About Us
In the mid-eighties, Nicola Raffaele Di Matteo received three unreleased recordings of the pianist from his father, producer of Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli in the sixties. He founded a label, White Shadow, and the company of the same name. He began his business by printing vinyl records containing the recordings of the Maestro and selling the products at retail. He then moved on to distributing the LPs directly to record stores and bookstores.
After a few years, with Gianni Salvioni, White Shadow becomes Ermitage 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. Ermitage was born.
In those years Di Matteo and Salvioni were busy creating catalogs and projects: this is how collaborations with Swiss Radio, PolyGram, RCA (later BMG Ariola) were born. They created Symphonia, Lyrica, Dance Music Magazine, Thunder: they were magazines complete with CDs distributed in Italy and, some, also in Spain and France.
After a few years the founders left the company while maintaining ownership of the brand that had been granted for use under license and sold it to a French company. Shortly after Nicola Raffaele Di Matteo left the group. Gianni Salvioni himself remained at the helm and founded other labels: Fabula Classica, Jazz Today and, later, Ermitage Cinema and DCult. With these latter labels, Ermitage also made its debut in 2003 in the production and distribution of DVDs with classic films in Italy with Medusa. In the 2000s, home video music productions also are release with artists such as Lucio Dalla, Eugenio Finardi, Stefano Bollani with the production of Gianni Salvioni.
The activity is now totally managed by a French company (La Machine du Temps sarl) which is based in Paris and which owns the brands and rights. The music products (CD, DVD, Blu Ray) are distributed in Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Austria, England, Czech Republic, Russia, Belgium, Netherlands, United States, Japan, Hong Kong, China, Korea as well as being distributed digitally on all the main stores as Spotify, Amazon Music, iTunes and others.
Ermitage now has a library of thousands of audio and video titles, produces CDs and DVDs and provides licensed video content for various television channels including Classica on the Sky platform and for Sky Arte HD. On CD it continues to publish the historic titles of the original catalogue but also produces new productions: it published the CD of I Solisti Veneti “On the wings of love”, which 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, it published exclusively for Italy the new restored version of the film Metropolis by Fritz Lang on DVD and Blu Ray with the distribution of Medusa. In 2012 Gianni Salvioni produce for Ermitage the DVD of Salvatore Accardo and in 2013 the live recordings of “I Solisti Veneti” made in Nairobi for the anniversary of Kenya’s independence.
In 2015 he produced for the group L’Espresso a series of 16 CDs dedicated to Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli on newsstands from June 12 (twentieth anniversary of the artist’s death) to September 25 with La Repubblica/L’Espresso (with artists as Nicola Piovani, Rita Marcotulli, Jovanotti, Sergio Cammariere and others).
In 2016 produced the CDs of the “La grande classica” series for Fabbri/Centauria Editore, on newsstands in Italy since the end of August 2016.
In 2017 produced the vinyl collection LP Loving Presley marketed in Italy by Corriere dello Sport and TuttoSport and dedicated to Elvis Presley, and the box sets composed of 3 CDs dedicated to Ella Fitzgerald, Maria Callas, Elvis Presley for Sorrisi e Canzoni magazine (Mondadori).
In 2018, continuing the collaboration with the Mondadori group, he created CD box sets of various artists including one dedicated to Frank Sinatra and Bob Dylan.
For Record Store Day, in 2018 he released 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 12″ multicolored vinyl, in 2019 a 10″ vinyl dedicated to Giorgio Gaber, in 2020 the 10″ vinyl dedicated to Sergio Endrigo. In 2020 he created a series of 4 double CDs dedicated to Beethoven distributed in newsstands with Sorrisi e Canzoni under the direction of Piero Rattalino.
On April 1, 2021, Ermitage launches the Ermitage TV project: a thematic channel specialized in classical and jazz music and classical cinema. The initiative will allow us to dedicate ourselves to the launch of the Ermitage channel present on MyMovies in the MyMoviesOne service accessible by subscription.
In 2022 Ermitage release new vinyl and CD products and the reprinting on special formats (yellow vinyl) and production of editorial projects for Arnoldo Mondadori Editore and Sprea.
With the signing of an agreement with Hemiolia Records, the ambitious project of publishing a series of titles in master tape format intended for the high fidelity market begins: the first titles produced achieve good sales success and an editorial plan is made for the three-year period 2023-2025.
The years 2023 and 2024 are the years of the expansion of physical distribution in England and the United States: in particular, a series of colored vinyl records (yellow) achieves great success and the catalog expands to about fifty classic jazz titles reprinted in this format. These are albums by artists such as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Quincy Jones, Art Blakey and many others. The presence of the catalog in digital distribution is further expanded, leading to a massive presence of Ermitage titles on all platforms (Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer and many others).
