What is your opinion on Wagner (You look like you have one). Is he good or bad? Any fun facts?
horrifyingly, i do.
perhaps my best take on wagner is that he’s full of contradictions to the point that it’s very hard to get to the bottom of anything he’s trying to say. i’ll never understand how he could have such an objectively bizarre and oftentimes straight-up bad personality and still write characters that imply great wisdom and knowledge about human nature. very little in wagner’s persona screams high emotional maturity/intelligence, often rather the opposite, and still he wrote characters that are so real and true you could hold their hand, and the music to tell you all about them. i’ll never get to the resolution of this contradiction, and so i’ve stopped trying to decipher him. it’s a better idea, i think, to know what sort of person he was, and what his faults were, and to let his work take flight and to find what it means to you personally.
musically, you like him or you don’t, both is fine – i think his works are musically fantastic. they’re extremely expressive, and to me at least, there’s an element of true-ness to it, when i think yes, this is really what something feels like, physically, even for feelings his compositions aren’t often traditionally associated with, ig, like grief.
fun facts:
- he was a short little btch of ca 165cm
- he was also a fan of colourful clothes and ordered trousers, shoes and pyjamas in really weird colours (pale yellow, pink, green…)
- he was allergic to wool
- most facts about him aren’t fun because they’re about his bad personality
sorry if it’s a boring question (i’m tired af 😭) but do you have a list of operas you want to discover in the future? any ones you didn’t like that you’d want to give a second try?
hiiii thanks for this ask <333 I'm extremely late on this but ehh it's been a WEEK
Okay so:
I've been working on La fanciulla del West... I like ch'ella mi creda and that bit about some guy's mother at the beginning... but I don't have a filmed production that I like? Does anyone know of a filmed version that isn't that met one with Jonas Kaufmann? Cause that would be nice...Oh if there was a version with Franco Corelli....*sigh*
Would you believe it if I said that I still haven't seen the entirety of The magic flute? So yeah...I should do that eventually cause I have seen clips of all the major arias (and I've technically seen it live but it was so long ago I was so young that I don't remember it)
I've just received like 3 boxes full of old opera recordings from my aunt's husband (who died years and yeas ago and was a huge opera fan) so I'm working through that... particular highlights include like 7 Offenbach operas and SO much Verdi (and also many albums with Anita Cerquetti? which like. nice.)
Then of course there's WAGNER! I liked Parsifal very much... I'm still very much on the [Wagner orchestral music > Wagner singing] train, but I should explore more... maybe Lohengrin..idk...also I should get on Korngold...Anyway, so any recordings and recommendations are very welcome!!!
I’m really sorry it took me so long but here it is!
I’d like to preface my Tosca take with a peek into my thought process. During the Digital Opera 2.0 there was a round table about the state of professional opera critique in the modern world and among other things everybody mentioned how modern critics often use cinematic comparisons to express their thoughts and feelings about any given performance using said comparisons: “Oh, that was like (insert a name of a famous film director or a well-known cinematic moment)!”. In my Tosca take I’d like to turn that around a little bit… One other thing everybody’s saying about successful operatic experiences – it’s that some magical combination of new, unexpected and familiar, easily instinctively predictable is the key, or at least one of the keys to success. So, why not use subtle, semi-subtle or even sometimes on its face obvious film/video references as points of familiarity in a performance to make it work on emotional and contextual level?
On the technical side ideally my staging would require a turning circle stage thingy but I can come up with a couple of ways to do it differently from a technical standpoint if need be!
Floria Tosca, a celebrated jazz singer - soprano
Mario Cavaradossi, a photographer - tenor
Baron Scarpia, chief of police - baritone
Cesare Angelotti, Civil Rights movement activist - bass
A ‘Sacristan’ – a photography shop employee/janitor - baritone
Spoletta, a police officer - tenor
Sciarrone, another police officer - bass
A Prison guard - bass
A Car Wash ‘boy’ - alto
Police officers, worshipers, various townsfolk
Ok, so while the public is gathering I want there to be the sun rise over the sea shore with beautiful cliffs projected onto the curtain… When the orchestra and the conductor’s in and we see a faded sign saying ‘Rome, IT’ with an impossible to read number of residents, like it’s smudged or something – it can be swiftly erected or simply projected onto the curtain. Three famous Scarpia accords and a disheveled man is running across the avant scene… The curtain goes up.
Act I
In front of the audience there’s a square. A very recognizable Back to the Future/Gilmore Girls American screen town main square, but the coloring of everything is not bright… It’s like sepia-pastel. There’s a church (white with columns), a barber shop, a town hall with a tall clock tower and some other businesses including a photographer’s studio. As the scene rotates, we see the insides – the studio is divided into two parts – a public one with a lot of smiling families’ photos and a platform for staged photo shoots and a private one, where the photographs are developed. There’s a huge pink Cadillac golden-era-of-American-middle-class style parked in the square.
