Some thing about opera.. can't sum it up in one line, sorry.

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No, Dan Perry, this is not another thread about why I don't like opera singers! And this has nothing to do with technique or performance - only composition...

The "question" is ... opera seems to be generally regarded as "high art" - (as opposed to pop music or comic books...) But how is it different from an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical? Wait, that's too much of a generalization, but I want to leave it said... Of course some composers were better than others... and I guess that's where this is going... how does a whole genre become the epitome of class and refinement? Was there a "Police Academy" of opera?

(I want to learn, really...)

Historians and musicians, sound off.

― dave225 (Dave225), Friday, 20 September 2002 11:36 (twenty-three years ago)

Actually, I think musicals did kind of start out as "operas for the working class" -- sort of like Threepenny Opera. Today, going to see a musical is as expensive as gonig to see an opera (often more so), but the fact that it was always presented for "normal" people, I think gives it the image of being middlebrow at most. When you consider that the plots of many major operas are oddly similar to episodes of Three's Company or As the World Turns, the perceived differences between musicals and operas might seem trite.

I'm not an opera scholar myself, but opera (as well as classical music in general) seems like it's been more of an upper class appreciation for a long time. I don't really know why this is, other than it's usually people with money who can afford to do things like spending an evening at the music hall, or sending their kids off for violin lessons (not to mention the pre-20th Century royal tradition of being entertained by the court orchestra and arias from popular operas of the day).

― dleone (dleone), Friday, 20 September 2002 12:07 (twenty-three years ago)

''I don't really know why this is, other than it's usually people with money who can afford to do things like spending an evening at the music hall, or sending their kids off for violin lessons''

yeah yr spot on here.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Friday, 20 September 2002 12:16 (twenty-three years ago)

So are you two "Agreeing" that opera isn't neccessarily any better than T.V. ?

― dave225 (Dave225), Friday, 20 September 2002 12:19 (twenty-three years ago)

From what I know (I'm not a scholar, I just perform the stuff as a hobby), opera was the TV of its time. I think it is currently seen as a highbrow cultural-elite thing today because so many of them were commissioned and performed for royalty. I don't think a drive towards producing operas for the masses came about until the late 19th century/early 20th century (but as I said, I'm not a scholar and could very well be wrong about that).

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Friday, 20 September 2002 13:15 (twenty-three years ago)

There was a high/low split WITHIN opera for most of its history.

― Colin Meeder (Mert), Friday, 20 September 2002 13:22 (twenty-three years ago)

what colin said

also we can blame wagner

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 20 September 2002 13:24 (twenty-three years ago)

yeah, harry partch wanted to bring the spice of real life to upper-crusts everywhere, and his field research beats most canonical operators, especially roger waters and lord webber -- and you can buy harry partch videos now

in italy you may as well confuse opera with aphrodisiac, plebeians to patricians, which prompted shoenburg to introduce the players throwing of raw meat at the audience in "moses and aaron"

― george gosset (gegoss), Friday, 20 September 2002 13:40 (twenty-three years ago)

four years pass...

Search: The current production of Eugene Onegin at the Met

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:24 (nineteen years ago)

Re: Threepenny Opera -- I think Kurt Weill was not just trying to make "opera for the masses" -- like pop opera or something, but leftist opera.

I always hear about how, in Italy, opera already was for the masses, and fishermen would go out on their boats singing opera, etc. But I don't know a lot about this, it's just one of those things I've heard.

― Hurting 2, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:29 (nineteen years ago)

It was probably mostly Burtolt Brecht's ideas about theatre and politics that went into Threepenny Opera, as he wrote the book and lyrics, not to mention John Gay, who wrote The Beggar's Opera that Threepenny is based on. Brecht's whole "theory" in theatre had to do with "alienating" the audience, in order to make them think more about the lesson being taught them, or something. But of course, the songs were undeniable.

― Beep, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:28 (nineteen years ago)

TS: Threepenny vs Mahagonny vs Street Scene

― HI DERE, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:39 (nineteen years ago)

I'm seeing Mahagonny this weekend, so I'll get back to you. Everything I know from Street Scene is sublime.

― Beep, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:48 (nineteen years ago)

Nono's "Prometeo" (his other opera is pretty gd too) and Kagel's "Staastheater" were probably one of the few operas that, as I see it, tried to breach a divide, or at least asked some of these uncomfortable questions of the audience that usually go to these things. From what I can tell,
Partch is looking at diff sources and a v diff audience.

