Opera Rara's 2024.25 Annual Report

2024/25 Annual Report th

Our 54 Season of operatic discovery

Dear Friends At Opera Rara, our mission has always been clear: to restore, record, perform and promote the forgotten operatic masterpieces of the 19th and early 20th centuries. This work is not simply about preserving the past, but about restoring lost and forgotten operatic works that resonate with audiences today.

Since our foundation in 1970, we have released 115 recordings. Each of these projects creates a lasting legacy. Through our restorations of musical scores and acclaimed studio recordings, made to the highest artistic and technical standards, we ensure that these rare works are given new life and permanence. Our endeavours were recognised this year at the highest level when we were named Gramophone Label of the Year. Yet Opera Rara is far more than a recording label. We are a dynamic arts charity, committed to bringing extraordinary music to audiences in a variety of ways—whether through world-class performances at venues in London or elsewhere, or through our intimate Salon Series, which provides a platform for emerging talent.

Over theth past year, Opera Rara has continued to fulfil this charitable purpose in its 54 season of live operatic archaeology. Our work to widen access to and deepen understanding of rare operas and songs through educational programmes, engagement initiatives and digital resources—including documentaries, research articles, curated playlists and our new podcast, Lives in Song—has resulted in Opera Rara’s recordings and educational videos streamed, downloaded or viewed over 2 million times, and we reached a total audience of 32,231 concert goers, online followers and subscribers through our concerts, recordings and digital offerings in just this year alone.

We believe that forgotten masterpieces deserve to be heard, understood and celebrated. Together, with your help, we are not only discovering operatic treasures, but also securing their future.

Charles Alexander CBE

Chairman

Henry Little

Chief Executive

Carlo Rizzi in the studio with Ermonela Jaho

Carlo Letter

From our Artistic Director For me, the heart of Opera Rara’s work is the joy of discovery—bringing to life music that has been forgotten or overlooked. Our 2024/25 Season included many discoveries that helped audiences and artists around the world to experience our beloved artform in fresh and inspiring ways.

Our multi-year Donizetti Song Project is especially close to me. Working with wonderful colleagues as we uncover nearly 200 songs, I have been reminded again and again of the richness and beauty hidden in these pages by one of opera’s greatest composers— now available, thanks to Opera Rara’s work, to young singers, students and future generations to enjoy.

Last spring, Manchester audiences were given the opportunity to revisit a Verdi masterpiece in its original 1857 version. Simon Boccanegra brilliantly brought together the forces of The Hallé, Opera North and the Royal Northern College of Music all under the baton of my predecessor, Sir Mark Elder.

The new recording has shown the world how scholarship and performance can come together to create something truly rewarding.

As we look to the future, I feel proud of the artistic legacy we are creating, one that offers new understanding, gives unique opportunities to the world’s finest singers, nurtures the next generation of artists and thrives on partnership. Our journey of discovery continues. Please join us.

Carlo Rizzi

Artistic Director

VERDI

“The strength of this performance from Mark Elder and the Hallé is the way everything comes off the page with such vigour and immediacy, you believe in it from beginning to end... it’s a fairly young cast… Germán Enrique Alcántara is singing his first major Verdi role as the Doge, and his final scene with William Thomas as his adversary Fiesco in Act III is a marvellous piece of theatre.”

BBC RADIO 3 RECORD REVIEW

In April 2024, Opera Rara partnered with The Hallé for the world premiere studio recording of Verdi’s original 1857 version of Simon Boccanegra.

Conducted by Sir Mark Elder and featuring a distinguished, young cast, this monumental project not only brought an important version in a new edition

by Roger Parker of Verdi’s opera to light, but also earned widespread acclaim for many emerging artists at the beginning of their careers.

The project was the centre of new relationships for Opera Rara with Opera North and the Royal Northern College of Music, giving many musicians in the Greater Manchester area, including current students at RNCM, the opportunity to be a part of an in-studio opera recording project.

Following the recording, Opera Rara presented the opera in a concert performance at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall on 18 April 2024. This performance offered audiences a rare opportunity to hear Verdi’s 1857 version of this beloved opera performed to a very high standard. With more than 150 musicians on stage including The Hallé, The Chorus of Opera North and students from the Royal Northern College of Music, critics from The Times, The Telegraph, and Bachtrack awarded the concert five stars, calling the night “monumental” and “transformative.”

