For many years, Simon Boccanegra, concerning the pirate turned Doge of Genoa, had a reputation as a Verdi opera strictly for the connoisseurs. Happily, it has a much firmer footing in the repertory today. Composed in 1857, it was revised in 1881, when it became Verdi’s first operatic collaboration with librettist Arrigo Boito. It’s the latter version, containing the electrifying Council Chamber scene, which is most often performed, but a new studio recording by Opera Rara – Gramophone’s 2024 Label of the Year – goes back to the 1857 original, which, when I meet Chief Executive Henry Little and Repertoire Consultant Roger Parker, raises an immediate question. Opera Rara already has an 1857 Boccanegra in its catalogue, which I brandish at them. Why another recording? Little gently puts me straight. ‘Ah, that’s not an Opera Rara recording, but a BBC recording of a live performance.

‘This and Don Carlos, La forza del destino, Macbeth and Les vêpres siciliennes were all licensed to Opera Rara for sale, but they’re not Opera Rara products. There aren’t actually any copies left as it’s been out of stock for some time now. Also, there is no digital version because the licence deal with the BBC extended exclusively to the physical format. So this will be the first studio recording of the 1857 version that will not only be available on CD, it will also be available digitally.’

‘My criterion when deciding on any of these operas’, explains Parker, ‘is that it doesn’t necessarily have to be the first ever recording, but it has to be the best recording. Without casting any aspersions – that BBC recording is rather nice – I think this one puts the work in a different light. It’s an attempt to think seriously about why this version of the opera is not performed. And the obvious reason is that, 24 years later, Verdi had another go at it. But that’s not sufficient reason to ignore this one because it’s part of the history of Verdi in the 1850s and it deserves to be thought about as part of Verdi’s output, not as a failed attempt to try to do something which he redid later.’

Verdi was going through a period of great transition in the 1850s. After the ear-popping Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La traviata, there’s his attempt at French grand opera with Les vêpres siciliennes in 1855. And then, two years later, along comes Boccanegra.

I ask Parker, whose new critical edition was published by Ricordi in 2021, to explain what surprises people can expect to hear when they listen to the original. ‘The entire first act finale is completely different from the later version. Indeed, in the first half of the opera, 50 per cent of it is different. It’s much sparer, more stylistically coherent. You hear the relationship between Boccanegra and Trovatore or Vêpres. The remarkable thing about the revised Boccanegra is that it’s looking forwards rather than backwards – so much of it is reminiscent of Otello and Falstaff, with a completely different attitude to orchestral sonorities. I’m not saying better or worse, but it’s just different – really different. The 1850s was Verdi’s most varied decade, with Boccanegra right in the middle – an attempt to do something extraordinary.’

Eri Nakamura (Amelia) (photo: Simon Weir)

I wonder what discoveries Parker made when preparing his edition. ‘Previous editions of the 1857 Boccanegra were done from copies,’ he explains, ‘which are pretty accurate as far as the text and notes are concerned, but they don’t include articulation – the slurs, dynamics and staccato accents. The copyists were working at speed and they just didn’t care. But Verdi really did care. He lodged his autograph scores with Ricordi, and if he wanted to change something, he went back to the autograph and changed it. So the autograph has huge numbers of very specific instructions about how to perform this opera, which means the one major change you’ll hear is in this sort of spiky exterior that he’s got with not much legato anywhere. Doing that in collaboration with conductor Sir Mark Elder, who is incredibly forensic about every single detail, was really an incredible education.’

The studio recording was made last year, followed by a concert performance at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall. ‘Our overarching approach is what I call live operatic archaeology,’ says Little, ‘which is to say that the ambition to focus on a particular opera starts a very long time beforehand, sometimes five years, sometimes even more. It was exactly that with Boccanegra. I joined Opera Rara at the end of 2015, more or less in the middle of Mark’s tenure as Artistic Director, and even then the idea of Boccanegra was under discussion. We had to find the right place in the schedule. At Opera Rara, we need to be confident that we can do that piece better than anybody else has ever done it. That’s really important given our particular USP.

‘We were particularly keen to have Mark and the Hallé for very obvious reasons. Mark’s tenure at the Hallé has been fantastic by any stretch of the imagination, and the relationship that he has with those players in Manchester seemed to us a very clear no-brainer that we should do the project with them. Doing the concert performance at the Bridgewater Hall was quite a risky and ambitious thing, given the fact that this 1857 version isn’t well known, but that performance was a particular success. It felt like a really strong climax to the incredibly intense period we’d all spent together in making the studio recording – this opportunity to perform the whole thing to thousands in concert. I’ve been in the job for nearly 10 years and I would say that this was among our strongest concert performances.’

Germán Enrique Alcántara (Simon Boccanegra) (photo: Simon Weir)

When I started building my CD collection in the 1990s, studio recordings of operas were a regular occurrence. Nowadays, if you get a new opera recording at all, it tends to be something that’s been recorded in concert, maybe with a patching session. Opera Rara is distinctive in focusing on proper studio recordings, although this is massively expensive. How does the company do it? ‘We do it through the incredible loyalty and generosity of our many supporters,’ Little tells me, appreciatively. ‘As Roger says, we choose to invest in this incredibly painstaking process because we know that it delivers such strong and rich artistic results. There are lots of obvious ways that it can be done much more cheaply, but given the fact that we focus on two major studio opera recording projects each year, it’s beholden upon us to make sure we can deliver them to as excellent a standard as possible. That’s why we choose to continue with the studio process; and that’s the message that we send to our supporters: no one except Opera Rara is investing the care and attention to detail that comes with a studio recording process, and that’s why it’s worth supporting, particularly for a title that’s not well known.’

