Great music - terrible libretto - what is the best opera with the worst libretto.

[Master Jacques]

'O wond'rous day! O wond'rous land!
And I'm in love
With Ferdinand!'

Nahum Tate, eat your heart out:
'To your promised empire fly,
And let forsaken Dido die!"

[Ein Heldenleben]

'O wond'rous day! O wond'rous land!
And I'm in love
With Ferdinand!'

(sic? - as quoted from memory).

Tell me you’re joking…

[Ein Heldenleben]

Sondheim didn’t like his libretto or more accurately lyrics for West Side Story . Not so much the plot structure ( pretty well unbeatable really ) but his words . He didn’t think a Puerto Rican girl would sing “ it’s alarming, how charming I feel” . He’s right but does it matter? Doesn’t the form allow people to be inappropriately poetic ?

[Ein Heldenleben]

Nahum Tate, eat your heart out:
'To your promised empire fly,
And let forsaken Dido die!"

I do like Comden and Green’s

“What a day , what a day
For an Auto-da-fé “

[RichardB]

Wasn't Metamorphosen inspired by the destruction of the Dresden Semperoper? You might make a case for self-pity when placed in relation to the destruction of other things and people in that conflict. But that building had huge emotional significance for Strauss, so I can empathise with his feelings.

I think it was the Vienna opera house actually, but it doesn't matter that much. I'm not sure what kind of person it takes to ignore the fact that large parts of the world had been ruined and millions of lives lost, through the actions of a régime he had no problems to make accommodations with, and instead write an elegy to a building with personal "emotional significance" (and of course financial significance too). Like many of Strauss's actions during the 1933-45 period, this doesn't show him in a very good light, to say the least.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I think it was the Vienna opera house actually, but it doesn't matter that much. I'm not sure what kind of person it takes to ignore the fact that large parts of the world had been ruined and millions of lives lost, through the actions of a régime he had no problems to make accommodations with, and instead write an elegy to a building with personal "emotional significance" (and of course financial significance too). Like many of Strauss's actions during the 1933-45 period, this doesn't show him in a very good light, to say the least.

Couldn’t have put it better. The work might have partly redeemed itself had he quoted Mendelssohn rather than the Eroica .

[Master Jacques]

I do like Comden and Green’s

“What a day , what a day
For an Auto-da-fé “

I'm a big fan of Henry Carey's (equally intentional) final chorus for The Dragon of Wantley (highly recommended):

'Sing, sing and roario
An oratorio!'

[Bryn]

Tell me you’re joking…

The lines are actually:

"How good they are, how bright, how grand
And I am loved by Ferdinand".

[Ein Heldenleben]

The line is actually, "How good they are, how bright, how grand and I am loved by Ferdinand". (the "A" of "And" dropped to lowercase for clarity).

Strange to introduce rhymes when the original text eschews them . Strange to ignore the original text which is really rather good,..
And one that lends itself to operatic setting. I’ve heard that the piece had a very troubled birth with , shall we say , numerous midwives.

[silvestrione]

I thought of Tippett. I love the first four operas very much, though. For some reason, the sung phrase from The Ice Break, 'is the plane late?', comes into my head at odd times.

My candidate would be Birtwistle, The Mask Of Orpheus. Extraordinary music, like nothing else...but the text pretentious nonsense.

[Dave2002]

Composers do apparently have to be careful over words. One story about Britten and Billy Budd is that he asked Michael Tippett to look at one of his earlier drafts. As he did so, it seems that Tippett burst out laughing, and said that some of the words needed to be changed. I can't remember the exact details, but the line in question was something like "Captain, there's a lot of seamen slopping around on deck" - which you have to read aloud or sing in order to see the problem.

I don't really have much of a contribution to this particular question. Regarding Rosenkavalier I feel it can work on stage, but the music in isolation doesn't work too well with whatever significance it has tied up in the words for a lot of the time. There are some glorious musical moments, but a lot of it is really quite dull.

[ChandlersFord]

I think it was the Vienna opera house actually, but it doesn't matter that much. I'm not sure what kind of person it takes to ignore the fact that large parts of the world had been ruined and millions of lives lost, through the actions of a régime he had no problems to make accommodations with, and instead write an elegy to a building with personal "emotional significance" (and of course financial significance too). Like many of Strauss's actions during the 1933-45 period, this doesn't show him in a very good light, to say the least.

A normal, human person I’d say. Buildings and objects can bring unalloyed pleasure; the same can rarely (in fact, never) be said of people.

And I don’t think Strauss was happy to make accommodations with the Nazis: he was more or less obliged to, to protect members of his own family. It’s easy to point the finger at people who lived under totalitarian regimes, but you have to ask whether you (or I) would have done things differently had it been us. Ronald Harwood’s play Collaboration is illuminating on this aspect of RGS’s life, and how awful he felt about having to abandon Zweig as a librettist.

[RichardB]

I don’t think Strauss was happy to make accommodations with the Nazis

I've spent much time looking at a great deal of the relevant literature about the case of Strauss and I'm not going to try and dredge it all back up now! especially since it's off topic. But, as has been said, Strauss was a political conservative and a fairly well-heeled member of the bourgeoisie, and these are exactly the kinds of people who, first of all, didn't take much notice of the signs that an authoritarian regime was on its way, and secondly found excuses to cosy up to it once it arrived.

As for The Mask of Orpheus, I like that libretto a lot. Like that of Punch and Judy but in a different way, it exactly reflects the strange mixture of abstraction and earthiness that characterises Birtwistle's music. His subsequent operas are much more conventional in comparison, I think.

[Joseph K]

My candidate would be Birtwistle, The Mask Of Orpheus. Extraordinary music, like nothing else...but the text pretentious nonsense.

Care to expand on this? Like many operas I know or have listened to I think the libretto is quite good in a functional sort of way.

But, not knowing many operas to say the least, I can't really answer this thread's question - but I have to say, the one record that I thought of involving great music but terrible words is Tony Williams' Emergency album. But that obviously isn't opera.

[ChandlersFord]

I've spent much time looking at a great deal of the relevant literature about the case of Strauss and I'm not going to try and dredge it all back up now! especially since it's off topic. But, as has been said, Strauss was a political conservative and a fairly well-heeled member of the bourgeoisie, and these are exactly the kinds of people who, first of all, didn't take much notice of the signs that an authoritarian regime was on its way, and secondly found excuses to cosy up to it once it arrived.

As for The Mask of Orpheus, I like that libretto a lot. Like that of Punch and Judy but in a different way, it exactly reflects the strange mixture of abstraction and earthiness that characterises Birtwistle's music. His subsequent operas are much more conventional in comparison, I think.

This is sheer extrapolation, as surely you must realise.