User:Nicola883/Ermitage (record company)

Ermitage is a classical music record company that was born in Bologna, Italy, in the 80s.

White Shadow (1986 - 1988)
In the mid-eighties, Nicola Raffaele Di Matteo received from his father, producer in the sixties of Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, three unpublished recordings of the pianist. He founds a label and company named White Shadow. Nicola starts the business by printing vinyl records containing the recordings of the Maestro from Brescia and sells the products in retail. He then goes on to distribute the LPs on his own directly to record shops and bookstores.

After a few years, he meets his childhood friend Gianni Salvioni; the advent of the compact disc pushes both to create a classical music label with a catalog consisting of only 3 CDs by Benedetti Michelangeli. They then founded the record company and signed a distribution contract with Dischi Ricordi entering the world of records. Thus was born in 1989 the company Ermitage SAS di Salvioni & Co.

Ermitage (1988 - today)
The company changes into a joint-stock company and takes the name of Ermitage SRL: in the company structure, a third shareholder will buy 51% of the label. In those years, Di Matteo and Salvioni were busy creating catalogs and projects: thus, collaborations were born with the Swiss Radio, PolyGram, RCA (later BMG Ariola). They make Symphonia, Lyrica, Dance Music Magazine, Thunder, all magazines with CDs in bundles distributed in Italy, and, some of them, in Spain and France.

After a few years, the activities of Ermitage are incorporated into a French Company. Other labels born: Fabula Classica, Jazz Today, and, later, Ermitage Cinema and DCult. With the latter, Ermitage also made its debut in 2003 in the production and distribution of DVDs with classic films in Italy with Medusa until the sale of the label by the Mediaset group to Warner Bros. and by CGHV (formerly Cecchi Gori). Today the entire cinema catalog has been licensed to Dynit. In the 2000s, home music video productions also saw the light with the collaboration of Swiss Television and with artists such as Lucio Dalla, Eugenio Finardi, Stefano Bollani, produced by Gianni Salvioni.

Today
The music products (CD, DVD, Blu Ray) are distributed by Disques Dom and by local distributors in Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Austria, England, Czech Republic, Russia, Belgium, Netherlands, United States, Japan, Hong Kong, China, Korea as well as being digitally distributed on all major online stores such as iTunes, Fnac, and others.

Ermitage now has a library of about 400 audio and video titles, produces CDs and DVDs, and supplies video content under license for various television stations, including Classica broadcast on the Sky platform and Sky Arte HD.

Ermitage continues to publish the historical titles of the original catalog but also realizes new productions: he has published the CD of I Solisti Veneti On the wings of love, which has achieved excellent sales results in Italy and France.

In 2011, in agreement with the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation and under license from Transit Film of Munich, he released the newly restored version of Fritz Lang's film Metropolis on DVD and Blu Ray with the distribution of Medusa, exclusively for Italy. In 2011 he resumed the publication of the magazines Symphonia and Lyrica under Piero Rattalino. In 2012 Ermitage produced the DVD of Salvatore Accardo and, in 2013, that of I Solisti Veneti with the concert in Nairobi for the independence anniversary of Kenya.

Since 2014, he has licensed his catalogs to the French group Disques Dom after having reorganized them and has begun to create a catalog of vinyl records (classical and jazz) for the English group Lasgo Chrysalis.

In 2015 he produced for the L'Espresso group a series of 16 CDs dedicated to Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli on newsstands from 12 June (the twentieth anniversary of the artist's death) to 25 September with La Repubblica / L'Espresso with the production of Gianni Salvioni and the artistic direction of Piero Rattalino. In 2016 he began a distribution relationship with Naxos America Inc. and presented the Ermitage / Symphonia label. Moreover, Ermitage produces for Fabbri / Centauria Editore the CDs of the "La grande classica" series on newsstands in Italy from the end of August 2016. In 2017 the company produces the LP Loving Presley vinyl collection marketed in Italy by Corriere dello Sport and TuttoSport and dedicated to Elvis Presley. Box sets consist of 3 CDs dedicated to Ella Fitzgerald, Maria Callas, Elvis Presley for Sorrisi e Canzoni (Mondadori). In 2018, continuing the collaboration with the Mondadori group, Ermitage created CD box sets of various artists, including the one dedicated to Frank Sinatra and Bob Dylan. He also acquired under license the rights to some live recordings of Bruce Springsteen making a series of 10 CDs marketed by Corriere dello Sport, TuttoSport, Il Giornale.

For Record Store Day, he released in 2018 the 10 "Gheru Gheru vinyl with the first recordings by Enzo Jannacci, a 12" LP dedicated to Fabrizio De André, and the soundtrack of the Wizard of Oz in multicolored 12 "vinyl, in 2019 a vinyl 10 "dedicated to Giorgio Gaber, in 2020 the 10" vinyl dedicated to Sergio Endrigo. In 2020 a series of 4 double CDs dedicated to Beethoven distributed on newsstands with Sorrisi e Canzoni under Piero Rattalino is released.

On April 1, 2021, Ermitage launches the Ermitage TV project: a thematic channel specializing in classical and jazz music and classic cinema.