) is a theatre in Covent Garden, central London. The building is often referred to as simply Covent Garden, after a previous use of the site. The ROH is the main home of The Royal Opera, The Royal Ballet, and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House (now known collectively as the Royal Ballet and Opera). The first theatre on the site, the Theatre Royal (1732), served primarily as a playhouse for the first hundred years of its history. In 1734, the first ballet was presented. A year later, the first season of operas, by George Frideric Handel, began. Many of his operas and oratorios were specifically written for Covent Garden and had their premieres there. The current building is the third theatre on the site, following disastrous fires in 1808 and 1856 to previous buildings. The façade, foyer, and auditorium date from 1858, but almost every other element of the present complex dates from an extensive reconstruction in the 1990s. The main auditorium ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
L'ange De Nisida
''L'Ange de Nisida'' (''The Angel of Nisida'') is an ''opera semiseria'' in four acts by Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti, from a French-language libretto by Alphonse Royer and Gustave Vaëz. Parts of the libretto are considered analogous with the libretto for Giovanni Pacini's ''Adelaide e Comingio'', and the final scene is based on the François-Thomas-Marie de Baculard d'Arnaud play ''Les Amants malheureux, ou le comte de Comminges''. Donizetti worked on the opera in late 1839—its final page is dated 27 December 1839. Because the subject matter involved the mistress of a Neapolitan king, and may thus have caused difficulties with the Italian censors, Donizetti decided that the opera should be presented in France. The theater company Donizetti contracted went bankrupt; the opera was reworked as ''La favorite'' in September 1840. ''L'Ange'' finally received its premiere in its original form in 2018 in a concert performance at London's Royal Opera House. Composition histor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
