One-Act Operas

[listener]

It would be useful to know your resources: number of cast members, extent of production values. etc.
I've got playing times listed for a number of titles, here they are with a few comments
Hindemith :The Long Christmas Dinner    if you can stretch to 47:27   one set, but a number of prop changes. Christmas dinner in one house over several generations. Characters age and disapear.  Based on a play by Thornton Wilder.   Some episodes could be cut/shortened to get to the 30 min.
Holst: The Wandering Scholar  24:--
Hindemith: Sancta Susanna  22:--  but not if it's a conservative school.  Could be appropriately sensational in a liberal college, nun goes mad at seeing a giant spider, flings herself at a crucifix and feeling guilt demands she be immured.  Ripe for hyper-expressionism.
Mozart: Lo Sposo Deluso  21:--
Ravel: L'Heure Espagnole  44 :--   but rather like a French farce with lovers hiding in large clocks.

[bricon]

Das Rheingold

[Papageno]

Thanks very much.  Do you know if I can find Erwartung or any of the titles that you've posted, on CD as instrumental only, without voice?

[BMW]

Gershwin's Blue Monday!





(probably not what you are looking for, but I love the piece)

[False_Dmitry]

Thanks very much.  Do you know if I can find Erwartung or any of the titles that you've posted, on CD as instrumental only, without voice?

Highly unlikely, I would have thought

[Scarpia]

Thanks very much.  Do you know if I can find Erwartung or any of the titles that you've posted, on CD as instrumental only, without voice?

I see, your movie will be Karaoke.  You just need a Karaoke machine with Schoenberg.   

[abidoful]

B. Bartok;
- Knight Bluebeards castle

K. Szymanowski;
- Hagith

S. Rachmaninoff
- Aleko
- The Miserly Knight
- Francesca da Rimini

J. Sibelius;
- Flickan i tornet

[Franco]

Thanks very much.  Do you know if I can find Erwartung or any of the titles that you've posted, on CD as instrumental only, without voice?

Karaoki opera?  Interesting concept - I am surprised it has not been done for the more famous arias, maybe it has - but I think you're off the beaten track with Schoenberg.

EDIT: It does exist! - However, no Schoenberg.

[False_Dmitry]

I am surprised it has not been done for the more famous arias, maybe it has

Indeed it has!  There are extensive albums of these arias, usually arranged by voice-type (soprano arias, mezzo arias etc).  Sometimes you can get complete operas, but only the most popular ones (Carmen etc).

Mostly they are recorded by Bulgarian and Romanian orchestras.

I don't think they reached Schoenberg yet

[Guido]

People will tut and pooh and roll their eyes, but Menotti's perky little two-hander THE TELEPHONE runs for 28 minutes, and he's only thought of as "old hat" because "familiarity breeds contempt" 

I don't think he's old hat, I just don't think he writes good operas. His libretto for Barber is wonderful though. Some of his arias are lovely set pieces (Monicas Waltz for instance I love when sung well), but in general his music is really lacking in substance and beauty for me. I always wonder how that affected his relationship with Barber - a composer of true greatness and a man and artist of  impeccable taste... I imagine it must have been a hard relationship when both had the same vocation but one was so clearly better than the other. Of course they split up around the same time or just after Antony and Cleopatra.

[Guido]

Gershwin's Blue Monday!





(probably not what you are looking for, but I love the piece)

Can't seem to find a recording - is there one?

[BMW]

Can't seem to find a recording - is there one?

This is the one I have which claims to be the world premiere recording of the original version as heard at the George White Scandals of 1922.  It is the only version I have heard and it is fantastic (especially the choral sections).  The disc also contains highlights from Porgy and Bess including "world premiere recordings" of two excerpts and Cab Calloway's final recording ("It Ain't Necessarily So").  Other than the Calloway, most of the excerpts are not the end all for me when it comes to one of my favorite operas, but the Blue Monday recording makes the compilation more than worthwhile.
http://www.amazon.com/Gershwin-Selections-Porgy-Bess-Monday/dp/B000007OMA

[listener]

Can't seem to find a recording - is there one?

also was available on vinyl Turnabout TV-S 34638 using a smaller orchestra accompanying the Gregg Smith Singers.

[bosniajenny]

Savitri by Holst is a very beautiful chamber opera. I have seen it in a double bill with Dido and Aneas, it worked very well.

Can it be denied that Pag and Cav are superbly effective?

I DON'T LIKE GIANNI SCHICCHI.

Mike

Nor do I! Saw it recently at the Sarajevo National Opera in a double bill with one of the Shostakovich chamber operas (I'm still trying to find out which one because it was a "closed" night for the Sarajevo Cantonal civil servants, and I didn't manage to get my paws on a programme). Preferred the Shostakovich......

[False_Dmitry]

I feel I ought to put a word in for Puccini's anarchic comedy here!

GIANNI SCHICCHI isn't really a "one-act opera", but the last part of the TRITTICO - three matching operas, all concerned with death.  Murder, suicide, and death from natural causes - in that order.  By the time we get to SCHICCHI we've been shocked by the ghastly ending of TABARRO and then put through the wringer with ANGELICA,  so the comedy comes as a welcome relief.  And it has to be played as Commedia comedy - it needs a very strong cast.  Too often it's produced with a student cast, or with amateurs "because the vocal parts seem quite easy" - and the result is a flabby mess.  Even the tiny roles of the Notary and the Witness need to be played with tight, thoroughly-rehearsed mises-en-scenes, or the project is lost.   The great comic Zero Mostel once played the title role, and this is what it needs - the legendary buffoonery and comic timing of a comedian at the top of his game - a real zanni.  Andrew Shore has played it, although the rest of the production around him was a dreary piece of weary kitsch.

