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.

-  By Alexandra Wilson

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.

The nearly 200 songs Parker found, which he has edited with Ian Schofield, have formed the basis for a multi-part performing and recording project by Opera Rara, for whom Parker is repertoire consultant. The project launched last September with a Wigmore Hall recital by tenor Lawrence Brownlee, accompanied by Carlo Rizzi. Further recitals have followed, with more to come, plus a series of 'salon concerts' by emerging artists. Eight albums are planned over the next few years, the first two to be released in October, and big names associated with the project include Opera Rara artistic ambassadors Ermonela Jaho and Michael Spyres.

The songs that Parker discovered - with the assistance of a network of obliging librarians were located all over the world. The autographs had found their way to Britain, Sweden, Australia, the US and beyond, because of Donizetti's propensity for giving them away as presents. This was disposable music: performed a handful of times and then discarded, in a musical context that demanded constant novelty. One of the most incredible discoveries was a cache of some 25 songs last heard of in the possession of the Marchesa di Medici in Rome in the late 1940s. Parker tracked the collection to a monastery in Linz, and persuaded the puzzled priest to go into the archive with a mobile phone.