Opera

[essexian]

So go on then, recommended me some Opera.

I know its sad to admit but I have reached middle age without knowing much about Opera or classical music: too many years spend as a “skinny indie boy” watching bands like Blur, Buzzcocks, Carter USM, Cure, Suede and the Wedding Present I suppose…. Good days however.

Why the sudden interest in Opera? Well I have always been interested in ballet (The Royal Opera House production of Alice in Wonderland last Christmas was the best thing I have seen live in a long time) and do feel I am getting too old to mosh anymore, so it would be nice to enlarge my experiences by moving into a new field. However, I can’t say my first introduction to Opera was that good: “Madam Butterfly” at the London Coliseum (it was poorly staged and the singing wasn’t up to much….. to my untrained ear) so what would you recommend?

[nicknack]

Wozzeck

[Von Broad]

so what would you recommend?

Well....you may [or may not] like the musical style, but have a look out for Wozzeck if you want something a bit different from what you've already listened to.

[edit: opps...nicknack beat me too it]

[Wowbagger]

I have seen/listened to very little opera but one I have been to twice is Cosi fan Tutte by Mr. Mozart. The first time was at the Queen Elizabeth Hall with Mrs. Wow and the second, at the Royal Opera House, was a christmas present 4 years ago from my daughter. Both were superb.

[pcolbeck]

Opera has a huge range covering over three hundred years of music. Got to be something in there you like.

I like baroque opera. Try Purcell's Dido and Aeneas

Dido's Lament

Moving on in time to Mozart his masterpiece was The Magic Flute

Queen of the night

Then then there is 19th century romantic Italian Opera. This is what people think of as opera unless they think Wagner and they are probably thinking of something by Verdi or Puccini

Libiamo ne` lieti calici - Verdi _ La traviata

Quando me'n vo - Puccini - La Boheme

The colossus that is Wagner. I find the singing difficult but the music ranges from gorgeous to tempestuous and disturbing.

Prelude Tristan and Isolde - one of my favourite pieces of music.

Loads of 20th century opera too but I don't get on with a lot of that. Probably Britten's Peter Grimes is the most famous

[clarion]

I can't stand opera.  This may have something to do with my sister being an opera singer (at Covent Garden for umpteen years).

[Butterfly]

I like light opera/operetta. It helps if you get the gist of the story beforehand because it's usually silly and sometimes quite convoluted. ENO sing in Engish which can be helpful if they have a good belter but unhelpful if they don't. The opera house has a pretty good sur title set up, but you can end up reading that instead of watching the flouncing about on the stage. Personally, I can't be doing with modern opera, it's shrieky.

[clarion]

It's all a bit shouty.  And I never understood why old people complained you can't hear the words in pop music, when most opera is completely incomprehensible (and, it turns out, not worth the effort when you've discovered the lyrics).

OTOH: The touring opera companies used to have really nice crew.

[ian]

I can't stand it. I've tried (or rather, my wife has made me try, and she gets free tickets because she knows people in the orchestra pits). But really it just sounds like cats being accelerated around the LHC. They occasionally pack one song that might pass as a tune in there, the other eight hours is filled with screeching felines. I should join them.

Ballet at least doesn't have the screeching, but the traditional stuff drags on it bit. Oh look, more spinning. Now he's holding her up and looking up her skirt. Now we're all looking up her skirt. I don't mind the more modern stuff since they usually end up hitting dustbins at some point or dressing up liking dancing robots.

Mind you the closest I come to any kind of culture is two-week-old Hovis.

[Cudzoziemiec]

It's all a bit shouty.  And I never understood why old people complained you can't hear the words in pop music, when most opera is completely incomprehensible (and, it turns out, not worth the effort when you've discovered the lyrics).

OTOH: The touring opera companies used to have really nice crew.

Quite a bit of opera, such as Verdi, Paccini, Bellini, is pop. It's 19th-century Italian pop that has (largely) stood the test of time and place.

[pcolbeck]

I don't get the "I cant stand opera" thing. Not liking a particular type of opera such as opera seria  for example I can see but since "opera" covers such a huge range of styles over such a long period I cant see how you can say you don't like them all. Its much like some people who say I don't like pop/rock music, again what all of it ? You might not like rap or industrial metal but to say I don't like any of it is odd.

[PaulF]

I don't get the "I cant stand opera" thing. Not liking a particular type of opera such as opera seria  for example I can see but since "opera" covers such a huge range of styles over such a long period I cant see how you can say you don't like them all. Its much like some people who say I don't like pop/rock music, again what all of it ? You might not like rap or industrial metal but to say I don't like any of it is odd.

I've been dragged to enough opera's and heard enough to be confident that I don't like it. Incomprehensible lyrics and, in my opinion, pompous overblown singing and lots of screeching. All in all I find it a rather uncomfortable experience (and many would also say the same about my tastes in music ). There's so much music that I enjoy that I see no need to waste my time on a genre that I don't.

But we digress....

[clarion]

I've worked on what I am informed was a wide variety of opera, and it all sounded like shouty nonsense to me.  Added to costumes, sets and ham acting that would be booed off the stage if it were presented as theatre (and massive wastes of money).

[pcolbeck]

I'll give you that, the acting is usually crap.

[ian]

I don't get the "I cant stand opera" thing. Not liking a particular type of opera such as opera seria  for example I can see but since "opera" covers such a huge range of styles over such a long period I cant see how you can say you don't like them all. Its much like some people who say I don't like pop/rock music, again what all of it ? You might not like rap or industrial metal but to say I don't like any of it is odd.