It was a clear demonstration of Opera Rara’s ability to combine scholarship with compelling artistry on the world stage. It was also a powerful illustration of how the charity can broker world-class artistic partnerships, in this case with two of Europe’s finest ensembles (the Hallé and the Chorus of Opera North) with a prestigious internationally renowned conservatoire (the Royal Northern College of Music).

The recording was released in March 2025, and has already been nominated for a Gramophone Award, named Editor’s Choice by many publications and was named Record of the Week by BBC Radio 3 Record Review.

IN THE PRESS

Read the reviews of Opera Rara’s latest complete opera recording.

Sir Mark Elder conducts Verdi’s original 1857 version of Simon Boccanegra

Scan the QR code to read more

At the heart of Opera Rara’s work is the act of musical restoration: uncovering and reviving operatic treasures that have been overlooked, forgotten or lost. This is perhaps best illustrated through the current Donizetti Song Project—a multi-year initiative to rediscover nearly 200 rarely, if ever heard solo songs by Gaetano Donizetti.

Working with leading Donizetti scholar Roger Parker and editor Ian Schofield, Opera Rara has painstakingly restored these works discovered in archives around the world, giving them new life both on stage and in the studio. In addition to making this music accessible, the project also creates a wider understanding of how we think of this period in music history, making a powerful argument for the importance of the Italian “school” of song in a field long dominated by German and French composers.

In the 2024/25 Season, Opera Rara continued the Donizetti & Friends series of song recitals at Wigmore Hall with performances by Ermonela Jaho on 23 May 2024 and by Rosa Feola on 2 November 2024, boththwith Carlo Rizzi at the piano. The final mainstage concert in Opera Rara’s 54 Season took place on 10 March 2025 at Cadogan Hall with Marie-Nicole Lemieux, Michael Spyres and Giulio Zappa. The performances all received four and five-star reviews being described as “fascinating” and “rewarding”. Four salon concerts were also presented at various venues in London featuring emerging singers Katia Ledoux, Jessica Robinson, Lluís Calvet i Pey and Ellie Neate with pianists Anna Tilbrook, James Southall and Florent Mourier.

All of these recitals connected not only with audiences in person but also around the world via Opera Rara’s YouTube channel with 35,470 streams.

Giulio Zappa, Marie-Nicole Lemieux and Michael Spyres at Cadogan Hall

Rosa Feola recording Donizetti Songs in the studio

Throughout the year, Opera Rara released the first four recordings in a series of eight volumes of Donizetti Songs. Volumes 1 and 2 featured tenor Lawrence Brownlee and bass-baritone Nicola Alaimo, both accompanied by pianist and Opera Rara’s Artistic Director Carlo Rizzi. Volumes 3 and 4 featured tenor Michael Spyres and mezzo-soprano Marie-Nicole Lemieux with pianists Carlo Rizzi and Giulio Zappa respectively.

DONIZETTI SONGS PLAYLIST

Enter into the studio through a curated playlist.

Scan the QR code to learn more

MADE POSSIBLE BY GENEROUS SUPPORT FROM

Elena Baturina in loving memory of Yury Luzhkov Andrea Pessino WITH ADDITIONAL SUPPORT FROM

Philip Eisenbeiss, The Colwinston Charitable Trust, Cockayne Grants for the Arts at the London Community Foundation, the Donizetti Syndicate and the Garrick Charitable Trust

Carlo Rizzi and Ermonela Jaho in performance at Wigmore Hall

Eloisa-Fleur Thom, Carlo Rizzi and Michael Spyres in the studio

“A titanic endeavor to bring together some 200 songs by Gaetano Donizetti (1797–1848)—mostly unknown —whose scores, sometimes unpublished, had been scattered across numerous European libraries.

A collection that certainly draws from the composer’s operatic writing, but also contains beautiful stylistic discoveries across a wide emotional spectrum.”

