Opera: A Positive Discussion

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by 56GoldTop, Nov 28, 2018.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Raylinds

    Raylinds Resident Lake Surfer

    As far as ticket prices go, back in the 90s I used to get "Standing room only" tickets to the Met for $25. I had to stand at the back of the orchestra seats, but there were always empty seats that I could sit in once the opera started. I'm not sure if they still do that.

    One of the best things I ever did was back when I lived in Sarasota, Fl. They had a well known opera venue where many singers from the Met would perform in the winter. I saw an ad for Supernumeraries (non-singing roles in the production) for Carmen. I auditioned and got a role playing a soldier. It was a wonderful experience and I actually got paid!

    Far from being the temperamental, egotistical divas they are stereotyped to be, the Met principals could not have been nicer to us less talented cast members and we had a great time partying together. They even offered to get me backstage at Met performances back in NYC. Stupid me never took them up on it, but I have some great memories of being in a real opera (and I still have the program to prove it).
     
    eeglug, Ginger Ale, Mr Bass and 2 others like this.
  2. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    You're half-right; I did miss that, I was scanning too fast. Not so fast as to miss how the discussion is though, decidedly, off-off-topic. If this had been about the mellotron, or Alice Cooper's art collection, or whether Nickelback can be mathematically proven to be, "musicians", it would be in the Music area. Perhaps nobody noticed it had been far down the memory hole since December, because it was in the wrong area?
     
  3. Mr Bass

    Mr Bass Chevelle Ma Belle

    Location:
    Mid Atlantic
    Re: the memory hole - this topic would have gotten no more traction in Music Corner. Even more mainstream classical music threads disappear quickly apart from the 2 long running threads frequented by a dozen regulars. It's quite possible for artistically great or even inspiring art to not be popular.
     
    56GoldTop likes this.
  4. 56GoldTop

    56GoldTop Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Nowhere, Ok
    I have found that to be the rule rather than the exception. But... I'm okay with that to a large extent. As long as the flame still burns and I can still get my hands on the recordings, I guess I'm alright. (Less people to fight for the good stuff in the record shops.) :)
     
  5. John B Good

    John B Good Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    NS, Canada
    Probably because no one has asked a Gort to put it where it belongs, where as another poster says, it would get more traction.
     
  6. arley

    arley Forum Resident

    I feel the same way about Bizet's Pearl Fishers; the duet 'Au fond du Temple Saint' is the high point of the opera, and it occurs very close to the beginning of the opera. Nothing else in the opera is as interesting musically. Here's tenor Jonas Hoffman and baritone Dmitry Hvorostovsky serving it up properly:

     
  7. Vaughan

    Vaughan Forum Resident

    Location:
    Essex, UK
    Opera is unrepresented in my collection. it has taken a lifetime to and appreciation, such as it is.

    Classical music followed a similar path for me. If you ask me, I'll tell you I like Classical music. People often jump to conclusions at that point, names such as Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Handel and others come to mind. In reality, that's not my taste. My taste is more modern works. Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Michael Gordon, John Adams, John Luther Adams, Ingram Marshall, Gavin Bryars, Arvo Part, Gorecki and so on. I have a pretty good classical collection, but of the major composers the only compelling one I sometime listen to is Bach.

    Same with Opera. As I become acclimatized, it is the more modern works that interest me. Missy Mazzoli, the aforementioned John Adams, the Philip Glass works, Augusta Read Thomas etc. I've not been able to get into the classic Opera's at all. To be fair, I listen to what I like, and haven't felt compelled to sample many works in full. I know where my tastes are, and it's the modern works that resonate.

    Still, I do know the first piece of operatic singing that entered my collection, and I love to this day. It was the opening track of Klaus Schulze's album, Blackdance. The track, Ways of Changes, includes a male voice over the synths singing...... well it's gibberish I think. Still, it is/was very effective, and allowed me to accept the singing style more readily. context is everything, I guess.
     
