Unpopular Opinions

[Florestan]

In movies the script is of the highest importance.  People say "the story, the story, the story".  Why would it be any different for operas ?

Because operas are not movies. 

They are not meant to be listened to on CDs but seen as a total art form, involving text, music, acting and dancing.

That's the Wagnerian point of view. I doubt Handel, Rossini or Meyerbeer would have subscribed to it, and they were hugely succesful and popular in their time. I always beware of judging the past with the criteria of the present time. 

[Florestan]

I am not without motive in provoking a quarrel with
the notorious Synthesis of the Arts. I do not merely
condemn it for its lack of tradition, its nouveau rlche
smugness. What makes its case much worse is the fact
that the application of its theories has inflicted a terrible
blow upon music itself. In every period of spiritual
anarchy wherein man, having lost his feeling and taste
for ontology, takes fright at himself and at his destiny,
there always appears one of these gnosticisms which
serve as a religion for those who no longer have a religion,
just as in periods of international crises an army
of soothsayers, fakirs, and clairvoyants monopolize
journalistic publicity. We can speak of these things all
the more freely in view of the fact that the halcyon
days of Wagnerism are past and that the distance
which separates us from them permits us to set matters
straight again. Sound minds, moreover, never believed
in the paradise of the Synthesis of the Arts and have always
recognized its enchantments at their true worth.
I have said that I never saw any necessity for music
to adopt such a dramatic system. I shall add something
more: I hold that this system, far from having
raised the level of musical culture, has never ceased to
undermine it and finally to debase it in the most paradoxical
fashion. In the past one went to the opera for
the diversion offered by facile musical works. Later
on one returned to it in order to yawn at dramas in
which music, arbitrarily paralyzed by constraints for-
eign to its own laws, could not help tiring out the most
attentive audience in spite of the great talent displayed
by Wagner.

So, from music shamelessly considered as a purely
sensual delight, we passed without transition to the
murky inanities of the Art-Religion, with its heroic
hardware, its arsenal of warrior-mysticism and its vocabulary
seasoned with an adulterated religiosity. So
that as soon as music ceased to be scorned, it was only
to find itself smothered under literary flowers. It succeeded
in getting a hearing from the cultured public
thanks only to a misunderstanding which tended to
turn drama into a hodgepodge of symbols, and music
itself into an object of philosophical speculation. That
is how the speculative spirit came to lose its course and
how it came to betray music while ostensibly trying to
serve it the better.

[...]

Think how subtle and clinging the poison of the
music drama was to have insinuated itself even into
the veins of the colossus Verdi.

How can we help regretting that this master of the
traditional opera, at the end of a long life studded with
so many authentic masterpieces, climaxed his career
with Falstaff which, if it is not Wagner's best work, is
not Verdi's best opera either?

I know that I am going counter to the general opinion
that sees Verdi's best work in the deterioration of
the genius that gave us Rigoletto, II Trovatore, Aida,
and La Traviata. I know I am defending precisely
what the elite of the recent past belittled in the works
of this great composer. I regret having to say so;
but I maintain that there is more substance and true
invention in the aria La donna e mobile, for example,
in which this elite saw nothing but deplorable
facility, than in the rhetoric and vociferations of the
Ring.

The whole thing here: https://monoskop.org/images/6/64/Stravinsky_Igor_Poetics_of_Music_in_the_Form_of_Six_Lessons.pdf

[Jo498]

But this is pure polemics. About as helpful as Wolf on Brahms, Hanslick on Bruckner or Adorno on Stravinsky...

[Ken B]

The whole thing here: https://monoskop.org/images/6/64/Stravinsky_Igor_Poetics_of_Music_in_the_Form_of_Six_Lessons.pdf

That was f#cking awesome.

I feel like I need a cigarette now. 

[Florestan]

That was f#cking awesome.

Ain't it? 

[Florestan]

But this is pure polemics. About as helpful as Wolf on Brahms, Hanslick on Bruckner or Adorno on Stravinsky...

Not quite. His points are more profound than meets the eye.

Consider also this:

The principle of the endless melody [...] is the perpetual becoming of a music that never had any reason for starting, any more than it has any reason for ending.

Harsh but true. 

