It’s Simon Boccanegra – but not as we know it. Verdi’s opera was first heard in Venice in 1857, but it’s a version he reworked almost a quarter of a century later, in 1881, that has become better known and tends to be performed in opera houses around the world. But just because the 1881 score came later, does that mean it’s actually better than the original? 

That’s the question posed by musicologist Roger Parker, who was commissioned by Verdi’s own publisher Ricordi to produce a new critical edition of the 1857 opera, based on a newly available autograph score. In a typically insightful essay, part of the handsome packaging of this new Opera Rara recording that includes the libretto and English translation, Parker pushes us to reconsider old narratives that historical progress (here, the progress of Italian opera) inevitably means artistic improvement. 

“Is Aida better than Il trovatore? Is Otello better than Don Carlos?” he asks. If we can accept that all of these works have...