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Friday, June 24, 2016

Shakespeare at the Opera



A fantasy opera entry; a long, long season of operas based on Shakespeare, including Doppelgangers and also a....what the heck would those trios be called?
  • Britten, A Midsummer Night's Dream
  • Purcell, The Fairy Queen
  • Thomas, Hamlet (even though I consider it mediocre at best!)
  • Verdi, Otello
  • Rossini, Otello
  • Bellini, I Capuleti
  • Gounod, Romeo et Juliette (hey, on record it sounds a lot better than Faust)
  • Berlioz, Romeo et Juliette
  • Verdi, Falstaff
  • Nicolai, Merry Wives of Windsor
  • Vaughan Williams, Sir John in Love (even though it doesn't sound that good on record)
  • Reimann, Lear
  • Verdi, Macbeth
  • Bloch, Macbeth (a belated entry, August, 2016)
  • Adès, The Tempest
  • Hoiby, The Tempest
  • Berlioz, Beatrice et Benedict
  • Wagner, Das Liebesverbot

9 comments:

  1. I'm curious about Gli Equivoci, by Steven Storace and Lorenzo da Ponte, based on The Comedy of Errors. The have been some modern revivals, although there doesn't seem to be a recording. Storace sounds like he might have been an interesting composer, but (according to Wikipedia) most of his scores were destroyed in the Drury Lane fire of 1809. Evidently this one survives.

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  2. Wow.

    Related to Nancy Storace, perhaps? Creator of Susannah in Nozze?

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  3. Here's an audio recording of Gli Equivoci, translated into English, from a live performance in London in 1977

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

    And here's an essay from the February 1974 issue of Opera Magazine (via Google cache):

    http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:58r1gbLyWfgJ:opera.archive.netcopy.co.uk/article/february-1974/26/storaces-gli-equivocr+&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

    Pretty interesting, isn't it?

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  4. I will give it a listen but not tonight: I am at my second Don Carlo. :-)

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  5. Prom 44: This transatlantic Prom presents a range of Shakespeare’s characters as reflected on stage and screen – with an all-British first half and a second half devoted to American musicals, conducted by the US-born Keith Lockhart.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/events/echmbp

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  6. Slapping forehead - there is a Macbeth opera by Bloch.

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