Thread: Opera!!!!!

Originally Posted by Stagehand

Life Is Short - Opera Is Long

ask me how I know...

How do you know?

My wife works for the San Francisco Opera. We go to a few every season. I like it way more than I ever thought I would. I really like the Italian operas: Carmen, La Traviata, La Boheme, etc. Also love Die Fledermaus.

I think growing up on Looney Toons cartoons just made me have a built-in appreciation for classical and opera.

I highly recommend that everyone go see an opera in Santa Fe at some point in their lives:
Santa Fe Opera House - Opera Musical Theater Productions in Santa Fe, New Mexico

Originally Posted by bpave777

My wife works for the San Francisco Opera. We go to a few every season. I like it way more than I ever thought I would. I really like the Italian operas: Carmen, La Traviata, La Boheme, etc. Also love Die Fledermaus.

I think growing up on Looney Toons cartoons just made me have a built-in appreciation for classical and opera.

I highly recommend that everyone go see an opera in Santa Fe at some point in their lives:
Santa Fe Opera House - Opera Musical Theater Productions in Santa Fe, New Mexico

I used to pass the place outside Santa Fe about 1x a month while I was working and went to the flea market there. Does that count?

Originally Posted by bpave777

My wife works for the San Francisco Opera. We go to a few every season. I like it way more than I ever thought I would. I really like the Italian operas: Carmen, La Traviata, La Boheme, etc. Also love Die Fledermaus.

I think growing up on Looney Toons cartoons just made me have a built-in appreciation for classical and opera.

I highly recommend that everyone go see an opera in Santa Fe at some point in their lives:
Santa Fe Opera House - Opera Musical Theater Productions in Santa Fe, New Mexico

I work in opera too! San Francisco is a dream place to work on my list at some point in my life.

I agree La Boheme, Lucia di Lammermoor and Carmen are amazing. I also did a production of Das Liebesverbot by Wagner this summer that was interesting as well.

Which is my favourite opera? Well... MY opera!
I'm currently working on an opera. And I've been studying a bit about opera as well (go figure...). Indeed Wagner's operas are Musical Dramas, but that is opera in itself. If you recall the first operas, written in the early 17th century, the designation was "drama per musica" meaning "drama for music". Wagner simply tried to revolutionize the operatic world by returning it to it's origins and breaking ground for what would become the modern opera. One can say that there is opera before and after Wagner...

In what concerns my personal taste I would have to say what I don't like, to start with: I'm quite partial to classical opera, for instance. Mozart is great and all that but I find his music to be not to my taste. I like barroque opera in moderate amounts. I'm also quite partial to romantic opera, especially the melodramas like Turandot, Madamma Butterfly and La Boheme. I really don't like the bel canto... it's too showy and all that. I like Wagner, particularly Tristan und Isolde but I keep it in the cupboard for a rainy day.
What I really like is European 20th century opera! I'm sorry but I'm not fond of any of the great american composers... they write well but, though the write what IS, in fact, opera, I'm really not fond of it... and I disagree: english is an operatic language. All you have to do is search for composers like Purcell...
I like Luigi Nono's Intoleranza 1960 (1960) and also his Prometeo, Tragedia dall ascolto (1985); I like Stockhausen's Licht cycle (1977 - 2002), a great cycle of 7 operas depicting the 7 days of the week, totalizing 29 hours of music. I also like some older stuff (a lot!) like Alban Berg's Wozzeck and also Lulu. I am also very fond of Emmanuel Nunes's (a portuguese composer) Das Maerchen.
But indeed... my favourite opera at the moment is Francisco Pessanha's (aka fpessanha! ) opera (work in progress...) "The Body of Phaedra and Hypolitus", due to be premiered somewhere between 2011 and 2012. If all goes well...

Originally Posted by bpave777

My wife works for the San Francisco Opera. We go to a few every season. I like it way more than I ever thought I would. ...

I've also become much more of an opera fan than I would ever have expected, thanks to a colleague who used to pass along subscription tickets when she and her husband couldn't go. The BW and I subscribed for a couple of years and still go to one or two every season. Working for a major opera company could be a fine gig--I'd love to hook up with the Lyric's library, but you'd doubtless need more music background than I have. One of my daughters has an interest in stage design; I think of her every time the curtain goes up on one of those gorgeous Lyric sets.

Originally Posted by bpave777

I think growing up on Looney Toons cartoons just made me have a built-in appreciation for classical and opera.

You know, you're right--those, and the various cartoons from the 30s and 40s that used to be on TV after school when I was a kid. It's amazing how much classical music I've encountered as an adult that I heard first while watching a grainy black-and-white cartoon.

Originally Posted by fpessanha

Which is my favourite opera? Well... MY opera!
I'm currently working on an opera. ...

But indeed... my favourite opera at the moment is Francisco Pessanha's (aka fpessanha! ) opera (work in progress...) "The Body of Phaedra and Hypolitus", due to be premiered somewhere between 2011 and 2012. If all goes well...

That's very cool! You'll let us know when it can be heard in some form, won't you?

~Rich

Version 9.61 works quite well for me, thank you for asking!

I find this chorus quite moving:
YouTube - Verdi. Nabucco. Va pensiero