DONIZETTI SONG PROJECT: MICHAEL SPYRES & MARIE-NICOLE LEMIEUX – VOLS. 3&4 (ORR256&257) – release date: Friday 21 February
LONDON RECITAL – Monday 10 March, 7pm at Cadogan Hall
On Friday 21 February, Opera Rara releases the third and fourth volumes in its Donizetti Song Project recording cycle featuring 18 songs for tenor performed by the charity’s Artist Ambassador Michael Spyres (singing here) and 21 songs for mezzo-soprano sung by Marie-Nicole Lemieux. On Volume 3, Spyres is accompanied by Opera Rara’s Artistic Director Carlo Rizzi; and on Volume 4, Lemieux is accompanied by Giulio Zappa.
On Monday 10 March, Spyres, Lemieux and Zappa celebrate the release of Volumes 3 and 4 at Cadogan Hall for Opera Rara’s fourth ‘Donizetti & Friends’ public recital.
The music of Gaetano Donizetti was the main source of inspiration for Opera Rara’s founders over 50 years ago, and he is a composer that the charity has returned to time and again. Spearheaded by Rizzi, Opera Rara’s Donizetti Song Project is curated by Repertoire Consultant Roger Parker. Over the course of two years starting in 2020, Parker tracked down Donizetti’s entire corpus of solo songs, nearly 200 in total, many of which have never been heard in modern times. His new edition of the Donizetti solo songs for Casa Ricordi, completed in collaboration with Ian Schofield, will be made publicly available for the enjoyment of artists, scholars and audiences alike.
‘In their totality these compositions make a powerful case for Donizetti as a key figure in nineteenth-century domestic music-making: someone whose achievements in this area deserve to be better known; a body of work that, single-handedly, makes a powerful argument for the importance of the Italian “school” in a field long dominated by German and French composers.’ Roger Parker
Opera Rara launched its Donizetti Song Project in September 2023 and has to date presented three recitals at London’s Wigmore Hall featuring Lawrence Brownlee, Artist Ambassador Ermonela Jaho and Rosa Feola. Volumes 1 and 2 featuring Lawrence Brownlee and Nicola Alaimo, both accompanied by Carlo Rizzi, were released in October 2024. As part of its Salon Series for emerging artists, the charity has also encouraged the younger generation of singers featured to include these rarely heard songs into their recital programmes. The next artist in the series is baritone Lluís Calvet i Pey who made his recording debut on Opera Rara’s 27th complete opera by Donizetti, L’esule di Roma (ORC64).
Named Gramophone’s Label of the Year in October 2024, Opera Rara will release its next complete opera recording – the original 1857 version of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra – on Friday 21 March. Sir Mark Elder, Opera Rara’s former Artistic Director, conducts the Hallé and a cast led by Germán Enrique Alcántara (Simon Boccanegra), Eri Nakamura (Amelia), William Thomas (Jacopo Fiesco) and Iván Ayón-Rivas (Gabriele Adorno).
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