quote:

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Originally posted by Gee D:
I think Figaro is the best of all operas, although quite a few have better music - Don Giovanni and Orfeo for starters.

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"The Marriage of Figaro" is one of my favourites - a lovely, enjoyable piece of work.

I tend to prefer the lighter pieces of Verdi and Puccini - lots of catchy tunes to be found. "Die Fledermaus" is lovely too and I always enjoy the rare occasions when that's shown on TV for New Year's Day.
 

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Posted by la vie en rouge (# 10688) on :
 
My favourite composers of opera are, in this order: Mozart, Mozart and Mozart .

I saw a (mostly*) wonderful Magic Flute about 18 months ago at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées. The whole stage was basically set with bare black scenery and then they projected white line drawings onto it (geometric figures, birds, stars) to turn it into a giant blackboard. It was magical. They were using period instruments and the flautist (wooden instrument) played like a flippin’ angel.

Nonetheless if I could only have one opera forever, I think I would have to go with Don Giovanni. Non mi dir is perfection. The climbing/descending scales of the overture and the descent into hell are incredible, and way ahead of their time. As I read in a commentary recently – imagine hearing that for the first time, and that you have *never* heard Beethoven or Wagner. It’s revolutionary. And fabulous. And if the production’s up to scratch, the stage goes on fire.

*Apart from the first ten minutes or so, which were Out. Of. Tune. Which is a bugger, because you sit there going “Oh crap, am I going to sit through three hours of no one singing in key?” The show was basically saved when the Queen of the Night turned up and nailed her first aria, at which point her colleagues all went “Oh yeah, that’s how you sing in tune” and bucked their ideas up .
 

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Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
I'm with you Lyda*Rose - and after the Russell surely the Queen of the Night's aria as sung by Florence Foster Jenkins?
 

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Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Sir Kevin:
Wow! I am working on a local ballet and I have done set carpentry for several productions over the last few years. I have never ceased to be amazed.

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Not a regular ballet attender so I don't know the right technical terms. The production had a female and male dancer alone on the stage, which had sort of inflated airbags across the back of the stage to represent the sea. At the end, he was standing near the back, and a bit to our left. She was at the front right, did a couple of pirouettes, then ran delicately towards him. He cupped his hands lowland to his left, she put a foot into the cup and he lifted her up and over his right shoulder and projected her into the airbags. The first year, it was impressive, but in the second performance we saw, the whole just became a fluid movement, absolutely spot on. A real knock-out.
 

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Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on :
 
I must admit my favourites tend to be from the baroque period. Wagner I have never really got into. Probably just me, and little to do with Wagner!

Last one we saw was Purcell's "Fairy Queen". Though that was done as an opera and not as a semi-opera, I guess for reasons of cost. I would like to see it done properly at some point - ditto King Arthur.

Some of Handel's later oratorios are operas in all but name. Joan Sutherland did a fabulous Athalia. The rest of the "cast" was selected for their precision and clean tone, whilst she hammed it up with vibrato a mile wide. A real pantomime villain!
 

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Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 
Siegfried is great earphone music for writing software. Especially the forging song.

Being a soppy sentimental sort, I rather like Puccini.
 

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Posted by Siegfried (# 29) on :
 
I have an obvious bias for Wagner.

I also like the drinking song from Boheme (or is it Traviata--I always confuse the two) and the Triumphal march from Aida.
 

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Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 
They both have drinking songs!
 

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Posted by Felafool (# 270) on :
 
For me, I love the way Puccini 'lays down a tune', and my fave has to be Madama Butterfly.

Wagner does some good stuff in between the hours of dross, and Lohengrin is my favourite of his.
 

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Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 
Dross? Dross? What dross?

OK, Parsifal goes nowhere, and Tannhauser is a bit dirgy when not being stirring, but there is not a second of dross in the Ring! Well, excpet, maybe, just possibly, if Erda is suing too slowly and too mournfully. But the rest of it is a continuous thrill. Each section demands the next one.
 

