Opera Rara. We hope you read HIGH FIDELITY'S classified ads as avidly as we do. Recently we were intrigued by the announcement of recordings by Opera Rara in London and wrote for more information. Along with de tailed descriptive material, we received a long and informative letter from Opera Rara's Don White, explaining what the organization is and how the Opera Rara Record Club came to be. We quote in part: "Opera Rara was formed in 1970, the brainchild of Patric Schmid of San Francisco and myself. In the past seven years Opera Rara has given the first modern revivals of Meyerbeer's 11 Crociato in Egitto and L'Etoile du nord, Mayr's Medea in Corinto (in its original 1813 Naples edition), Merca dante's Gli Orazi e i Curiazi and Virginia, Offenbach's Robinson Crusoe and Christopher Columbus, Viardot's Cendrillon, Poniatowski's Au travers du mur, and Donizetti's Maria Pa dilla, Maria di Rudenz, Rosmonda d'Inghilterra, Castello di Kenilworth, Torquato Tasso, L'Ajo nell'imba razzo, Le Convenienze teatrali (one-act version), and the Malibran edition of Maria Stuarda. Apart from Medea in Corinto (available on commercial disc), every one of these has turned up on pirate records! "We therefore decided to beat the pirates at their own game by making the records ourselves, commercially.
The biggest problem was, of course, how to pay for the recordings, when a three-disc set costs in the region of $40,000 to package (even with young artists and conductors not well known to the record-buying public).
Our answer was a subscription club, with the purchasers themselves paying for each recording in advance.
Would it work? The response has been incredible. Our first recording, Donizetti's Ugo, conte di Parigi, is al ready paid for and will be done in July with Janet Price as Bianca, Yvonne Kenny as Adelia, Christian du Plessis as Folco d'Anjou, and Alun Francis conducting the New Philharmonia Orchestra (Bob Auger, probably the most famous British recording engineer, will be in charge of the technical side) and will be available to members in mid-August. As there will be no public performance, there cannot be a pirate recording of it either! The second recording, Offenbach's Christopher Columbus, is nearly paid for [as of April 29].
"The other wonderful indication of interest is the response to the 'members' request' panel in our brochure.
The most requested work is Donizetti's L'Assedio di Calais, and this will most definitely be in our second recording season. Not far behind are practically anything by Mercadante, Gomes' II Guarany, Pacini's Maria Tudor ... so there is no chance of our running out of ideas for the next hundred years! "Opera Rara has also become famous for discovering new young talent, and our list of discoveries includes Christian du Plessis, Janet Price, Yvonne Kenny, Sandra Browne, Graham Clark, Bruce Brewer. Some have made their U.S.
debuts already (Price in San Antonio's Rienzi, American-born Brewer with Beverly Sills in Barber of Seville); Brewer has sung in Rameau's Indes galantes for CBS, while Du Plessis is known for his Cecil in Sills's Stuarda and recently sang Mathisen in the CBS Prophete." The plan is to record four operas a year (including one by Donizetti), with all members agreeing to buy at least three of the four. Planned for the first year, in addition to the Donizetti and Offenbach works (the latter in an English translation by White), are Meyerbeer's Dinorah and the Ricci brothers' Crispino e la comare. Each set will include three stereo discs and a full libretto, and each will cost £8.99 (or $20 if you pay in dollars) plus postage. There are discount prices for prepayment of three or all four of the year's offerings: £24.28 ($50) plus postage for three sets, £32.37 ($65) plus postage for four.
Postage for U.S. and Canadian members is $5.70 per set surface mail, $8.00 per set by air. Write to the Member ship Secretary, Opera Rara Record Club, 8 Haverstock St., London N1 2DL, England.
Early Music Group. Reviewing the late David Munrow's "The Art of the Netherlands" in August, Susan T. Sommer had special praise for lutenist James Tyler, who was performing at the time with Munrow's Early Music Consort of London. Last year, how ever, Tyler-an American who began his career as soloist with the New York Pro Musica-formed his own group, appropriately enough called the London Early Music Group. Now Tyler and his ensemble have been signed to an exclusive RCA contract, no doubt reflecting the increasing impact of the pre-baroque in the market place. Already in the advanced planning stage, we are told, is an extensive series devoted to Byrd, Taverner, Dunstable, and other English composers of the period.