[kishnevi]

I regret having to say so;
but I maintain that there is more substance and true
invention in the aria La donna e mobile, for example,
in which this elite saw nothing but deplorable
facility, than in the rhetoric and vociferations of the
Ring.

He was perhaps correct to say "middle Verdi" is better than the Ring, but he is wrong to say "middle Verdi" is better than "late Verdi".  I happen to think Otello and Falstaff are among the best operas ever.  In part because of the libretti by Boito/Shakespeare, which gave Verdi characters and situations​ to write about , in part because Verdi in a way took Wagner's ideas and distilled them into something closer to Italianate theater.

[Madiel]

Operas pretty much are movies.

[Spineur]

Operas pretty much are movies.

Indeed, let say it is one of the genre.  Between all the operas that have been filmed in outdoors and the musical comedies, there are no difference.  More generally there are no such barriers.  People have turned so many plays into movies and movies into plays.
And a good script makes a better movie and a good libretto a better opera.  It is not the whole story obviously and Jo is right in saying that a good libretto in the 18th century may no longer be considered so today.

[Mirror Image]

Operas pretty much are movies.

Well, if this is the case, then Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle is one of the finest pieces of cinema I've ever seen!

[Spineur]

Well, if this is the case, then Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle is one of the finest pieces of cinema I've ever seen!

I have seen one filmed version.  I'll try to dig it out for you !!  In my youth, I was also quite found of it.  It has slipped a little, but who knows, if I see a good staged version it may make a big comeback. 

[Mirror Image]

I have seen one filmed version.  I'll try to dig it out for you !!  In my youth, I was also quite found of it.  It has slipped a little, but who knows, if I see a good staged version it may make a big comeback.

Well, I was just kidding around of course. I don't really care anything about watching opera films, but this one would be an exception and even then I would rather see it performed live. The music, though, is what really matters to me and the libretto is a deeply fascinating one for me.

[Mirror Image]

Bluebeard is more of a twisted psychological horror than a drama in my head, so most of the (low budget?) film versions are unsatisfactory. The version Esa-Pekka done a few years back was far more in the original intentions; to focus on the character's minds and feelings during this horrific revealing of events

Yep, psychological horror at its' best! Love, love, love this opera, but you already knew this.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Instrumental music is automatically way more interesting with electronics added.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

I'm starting to agree on that, some of the best contemporary music I've heard includes either an ensemble, orchestra or a solo instrument backed by/or alongside electronics

I guess soon this opinion won't be unpopular

[Madiel]

Instrumental music is automatically way more interesting with electronics added.

Automatically? No way. It's like anything, it depends on whether the person understands what they're doing.

Every success story in the arts is followed by a bunch of people slavishly imitating the obvious part of the technique and not understanding why they don't get the same quality of result. After Toy Story you get a glut of computer-animated movies because they think computer animation was the important bit of Toy Story. I'm quite sure there are plenty of people who've whacked electronics onto music with no insight as how to make it work well. Lord knows there are plenty of pop songs that have been "remixed" with a tin ear, I don't see why instrumental music would be any different.

[Madiel]

To stick with the classical world, I'm fairly sure that this:

https://www.youtube.com/v/nNwiUgkJXpw

was not made more interesting when it was turned into this:

https://www.youtube.com/v/O3xPfyg3bXE

[Madiel]

Of course context is everything.

Of course, allowing for context wasn't the claim that was made.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Revising my opinion, thanks to orfeo's insightful advice:

There is a greater amount of possibilities when a composer is combining the more traditional and purely acoustic instruments with electronics (live or an accompanying electroacoustic track) and I tend to find that these compositions have the potential of being more interesting to me than compositions for the same instrument or ensemble without the electronic element. For example: I prefer Anthèmes II to Anthèmes I.

[Madiel]

Revising my opinion, thanks to orfeo's insightful advice:

There is a greater amount of possibilities when a composer is combining the more traditional and purely acoustic instruments with electronics (live or an accompanying electroacoustic track) and I tend to find that these compositions have the potential of being more interesting to me than compositions for the same instrument or ensemble without the electronic element. For example: I prefer Anthèmes II to Anthèmes I.

I can live with that. A broader palette offers more possibilities.

I don't have much experience of it with instrumental music. I do know that some of the things I've enjoyed most in the "pop" world have involved intelligent combination of acoustic, electric and electronic sounds.