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"Opera Rara’s world premiere recording of Alessandro nell’Indie is the latest from a company that has long championed the composer. Some of its previous exhumations have shown Pacini to be competent rather than inspired, and though Alessandro contains its fair share of unmemorable tunes it also has some arresting moments. Clearly, Pacini was rising to the occasion of his first opera for Naples (1824). An unresolved chord imposingly cuts through the air at the opening, and some of what follows is almost proto-Verdian, if without being as dramatically sustained as Verdi might have achieved; and the orchestration is more exciting than you might expect. The plot is simple, with just three main characters. Alessandro (‘the Great’, no less) is resisted in his Asian campaigns by an Indian king, Poro. Both mean love Cleofide, a queen from another part of India, and in the end the militarily victorious Alessandro magnanimously cedes her to his rival. Bruce Ford (as Alessandro), Jennifer Larmore (Poro) and Laura Claycomb (Cleofide) bring their roles to vivid life, and David Parry is a persuasive conductor." - Classical-Music.com Opera Rara, the brainchild of Patric Schmid and Don White, has been in the business of bringing back forgotten operatic repertoire of the 19th-century for over 40 years. Operas once threatened with extinction have now been brought vividly back to life through the Opera Rara recordings. In a world in which recording companies find it increasingly difficult to survive, let alone expand their activities, the achievement of Opera Rara is a remarkable success story. The secret of this success is that the company has always been a highly specialised venture founded on the conviction that there is an inexhaustible mine of fascinating, yet undeservedly forgotten, 19th-century Italian and French operatic music.