what is your favorite opera?

[ffm172]

mine is Carmen by Georges Bizet. I just love the intensive music. What makes your favorite opera your favorite?

[bridgit]

1. carmen2

[Az]

2. I'm a sucker for the drama of Wagner's Ring Cycle

Sigfried's funeral musique kills me everytime.

[ffm172]

4. so far I haven't had the chance to see Wagners operas

but I want to see at least one. my granddad was a big fan of Wagner.

[murielm99]

7. Lyric Opera in Chicago has been doing the Ring Cycle

I went to two of them.

They are doing Carmen this season. Carmen is my favorite.

[snowbear]

3. Opera Winfrey

:rofl:

Hey... We don't get many opera's in this neck of the woods..

[imenja]

8. yeah, what do they think we are? cultured or somethin

:beer: :popcorn:

[Huckebein the Raven]

5. My exposure to opera is limited I'll admit but I did like

Wagner's opera Tristan (is that right ?)

[ffm172]

6. I think you are right

[tjwmason]

14. Tristan and Isolde

For some details http://inkpot.com/classical/wtristan.html

If you liked Wagner, you may well like other stuff too. In many ways he's the most hard-core (which is why I like him) which puts off many people.

[AntiCoup2K4]

9. Tommy

and that would be the original album, not the acid-overdosed mid 70's movie.

Sorry, but it's the only opera I can figure out the lyrics to.

[BrotherBuzz]

10. If you liked Carmen, you'll love Carmen Jones

Oscar Hammerstein II had toyed with the idea of adapting Georges Bizet's Carmen ever since he had heard it in concert at the Hollywood Bowl in the 1930s. The 1875 opera had healthy doses of drama and passion, which Hammerstein felt was well suited to a musical theater adaptation. His concept was to reset the action of the play to World War II North Carolina and Chicago and perform it with an all-black cast. In creating the musical, Hammerstein worked with the original Carmen score and libretto. With the exception of two arias, he did not alter Bizet's music in any way.
<more>
http://www.lentriola.com/deccapp/cjones.htm

[Sugar Smack]

11. The Marriage of Figaro- Mozart

Near the end of the opera, there's a bit that I keep playing over & over-the wedding march. It's so JOYOUS that whatever else is happening in the world, I have a clean escape from it for a few minutes!!!!!! I also like Strauss's Die Fleidermouse, and I love Lucia di Lammermoor by Donizetti.


:headbang:

[tjwmason]

12. Parsifal - Wagner

The bizarre mixture of Christian and pagan imagery. The sheer Wagnerian nature of it.

The other Wagner operas are also wonderful, but Parsifal is my fav by a fair distance.

Also love early opera, Monteverdi et al.; and more recently Benjamin Britten (The Turn of the Screw is amazingly powerful and shocking). Not really into the whole 19thC. Italian thing, though watching them is a fixating experience certainly.

[imenja]

13. no concerns over the Nazi connections?

Or is artist merit entirely separate from political context for you?

[tjwmason]

15. Concerned, but not majorly so.

All music, indeed all art, is created by people and all people contain a mixture of good and bad stuff. So too that art can be used to good or bad ends.

As long as I can separate the music from its Nazi connexions I have no problem personally; clearly I am not a Nazi and listenning to Wagner has not made me so. I also listen to Shostakovitch, and do not thereby endorse Stalinism.

[imenja]

16. I don't disagree

If we decided to examine every artists to standards of political or personal virtue, we wouldn't have much left to enjoy.
I ask because I find the general question an interesting one. People on DU commonly ask about the political identification of actors and express great horror if someone they like turns out to be a Republican. I've also seen writers and other artists assailed because of their political positions. I for example love the writing of Mario Vargas Llosa, though many resent his politics and thus dismiss his writing. Politics is part of an artists life and work, but I think an assessment of their contributions should consider far more.

[Misunderestimator]

17. If you like Benjamin Britten, listen/see "The Rape of Lucretia"

Really powerful opera, with some great music.

[tjwmason]

18. Have done so, yes it's stunning stuff n/t

[jpgray]

19. Boris Godunov by Mussorgsky

Some crazy stuff in there.