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Monday, April 11, 2011

Fantasy Opera, Season 5

Still daydreaming.
  • Barber, Vanessa
  • Britten, Gloriana
  • Delius, A Village Romeo and Juliet
  • Argento, Postcards from Morroco
  • Weisgall, Esther
  • Bennett, The Mines of Sulphur
  • Humperdinck, Konigskinder (aka The Goose Girl)
  • Mascagni, Isabeau
  • Albeniz, Merlin
  • Dallapicolla, Il prigonniero (need companion opera...)
  • Lully, Cadmus et Hermione
  • Charpentier, Medee
  • Rameau, Samson
  • Cherubini, Medee
  • Martinu, The Greek Passion

11 comments:

  1. Usandizaga - Las Golondrinas

    I've never heard a note of Las Golondrinas but it's often referred to as the Spanish Pagliacci. It apparently contains some very fine music. Historians say that Usandizaga was the great 'might have been' of Spanish opera. He died in Barcelona (1915) at the age of 28.

    Malipiero - The Changeling Prince

    Wolf-Ferrari - The Curious Woman

    Roussel - Padmavati

    Smetana - Libuse

    Milhaud - Christoph Coulomb

    Schulze - Peter Schwarze

    Massenet - The Juggler of Notre Dame

    Nono - Prometeo, The Tragedy of Listening

    Messager - Veronique

    Krenek - Charles V

    Respighi - The Flame

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  2. I can't believe I didn't have La fiamma in an earlier season - great opera, or anyway, it sounds really good on record.

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  3. Believe it or not, Trouble in Tahiti (Bernstein) is a fine companion to the Dallapicolla. The subject matter of each is complementary, and the stylistic contrast makes for a very good double bill.

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  4. You could lighten up the Dallapicolla with Zemlinsky's Florentine Tragedy. At least two of the three characters are happy at the end.

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  5. ahahaha, that is a great suggestion! I've seen "A Florentine Tragedy" (and I wish I could remember how to spell it in German). How about that Korngold one-acter, Violanta, which has a similar plot? (Is it only one act??)

    Steve, that's an interesting suggestion!

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  6. It's "Eine Florentinishche Tragoedie." And one of the leads is named "Simone" in it and also in Korngold's one-act, 74 minute, "Violanta." Good point about the similarities!

    Shorter operas aside, though, if I could pick one from Zemlinsky and one from Korngold they would be "Der Koenig Kandaules" and "Das Wunder der Heliane." Which both, now that I think of it, pivot on the disrobing of the female leads.

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  7. There's an extra h in that: Florentinische Tragodie rather than Florentinishche. :)

    Hahaha, "Wunder der Hiliane" is on an earlier fantasy opera season, I think.

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  8. Berthold Goldschmidt's Beatrice Cenci?

    Did you already have Ullman's Emperor of Atlantis? (I think that's also short and might need a companion opera.)

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  9. Huh, no, I do not yet have Der Kaiser von Atlantis scheduled. How could I have missed it??

    Don't know a thing about the Goldschmidt.

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  10. Lisa, I don't know what you have in mind with the Rameau. Samson was abandoned in 1735; it was never performed, and the music is lost. Rameau may have re-used some of the music in later works, but that's conjecture. Are you proposing a total (conjectural) reconstruction of this lost work? a pastiche?

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  11. Nope - I grabbed something at random from a works list without reading very carefully!

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