Like a metaphor, the water crept across the marble floor from two directions, a rising canal on one side and a rapidly flooding garden on the other. A warm May night in Venice had brought heavy rain to meet an unusually high tide. Concert-goers at Palazzetto Bru Zane descended a frescoed staircase from the galleried first-floor recital room to find the ground floor awash, with waiters in wellies sweeping the worst of the water away before calmly pouring chilled prosecco.

That surreptitious seeping seemed strangely appropriate for an institution whose raison d’etre is to ensure that French Romantic music drips into the consciousness of music-lovers everywhere. Yes, that’s right: French music, researched, published, and often financed, from a Venetian palazzo. The Centre de Musique Romantique Française is a truly singular organisation, one that aims to put lost or neglected French Romantic opera, orchestral music and chamber works back on the map in the 21st century, much in the way that Versailles engendered the revival of French baroque music in the 20th century.

(Photo: Matteo De Fina)

That wet night, lightning flashed and thunder roared as accomplished young members of the Academy of the National Opera of Paris gave one of the regular chamber concerts held at the Palazzetto, a delightfully curated recital of songs by Gabriel Fauré and his contemporaries. Afterwards they, like the audience, became marooned in the Palazzetto, unable to leave because of the torrential rain. There was nothing for it but to drink more sparkling wine until the weather improved. It’s a hard life sometimes.

This engine of musical enterprise was established in 2006 by the distinguished physician, researcher and businesswoman, Dr Nicole Bru. The Bru Zane Foundation is the fruit of her love both for Venice and for the music of her native land. As a pharmaceutical scientist and entrepreneur she wanted a meticulous, analytical approach taken towards the research and development of neglected scores, while also giving something back to the La Serenissima. So she bought Palazzetto Zane, which dates from 1695, and spent three years restoring it. Now, alongside the intense academic work, music-loving Venetians and discerning tourists can enjoy a concert series in this elegant building where 1,000 schoolchildren are also welcomed every year to take part in the Foundation’s educational endeavours.

‘We want to restore this music to illustrate the richness of the 19th-century French repertoire,’ says Rosa Giglio, artistic coordinator, who remembers when the Foundation started out with a staff of just three. She praises the generosity of Dr Bru and the freedom she allows the Foundation to make its own artistic decisions.

Since those early days some 20 more people have joined the staff, researching and publishing scores that they then bring to life by approaching opera companies and orchestras across Europe, Asia and America, often providing funding to help the project become reality.

Collaborating with conservatoires, universities and research centres, they also publish correspondence and memoirs, aiming for a better understanding of the Romantic period and revealing unjustly forgotten composers and works. Palazzetto Bru Zane has also established itself as a leader in recording French music, winning awards for both the quality of performances and the scholarship behind them.

The original linograph poster for the 1875 production of Bizet’s Carmen

This scholarly approach pays huge dividends for audiences, who in the past season have been introduced to, for example, Reynaldo Hahn’s comic opera Ô mon bel inconnu, both through live performance in Munich and Rouen and through a lavishly researched recording. The Foundation also recorded Hahn’s complete songs, published a biography, and made available further digital resources, offering a complete picture of the composer. Neglected female composers are also high on the list of priorities, with Fausto, a lost opera by Louise Bertin (1805-1877), given new life in productions in Paris and Essen last season, a project that also produced a recording that won high praise from the critics.

The 2024-25 season will see the 150th anniversary of Bizet’s Carmen, and mark the composer’s untimely death just three months after the opera’s premiere. Excitingly, the Foundation’s researchers discovered the first 1875 production’s scenery and costume designs and a handbook of very strict directions for the singers. A recreation of that original production was mounted in Rouen in 2023, with costumes by Christian Lacroux, and its revival at Versailles in January and in Hong Kong in March promises to be a stand-out event in the Foundation’s cycle ‘Bizet, the Rebellious Bird’. The operetta Le Docteur Miracle will travel between Poitiers, Bordeaux, Venice, Normandy and Switzerland. Paired with the stage music of L’Arlésienne it willgo to Tours in October this year, and theThéâtre du Châtelet, Paris, in May and June next year, while a symposium at the Opéra-Comique will bring together researchers to discuss the composer. The Foundation is also producing several recordings and books on unknown works by Bizet, including Djamileh, Vasco de Gama, Le Retour de Virginie, Le Golfe de Baïa and others.

L’Ancêtre by Camille Saint-Saëns will be staged in Monaco in October, Mazeppa by Clémence de Grandval in Munich in January, and Psyché by Ambroise Thomas in February, first in Budapest and then Vienna. And the original version of Gounod’s Faust, published by Bru Zane in 2019, returns to the stage in Lille and at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. Back at the Palazzetto, the 2025 autumn chamber season will offer an overview of the French repertoire dedicated to the cello, featuring pieces for soloist accompanied by piano, cello ensembles, and quintets with two cellos.

Bru Zane artistic director Alexandre Dratwicki has described Centre de Musique Romantique Française as a musical laboratory: surely a fitting description for a place that has found a winning formula. 

This article originally appeared in the Winter 2024 issue of Opera Now. Never miss an issue – subscribe today