It's an astounding score, and the very opening scene is some of the most difficult ensemble-writing Puccini ever wrote - it's rare that it actually comes out right in live performance. 

Are we put-off the opera because it has a lollipop number for the soprano in it?  I fear we might be.  Although for me the real "hit number" is Rinuccio's number about the glorious history of Florence    It takes a bravura young lyric tenor to toss-off that final phrase

[knight66]

As always you put it very well and from a though provoking point of view.

I can't stand Angelica either, so Trittico would not be an evening I am likely to put myself through. As so often with Puccini, there is something about Angelica that makes me queasy. I am not anti-Puccini, but rather as with Dickens his preoccupations surface in an uncomfortable way through his plotlines and the elements on which he dwells.

Mike

[False_Dmitry]

I can't stand Angelica either, so Trittico would not be an evening I am likely to put myself through.

Oh dear    Well, it would be a dull old world if we all liked everything,  and I freely admit to being left unmoved by NORMA   Perhaps you'll come around to them later?

I admit to being a sucker for ANGELICA these days.  I used to think (some years ago) that you had to be a Catholic to like this piece, but on mature reflection I don't think this is the case now.  The central theme is really one of foregiveness and the acceptance of the imperfections of others - I find the Principessa a more pitiful figure than Angelica, because she's wrecked her own life with her absurdly harsh vindictive piety... in some ways this is an anti-Catholic opera   And the conclusion that there is forgiveness for even those who have broken the most obdurate tenets of the Catholic Church (promiscuity, bearing a child out of wedlock, and suicide - three utter no-no's) must have been quite disturbing for any "Principessas" in the audience?  Puccini's "God" is kinder and more merciful than the preachings of priests

[BTW it is, of course, based on a real incident in Puccini's own life.  When he was a kid, he had a favourite aunt - in fact only a few years older than himself - who loved to spoil him and play with him.  But one day she "disappeared", and Pucccini's mother told him he was never to mention her name again... she had "gone away".  Of course, she'd had an illegitimate child, and had been sent to the convent - the child was put up for adoption.  Puccini was too young to understand what had really happened, but in later life he used his wealth and connections to locate his aunt, and visited her once in her convent - although very much against the will of the Mother Superior, who acted to prevent any further visits.  It's not known what happened to the child.  The separate incident in which the housemaid of the Puccinis poisoned herself over allegations of adultery with the composer may also have played a formative role in the piece's creation.]

It's worth noting that the Eternal Damnation from which Angelica is "saved" in the closing stage-directions of ANGELICA (if, ehem, we believe them?  Does the Virgin really appear?) is exactly the self-same Eternal Damnation to which the zanni Schicchi goes (according to his little speech before the final curtain) for the sake of his daughter's happiness.   

So the tragedy has a happy ending, and the comedy ends in Hades... and then we're all asked to applaud.  Neat, isn't it? 

But TABARRO is the masterpiece   Taut, concise, pitiless, and horrific.  A pet peeve of mine (which I've mentioned elsewhere) is that we don't hear Puccini's original version (he rewrote the end after bad notices for the premiere).  There's a rather more nihilistic aria for Michele (Scorri, fiume eterno, and a slightly different final moment...  instead of a stage direction that Giorgetta "screams", there's a written top-C for her as the curtain falls.

One final observation about these operas as verismo pieces - all three are written "in real time".  Part of their schlocky success is the realisation that our lives can be utterly changed - usually for the worse - within the space of an hour that we never even gave thought to when we woke that morning.  At the opening of ANGELICA she is the much-loved and cheerful nun who is the friend of all the others.  Within an hour, she's dead.  No gods, no emperors, no mighty armies or national destinies...  a far more believable, private and personal tragedy.

[knight66]

Again, interesting and convincing. I had not tumbled to the real time of the operas. I do enjoy, or relish, Tabaro and agree it is the best of the group.

But as with you and Norma, so with me and Angelica.

Artists do mine their lives and backgrounds to infuse their art, but I do find Puccini's frequent clash of sentimentality and torture to be too icky. That incident of the maid also made its way through the prism of Turandot.

Although I often feel I need a bath in Dettox after seeing Puccini, Tosca and Turandot are amongst my favourite operas. With Butterfly I feel too manipulated to encounter it now other than on CD.

Mike

[The new erato]

Didn't think I would like Angelica either but then I saw it live. 

Of course it's a shabby, sentimental shocker, and Puccini is a cynic old gentleman who pushes all the buttons to get the effect he wants (I can fully understand the  comment about detoxing); but it's a real battle-hardened soul that doesn't succumb when seen in a convincing staging. Somehow I hate myself for being manipulated ino liking it. 

[False_Dmitry]

Somehow I hate myself for being manipulated ino liking it.

Yes, I know that feeling extremely well with Puccini.

For those feeling exploited by his sentimentality though, a dose of LA FANCIULLA DEL WEST is prescribed