 In September 2019, Italian conductor Carlo Rizzi succeeded Sir Mark Elder as Artistic Director.Opera Rara launched in the 1970s with a series of concerts of 19th-century operatic arias performed at the Southbank Centre, St John’s Smith Square and Wigmore Hall in London.The company presented its first complete opera - Meyerbeer’s "Il crociato in Egitto" - in 1972 at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, marking the first performance of the opera for more than 100 years.