I share PaulF's opinion, I can't get on with the style and presentation, and I've fidgeted through enough of it. OK, there's the occasionally song that teeters on the edge of a tune before being pierced through by more histrionic scheechery, but for a few potential minutes, there's hours of generic screeching. And they're never short. Even my wife occasionally has to admit that it was a bit of a slog and she has opera genes from her grandmother. Plus there's the entire social status thing, people wandering around telling you how much they paid for a ticket.

Of course, I'm not going to picket the Royal Opera House playing my Nik Kershaw greatest hits collection through a megaphone. Not now I have the ASBO banning me from Covent Garden for doing it.

[LEE]

Is there a form of Opera which doesn't require the main protagonists to sing/shout/scream absolutely everything, no matter how mundane?

"I'M GOING OVER TO THE WINDOW!!!..AND NOW I'M GOING TO SIT DOWN!!!.....NOW I'M WALKING BACK FROM THE WINDOOOOOOW!!!...OH MY GOD SHE'S DEAAAAAAD!!"  ..you get the idea.

I mean just give me the good tunes and talk/act in between.

What's that you say?  Musicals?

Whenever I hear Opera singers I always feel that there may be millions of great ones in our midst.  It's just that most of us would be too embarrassed to even attempt to make those sorts of noises.

[clarion]

You forget the repetition:

I'M GOING OVER TO THE WINDOW.  TO THE WINDOW.  TO THE WINDOW

HE'S GOING TO THE WINDOW

I'M GOING TO THE WINDOW

HE'S GOING TO THE WINDOW

etc etc until you'r chewing the seatback in front of you in frothing insanity.

[red marley]

If you can get tickets, I would heartily recommend Philip Glass's Satygraha currently on at the Coliseum in London. It suffers from none of the "I'm going over to the window" problems that Paul complains about. It's utterly mesmerising with immersive music, stunning set design and choreography. To me that's the kind of experience opera should be about rather than flamboyantly labouring over a pedestrian story.

[Wowbagger]

Opera is sheer ostentation and utter nonsense. It can be sumptuous.

It's also worth watching this: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/zvNw0P5ZMbA&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/zvNw0P5ZMbA&rel=1</a>

[Wowbagger]

There's always Gilbert & Sullivan. It's rubbish, but it's good British rubbish.

Actually, I think Gilbert wrote some very fine poems and Sullivan's music is OK.

http://walternelson.com/dr/gilbert-etiquette

and

http://www.victorianweb.org/mt/gilbert/yarn.html

are poems I used to read to classes of junior school kids. I love them, and the kids seemed fairly receptive as well.

[Jaded]

Comic opera can be digestible. Orpheus in the Underworld I think was funny.

The only opera I have ever remotely wanted to see was Aida at The Pyramids. We could have gone on our honeymoon, but had no money left.

[Biggsy]

I don't get the "I cant stand opera" thing.

The opera style of singing is what I (nearly always) can't stand.  It makes me turn off the radio/TV, so I don't have a chance of liking the music.  I wouldn't risk going to a live opera.  I might actually die!

Must admit I like this, though:
http://youtu.be/bbykxGeSCFA
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/bbykxGeSCFA&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/bbykxGeSCFA&rel=1</a>

Classical music (mostly without singing): I used to go as a boy with my Dad to concerts, so I have been there and done that ...and had enough.  I take inspiration from John Peel in being never being too old to love the latest noisy alternative rock music.

[LEE]

You forget the repetition:

I'M GOING OVER TO THE WINDOW.  TO THE WINDOW.  TO THE WINDOW

HE'S GOING TO THE WINDOW

I'M GOING TO THE WINDOW

HE'S GOING TO THE WINDOW

You know...I think I'm starting to like this Opera.

Sorry, that should be...

I'M STARTING TO LIKE OPERA!!
HE'S STARTING TO LIKE OPERA!!!
I THINK I QUITE LIKE OPERA!!!
THE OPERA, THE OPERA, THE O-O-O-O-OPERA!!
THE O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPEEEEEERRRRAAAAAA!
KAHBOOM!
MY NAME'S PAUL METCALF, I'M HERE ALL WEEK...G'NIGHT

[rogerzilla]

It's like other music - some of it is tuneless and inaccessible, some is very good.  Mozart's Don Giovanni has been described as one of the three finest things God made, along with the Mona Lisa and the sea.  At least half the arias are brilliant and the rest aren't bad.  A big barrier is the language (let's forget the ENO for now, because the libretto rarely works in translation).  Italian usually sounds best, French is OK, German is a Bit Odd although it hasn't stopped The Magic Flute being the most performed opera.  Even if you spoke the language natively, you'd probably find it a bit old-fashioned.  The stories aren't easy to follow in a foreign language so it's best to first watch a DVD with subtitles or at least get a scene by scene guide.  Some of them have been filmed, like Joseph Losey's version of Don Giovanni; the catalogue aria, where Leporello is explaining to the already-distressed Donna Elvira how many women the Don has shagged (1003 in Spain alone) is rather well done.

[Ham]

Why don't you start with Tommy and work your way up?

I'm also in the really-think-I-ought-to-like-opera brigade and I've been to quite a few in my time, most of which I've enjoyed overall, but also been bored to buggery in parts.

There's no doubt in my mind that for example when you get two sopranos singing together with their voices spiralling around each other that can be one of the most sublime listening experiences. It doesn't matter you can't understand the language, even when they are singing in English (eg with the ENO) I can't understand. That's ok, Some of the arias are truly magnificent, and the pleasurable noise that ordinary humans can make is awe inspiring, but I hate opera collections in the same way that I wouldn't tuck into a bag of sugar with a spoon.

My conclusion? I'm not made for Opera, and Opera at those eye-watering prices isn't made for me.

Posted using Opera.