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Bechs

SORAYA MAFI, ROBERT LEWIS & ANNA TILBROOK

curated by Roger Parker

The concert will finish at approximately 8 15pm, without interval

Welcome g g

SalonSeries, and toOperaRara’s DonizettiSyndicate, theColwin

CockayneGrants for theArts at theLondonCommunity Foundat

support of theDonizettiSongProject, as wellas toHis Excellency

OperaRara’s DonizettiPatron.

Wehope you enjoy tonight’s concert

Henry Little

ChiefExecutive

OperaRara

Composer Song

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)

Georges Bizet (1838-1875)

Franz Liszt (1811-1886)

Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848)

Roger Quilter (1877-1953)

Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900)

Henry Bishop (1785-1855)

Gaetano Donizetti

Les roses d’Ispahan

Le Tournoiement

Adieux de l’hôtesse arabe

Soraya Mafi, soprano

Robert Lewis, tenor

Anna Tilbrook, piano

Poet

Charles Marie René Leconte de Lisle

Armand Renaud

Victor Hugo

Pace non trovo

Benedetto sia ’l giorno

Io d’amor, oh Dio, mi moro

Pietro Metastasio

Three Shakespeare Songs, Op 6 “Come away, death” “O mistress mine” “Blow, blow thou winter wind”

Orpheus with his lute

Lo! Here the gentle lark

William Shakespeare

Uno sguardo di nera pupilla

Michele Palazzolo

ProgrammeNoteandTexts

Opera Rara’s Donizetti Song Project

One of Opera Rara’s most ambitious projects in its more than fifty-year history is to record the complete solo songs of Gaetano Donizetti

A handful of these songs have been long known and often performed; many more were listed in specialist catalogues but very rarely if ever performed; others still were completely unknown or thought lost and have now come to light

Recent research connected with this project has made clear that, in total, Donizetti wrote some 200 solo songs over the course of his thirty-year career

Making modern editions of this vast corpus has been challenging: the songs are dispersed in European libraries and beyond, often having been casually given away at the time of composition (typically as a present to the dedicatee)

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

The Donizetti Song Project is based on a new edition of the composer’s complete solo songs, concluded by Roger Parker and Ian Schofield

All Donizetti commentary, texts and translations in this programme book have been provided by Roger Parker, with additional translations from Oxford International Song Festival and Lieder.net.

For a collection of clips from the recital hall and the recording studio, visit our YouTube channel at youtube.com/@operararaofficial.

This June, hear new songs by Donizetti at Wigmore Hall.

Praised internationally for his commanding stage presence and vocal artistry, Italian bass-baritone

Nicola Alaimo makes a welcome appearance at Wigmore Hall in a programme that brings together the wit, elegance and lyricism of early 19th-century Italian song

Joined by pianist and Opera Rara’s Artistic Director Carlo Rizzi, with appearances by cellist Hetty Snell, Alaimo explores the rarely heard world of Donizetti’s solo songs alongside works by Rossini, Bellini, and Mercadante The recital highlights the ingenuity and invention of composers best known for their operatic triumphs, yet whose songs are often neglected

Tuesday 16 June | 1.00PM

Nicola Alaimo bass-baritone Carlo Rizzi piano with Hetty Snell cello Learn more at opera-rara.com/events tickets are on sale now!

Les roses d’Ispahan

Les roses d’Ispahandans leur gainedemousse,

Les jasmins de Mossoul, les fleurs de l’oranger

Ont un parfum moins frais, ont une odeur moins douce,

Ô blanche Leïlah! que ton souffle léger

Ta lèvre est de corail, et ton rire léger

Sonne mieux que l’eau vive et d’une voix plus douce,

Mieux que le vent joyeux qui berce l’oranger,

Mieux que l’oiseau qui chante au bord d’un nid de mousse …

Ô Leïlah! depuis que de leur vol léger

Tous les baisers ont fui de ta lèvre si douce,

Il n’est plus de parfum dans le pâle oranger,

Ni de céleste arome aux roses dans leur mousse

Oh! que ton jeune amour, ce papillon léger,

Revienne vers mon cœur d’une aile

prompte et douce,

Et qu’il parfume encor les fleurs de l’oranger,

Les roses d’Ispahandans leur gainedemousse !

The roses of Isfahan in their mossy sheaths,

The jasmines of Mosul, the orange blossom

Have a fragrance less fresh and a scent less sweet,

O pale Leilah, than your soft breath!

Your lips are of coral and your light laughter

Rings brighter and sweeter than running water,

Than the blithe wind rocking the orangetree boughs,

Than the singing bird by its mossy nest…

O Leilah, ever since on light wings

All kisses have flown from your sweet lips,

The pale orange-tree fragrance is spent,

And the heavenly scent of moss-clad roses

Oh! may your young love, that airy butterfly,

Wing swiftly and gently to my heart once more,

To scent again the orange blossom,

The roses of Isfahan in their mossy sheaths!

g Detournerjenecessepoint

Soumisauxloisquerienn'ajourne,

Camille Saint-Saëns

Auxloisquesuitl'astreensonvol,

Jetourne, jetourne, jetourne ;

Mespiedsnetouchentpluslesol.