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Posted by basso (# 4228) on :
 
I love the Ring, but Meistersinger is my favorite Wagner. I also like Peter Grimes, and all Mozart.

As I get older and perhaps mellower, I keep coming back to Bohème. The last two acts can reduce me to tears in no time at all. It was the first opera I got to know really well, thanks to the Beecham/Björling/de Los Angeles recording we had when I was growing up.
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
I have a soft spot for Peter Grimes since it's one of the few operas I've seen live - a perfectly magnificent production in the Oslo Opera House.

I also remember a Carmen for the opposite reason. It was an amateur company, with - rather superannuated - professionals in the lead roles. Carmen - with a little energetic suspension of disbelief - was OK. Don Jose was quite good (a pity his costume showed a little of his abdominal corsetry). But the Toreador (and producer) was old and fat and his voice wurbled all over the place. We were in the front row, so had a view of the orchestra doing major eye rolling during his arias.
 

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Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Firenze:
I have a soft spot for Peter Grimes since it's one of the few operas I've seen live - a perfectly magnificent production in the Oslo Opera House.

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My first experience of Peter Grimes was Opera North's production a few years ago. It had a profound, lasting effect on me. A true and beautiful work.

I'm mostly a Wagnerite, though I love all sorts of opera. I used to think Parsifal was the greatest opera ever written. After much longer acquaintance, I think the title might actually go to Götterdämmerung, if we're allowed to take the Ring operas separately (and I think we should be). The term "emotional rollercoaster" could have been invented specially for it. I always need a little lie down after I've listened to it.
 

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Posted by Alaric the Goth (# 511) on :
 
You know you've had too much whisky when you click on this thread because you think it says 'Pedants thread', get confused when it's about opera, and click on SOF again a minute or so later, only to find it says 'Opera Pedants Thread...
 

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Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :
 
We saw Figaro several years ago in Berlin, with Auschwitz right after, and then Mozart's Requiem in Vienna after that. The context of this sequence has me in its thrall, at the level of dream, and surreality. Poignant and as immediate as when I heard Figaro laugh, I hear it just now, and again. Now I have a Figaro ear worm for the evening.
 

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Posted by Pigwidgeon (# 10192) on :
 
I fell in love with opera when I was in college. I have since "complained" to the professor responsible, telling him of the thousands of dollars I have spent over the years, all because of him!

Wagner is my true love, especially the Ring and Parsifal (heard Vickers in the title role at the Met ).

I love almost all of it, but Puccini leaves me cold.

(I just spent most of today at the Arizona Opera offices stuffing envelopes for a mailing they're sending out.)
 

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Posted by JB (# 1776) on :
 
Santa Fe usually has memorable staging, and one that I recall was Cosi fan Tutte in 2007. The opera was set in the 1950s, in a mirror-finished set which cracked along with the trust and virtue of the protagonists.

Another was the premier of "Mother of us All" (an opera biography of Susan B. Anthony by Virgil Thomson to a libretto by Gertrude Stein) in 1976. It was videotaped by PBS and at the end there was a feminist on the fountain outside delivering a speech. It wasn't clear if it was part of the opera. The film crew moved out into the courtyard and recorded it also. You can still get the music on iTunes.

And finally Madame Butterfly:

quote:

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This is a setting worthy of opera, and the Santa Fe directors regularly use the surrounding mountains, the great expanse of darkening sky, or the moonlit hills to evoke an opera’s time and place – most famously in Madame Butterfly, when the shimmering lights of Los Alamos, twenty miles away in the foothills of the Jemez, suggest Puccini’s Nagasaki, ironically one of the towns nearly destroyed by the atomic bomb developed on that very mesa.
Huscher, Phillip. The Santa Fe Opera: an American pioneer. Santa Fe: The Santa Fe Opera 2006, p. 84.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Firenze:
I have a soft spot for Peter Grimes since it's one of the few operas I've seen live - a perfectly magnificent production in the Oslo Opera House.