One of the other things that Opera Rara does is invest in young singers. This Boccanegra features soprano Eri Nakamura (41 at time of recording), tenor Iván Ayón-Rivas (now 32), bass William Thomas (29 at time of recording) and, in the title-role, baritone Germán Enrique Alcántara (37). ‘This is something that’s been part of our DNA since the very beginning,’ Little explains. ‘It goes back to Patric Schmid’s approach. He was, with considerable support from Peter Moores, really good at spotting very young artists at a point when no one had ever heard of them. We’ve got the skills and the artistic insight to know what’s right for a particular young singer to do and what they shouldn’t do – it’s an artistic progression through a series of repertoires, if you like, that’s always been part of the Opera Rara approach. Remember, Renée Fleming [now the company’s Honorary Artist Patron] made her very first complete opera recording with us. And there are many other examples: Nelly Miricioiu, Carmen Giannattasio, Bruce Ford.’ Parker chips in: ‘And with Michael Spyres and Ermonela Jaho, that process is still going on.’

The Peruvian Ayón-Rivas, who in 2022 sang on Opera Rara’s recording of Mercadante’s Il proscritto, tells me: ‘It’s a beautiful experience recording with Opera Rara. It’s a great honour because my teacher, Roberto Servile, recorded with Opera Rara many years ago, so it’s beautiful, continuing this tradition.’

On the same Zoom call is the Argentinian Alcántara, who jumped into the title-role at almost the last moment after the withdrawal of both Igor Golovatenko (due to an overbooked schedule) and his replacement Nicola Alaimo (illness). ‘At that point, we had to scramble,’ Little confesses, ‘and think very creatively, very quickly. I started phoning my friends big time. Luckily, I’ve got some incredibly experienced, very wise, clever and helpful friends in the opera business, both here and abroad. And that’s how Germán’s name came up. I wrote to one of my friends to check if we were doing something stupidly insane. I got an immediate reply, saying, “Henry, if I had a Boccanegra to offer him starting in a week, I would do it.” And that got us over the line. What a discovery – incredible artistry, energy and drive! That’s also the terrifically impressive thing that comes with working with young artists – they’re so excited by the opportunity. They rightly see the enormous potential for them of this kind of collaboration.’

‘I never thought I would be singing Simon Boccanegra as my first big Verdi role!’ Alcántara tells me. ‘We tend to think these baritone roles should be cast with someone who is a certain age. They are the bad guys, the fathers, the kings. We usually have to wait for a long time to get to these roles, but I think this version of Boccanegra challenged everyone’s thinking. You see a lot of these roles coming from bel canto. I’ve been doing a lot of Donizetti and Mercadante, and you recognise all of this music on the written page of Boccanegra. There’s plenty of articulation, plenty of fury, but it’s also very high, especially the cadenza in the duet with the soprano.’

‘It’s beautiful,’ agrees Ayón-Rivas. ‘It’s bel canto. If you sing Donizetti or Bellini and then you sing Verdi, it’s the same thing. It’s about the meaning of the word.’ Alcántara chimes in: ‘La parola Verdiana.’

Both singers relished the recording process and the opportunity to sing the opera in concert with Elder and the Hallé afterwards. ‘I had never been in a production where the people are not only friendly, but also taking care of everyone as a little family,’ reveals Alcántara. ‘I know that a lot of the time we talk about family in opera, but in this case there was something special. The concert was cathartic. I felt so blessed that night.’ Ayón-Rivas agrees: ‘When you record something like Simon Boccanegra, you have to be careful because you risk a lot. In the first recording session of my aria, I gave so much in the rehearsal that when we started to record, I was a little tired. You have to pace yourself. But at the concert you have to give everything.’

Little reflects on the Label of the Year award. ‘This is a kind of clichéd phrase, but it’s such a terrific vote of confidence in what we’ve been doing, especially when that kind of accolade usually goes to much larger labels than us. In a way, this award is as much for our supporters, a vindication of their faith. Without their help, we couldn’t have done what we’ve done.’

Right now, Little is focused on the completion of the Donizetti Song Project. The next major studio opera recording will be Puccini’s La rondine featuring soprano Ermonela Jaho and capturing a brand new version that has never been recorded before. I ask about what else features on Little and Parker’s wish lists. ‘We would certainly like to do another Offenbach piece,’ reveals Little. ‘We’re already looking at one specific title that we’re interested in. We would also like to continue the exploration of Mercadante off the back of the success of Proscritto in Roger’s edition. There is also the idea of doing one of the French grand operas, which is quite an elusive thing, because it’s quite tricky to have confidence in their merit.

‘I would say there are more Donizetti titles that we would like to look at.’ Parker adds: ‘If there’s a cliché about Donizetti, it’s that his real career began in 1830 with Anna Bolena. We have to make people rethink that. It’s very good having this verismo thread though. There are some interesting Leoncavallo works, including another version of the La bohème story, for instance, called Mimì Pinson.’

Talking of French opera, I ask Little whether there is ever any kind of cross-consultation with a company like Palazzetto Bru Zane which might be doing the same kind of repertoire. ‘We’re in pretty regular touch with them,’ he replies, ‘to talk about what each other is doing or even about potentially working with them. That’s something that used to happen – our recording of Offenbach’s Fantasio was actually done in association with Bru Zane way back during Mark’s tenure. So we’re absolutely up for collaboration.’

Coming full circle back to the new Boccanegra, I ask whether they would think about recording other rarer Verdi. ‘We’ve been thinking about La forza del destino,’ suggests Parker, ‘which is one where Henry shudders every time I mention it because of the cost!’

‘I think we’ve got to be careful’, says Little, ‘that whatever we do has what I call the Opera Rara USP, the DNA. We’ve got to be absolutely satisfied that a title hits the right criteria. I’m absolutely convinced that Boccanegra does.’