Puccini’s final version of La Rondine, a recital from Simon Boccanegra and Donizetti Songs: Opera Rara’s 2025/26 season

Ermonela Jaho & Carlo Rizzi recording Donizetti for Opera Rara (Photo: Russell Duncan)

By and large, Puccini’s operas do not have complex musicological issues surrounding them. He made substantial revisions to Madama Butterfly, but the final version has largely been adopted as the most satisfactory. However, the composer never quite seemed to settle on La Rondine, his attempt at creating a lighter opera. The opera premiered in 1917 with a second version in 1920, before Puccini had another go in 1921. This third version involved a new scene in Act Three. This was the version Puccini was most satisfied with, unfortunately parts and score were damaged in the war.

In 1994, the final act from this version was performed in Turin with the orchestration restored by Italian composer Lorenzo Ferrero, alongside the original versions of the first two acts but the 1921 has never been performed complete since the 1920s. Now Opera Rara plans to perform the 1921 version of La Rondine as part of its 2025/26 season.

Carlo Rizzi will conduct the BBC Symphony Orchestra with Ermonela Jaho, Iván Ayón-Rivas, Nicola Alaimo, Ellie Neate and Juan Francisco Gatell with a concert performance on 5 December 2025 at the Barbican Centre, and the opera will be recorded in the studio a week before, for release in autumn 2026.

Also as part of Opera Rara’s 2025/26 season, they will be releasing the fifth and sixth volumes in its Donizetti Song Project, featuring 18 songs in Italian and 19 songs in French performed by Ermonela Jaho and Carlo Rizzi. Jaho and Rizzi performed a selection of the Italian songs at the Wigmore Hall in May 2024 as part of Opera Rara’s Donizetti & Friends London concert series, which launched in September 2023. 

On 10 October, Opera Rara launches its 55th season Salon Series at Temple Music Foundation with Germán Enrique Alcántara who sang the title role in its most recent revival of the 1857 version of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra.

Full details from Opera Rara’s website.