OBITUARY: PATRIC SCHMID ; Co-founder of Opera Rara First Edition

It is 35 years since Patric Schmid, with his fellow American Don White, created Opera Rara. Originally intended to promote concert performances of rare Donizetti and other bel canto operas of the first half of the 19th century, which had been a passionate addiction of his since boyhood, Opera Rara b...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIndependent (London, England : 1986)
Main Author bes, Elizabeth
Format Newspaper Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London (UK) Independent Digital News & Media 14.11.2005
Subjects
Callas, Maria
Mayr, Simone
Schmid, Patric
Sutherland, Joan
White, Don
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Summary:It is 35 years since Patric Schmid, with his fellow American Don White, created Opera Rara. Originally intended to promote concert performances of rare Donizetti and other bel canto operas of the first half of the 19th century, which had been a passionate addiction of his since boyhood, Opera Rara became a recording label that greatly enriched the repertory of operas on disc with works by Meyerbeer, Mayr and Mercadante, as well as Rossini, Donizetti and Offenbach. Schmid also spent 10 years as artistic director of Opera Northern Ireland, which gave him the opportunity of working with the more popular operas of Puccini, Verdi and Gounod. Schmid had written to William Ashbrook, the Donizetti expert, a few years previously to ask how he might learn more about the composer. Ashbrook replied: 'Go to Italy!' Schmid didn't until 1970, when he finally visited Bergamo, Donizetti's birthplace. White was working in an advertising agency in London, and there, in his small house in Islington, they set up Opera Rara. Schmid spent a great deal of time in libraries in Italy and France tracking down scores and photographing manuscripts. Opera Rara gave its first concert, devoted to Mercadante, at the Wigmore Hall on 17 December 1970, the centenary of the composer's death. The following year Opera Rara gave another concert, this time of extracts from the operas of Simone Mayr. Then in 1972 there was a concert performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall of a whole opera, Meyerbeer's last Italian opera, Il crociato in Egitto, in which the mezzo Patricia Kern sang Armando d'Orville, the Crusader of the title (originally a role for castrato). Il crociato was very successful and was followed by performances of Mayr's Medea in Corinto and Donizetti's Maria Padilla (1973) and Maria di Rudenz (1974), all at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Meanwhile Opera Rara had begun staging operas for the Camden Festival at the Collegiate Theatre.
ISSN:0951-9467