The disheveled man (Angelotti) enters the square from the corner opposite to the parked car nursing an injured arm in a makeshift sling. He searches the base of one of the church’s columns, finds a key, wants to run to the car but sees a cop, who is putting a piece of paper with a fine on the windshield. The man freezes and hides in the photo shop instead.
An elderly black guy wearing his best church clothes with a paper bag full of food enters the stage, he sees that the photographer’s door is ajar, enters the shop, takes off his hat and jacket, puts on an apron and starts straightening the shop up. Then the photographer himself enters and the action shifts to the back room where he looks through the negatives and photos – these are photos of demonstrations and civil rights movement unrest and not of smiling families. Finally he comes across a very artistic photo of a woman – we can’t see her full face but she’s blond and beautiful, she’s covering herself with a big feathery fan. ‘Recondita armonia’. The black man sweeps the floor disapprovingly and finally makes the photographer go to the front part of the shop while he cleans the dark room.
The disheveled man appears from behind the folding screen. Their exchange ensues. They keep looking out of the window but there are more and more people and what’s more important cops in the square – the shops are opening. The photographer hears his lover approaching and hides the man again, having given him the bag of food. Photographer’s lover – a jazz singer appears in a magnificent white dress with flowers clearly given to her by her fans. She’s a gorgeous black woman. He goes outside to talk to her – she’s suspicious and unhappy to talk to him in the street where everybody can see them, they come inside, the scene continues until she sees the blond woman’s photo left on the counter. She’s jealous and furious. He finally rips the photo to pieces and she leaves. Photographer sends the man in the apron out to give the flowers his lover left back to her and while he’s gone leaves with the man through the back door.
The police enter the square. The police chief sees the pink car then the photo shop – the only shop with the sign ‘closed’ on the door and goes straight to it with his men. They search the shop, then the black man comes back, then the singer. The policemen show the chief, who is playing with a fan used in the blond woman’s photo, the paper bag and some bloody rags – the man’s sling is among them – it definitely was a woman’s pink neckerchief once. They break the door and go into the back room and find the photos and negatives. When the singer comes the police chief shows her more photos and negatives with the blond woman on them. She leaves to confront her lover.
There are more and more people coming into the square – children are running around, playing and mocking the old black man at times. The police chief comes and everyone’s apprehensive when it becomes apparent that people are here to see the travelling preacher – a scene of American protestant fundamentalist rampant religious devotion ensues – with people shaking, speaking in tongues, falling to the ground maybe… Some are instantly cured by the preacher’s touch. Finally he’s lifted on the people’s shoulders and brought into the church. ‘Ta Deum’ – the police chief stands in front of the whole scene and during the final accords he slashes the tires of the pink Cadillac.
Act II
The objects in the square are rearranged like we look at them from a different angle, and a temporary scene is near the end of being finished – carpenters are collecting their tools, some other people are putting patriotic decorations around, some musicians are already here rehearsing or taking their instruments out of their cases behind the drawn curtain – in front of the curtain there’s a lot of public walking in the square. It’s getting late.
As the stage piece turns we see the insides of the police chief’s office: every inch of the walls is covered with the hunting trophies. There’s a massive – totalitarian dictator style table and a window into the square. The whole scene goes in this room without turning back into the square. There are plenty of steal arms and firearms in the room but Tosca kills Scarpia with the knife he leaves on the table recklessly and she takes the knife with her afterwards. (I want her to wear the red dress. Her dress should be the brightest spot in the whole performance and I want her to stick the knife into his neck. I want blood!)
I also want her to leave him in a natural pose – like she definitely wanted to cover the killing. She was going to at least try to save her lover and get away for as long as possible. I want to see (and hear) that determination!
Act III
In this part, the scene is again divided into three segments. One is a brick wall with a police car standing in front of it. A car wash boy (it’s really a girl dressed as a boy in the overalls, a white sleeveless top and a peaked cap brings a bucket of foamy water and starts washing the police car. A couple of cops are smoking and ogling… And I really want the cops to look repulsive – don’t give me a bunch of cute mimans guys – give me older, overweight and bold with sweaty armpits…
Then the stage turns and reveals two segments separated by a brick wall – I want it to divide the scene in two equal parts at this point – one is a back room of a police station where Mario is held in a cage. While the other is the street/yard next to it. In the background of the street segment we can see the night sky – the same one we saw over the see before the start so we get the sense that there’s a precipice there. (Maybe even put a danger sign on the brink or something!) The sky’s getting lighter as the act progresses.