LE MONDE

Our 54th year in numbers

2,040,614

8

mainstage and salon concerts

Carlo Rizzi and Ermonela Jaho’s final bows at Wigmore Hall

5

total digital streams, downloads and views of Opera Rara’s recordings and educational videos

6

Lives in Song podcast episodes

Behind the scenes at the Creative Kin Studio

new recordings released

2,781 +14% 35,470 29,445 17,210 475,886 1,562,871 34,754,665 total concert attendees

growth in digital following

total concert streams

total online followers

YouTube content hours watched

YouTube channel views

streams of Opera Rara recordings

streams on social media channels

134

170 23

Students from the Royal Northern College of Music record with The Hallé, Chorus of Opera North, and the cast of Verdi’s original 1857 version of Simon Boccanegra conducted by Sir Mark Elder

soloists and conductors

orchestra and chorus members

total musicians and production team members

13

production team members

£1,163,422 £1,044,720 £806,406 £775,906 £30,500 148 £503,980 total annual expenditure

spent on charitable activities

Opera Rara supporter and trustee Philip Eisenbeiss with Lawrence Brownlee and Carlo Rizzi

total amount fundraised

donations from individuals including Gift Aid

Opera Rara supporters observe Lawrence Brownlee and Carlo Rizzi in the studio

grants from trusts and foundations

total individual donors

donations from individuals outside of the UK

Opera Rara supporters David de Jager and trustee Glenn Hurstfield with Ermonela Jaho

44

total international donors

£189,146 £56,337 £37,976

total ticket sales, recording sales and other revenue

revenue earned from CD sales and recording streams Katia Ledoux and Anna Tilbrook perform in a salon concert

revenue earned from ticket sales

4,690

Opera Rara recordings sold

2024

winner

= number of total award wins

84%

audience capacity at our salon concerts

Opera Rara’s Supporters THANK YOU!

Henry Little accepts the Gramophone Label of the Year award

Opera Rara’s work is only made possible by the generosity of our supporters, who believe in our mission to restore, record, perform and promote the forgotten operatic heritage of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We would like to take this opportunity to thank those individuals and foundations who have made a gift to our 2024/25 Annual Fund with a donation made between 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025.

Your continued support is vital to our success.

A full list of Opera Rara’s current Annual Fund supporters can be found at: www.opera-rara.com/list-of-supporters.

LIFETIME GUARDIANS Opera Rara is particularly grateful to those individuals and organisations who have been exceedingly generous and have been guardians of our work since 1970.

Opera Rara’s Donizetti Patron, H.E. Inigo Lambertini, Ambassador of Italy to the United Kingdom awards Opera Rara’s Artistic Director Carlo Rizzi with the Start of Italy

Members of the Opera Rara team, Warner Classics team and tenor Josh Lovell at the 2024 Opus Klassik Awards in Berlin

Charles Alexander CBE Foyle Foundation Carlo Grosso Michael Hartnall Glenn Hurstfield The Monument Trust Sir Peter Moores & the Peter Moores Foundation Stefan Olsson & John Tierney Sir Simon & Lady Virginia Robertson

GUARDIANS

Elena Baturina Carlo Grosso Stefan Olsson & John Tierney Andrea Pessino∞ CIRCLE MEMBERS

OPERA RARA CIRCLE

Philip Eisenbeiss+ ARTIST'S CIRCLE

Carlo Rizzi & Lucy Stout+ Sir Simon & Lady Virginia Robertson

◊Gift in Kind ∞American Friend +Donizetti Syndicate

PATRONS

FRIENDS

Allan Heinberg∞+ Jenny Hodgson Yvonne Horsfall Turner◊ Ditlev Rindom & Enrique Sacau Peter Rosenthal Terence & Sian Sinclair Gerry Wakelin & Ivor Samuels+

Nicholas Berwin Mackenzie Brown Anthony Freud and Colin Ure Marian Gilbart Read Glenn Hurstfield Hal Lindberg Henry Little and Prof. Maria M. Delgado Sir Timothy Lloyd Jennifer Marling∞ James Power Jackie & John Rothenberg Bradley Sabel∞ David & Unni Spiller Zachary Vanderburg & Felipe Ramos Barajas Mr Richard Anwyl Williams

BENEFACTOR

DEVOTEE

Timothy Congdon Harry Hyman Alan Jackson Leslie & Peter Macleod-Miller◊ Bruce & Sara Mauleverer David & Janet McCue∞ Sara Naudi & Prof. Mark Layton The Donizetti Society+

in memory of its Chairman Alexander Weatherson

Imogen Rumbold Mark Walker AFICIONADO

Charles Alexander CBE Claus Ambos Malcolm Barnett David Bernstein Anonymous John Chichester Sir Anthony Cleaver Marco Compagnoni Eleanor Cranmer & Nick Thomas Sir Vernon Ellis Jeff & Emily Fergus Adolfo Laurenti & Juliet Petrus Michele Leuenberger Simon Mortimore KC Alison Nicol Islée Oliva Salinas & Michael Buckley Deborah Roslund Mark Shaw Martin & Patricia Spiro