But none of these have been revived /or are tackled with often, which isn't exactly encouraging, though some of Kagel's students might do something w/ his conceptions - Gerald Barry's last opera had its characters speaking as if you were fast fwding your video. Lachenmann's musical theater piece hasn't been staged - but often now (don't know the exact history of musical theater) you get what sounds like something that is smaller in scale to opera but a space where you can explore ideas in a way you might not be able to w/ an ensemble/chamber piece, something that aims to take away from its high artiness to appeal to others.

Also: Robert Ashley.

― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 3 March 2007 11:16 (nineteen years ago)

one year passes...

The Otto's Opera House station is pretty amazing.

― lemmy tristano (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 12 February 2009 00:29 (seventeen years ago)

Funny about this thread revive, I'm suddenly interested in opera again.

I have never seen opera as the "epitome" of class and refinement, but then I'm an urban American and an Italian. I mean, you can get it on public television or DVD.

Anyway, right now I am sifting through opera on DVD and am wondering which ones are the best - there are so many!

― u s steel, Thursday, 12 February 2009 02:18 (seventeen years ago)

I have never seen opera as the "epitome" of class and refinement
Don't know about class or refinement, but it is the epitome of a certain kind of spectacle.

― lemmy tristano (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 12 February 2009 02:20 (seventeen years ago)

I have never seen opera as the "epitome" of class and refinement, but then I'm an urban American and an Italian. I mean, you can get it on public television or DVD.

Anyway, right now I am sifting through opera on DVD and am wondering which ones are the best - there are so many!

― u s steel, Thursday, February 12, 2009 2:18 AM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark

There are good recommendations on this blog: http://mostlyopera.blogspot.com/

I love Britten operas, but I've found they don't translate so well to DVD. (I don't have 5.1 though, maybe I'm missing something.) My favourite opera on DVD is Paris/Gardner 1993 production of Le Nozze Di Figaro with Bryn Terfel... beautifully sung, staged and shot.

― Tourtiere (Owen Pallett), Thursday, 12 February 2009 02:59 (seventeen years ago)

Can't sit through the stuff on DVD, but I'll give your recommendation a try.

― lemmy tristano (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 12 February 2009 03:01 (seventeen years ago)

Went to say Eugene Onegin again at the Met with this season's cast. The Polish tenor Piotr Beczala pwnd Lensky's big aria before the duel. He's gonna be a big star.

― lemmy tristano (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 15 February 2009 17:32 (seventeen years ago)

^^ heard that on radio 3 last night. enjoyed it muchly.

i also love the gardiner figaro dvd.

― Henry Frog (Frogman Henry), Sunday, 15 February 2009 17:34 (seventeen years ago)

I still have a kind of reflexive dislike of things that seem to require big, expensive productions unless they really REALLY justify it -- I feel this way not only about opera but Matthew Barney installations and arena rock shows. I guess the exception would be something like a David Lean epic.

I also don't generally like the sound of operatic voices - not keen on the vibrato. I was raised on it, so I actually grew up with the strange notion that the only kind of "proper" singing was that wavery singing I didn't really like that much.

― You just got HAPPENED (Hurting 2), Sunday, 15 February 2009 17:55 (seventeen years ago)

(to be fair, even classical vocal teachers would not describe vibrato operatic singing as the only proper singing)

― You just got HAPPENED (Hurting 2), Sunday, 15 February 2009 17:56 (seventeen years ago)

Did not like operatic singing until very recently. Isn't there a thread where Dan Perry explains that singing with vibrato is natural and if you sang without vibrato at operatic volumes you would shred your voice? Don't see how you could do the Chet Baker/Joao Gilberto without a microphone.

― lemmy tristano (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 15 February 2009 21:08 (seventeen years ago)

Well yeah, the invention of microphone was really one of the main things that made 20th century popular music different from what came before. I think it was mentioned in some other thread that one of the reasons Bing Crosby is considered such an influential singer is because he was among the first to make use of the microphone to produce types of "quiet" singing that weren't possible before.

― Tuomas, Sunday, 15 February 2009 21:43 (seventeen years ago)

Well thank god for the microphone then!

― You just got HAPPENED (Hurting 2), Sunday, 15 February 2009 21:43 (seventeen years ago)

Well yeah, Bing Crosby, but he was still singing in a manly baritone not the ethereal whisper of the two guys I mentioned. And I'm no expert but I wouldn't call Bing a vibratoless singer. And I assume there was plenty of pre-microphone singing without the full-on vibrato of the opera house.

― lemmy tristano (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 16 February 2009 02:00 (seventeen years ago)

Let's talk about vocal vibrato
How Does One Get Vibrato (Singing)?

Neither one has a single word about Der Bingle.

― lemmy tristano (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 16 February 2009 02:05 (seventeen years ago)

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