The jailer lets Mario out of his cage to write the letter, but never leaves him alone – stands in the corner and smokes instead. The condemned talks to Tosca through the bars, then she’s escorted into the street rather unceremoniously. Next, the cops beat him senseless and finally shoot him in the back through a pillow to muffle the sound, then they stage a break-out attempt and finally push his body into the street. Tosca runs to him and discovers he’s dead.
Next, all hell breaks loose, but I want her to fight using the knife, not just run away, and then jump. Oh, and she’s wearing male clothes, very similar to her lover’s clothes, like she’s wearing his clothes (but they magically kind of fit her, you know like it happens in movies).
So, here you have it! My take on Tosca. A bit chaotic but it’s always difficult to put such things into words even when you can see it in your head very clearly.
a while ago it would’ve been nozze actually but i caught up :) i have *theoretically* seen don giovanni but i may as well have not. therefore i have not seen don giovanni 🌝
5. favourite opera character
uh. i have trouble picking just one 😭 going by how ticked off i get if the characterisations are bad though, it’s siegmund and sieglinde. pls don’t make me pick one over the other :’(
13. favourite opera production
man this is HARD 🫠… overall, probably chéreau’s walküre though, bc it was so instrumental in making walküre one of my top 3 favs.
15. opera composer i’d most like to meet
hm. tbh i’m not sure i’d want to meet any composer. they wrote things and had their time and their say, and my favourites are dead now, and what they wrote lives a life of its own and has a meaning of its own in my head. it’s kind of a problem that everything i love becomes a little mine in my head & then i don’t much care if my idea perfectly overlaps with the composer’s. sometimes i worry about that. i try to be a little knowledgeable anyway…
but there are some directors i’d love to meet ig ( & i’m working on it with talking to singers) :)
Hey, new to your blog and to opera, and first of all I want to thank you for sharing all your informative, comprehensive and entertaining takes with us. Theatre fandom is so much richer for it! Secondly, I wondering if I might trouble you for some resource recommendations and some advice r.e. understanding opera technically and artistically as a newcomer to the genre. Myself, I only have highschool/College rudimentary orchestral (flute) skills and sadly cannot write music, sightread or sing well (would love to and have tried in the past to teach myself, but it's very difficult and hasn't...really taken well), so while I enjoy so much of the opera music to which I've been exposed, I feel so much is going over my head. What's more, though I have a theatre degree and poetry qualifications, my background is more performance Art and modern non-musical stage, so again I feel I'm missing so much nuance as I take in opera and the glitzy mad world around it. One of my tentative goals is to one day write a libretto, so it's important to me to figure it all out, however I know this will potentially be a long process. The podcasts Opera After Dark and Aria Code have helped somewhat with my understanding, but more knowledge and simpler breakdowns can only help more. Am interested in particular to know how you'd approach educating someone in opera, as you are so well-versed. In about a month I'm going to a screening of Rheingold, which is very much the scary deep end for me (I'm a fluffy French opera fan), so I'd like to go in forearmed haha. Thank you so much for reading and for your content, looking forward to the new season!
hey hey! first of all, sorry for taking half a century to respond to this ask - this is so sweet of you to say, i'm really touched 🥹
about the advice - first, to all the opera friends who see this, feel free to reblog with your own advice and ideas! i don't feel like the most qualified advice giver (lol) because for much of my knowledge, i don't quite remember how i got it. i played classical piano for twelve years, but i never "properly" studied operas anywhere, so most of my learning is and was autodidactic. i think i spent a lot of time on the internet reading interviews with my favourite singers. i also once joined an opera club/society at my university, where i learned more about practical aspects of rehearsals and performing. if you have the chance, going to any kind of open rehearsal is also great to learn about how music, staging, and acting end up together. then, it kind of depends on what you specifically want to discover about the operas you hear, whether it's music theory or aspects of stagings, etc.
i think i can say a bit, though, about how to approach a first-time rheingold (or a first-time wagner?). the most important thing is: the veil of seriousness that seems to surround wagner operas does not exist. at least it doesn't exist for me. it can be no less funky and fun than any other kind of opera. especially rheingold.
it depends a bit from which side you're more prone to approaching something: if you enjoy analysing music to get closer to it or if you feel you have to get closer to it first in order to want to analyse it. i am of the second type, which means i try to drop all worries before going to see something new and approach it with a "yeehee fun!!" mindset. something i find extremely worthwhile in wagner operas, especially because the words and the story are so old, is putting yourself in the characters' shoes and treating them as if they were real people. this helps if you tend to look at everything through the emotional lens - feeling emotionally close to the story in some way, either through understanding the relationships or properly relating, can help with appreciating the music and developing an understanding of why it was written this way. i'm no huge music analyst by choice myself, though, i have to admit. however, rheingold specifically is a very fun opera because it illustrates its own setting quite nicely with the music - there's a lot of atmosphere in the music and there's a lot of tone painting going on, like music that sounds like diving through a river, giant threatening footfalls, sounds of a smithy, and such. several of these reappear multiple times throughout the opera, so one thing i enjoyed playing around with while and after my first ring cycle was this playlist:
Der Ring Des Nibelungen Leitmotifs
it has all the ring leitmotifs the heart desires and it's quite fun to play auditory bingo with them - you can either listen before you go or afterwards and then check out a recording.