Stoky/CBS: Year Two. Leopold Stokowski celebrated his ninety-fifth birthday recording Brahms's Second Symphony with the National Philharmonic for CBS, his first recording of the work since his late-Twenties version with the Philadelphia Orchestra.
The filler, the Tragic Overture, is apparently a Stoky recorded first (in deed the conductor didn't recall playing the piece since the Thirties).
For the second year of his six-year CBS contract, Stokowski has a number of projects firmly lined up-including a coupling of Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony and Bizet's Sym phony in C, Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony, and Beethoven's Pastoral.
Vladimir Ashkenazy, entrepreneur/ conductor. Gale Records (for first re views, see page 112) is planning to re cord pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy as a conductor. We understand that one work being considered is Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony. Ashkenazy, who is a partner in the company, has appeared before the recording mikes as a conductor frequently, for both Decca/London and EMI. And, yes, Gale is the same Ira Gale whose turn table caused such a stir in the audio world a year or so back.
Enticements from MHS. Musical Heritage Society has put into effect a new price policy for all releases. The $3.50 per-disc ($4.95-per-cassette) price re mains in effect for MHS members, but the price for nonmembers has been raised to $4.95 per disc ($6.95 per cassette).
That may, however, sound more onerous than it is, for MHS membership still involves neither cost nor obligation. Members now receive notice of new releases (among many other things) in the form of Musical Heritage Review Magazine, published eighteen times a year and sent free to MHS members. As always, members may buy as many or as few records as they wish. If that sounds like an irresistible invitation, you can get more information from Musical Heritage Society, MHS Building, Oakhurst, N.J. 07755.
Dorati's Seasons. Antal Dorati has re corded his second Haydn oratorio for Decca/London. Like the earlier Creation, The Seasons features the Royal Philharmonic and the Brighton Festival Chorus; the soloists are soprano Ileana Cotrubas, tenor Werner Krenn, and bass Hans Sotin. (For Decca/Lon don, Dorati has also recorded his own Johann Strauss-derived ballet Graduation Ball with the Vienna Philharmonic; his new Beethoven-symphony cycle with the Royal Philharmonic is scheduled for domestic issue in the Mercury Golden Imports series.) Mrs. Dorati's Haydn. Dorati's wife, pianist Ilse von Alpenheim, has also been recording Haydn-the piano sonatas, for Vox. The sessions in the Rosslyn Hill chapel, Hampstead, are being engineered by a Decca/London team; the latter company, of course, is nearing completion of its own Haydn series, by pianist John McCabe (issued domestically on the London Treasury label).
Kontarskys signed. The brothers Kontarsky, Alfons and Aloys, have signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon, extending the relation ship that has produced recordings of the four-hand piano works of Debussy and Ravel and the Brahms Hungarian Dances. Already on tape are works by Stravinsky and Bartok; fu ture plans include works by Schubert, Brahms, and Schumann.
Fitzwilliam Shostakovich. It's now official: England's young Fitzwilliam Quartet-whose two Oiseau-Lyre discs of Shostakovich quartets (Nos. 7, 13, and 14 on DSLO 9, May 1976; Nos. 8 and 15 on DSLO 11, February 1977) have won high praise in these pages is now under contract to complete the cycle.
Boulez' Schoenberg. With soprano Janis Martin and the BBC Symphony, Pierre Boulez has recorded Schoen berg's Erwartung for CBS. The likely coupling: an as yet unscheduled recording of Die ghickliche Hand.
Pavarotti's Pag. Readers will recall our earlier report of Luciano Pava rotti's Decca/London recording of Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana, into which Julia Varady stepped at the eleventh hour as Santuzza. (The Alfio was Piero Cappuccilli, the conductor Gianandrea Gavazzeni.) Now the tenor has added Leoncavallo's I Fag liacci, for issue in tandem with the Cav, though the two have only Pavarotti in common. In Pag, Mirella Freni sings Nedda, Ingvar Wixell is Tonio, and Giuseppe Patane conducts.
Recorded at the same time is a second "Pavarotti in Concert" recital of arie antiche.
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(High Fidelity, Oct. 1977)
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