Espoir

The Parisians were hooked on Italian grand opera in the heady days of post-revolutionary France—and composers such as Donizetti, Verdi and Rossini duly obliged, feeding the public’s almost unquenchable thirst for high musical drama. This is a rich collection of rare moments from these operas, many of them long consigned to the archives. In an impressive debut solo recital, American tenor Michael Spyres, alongside the Hallé Orchestra, makes us wonder what we’ve been missing, with beautiful moments from rarities such as Verdi’s Jérusalem, Rossini’s Othello and Halévy’s Guido et Ginévra.