  8. Antmanbee

    Antmanbee Mental Toss Flycoon

    Location:
    Leicester, UK
    I'm a reasonably frequent visitor to the Royal Opera House, and a Friend of Covent Garden, which allows me to book early, before tickets go on general sale. I go to mainly opera, but also ballet (Royal Ballet). Ballet is cheaper as the company is resident, whereas with opera principal singers have to contracted years in advance and the going rate paid for them, hence opera is more expensive.
    Though I can get tickets for most operas at Covent Garden for as little as £10, these will offer a restricted view of the stage, though the acoustics at the ROH are superb, and no amplification is used of with singers or orchestra.
    I've paid much more though, if and when I can, for the best seats I can get, sometimes up to £200. It's a lot, but it's a special place, very beautiful, and it's opera of a world class standard. I always go on my own, travel down by train, and don't usually get home till after 1.00am. Train fare, return, can be as much as £65, but buying in advance I can get it for under £45. I usually go at least once a month. I'm seeing Giordano's Andrea Chenier there in early June, cost me £65 for an Amphitheatre seat, level 4. It's in a shell-like half-dome with a high viewpoint, and the sound up there is amazing!
     
    Squiggsy68, arley and 56GoldTop like this.
  9. Opera is the highest form of storytelling.

    All at once - in one accord - you have literature, with libretto in hand. You have live acting and you have the sublimity of music, all making a unified whole.

    All of our cherished arts at once, as we won't fail to mention the work that goes into original art and set design.

    It's the complete meal.
     
  10. Adam9

    Adam9 Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй.

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    This.
     
    EVOLVIST likes this.
  11. Antmanbee

    Antmanbee Mental Toss Flycoon

    Location:
    Leicester, UK
    The opera that turned me on to opera was Carmen. Back in 1984 my then-partner sat me down on a Saturday evening with a bottle of wine and we watched a filmed performance of Carmen, I think it was directed by Peter Brooks. I was hooked.
    On the Monday following I went to my local library which had a great record library and borrowed the boxset, Leonard Bernstein, with Marilyn Horne and James McCraken. I listened to it over and over, following the libretto line by line. After that it was one opera boxset after another: Marriage of Figaro, Tristan und Isolde, Madama Butterfly, Lucrezia Borgia, Faust, Der Rosenkavalier, Giulio Cesare, Lady Macbeth of Mtensk.
    My first live opera was in 1985, Tosca with Josephine Barstowe in the title role, a Welsh National Opera touring production at Birmingham Hippodrome Theatre. I knew Tosca pretty well by then, and it was incredible!
    I didn't make it to Covent Garden until March 2016 (it took me a long time to work up to it; it was a big deal for me, being autistic and prone to anxiety episodes). The opera was La Traviata, which I've since seen four times there. Unforgettable experience, that first time, and all the others.
    The Royal Opera House broadcasts a selection of live performances of both opera and ballet by satellite across the world to cinemas, as does the Met and Glyndebourne, and I urge you to check them out. They're a great way to see and hear opera and ballet, and all in HD, and with subtitles.
     
    56GoldTop and Adam9 like this.
  12. Chris Schoen

    Chris Schoen Rock 'n Roll !!!

    Location:
    Maryland, U.S.A.
    Years ago I lived in an apartment building, my "kitchen" window was right across from another building, and of course
    there was certainly lots of "sounds" flowing through the air, as people kept their windows open most of the time (this was California...)
    One Sunday morning while having a little breakfast at my little kitchen table, I start to hear the fat lady two floors down in the next building
    doing her opera "practice" (right on time...), after about 10 minutes, I hear a window above me slide open, and a guy (who sounded like
    Tom Waits,) leans out and sez "Shut up bi***!!" - The opera warm up came to an abrupt end. :laugh::sigh:
     
  13. samurai

    samurai Step right up! See the glory, of the royal scam.

    Location:
    MINNESOTA
    I love opera but like baseball I think it could be sped up.
     
  14. Antmanbee

    Antmanbee Mental Toss Flycoon

    Location:
    Leicester, UK
    Top on my opera bucket list is to see Wagner's Ring.
     
    56GoldTop likes this.
  15. Adam9

    Adam9 Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй.

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    What kills me about Carmen is that it flopped when it premiered and its composer, Georges Bizet, died a few weeks later thinking it was a failure. Today it's perhaps the most frequently performed opera of all time.
     
    Antmanbee and mmars982 like this.
  16. tenor1

    tenor1 Forum Resident

    So many of the top opera houses in the USA, like the Met and San Francisco, are way too large. Unless you have really good seats you are so far away from the action that you can lose the visceral impact.

