Imagem excited about Rodgers & Hammerstein catalogue.

Imagem sees SOME "huge opportunities" in the Rodgers & Hammerstein catalogue, after last-week concluding a nine-month period of negotiation to buy the company, which owns the rights to many of the world's most popular stage and film musicals

The deal, Imagem's first significant acquisition since purchasing classical music publisher Boosey & Hawkes last year, opens up a catalogue that boasts musicals such as Oklahoma!, South Pacific and The Sound Of Music.

Imagem chief executive Andre de Raaff explains that it was his company's sensitive treatment of the Boosey & Hawkes catalogue and infrastructure that helped secure the deal, providing assurance to the family of the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization of Imagem's abilities to handle such an historic catalogue.

"Part of the reason the deal took such a long time to secure was because we had to go through a process by which the family had to adjust to the idea that they were going to sell it," he says.

"For them it was important that the person that bought it felt as special about this copyright as they did and were people that understood how to keep the value of the copyright there. They aren't interested in over-exposing the catalogue, things where maybe in three or five years they make more money but less in 20 or 30 years."

Boosey & Hawkes managing director John Minch, who made first contact about the deal, will now help to oversee the RHO catalogue.

"There were quite a lot of people interested in buying it and breaking it ...