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quote:

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Originally posted by basso:
...Meistersinger is my favorite Wagner. I also like Peter Grimes, and all Mozart.

As I get older and perhaps mellower, I keep coming back to Bohème. The last two acts can reduce me to tears in no time at all...

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quote:

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Originally posted by Ariel:
There was a wonderful modern-day BBC take on Figaro some years ago, set in modern times, starring a randy MP who was after his maid, Susanna. It was sung in English. Purists will hate it, but as an introduction, it was great (and hilarious) and inspired me to go and see the real thing.

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quote:

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Originally posted by moonlitdoor:
I have a question based on what la vie en rouge wrote - is it easy or difficult for singers to adapt to sing in tune with original instruments ?

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There could be two aspects to this. The first is what is known as Baroque Pitch, which is slightly less than a semitone lower than western concert pitch. Actually, pitch varied considerably from place to place during the baroque and classic periods, but current convention has it that on average, an A was slightly lower then than now. This makes more of the repertoire accessible to lower voices. My younger self could have sung the soprano arias in Handel's Messiah in baroque pitch. Now I'm grateful to sing the alto arias in baroque pitch!

The second aspect is that early instruments were more difficult to tune and to play in tune, and the earlier, the more difficult, as anyone who has played or listened to a renaissance crumhorn will testify. They were (are?) aften not in tune with each other, and there was therefor a range of intuneness, or out of tuneness, from which a singer might choose which instrument to be in tune with. Or not. As a member of a medieval band, playing that well known instrument of the later middle ages, the concertina*, I have experienced this at first hand.

Probably the answer to the question would be the ability of the singer to hold pitch. This is a technical issue, though some singers are born with the gift, while others have to acquire it.

*We don't have access to an portative organ, which would be held with one hand and played with the other, but a concertina is also a reed instrument with a not dissimilar sound. It is also forceful enough to hold its own amidst a welter of tromba, crumhorn,you name it. None of them could be called quiet instruments.
 

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Posted by Joan Rasch (# 49) on :
 
For those reading here who are beginners with Wagner and would like to explore some more, our Shipmate Adeodatus did some nice posts on a blog called wagner200th.

cheers from Boston
Joan Rasch aka Fafner the thurifer
 

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Posted by Welease Woderwick (# 10424) on :
 
The Peter Sellars modern dress Don Giovanni, Cosi and Nozze were fab but sadly now, apart from Nozze, quite difficult to get hold of in DVD format. The Perry twins in The Don were remarkable - and gorgeous but that is another subject not appropriate for this thread!
 

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Posted by Huia (# 3473) on :
 
This is slightly off topic, but opera related. There was a local news item on Tv a couple of nights ago about a teenage Samoan New Zealander who had never heard classical singing. A couple of years he mistakenly got Les Mis out of a dvd library thinking it was an action movie He was so entranced he watched it 3 times and the singing just blew him away. He now wants to sing opera. The news item showed him listening to, then singing with, a local group of tenors called O sole mio (?spelling).

Honestly I don't ever think I've seen a teenager so enthusiastic about anything, much less opera. Apparently he has professional support to get further training, then who knows?

I know very little but he sounds as though he has potential.

Huia
 

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Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on :
 
The NY Times has an interesting article Figaro serves a new Master which describes a new production of the plays of Barber and Figaro. Stephen Wadsworth who directed the last Seattle Ring Cycle is directing the two plays from his own translations of the original plays.
 

