Most loved, hated etc

[verismissimo]

There's a lot of this about currently. Here's my list:

Opera I hate: Il trovatore (never made it to the end)

Opera I think is overrated: Most of Verdi

Opera I think is underrated: Martha

Opera I Love: Eugene Onegin

Opera I Cherish: The Cunning Little Vixen

Guilty Pleasure: Arabella

Opera I want to see revived: Sadko

Opera that I first saw: Carmen (Colin Davis conducting Sadler’s Wells in Coventry, c. 1959/60)

Opera I saw most recently: The Snow Maiden

Greatest Opening: Das Rheingold

Greatest Ending: La boheme

Greatest Opera of all time: Cosi fan tutte

[Conchis]

Opera I hate: Nozze di Figaro (over-long, tedious and unfunny)

Opera I think is overrated: Most of Mozart: he really was not an operatic composer.

Opera I think is underrated: Die Tote Stadt (Korgold)

Opera I Love: Die Walkure

Opera I Cherish: Cavalleria Rusticana

Guilty Pleasure: La Gioconda

Opera I want to see revived: Der Gezeichneten (Schreker)

Opera that I first saw: La Traviata (WNO at Palace Theatre, Manchester).

Opera I saw most recently: Madama Butterfly

Greatest Opening: Der Rosenkavalier

Greatest Ending:Gotterdammerung

Greatest Opera of all time:Tristan Und Isolde

[Stanfordian]

There is too much 'hate' and not enough 'love' in the world.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

There is too much 'hate' and not enough 'love' in the world.

[teamsaint]

Well said both.

[doversoul1]

I can’t say I love every Baroque opera but I can’t say I ‘hate’ any works either. But I HATE some productions with all my heart.

[pastoralguy]

Sorry, but for me, Marriage of Figaro is the one work I would take to the mythical Desert Island.

[Conchis]

Sorry, but for me, Marriage of Figaro is the one work I would take to the mythical Desert Island.

No need to apologise! :) I know I'm in the minority on this one.

[cloughie]

Well said both.

Like the men said...
Overall opera is very overrated, lots of banale bits and nasty voices, vibrato and all that stuff, but there are some beautiful bits and when the voices are good they can be really good eg bits of Der Rosenkavalier with the right singers is sheer ecstasy! ...and there are bits of Wagner which are seriously wonderful but a good Symphony or large scale orchestral work is overall much more satisfying. A bit of vocal inclusion au Daphnis or Mahler 2 or 3 is fine, but opera overall - no! As for early opera eg Handel is a rather large turnoff.

[Dave2002]

As for early opera eg Handel is a rather large turnoff.

I thought that the recent Handel Partenope at ENO had some of the most beautiful singing for soprano I'e ever heard. OTOH the plot as ever was daft, and there were some tedious moments, but I can away thinking "Do I dislike Handel opera?" Answer - "No - not with singing like that." I have a friend who seems more addicterd to Handel than I am though - he drags me off to these productions.

[jayne lee wilson]

"I'd like the opera - if it weren't for the singing;
I'd like the singing - if it weren't for the opera..."

Attrib...... anon...?

[P. G. Tipps]

Consulting my trusty dictionary, as is my occasional wont, I discover that the word 'hate' can have quite a few meanings on a scale of degree.of negative response.

'Dislike greatly', 'not able to bear', 'shrink from' are all listed as possible meanings as well as 'despise', 'feel revulsion towards', feel hostile towards', etc etc etc.

I suspect most of us have experienced music/operas where the first descriptions might be an honest appraisal of our feelings but few ... surely only the most violently intolerant of listener/opera/concert-goer ... would go along with the more extreme definitions?

I'm not a great opera fan, (silly story-lines, lasting far too long) but those Italians didn't half compose some wonderful tunes ... and, of course, there are always the 'Bleeding Chunks' to often excite and enthrall!

[verismissimo]

As for early opera eg Handel is a rather large turnoff.

And here's me - deep into Porpora and his contemporaries currently. Wonderful singing from Ann Hallenberg, Cecilia Bartoli, Philippe Jaroussky, Franco Fagioli and others. We are currently in the midst of a revival, unnoticed on these boards.

Looking forward to actually seeing Porpora's Agrippina at the Barber Institute in Birmingham in September. That's where the baroque opera revival (Handel, Rameau, Purcell etc) was started in this country by Anthony Lewis in the 1950s/60s.

Porpora was born the year after Handel and, aside from his extensive compositional activities, was a great teacher - the great castrati Farinelli and Caffarelli his most famous pupils - but his pedagogical great-grandchildren are all around us, including Kiri Te Kanawa, Sondra Radvanovsky, Danielle de Niese etc. And in the last generation - Maria Callas, Joan Sutherland, Beverly Sills etc.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

"Handel" = "Early"?????

('slike calling Brahms' String Quartets "early" examples of the genre!)

[verismissimo]

"Handel" = "Early"?????

('slike calling Brahms' String Quartets "early" examples of the genre!)

Nevertheless, early enough that whole swathes of the genre are still being disinterred, ferney.