Jemonteaufirmamentnocturne ;

Devantlalunetaciturne,

DevantJupiteretSaturne,

Jepasseavecunsifflement,

EtjefranchisleCapricorne,

Etjem'abîmeaugouffremorne

Delanuitcomplèteetsansborne

Oùjetourneéternellement

Georges Bizet

méchants,

Un éventail de feuilles vertes.

Si tu ne reviens pas, songe un peu quelquefois

Aux filles du désert, sœurs à la douce voix,

Qui dansent pieds nus sur la dune;

O beau jeune homme blanc, bel oiseau

passager, Souviens-toi, car peut-être, ô rapide étranger,

Ton souvenir reste à plus d’une !

Hélas ! Adieu ! bel étranger ! Souviens-toi !

A night over 100 years in the making. Puccini’s final 1921 version of Larondine

Come away, death

Come away, come away, death,

And in sad cypress let me be laid

Fly away, fly away, breath;

I am slain by a fair cruel maid

My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,

O, prepare it!

My part of death, no one so true

Did share it

Not a flower, not a flower sweet,

On my black coffin let there be strown

Not a friend, not a friend greet

My poor corpse, where my bones shall

be thrown

A thousand thousand sighs to save,

Lay me, O, where

Sad true lover never find my grave,

To weep there!

O mistress mine

O mistress mine, where are you

roaming?

O stay and hear; your true love’s coming,

That can sing both high and low;

Trip no further, pretty sweeting;

Journeys end in lovers’ meeting,

Every wise man’s son doth know

What is love? ’tis not hereafter;

Present mirth hath present laughter;

What’s to come is still unsure:

In delay there lies no plenty;

Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty;

Youth’s a stuff will not endure

Blow, blow thou winter wind

Blow, blow thou winter wind,

Thou art not so unkind

As man’s ingratitude;

Thy tooth is not so keen

Although thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude

Heigh ho! sing heigh ho!

Unto the green holly:

Most friendship is feigning,

Most loving mere folly:

Then, heigh ho! the holly!

This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze thou bitter sky,

Thou dost not bite so nigh

As benefits forgot:

Though thou the waters warp,

Thy sting is not so sharp

As friend remember’d not

Heigh ho! sing heigh ho!

unto the green holly:

Most friendship is feigning,

most loving mere folly

Then, heigh ho! the holly!

This life is most jolly

rpheus with his lute

Orpheus with his lute made trees,

And the mountain-tops that freeze,

Bow themselves, when he did sing:

To his music, plants and flowers

Ever sprung; as sun and showers

There had made a lasting spring

Everything that heard him play,

Even the billows of the sea,

Hung their heads, and then lay by.

In sweet music is such art:

Killing care and grief of heart

Fall asleep, or, hearing, die.

Lo! Here the gentle lark

Lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest,

From his moist cabinet mounts up on high,

And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast

The sun ariseth in his majesty;

Who doth the world so gloriously behold

That cedar-tops and hills seem burnish'd gold

Venus salutes him with this fair good-morrow:

'O thou clear god, and patron of all light,

From whom each lamp and shining star doth borrow

The beauteous influence that makes him bright,

There lives a son that suck'd an earthly mother,

May lend thee light, as thou dost lend to other

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SorayaMafi

Lancashire-born soprano Soraya

Mafi studied at the Royal Northern College of Music and Royal College of Music, supported by the Help Musicians UK Sybil Tutton Award

Soraya’s many awards and prizes include the Maggie Teyte Prize in 2014 and the Susan Chilcott Award in 2016 She was also the 2nd Prize winner in the 2015 Kathleen Ferrier

Awards and is an Associate of the RNCM, an honour conferred upon recent alumni making an outstanding contribution in the early stages of their career.

Recent highlights include Tytania (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) for the

Glyndebourne Festival and Opéra de Rouen, Valencienne (The Merry Widow) at

Glyndebourne, and Ismene (Mitridate, re di Ponto) for Garsington Opera. This season she sings Gilda (Rigoletto) with Welsh National Opera and Irish National Opera, Pamina (Die Zauberflöte) at Opera North, and Michal (Saul) at

Glyndebourne, with future plans including Cunegonde (Candide) for WNO and Nitocris (Belshazzar) at Komische Oper Berlin

A former ENO Harewood Artist, her roles there include Tytania, Mabel, Yum-Yum and Amor, with further appearances as Susanna (Le nozze di Figaro), Despina (Così fan tutte), Morgana (Alcina), Anne Trulove (The Rake’s Progress), Musetta (La bohème), Nanetta (Falstaff), Gretel (Hänsel und Gretel) and Cleopatra (Giulio

Cesare)

On the concert platform she has performed with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, BBC Symphony, Bournemouth Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Academy of Ancient Music and Ensemble Matheus, and in recital at Wigmore Hall, Philharmonie Luxembourg, Oxford and Buxton Lieder Festivals, Ludlow English Song Weekend, Covent Garden and Opéra de Lille.

