Kudos to Odyssey Opera. The Boston-based company, founded by conductor Gil Rose in 2013, is doing the world favour after favour with its pioneering series of operas unearthed, polished up, and performed often in never-heard-before original versions with fine American casts. Recently they made a grand impression with the first complete recording of Gounod’s La Reine de Saba, and now they’ve done it again with Saint-Saëns’ Henry VIII, an opera with a reputation as the composer’s forgotten masterpiece and yet one with only one other no longer available recording in the catalogue.
This recording, taken from live performances in 2019 but with no intrusive sound or applause, is billed as the world premiere recording of the complete original version of 1883. Although the opera was reasonably frequently staged in the 19th and early-20th centuries, it seems that even the premiere version was heavily abbreviated. After some serious detective work and the help of Saint-Saëns scholar Hugh Macdonald, Rose and Odyssey Opera have managed to restore a remarkable hour of music, including entire scenes, that has never been heard before.
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