BaL 10.06.23 - Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf

[visualnickmos]

Oh I see - cute.

I’ve had the Abbado since it was released: instrumentally superb, but I do find the narrator’s attempted improvements, adding contemporary stock/clichéd phrases (like grandfather grumbling “young people nowadays, they’ve got no respect”), rather intrusive and annoying… but that’s probably because the Ace of Clubs LP was firmly imprinted on my brain at an early age…

Indeed. Completely messes it up, in my opinion. Also - I don't really find Sting's 'speaking voice' in the least bit engaging.

[MickyD]

Just caught up with the broadcast. I must admit that I was very impressed with the David Bowie version - such a good story-telling voice.

[Parry1912]

My favourite, also with French narration, is Peter Ustinov/Orch de Paris/Igor Markevitch.

I’ve got Ustinov with Karajan. His multilingual abilities really were perfect for this work.

[Master Jacques]

No, I was responding to the previous post that mentioned operas with spoken dialogue. I was wondering if anyone had staged (e.g.) a German singspiel or a French opéra comique where the spoken dialogue was in English, but the arias and choruses were in the original language.

Yes, it is happening more and more, I regret to say - in German, French and Spanish operas with spoken dialogue. You may note my "regret": what happens is that doing the dialogue in English and the sung numbers in the "original language" produces a complete breakdown of theatrical illusion, and of dramatic consistency. It is a terrible, destructive halfway house.

Of course, I realise that there are audience members who don't prioritise what's being said in opera, but many other audience members do. In singspiels such as Fidelio, comic operas such as Orpheus in the Underworld and zarzuelas such as Doña Francisquita the drama is moved forward as much in the musical numbers as in the spoken dialogue and melodramas; so making these works dysfunctionally bilingual only produces another level of obfuscation. Switching from dialogue which the audience understands, to arias or ensembles which they don't (forcing them to suddenly look away from the stage, where the focus should be) is the worst of all possible worlds.

Were Wagner, Puccini, Janacek wrong in wanting their operas sung in the vernacular? What makes us think we know better? Offenbach, Beethoven or Vives would have been even more appalled to have their operas compromised artistically, by being morphed into bilingual monsters, with fractured texts and conflicting verbal and vocal styles.