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Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Joan Rasch:
For those reading here who are beginners with Wagner and would like to explore some more, our Shipmate Adeodatus did some nice posts on a blog called wagner200th.

cheers from Boston
Joan Rasch aka Fafner the thurifer

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quote:

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Well, some years ago (about 30) I came across an LP set of Monteverdi's Incoronazione di Poppea with Jon Vickers and Gwyneth Jones as Nero and Poppea.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Chamois:

.. I find Wagner sounds good but doesn't work on stage, it's too static. I've always thought Wagner was ahead of his time and his operas should be done as animations. The End of the World and the Bottom of the Rhine would work so much better on film than on stage, and the Valkyries could really ride through the clouds.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Chamois:
I find Wagner sounds good but doesn't work on stage, it's too static. I've always thought Wagner was ahead of his time and his operas should be done as animations. The End of the World and the Bottom of the Rhine would work so much better on film than on stage, and the Valkyries could really ride through the clouds.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Chamois:
I find Wagner sounds good but doesn't work on stage, it's too static. I've always thought Wagner was ahead of his time and his operas should be done as animations...

(The operas) would work so much better on film than on stage, and the Valkyries could really ride through the clouds.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Barnabas Aus:
the operas and cantatas of Vaughan Williams and Britten, and have enjoyed them ever since. VW's Sir John in Love is a countrified romp,

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quote:

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Originally posted by Sir Kevin:

quote:

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Originally posted by Chamois:
I find Wagner sounds good but doesn't work on stage, it's too static. I've always thought Wagner was ahead of his time and his operas should be done as animations...

(The operas) would work so much better on film than on stage, and the Valkyries could really ride through the clouds.

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Or along the road!

Were I to be an art director on a film with an unlimited budget, all of the Valkyries would take a high performance driving course. They would then drive Audi R12s with their tops down on the Autobahn with fascia-mounted cameras showing their faces and the road ahead. Microphones would be mounted in-car to hear their voices and on the side of the road to hear the cars!

Light-years better than just sliding down a hill on stage!

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I'd like to see this staging.

 

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Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on :
 
Many years ago I was helping to set up a large auditorium movie sound system to test in a showing of 2001 among other things.

At one point the film was showing the famous planets going into conjunction with the Sun that is normally accompanied by Strauss' Also Sprach Zaruthusa. Due to the sound test, what actually played was Ride of the Valkeryies as the planets rolled into place. It fit so perfectly it felt like I was watching an alternate version of the movie.
 

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Posted by Brother Worm (# 8680) on :
 
I'm surprised no-one has mentioned Rossini yet. Is he too corny and unsophisticated to be anyone's favourite nowadays? Or do people just associate him with the Lone Ranger galloping across the dusty prairie to the strains of William Tell?! Personally I'm very partial to Rossini, especially 'Cinderella'.

My favourite opera composers are Donizetti and Bellini, with Verdi not far behind. Opera such as 'I Puritani' and 'Roberto Devereux' move me deeply. I marvel how mere humans could have created such transcendence.

I think Monteverdi's 'Coronation of Poppea' and 'L'Orfeo' are exquisitely beautiful, and Purcell's 'Dido & Aeneas' and 'The Tempest' are hauntingly sad. I find Rameau's opera music very appealing due to its electric energy but I can't listen to a full length work in one go because it is too mentally exhausting!

My favourite Mozart opera is 'Il Seraglio' and always enjoy the famous low bass note sung by Osmin near the end. Wagner leaves me cold, and Puccini doesn't do much for me either, but I find the whole of Mascagni's 'Cavalleria Rusticana' (and not just the famous excerpt) captivatingly passionate. I recently listened to Saint-Saëns' 'Samson & Delilah' for the first time and was smitten by it!

An obscure opera I like very much is 'The Barber of Baghdad' by Peter Cornelius. It resonates with me for some unknown reason despite being very unlike the other opera music I like. Does anyone share my penchant for it? Has anyone even heard of it, or of him?
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Brother Worm:
I'm surprised no-one has mentioned Rossini yet. Is he too corny and unsophisticated to be anyone's favourite nowadays? Or do people just associate him with the Lone Ranger galloping across the dusty prairie to the strains of William Tell?!

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quote:

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My favourite Mozart opera is 'Il Seraglio' and always enjoy the famous low bass note sung by Osmin near the end.

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I agree. I've seen it twice: a direly dull performance at Salzburg c.1969, and a delightful production in Budapest about 10 years ago. My son, by the way, cannot sing in tune but used to love trying to be Osmin when in the bath!
 