    Older operas were written for smaller houses. I've had a lot of luck getting people interested in opera by attending regional houses. We are blessed with lots of them in the San Francisco area. I'm lucky enough to sing in the West Bay Opera chorus in Palo Alto where we have a 400-seat theater. You get a few full-on operatic voices going in a house that size and you have a physical impact in the audience that you just won't get at the larger houses. It's like the difference in seeing a rock act at a club vs an arena or stadium. Both can be great but they are different experiences.

    In Europe the prestigious houses are smaller than in the USA. I've really enjoyed the performances I've seen in London, Vienna, Munich, and Prague. We do try to time our vacations with operas that we want to see.
     
    EVOLVIST likes this.
  17. 56GoldTop

    56GoldTop Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Nowhere, Ok
    Funny story. It reminds me of our first apartment in NashVegas. We had a "little girl country superstar" (N-O-T!!) who used to go out on the patio directly under our living room deck and belt the worst Reba you have ever heard. Horrid!! Those were the days.

    Funny too because not unlike opera, Tom Waits (especially his later stuff) is just as much an acquired taste. My first exposure to him was Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards. Good night, scary stuff!! ...but warmed to it and went on to hunt down his back catalog.
     
    Chris Schoen likes this.
  18. Chris Schoen

    Chris Schoen Rock 'n Roll !!!

    Location:
    Maryland, U.S.A.
    I was told that when I was a little kid (5 years old,) there was an old guy that used to sit down at the corner of our street, who I use to sing to(?!) I guess I was not too bad, he sat there and listened to it... :laugh::sigh:
     
    56GoldTop likes this.
  19. Ginger Ale

    Ginger Ale Snackophile

    Location:
    New York
    It was my parents and their old LP of Carmen that got me started on opera. :righton:
     
    56GoldTop, Adam9 and Antmanbee like this.
  20. Daedalus

    Daedalus I haven't heard it all.....

    I was going to start a new “Opera Corner” thread but I found this thread when I did a search. So let me post a comment as a revival of this thread. I am presently listening to a 1950 recording of Glinka’s Ruslan and Lyudmila performed by the Bolshoi Chorus and Orchestra under the direction of Kirill Kondrasin. It is a CD release as part of the Great Hall series. For me Puccini’s operas were the “gateway drugs”. I eventually explored Wagner and then the Russians. But more to follow. What are your experiences?
     
  21. Antmanbee

    Antmanbee Mental Toss Flycoon

    Location:
    Leicester, UK
    Booked for Otello (22nd) and La Traviata 27th) at Covent Garden over the Xmas break.

    They're evening performances, so in the afternoon I'm going to see a couple of plays: The Woman in Black before Otello, and Witness for the Prosecution before Trav.
    The former play is at the Fortune Theatre, literally just around the corner from the Royal Opera House, and the latter is staged in an actual, though former, courtroom in what was the GLC building on the South Bank.

    Two great days in London over the holiday I'm eagerly looking forward to!
    Staying in a Premier Inn 'hub' hotel over the 22nd, very reasonable rate for Central London (£56), possibly as it's a Sunday night. I've stayed in Premier Inns any number of times, but this will be my first time in one of their 'hubs', and I'm intrigued at the prospect. I understand they've taken the idea from 'capsule hotels', though the rooms are a little more spacious than that, and all have en suite facilities, app-controlled environmental conditions, 40inch TV, free tea and coffee and and in-house restaurant.
     
    Ginger Ale likes this.
  22. WLL

    WLL Popery Of Mopery

    ...When I was teenage, my mother had season tickets to N.Y.C.'s City Opera. Various of the family would go in sometimes - When I went, the comfy but kinda cooped-in seats and the music would sometimes ' make me live up to the mid-2£th Century comedy businessman-taken-to the-opera- by-Wifey stereotype and doze off!:laughup::idea: it was alright. I've just been known to have a dozing-off-at-the-movies problem at times too. I also remember us going to Radio City Music Hall to see this Houston Opera production of PORGY AND BESS that I think was noted for restoring parts of it that had tended to be dropped in productions of it - My memory remembers one particular of these insecurities, " The Buzzers Song " - the cast flisled and waved their arms all over the stage to the shadow of a buxzard because it represented bad luck!:yikes:!!!
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page

molar-endocrine