What Opera Are You Listening to Now?

[Tsaraslondon]

Callas wasn't in her best voice for this Il Pirata, but she still gives lessons in style to her colleagues. Too bad the La Scala performances of the previous year weren't recorded, where her colleagues were Corelli and Bastianini. Still, the opera comes across as being rather good, I think.

[JBS]

From



Currently in the Act 1 riddle game between Mime and the Wanderer

At least in terms of the sonics, Barenboim's Bayreuth recordings are the best I've ever heard.

[JBS]

In German but otherwise a complete contrast to what I was listening to yesterday.


The Italian version--Le Donne Curiose--might be a bit more familiar but was premiered--in New York, a year before its Milan premiere--8 years after the German version in 1903

Based on a Goldoni play in which 2 wives are determined to find out what the men-only club to which their husbands belong  is really up to (turns out to be good food and wine).



Wikipedia isn't specific, but I think that's from the Milan production.

[JBS]

Again, the original German version (1906) of I Quatro Rusteghi, which wasn't premiered in its Italian version until 1914, in Milan.

Another Goldini comedy with a rather thin plot, centering around the four grumpy husbands who are the title characters, and their wives (plus a daughter and a son) who have to deal with them.

[Tsaraslondon]

I think this was the first Wagner opera I owned. I had it on LP and then replaced it with the same performance on CD. A superb recording in every way.

[JBS]

Act I. I'm not sure if I will do the whole thing tonight or leave Act II and Act III for tomorrow.



Update:

Went for it all.

[Tsaraslondon]

Not my favourite Bellini opera, but some of the most accomplished singing even Callas has ever given us.

Callas in I Puritani

[San Antone]

María de Buenos Aires is a tango opera (tango operita) with music by Astor Piazzolla and libretto by Horacio Ferrer that premiered at the Sala Planeta in Buenos Aires on 8 May 1968.

I know of six recordings of the work, the latest was released in 2025.  The one I'm most familiar with is Gidon Kremer's recording of 1998.



The first part of the surreal plot centers on the experiences of a prostitute in Buenos Aires, Argentina; the second part takes place after her death. The characters include María (and, after her death, the Shadow of María), a singer of payadas; various members of the Buenos Aires underworld; a payador who functions as a poet and narrator; a goblin-like duende; several marionettes under the control of the duende; a circus of psychoanalysts; pasta makers; and construction workers. Many elements of the libretto suggest parallels between María and Mary, the mother of Jesus (in Spanish, María) or Jesus himself. (Wikipedia)

[Tsaraslondon]

Starting one of my irregular visits to Der Ring. I know it's a major simplification, but I wonder if the reason I find the cycle less moving than Tristan or Die Meistersinger is the fact that its story deals for the most part with mythical beings and gods.

[JBS]

Starting one of my irregular visits to Der Ring. I know it's a major simplification, but I wonder if the reason I find the cycle less moving than Tristan or Die Meistersinger is the fact that its story deals for the most part with mythical beings and gods.

Having just completed the Barenboim Ring, I have tentatively decided....
Siegfried is an idiot.

Obviously this has a serious impact, since the last two "days" of the Ring are all about him, so we end up sitting through 9 1/2 hours of a tale told about an idiot.

[Iota]

Having just completed the Barenboim Ring, I have tentatively decided....
Siegfried is an idiot.

Obviously this has a serious impact, since the last two "days" of the Ring are all about him, so we end up sitting through 9 1/2 hours of a tale told about an idiot.

.

Preferable to a 'tale told by an idiot' ..?

[Roasted Swan]

.

Preferable to a 'tale told by an idiot' ..?

Idiocy is a central defining feature of many operatic characters

[Iota]

Idiocy is a central defining feature of many operatic characters

And is a defining feature of life itself, if you take the Macbeth speech to which my quote referred as your guide. It's certainly a pretty central one to mine ..

[JBS]

Only Act 1 tonight.


Final installment of

[Philo]

Sooner, rather than later: Dvorak's The Jacobin (in Czech)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfX7a765JJg

(performed 2024)

[JBS]

Sooner, rather than later: Dvorak's The Jacobin (in Czech)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfX7a765JJg

(performed 2024)

A comic opera whose title turns out to be one of the jokes. I have the recording on Orfeo. It should be better known.

[JBS]

Only Act 1 tonight.


Final installment of

Act 2 and 3 this afternoon.

There are more than a few bits of sonic splendor in this opera, but they  don't last long enough.

At any rate, I'm not rushing to listen to the other two Wagner boxes I have:  I feel like I have filled my Wagner quota for this year.

[Cato]

Beethoven: Fidelio   Otto Klemperer, The Philharmonia Orchestra







Christa Ludwig, Jon Vickers, and Gottlob Frick.

I found it at a "thrift store" for $1.00 - in perfect shape - and decided it was high time to revisit the work!

[André]

I think this was the first Wagner opera I owned. I had it on LP and then replaced it with the same performance on CD. A superb recording in every way.

During our high school years me and a friend of mine were building our LP collection and sometimes compete in buying different works from a composer or different versions of a given work.

I remember buying a Seraphim LP of Furtwängler's Tristan und Isolde and babbling incessantly about it. Then my friend bought the just-issued Decca Solti Tannhauser. I recall not being won over as I had been by Furtwängler's Tristan. It was not just the sound difference. I felt a whole cosmos of conceptions was responsible for my reaction: how singing (singers) and conducting (conductor) could shape a story and a musical performance to make it unique.

Another time, I bought Mehta's WP Bruckner 9th, to which he responded by acquiring Klemperer's NPO version (many decades later I think both are the Alpha and the Omega of B9 performances, and equally valid). And so on (we did have some epic fights over works, performers, even sound quality). It started in our mid-teens and we're still dear friends some 55 years later.

That's how my perception of music took shape. I came to value music performances as much as the works being performed, because classical music is a living, palpitating thing, ever waiting to be performed to the next generation's sensibilities and understanding.

[Tsaraslondon]

Continuing my Ring odyssey with the second instalment of Karajan's recording.