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Posted by andras (# 2065) on :
 
Looking at the list so far, I note that no-one has mentioned poor old Meyerbeer, who was certainly the biggest name in Grande Opera (not the same thing as Grand Opera at all!) in the first half of the 19th Century. Gorgeous music, and everything ends with the scenery collapsing around the singers, rather like it does at the end of the Ring Cycle. But he's so far out of fashion now that even recordings are hard to come by; Wagner, wretched ingrate, never forgave Meyerbeer for all his kindness during his Paris exile. Come back, Giacomo, some of us love you!

Personal absolute favourite, though? Hard to choose, but probably Fledermaus, with Cavalleria Rusticana a very close second. The Easter Hymn absolutely transfixed the teenaged me, and still sends shivers down my spine today.
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
Talking of unfashionable, my wife and I have a penchant for Hungarian/Viennese operettas, especially works like the "Gipsy Princess" and "Countess Maritza" by Emmerich Kalman. Does anyone share our enthusiasm?

P.S. This production came to Sadler's Wells but, like holiday wine, it didn't travel well!

[ 07. April 2014, 10:41: Message edited by: Baptist Trainfan ]
 

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Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :
 
We saw Countess Maritza about 30 years ago here, and maybe a half dozen years before that saw Gypsy Princess. I would not be bothered if I did not see another production of either.

Cav and Pag are in one way potboilers, but each tells basic human themes of love and betrayal, and tells them very well.

[ 07. April 2014, 11:53: Message edited by: Gee D ]
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
I've only seen "Cav" (twinned with "Gianni Schicchi" when I was living in Lisbon many years ago. It could have been a very weird performance as the chorus were in dispute with the management and wanted to go on strike; in the end they didn't but handed out leaflets about their grievance to every member of the audience.

Not surprisingly their singing was a bit lacklustre! The lead mezzo-soprano was the great Fiorenza Cossotto although she was perhaps a little past her prime.

[ 07. April 2014, 14:09: Message edited by: Baptist Trainfan ]
 

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Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 
Never seen Cav live, but I had a video of the 1982 Zeffirelli film. Placidia Domingo and Elena Orlova. Wonderful. Shot on location, with real acting!


The music is great. I love it.

Film is back-to-back with Pag of course, but by comparison its not worth watching. Plot, music, all inferior. Don't like it at all. A few good bits.
 

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Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :
 
I think Rossini is wonderful. But there's no one work that is the real goods. (Listening to Tasncredi years ago, I had the sudden apercu that it's not colourless Donizetti, as I'd imagined, but Handel or Idomeneo with balls.

If I had to choose one Rossini opera which wasn't Il barbiere di Siviglia, it would probably be La gazza ladra. But Covent Garden is doing William Tell so I'm lookng forward to that.

Meybeer. Hum. I saw Robert le Diable at Covent Garden in December 2012. It's pretty crummy, to be honest.
 

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Posted by georgiaboy (# 11294) on :
 
Agreeing with both the above:

Cossotto was one of the great Santuzzas; and the film was a knock-out, heightened by its on-location filming and authentic-looking cast. And I simply adored the procession!

Also re: Rossini. 'William Tell' is far too rarely done, perhaps because of the extreme difficulty of some of the roles, but it's great!
 

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Posted by Graham J (# 505) on :
 
Figaro - yes, yes, yes.
But Ingmar Bergman's Magic Flute comes close.
And Rosenkavalier.
Meistersingers changed my mind about Wagner (for the better)but not all performances would do that.

Arias...
Pur ti miro from Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppea (I think.)
This is my favourite version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YJIJlGkUJw&feature=player_detailpage

...or possibly

Va tacito e nascosto from Handels Julius Caesar (I'm a horn player)
Regards,
G
 

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Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 
I do like the whole verismo idea, even if no-one can ever agree which operas are in fact verismo. Apart from Cav. Its truly democratic and egalitarian art, using the same kinds of music and staging to highlight the lives of ordinary people as previous generations of opera had used for kings and dukes and ancient demigods.

