Opera Rara has succeeded again! This incredible company’s mission is to rediscover, restore, record and perform the lost operatic heritage of the last 200 years. Leoncavallo was one of the very few operatic composers who has been so closely associated with one operatic work – in his case the 1892 masterpiece Pagliacci. None of his later operas followed this great success but Zingari whose premier was in 1912 was the most widely performed. Its source was Pushkin’s poem “The Gypsies”. It was commissioned by the old Hippodrome Theatre in London and is a short opera in two Acts.

In the first Act, Fleana falls in love with Radu and is married by the head of the Gypsies, “the Old Man” who is her father. She has just rejected a childhood friend, Tamar. In the second Act, Fleana falls out of love with her husband Radu and back in love with the rejected Tamar. Radu catches them in a tryst sleeping together in a hut and in anger burns down the hut with them inside it. Grizzly stuff!!

Whilst the original vocal score survives, the original orchestral score was lost and it took ENO’S brilliant Martin Fitzpatrick to add orchestration to the original 1912 version.

The evening had started with an impressive Tosca Symphonic Suite arranged by that “master interpreter” of Italian opera – the conductor Carlo Rizzi. His potpourri of the best bits of the opera Tosca is sophisticated in its conception and masterly in its presentation. It crackled with magnetic force and was a constant reminder of the brilliance of Puccini’s work. But then the evening continued with the concert performance of Leoncavallo’s Opera Zingari.

Carlo Rizzi, the Artistic Director of Opera Rara, has conducted opera all over the world. Having been Music Director of the Welsh National Opera he oversaw a dramatic increase in the company’s artistic standards and international profile. It is no surprise however that he has championed Zingari as his debut with Opera Rara as Artistic Director.

Whilst it is not a piece to rival Pagliacci, and is an opera that has fallen by the wayside in the last 100 years, it is of great significance in its own right with strings of consciousness from other operas including Bizet’s Carmen, Verdi’s Il Trovatore and Pagliacci itself. As an opera, it does have limitations, particularly in its intensity and storyline. That said, however, it is unsurprising that during Leoncavallo’s lifetime and beyond it was a great success especially at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. As you paint the score of Zingari it is almost like a Britto Masterpiece where the various sections of the painting are individually interpreted and clearly defined. And thus the music is similarly interpreted with great effectiveness.

Opera Rara was able to put together an outstanding array of singers. The Bulgarian soprano Krassimira Stoyanova was a magnetic and plush Fleana with her husband Radu sung by the Armenian tenor Arsen Soghomonyan. Whilst only making his debut as a tenor – previously a baritone – in 2017, his passionate Italianate sound is full of intensity and ringing virility, even though on the odd occasion there appeared some tightness at the top of his voice. The American baritone Stephen Gaertner – being a late replacement – was a sophisticated Tamar and the Polish-bass Lucasz Golinski was an intense “Old Man”.

The Opera Rara chorus was in fine voice. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra was compelling under Rizzi’s baton, and this was a concert performance of real note. However, with the singers performing behind the orchestra and the chorus on an upper level to the orchestra, there was at times a question mark over the balance between voice and music.

The escalating power and intensity of the second Act love duets made it clear that this forgotten masterpiece should be performed more regularly and certainly more than once in nearly a 100 years.