This is her debut with Opera Rara

Robert Lewis is the winner of the 2025

Tenor Viñas Competition Domingo

Prize A former Jerwood Artist at the

Glyndebourne Festival Opera, he began forging his professional career in one of the world’s most respected young artist programmes, the Opéra national de Lyon Studio, where he sang a wide range of roles spanning Mozart to

Strauss and Janáček, including Don Curzio in Le nozze di Figaro and Janek in The Makropoulos Affair He made his major festival debut at the Festival d’Aixen-Provence as Andres in Wozzeck

with the London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Simon Rattle

In 2026, he returned to the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence as Der Bucklige and Die Erscheinung eines Jünglings in Barrie Kosky’s new production of Die Frau ohne Schatten conducted by Klaus Mäkelä, and he also made his debut in the role of Erik in Der fliegende Holländer at the Opéra de Rouen Normandie He returned to the Opéra de Lyon as Edmundo in Manon Lescaut and made his debut for Glyndebourne as Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Other highlights have included Andres and Ferrando in Così fan tutte for the Opéra national de Lyon, Lensky in Eugene Onegin for the Opéra national de Lorraine and Der Bucklige in Die Frau ohne Schatten for the Dutch National Opera

He is also building a notable concert profile. Highlights include performances as Alfred in Die Fledermaus on tour with Les Musiciens du Louvre under Marc Minkowski, Britten’s War Requiem with the Tokyo Philharmonic conducted by Jonathan Nott and Don José in concert performances of Carmen in the Philharmonie de Paris with Divertimento and conductor Zahia Ziouani and a Russian operatic programme with the Orchestra of Scottish Opera conducted by Stuart Stratford

Robert Lewis made his debut with Opera Rara in 2026, with the recording and performance of Puccini's final 1921 version of La rondine, to be released in October this year

Anna Tilbrook has been a regular

artist at all the major concert halls and festivals since her debut at the Wigmore Hall in 1999 and frequently broadcasts for Radio 3

She has collaborated with many leading singers and instrumentalists including Lucy Crowe, James Gilchrist, Ian Bostridge, Mary Bevan, Sophie Bevan, Barbara Hannigan, Sir John Tomlinson, Sir Willard White, Roderick Williams Matthew Rose, Nicholas Daniel, Michael Collins, Natalie Clein, Philip Dukes, Jack Liebeck, Pavel Šporcl, Elise Båtnes,

RogerParker

Roger Parker is Professor Emeritus

at King's College London. He studied

at the University of London, first at

Goldsmiths College, then at King’s

College In 1982 he moved to Cornell

University in upstate New York where he was Assistant Professor and then Associate Professor In

1994 he returned to England to become a Lecturer in Music (later

Professor) and Fellow of St Hugh’s

College, Oxford. In 1999 he became Professor of Music at Cambridge, where he was a Fellow of St John’s

College and (in 2005-6) Chair of the School of Arts and Humanities

In 2002 he was the Visiting Ernest Bloch Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley; in 2007 he was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study at

Princeton From 2006 to 2010 he delivered four series of free public lectures as Professor of Music at Gresham College.

For many years Roger’s work has centred on opera, in particular Italian opera of the 19th century For ten years he was founding co-editor of the Cambridge Opera Journal, and he continues as General Editor of the Donizetti Critical Edition

He received the Premio Giuseppe Verdi in 1986, was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1986-7, in 1991 was awarded the Dent Medal of the Royal Musical Association and in 2008 was elected a Fellow of the British Academy

Roger writes regular reviews for Opera magazine, has written numerous programme books for the major opera houses (Royal Opera, ENO, Glyndebourne) and appears often on BBC Radio 3

Roger Parker is Opera Rara's Repertoire Consultant. He has overseen the creation of several performing editions for Opera Rara, with recent titles including Il Paria by Donizetti, Il proscritto by Mercadante, and L’esule di Roma by Donizetti He is also the editor of Opera Rara’s most recent complete opera recording, the 1857 version of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra, and he has discovered and edited ongs by Donizetti, forming Opera Rara’s Donizetti Song Project.

Trustees,PatronsandStaff

ofDonizettiSongs

Internationally renowned soprano Renée Fleming, whoma recordingdebut withOperaRarain 1994 inDonizetti’s Rosm Honorary Artist Patron In 2022, markingDonizetti’s 225thbi

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Ermonela Jaho and Michael Spyres as Artist Ambassador longandacclaimed work with thecompany.

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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 Annual Fund* Your continued support is vital to our success

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