So, yes, Cav is a story that could have been a potboiler cowboy movie. And Boheme could easily be a subplot in a TV soap. (Probably has been). But they get the same glorious treatment as William Tell, or Charles V, or Siegfried. (OK, not quite as glorious as Siegfried.)

I suppose I have a wide working definition of verismo. Definitely includes Carmen. And if we are allowed French, maybe the last (latest) great verismo opera is Les Parapluies de Cherbourg?


 

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Posted by busyknitter (# 2501) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by ken:
Never seen Cav live, but I had a video of the 1982 Zeffirelli film. Placidia Domingo and Elena Orlova. Wonderful. Shot on location, with real acting!


The music is great. I love it.

---

Saw Cav about twenty years ago on the island of Corfu (which incidentally seems to be singing crazy - walk down any street in Corfu Town on a weekday evening and you are likely to hear a choir rehearsing).

It was great, but we weren't familiar with the story and had lots of fun trying to piece together what was going on from the on stage action and the Italian libretto, handily translated into Greek

Mr BK "So is she pregnant"
Me "Think so"
Mr BK "Who's the father then?"
Me "Him or him? They seem to have fallen out."
 

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Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
Talking of unfashionable, my wife and I have a penchant for Hungarian/Viennese operettas, especially works like the "Gipsy Princess" and "Countess Maritza" by Emmerich Kalman. Does anyone share our enthusiasm?

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
That's true ... although we have to remember that (a) these operettas were designed as escapist entertainment and (b) most countries create similar myths e.g. "Merrie England".

I think a diet of mad up solely of angst-ridden reality such as "Billy Budd or "Wozzeck" (great operas both) would be hard to bear. (I remember seeing Geraint Evans as the latter, a most uncharacteristic role which he carried off superbly).

Has anyone mentioned "Rosenkavalier" (which I've never seen live) with its bittersweet threnody of a passing age? I think that its final duet (or is it a trio?) is one of the most sublime pieces of music ever written, alongside the trio "Soave sil il vento" from "Cosi fan tutte".

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quote:

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Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:

P.S. Stafford Dean was a real trouper in everything he did, from Britten to Wagner, although now retired.

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A thousand years ago, when I was a chorister in Cologne Opera, we were performing the Ponell stagings of the Mozart operas. Stafford Dean played Figaro. According to my singing teacher, a friend of his, he was rather taken aback when his Susanna, played by Ileana Cortrubas, instead of doing the usual stage slap, actually slapped his face with the full force of her arm. Being a trouper, however, he carried on. History doesn't record whether he remonstrated with the lady afterwards.
 

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Posted by Sir Kevin (# 3492) on :
 

 

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Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Brother Worm:
I'm surprised no-one has mentioned Rossini yet. Is he too corny and unsophisticated to be anyone's favourite nowadays?

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quote:

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Originally posted by andras:
Looking at the list so far, I note that no-one has mentioned poor old Meyerbeer, who was certainly the biggest name in Grande Opera (not the same thing as Grand Opera at all!) in the first half of the 19th Century. Gorgeous music, and everything ends with the scenery collapsing around the singers,
...

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quote:

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Originally posted by bib:
I've always loved Bizet's The Pearl Fishers and can go into raptures over the duet In the Depths of The Temple, particularly when sung by Jusse Bjorling and Robert Merrill (you can find on Youtube).

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quote:

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Originally posted by cattyish:
I'm quite enjoying La Boheme. I still prefer L'Elisir D'Amore though.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Adeodatus:
No, he's brilliant! At comedy, anyway. I've seen Barber and Cinderella live, and there were great laughs from the audience. And it wasn't just his librettist, either - the music is funny. And it also doesn't matter that he keeps re-using music, plots and situations - why kill a great formula? I think my favourite Rossini moment is the "I'm so confused it's like my head is on an anvil" finale to Act One of Barber.

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