ENTHUSIAST

TRUSTS & FOUNDATIONS

Ermonela Jaho with Opera Rara Guardian Elena Baturina

CONNOISSEUR

Sir David Bean Lady Lorraine Elborough-Cook Amanda Elder Eduard Herzog Jonathan Jempson Sarah & Christopher Knight Christopher Leslie Jonathan & Fang Min Macdonald David Macfarlane Lady Carolyn Newbigging Lucie & Christopher Sims

Fellow Opera Rara Patrons Malcolm Barnett and Sara Naudi

and special thanks to our many Contributor and Member Friends

Opera Rara Patron Michele Leuenberger with soprano Rosa Feola

To support Opera Rara’s work and join us on your own journey of operatic discovery, visit:

opera-rara.com/support

Opera Rara supporter Fang Min Macdonald

Trustees, Patrons and Staff ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

Carlo Rizzi

CHIEF EXECUTIVE

Henry Little

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Charles Alexander CBE, Chairman Philip Eisenbeiss Anthony Freud OBE Glenn Hurstfield Adolfo Laurenti Bruce Mauleverer KC Simon Mortimore KC Alison Nicol Islée Oliva Salinas Terence Sinclair Nicholas Thomas DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE

Dori Dana-Haeri Glenn Hurstfield Islée Oliva Salinas Terence Sinclair John Tierney

ARTIST AMBASSADORS

Ermonela Jaho Michael Spyres

STAFF

LABEL and PRODUCTION DIRECTOR

Aurelie Baujean

FINANCE DIRECTOR

Irene Cook

DEVELOPMENT and COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR

Zachary Vanderburg

PHILANTHROPY MANAGER

Charles Knowles

DEVELOPMENT and EVENTS COORDINATOR

Orlando Querobino Vas CONSULTANTS

PRESS, PR and SOCIAL MEDIA CONSULTANT

Moë Faulkner

DIGITAL MARKETING CONSULTANT

Milly March

CASTING CONSULTANT

Jesús Iglesias Noriega REPERTOIRE CONSULTANT

Roger Parker

DEVELOPMENT CONSULTANT

Kirstin Peltonen

HONORARY ARTIST PATRON

Renée Fleming

DONIZETTI PATRON

H. E. Inigo Lambertini

the Italian Ambassador to the United Kingdom

The Chorus of Opera North, students from the Royal Northern College of Music and The Hallé perform Verdi’s original 1857 version of Simon Boccanegra with baritone Germán Enrique Alcántara in the title role

Your journey of operatic discovery continues.

Puccini’s La rondine final 1921 version Friday 5 December | 7.30PM Barbican Hall Ermonela Jaho

Iván Ayón-Rivas

Carlo Rizzi

BBC Symphony Orchestra & BBC Singers

Ruggero Lastouc

Magda de Civry conductor

Nicola Alaimo

Rambaldo Fernandez

Donizetti & Friends Tuesday 16 June 2026 | 1PM Wigmore Hall

Nicola Alaimo Carlo Rizzi bass-baritone

piano

SALON SERIES Friday 10 October | 7PM

in partnership with

Middle Temple Hall Germán Alcántara baritone

Anna Tilbrook piano

Thursday 26 February | 7PM

in partnership with

Bechstein Hall

Julieth Lozano Rolong soprano

Anna Tilbrook piano

Thursday 23 April 2026 | 7PM Bechstein Hall

Soraya Mafi Robert Lewis soprano

tenor

Anna Tilbrook piano

Our 55th season begins. Learn more at

opera-rara.com/events or by calling 020 7613 2858

OPERA RARA

No 11 Cloisters House 8 Battersea Park Road London SW8 4BG info@opera-rara.com +44 (0)20 7613 2858 Registered Charity No. 261403

2024

Explore our recordings of rare operas and see how you can help us secure their legacy for years to come at opera-rara.com Join our mailing list at opera-rara.com/mailing

winner

= number of total award wins Photos by Russell Duncan, Simon Weir, Milly March, David Hughes/The Hallé and Colin Miller/Gramophone