Between 2001 and ’22, I was tasked with finding a ‘rarely performed’ opera on an annual basis for University College Opera’s yearly production in March.
The invitation to take down a piece from the shelf that few, if any, had ever seen, then putting it on the stage, must count as one of the most desirable assignments one could have. The model was professional principal cast, director, designer, plus student chorus and orchestra, for four performances in University College London’s Bloomsbury Theatre.
Choosing the piece wisely was crucial. We all had to live by that choice. The students needed the right level of stimulation and challenge; you had to be able to cast the piece. There ideally ought to be some whiff of topicality or point of interest in that selection that caused it to edge ahead of other possible pieces one might have lighted upon at the time. So how much of a downside lay in that characterisation of ‘rarely performed’ opera? Was this obligation to investigate opera’s reject pile a restriction? What lay there, and what was it that caused an opera to find itself in the ‘rarely performed’ category?
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Esta historia es de la edición July 2023 de BBC Music Magazine.
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Discovering Donizetti - Thanks to a two-year lockdown project, nearly 200 previously lost Donizetti songs will now see the light of day
Thanks to a two-year lockdown project, nearly 200 previously lost Donizetti songs will now see the light of day. For most people, undertaking a lockdown project meant learning to bake sourdough bread, getting fit with Joe Wicks, or taking up a language. But Professor Roger Parker, the eminent historian of Italian opera and emeritus professor at King's College London, had something far more ambitious in mind. He set about unearthing songs by Gaetano Donizetti - many of which had been lost since the composer's lifetime - and the enterprise turned into a two-year labour of love.
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The spirit of soprano Birgit Nilsson is alive and well in the town of her birth, home to a festival dedicated to her memory
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\"At this moment in time we don't need more virtuosi. We need musicians to engage with the philosophy of music
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