Now listening to "Lili Boulanger - Faust et Helene" performed by the City Of Birmingham Symphony Chorus and the BBC Philharmonic led by Yan Pascal Tortelier on Chandos. Featuring: Lynne Dawson Ann Murray Bonaventura Bottone Neil Mackenzie Jason Howard
Resuming my opera, now playing CD3 from the following box for a first listen. To be sure, I heard the LP version of this recording over thirty years ago ...
Now playing CD4, the last CD from the following box for a first listen. I still have three more Ring cycles to tackle ...
I know a few of us here have problems handling the overwhelming Wagnerian operas. I just cannot sit down and listen to operas for any length of time much longer than 2 hours ...
Someone--was it Henry Kissinger?--once remarked, "You go to a Wagner opera and it starts at 8:00, and you sit there for three hours, and you look at your watch, and it's 8:15."
. At least opera is not a subgenre of classical music that has been able to compel me to spend money to attend a live performance ... To be sure, opera is not as exciting to Henry K as a game of soccer.
And after sitting through this whole operation, what do you hear? You hear: [Plays and sings Rheinmaidens’ leitmotif]. YOU’RE EXACTLY WHERE YOU STARTED TWENTY HOURS AGO! An Analysis of Wagners Ring der Nibelungen by Anna Russell »
This morning, more Schubert from that Time-Life set: some songs from Die schone Mullerin; "Wohin?", "Der Neugeirige", "Mein", and "Trockne "Blumen." Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Gerald Moore, piano.
I have attended operas, whenever I could not help it, for fourteen years now; I am sure I know of no agony comparable to the listening to an unfamiliar opera. I am enchanted with the airs of "Travatore" and other old operas which the hand-organ and music-box have made entirely familiar to my ear. I am carried away with delightful enthusiasm when they are sung at the opera. But, oh, how far between they are! And what long, arid, heartbreaking and headaching "between-times" of that sort of intense but incoherent noise which always so reminds me of the time the orphan asylum burned down. - Mark Twain, a Biography
I only sat through the second half of the opera since I listened to the first half a few months ago. My way of listening to opera is sacrilege to opera lovers ...
Been talking about some BBC tapes I had years ago, on another thread. This is one on vinyl from 1975, Ravi shankar's Sitar Concerto from 1975, with Andre Previn conducting the LSO.
BTW, is an opera recording mostly a one-shot deal for any conductor? It does not look like any conductor has ever recorded the same opera twice. Some might have recorded the Beethoven Symphonies cycle four times, as was the case with Karajan but opera is a totally different animal ...
I was lucky [?] enough to be comped in for a fair number of 'world-class' productions in San Francisco, one at the Met in NYC. When everything is going right, it's a dream. Something's always going to screw up, being as there's so many balls to juggle. On of the best was a traditional production of La Boheme on a Halloween night, with nothing but up and coming, right out of music school voices, no famous names, no stars. Another production, also very traditional, of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, had a few famous names [I have subsequently forgotten], everyone in decent voice and an opera full of tunes. On the other hand, couldn't ignore a lot of the opera's subtext. Another production of Gounod's "Faust" had the wonderful Alfredo Krauss and a great production of one of those operas Mark Twain mentioned previously, not familiar and with more than a few arid spots. It goes downhill from there, down to a po-mo production 'Cosi Fan Tutti' inspired by Laverne and Shirley. I walked out of about three, including that revisionist re-framing of Mozart. Not much "acting" in Fidelio, a lot of standing there with puffed-up chests and bellowing as loud as one can. Considering what Beethoven's hearing must have been like during that final revision . . .
We all listen to Opera differently, when I have a new one I listen without libretto, pure abstract music. only after a few listens do find out what is going on.
IIRC, I bought the Karajan Ring cycle LP boxes in a single purchase, though they were sold separately then. Back in the day, I rushed through my first listens to ensure the LP's were of decent press quality or else I would return the box to the store for an exchange. Obviously with CD's, that behaviour has changed, i.e. I take my sweet time listening through the sets ...
There's an equally large number of opera repeats with Karajan, considered a 'star' among opera conductors. Then again Karajan was probably the most prolific Conductor of all time. By way of example, there's two studio recordings of Mozart's Magic Flute, Two of Bizet's Carmen, Two of Verdi's Aida . . . And there are many airchecks and other recordings once regarded as bootleg, seeing as Karajan was always at the Salzburg Festival, always broadcast and [usually] archived, also other music festivals of note. So, in this particular case, lots of alternate versions of the same work from the same conductor that were issued as LP's/CDs, even DVDs. I can't think of any other conductor who has as much duplication of repertoire. I'd be interested to find out a more prolific conductor of opera.
I literally forgot about Karajan had started out as an opera conductor. He did record Bizet Carmen twice and the first one he recorded with Leontyne Price?
After many auditionings of "Bleeding Chunks" of Wagner, I sat through the entirety of the Ring just once. It was the Furtwängler/La Scala set, on Italian-pressed Fonit Cetra LPs, fresh out of the cellophane. The sound quality was dreadful, the imprint of the experience has me avoiding Wagner's operas. Still love bleeding chunks a' la Stokowski.
The Furtwangler's Wagner Ring is in his Legacy box, which I have. I feel like staring out to eternity if I will ever be done with that box for my first listen. The remastering is of somewhat uneven quality but the box was billed as representing the most comprehensive collection of Furtwangler's recordings out there ...