as you were in orchestra, perhaps buying/borrowing a score and reading along would also be an option for you? i do this only for the works that really, really interest me, but i feel it does wonders for the amount of things i hear in the music, especially for wagner, because sometimes you can recognise motifs by sight on the page first and then you actually hear them better. i'd suggest doing this after the screening, though, if you liked it.
i'm not sure if this advice is any good, lmao - if you have any more questions, absolutely don't hesitate to be in touch! :) hope that rheingold goes well (which one will you be seeing, btw?) and i'd be curious to find out your opinion at the end!! :D
Will you hear the new BFRing via Radio tonight? I'm kinda scared cause this will be my first Bayreuth Ring I will experience "live".
i won’t but that’s only because i’m going to see it live later this august!! i’m excited out of my MIND (basically vibrating rn) and i want the live performance to be the first time i perceive this ring in its entirety…otherwise i’d follow along via radio!
i think tuning in would probably be cool, though. it’s always a little harder to follow with audio-only stuff (i find) but if you feel you won’t get lost in the plot, go for it! also, new ring productions don’t come by on the daily, so seize the day (or the evening) if you wish >:)
Any hot takes and/or unpopular opinions on the Ring Cycle? All of it or just any opera/character/dynamic you feel like. ^^
me 🤝 taking ages to answer asks i love
- wotan loves his children. there, said it.
him not loving his children isn’t why he fucks up their lives. the problem is the rest of his personality. brünnhilde has presumably a pretty good grip of the concept, seeing that she experiences it herself, and she says she knows wotan loved siegmund. (kind of incriminating that she says it, not him, but hey, she’s not a liar.) wotan essentially has two relationships with each child:
1) a fatherly relationship, and
2) a ‘working relationship’, in which he expects them to do what he wants. obviously and predictably, he can’t keep the two apart, and he really can’t deal with problems in the ‘working relationship’ without it bleeding into the fatherly one. long story short, i think his horror at siegmund’s death and sadness at never seeing brünnhilde again is real because he mourns them as people, but it’s still self-inflicted because he could’ve just only loved them as children.
- alberich stealing the rhinegold isn’t purely about sexual rejection. “horny dwarf doesn’t get what he wants and decides he’ll just take world power instead” is a funny concept and i will joke about it, but i really don’t think it’s about sex that much. there has to be a lot wrong with you for things to escalate this fast. there are two options:
1) either alberich has an entitlement problem, but i consider it less likely because in the opening scene of Rheingold, he doesn’t actually seem to think he’s particularly fantastic and should thus get what he wants. it has more the air of someone just...recklessly trying their luck. thus,
2) alberich is actually a pretty intelligent creature. and he’s looking for something he's missing. in the beginning, it might’ve been actual love, then admiration, then some form of physical affection, until it boiled down to sex, because out of all of these things, it can be done relatively casually and appears more pursuable than, say, lifelong love, if that didn’t work out. and alberich has been searching for a long time for whatever it is that he wants, whatever part of himself wants this, and the rhinemaidens scene was just the end point of a development we never got to see.
- i like the reading that fasolt is genuinely in love with freia. It’s another example of people resorting to terrible methods, but if you play it straight, it’s incredibly uncomfortable. if fasolt really does not know how to get a girl, agreeing to manual labour in exchange for one is his best option. this adds a lot more dimension and struggle to fasolt and doesn’t leave him at ‘creep who requests women as payment for skeevy reasons’ and instead makes him just another person whose emotions wotan toys with. not at all saying that this is a healthy option to get a girl, but i consider it entirely possible.
- (btw none of these hot takes were written to excuse anyone’s actions. people having reasons to do things does not make their reasons or actions good. it just explains them.)
- this is not a hot take because i think it’s not hot anymore but i consider 75% of the ring’s main characters to be in the age range of 15-20 and i will fight people over this.
✨ bonus musical hot take!
- the ride of the valkyries is annoying and incredibly overrated. it’s what people who don’t listen to wagner think wagner is like. it’s not. the instrumental version that’s often performed in concert is the worst of all. the sung “hojotoho!” added at least a tiny bit of spice. it’s grating, repetitive, and it has NONE of the emotional gut punch that the rest of walküre has. in a way, it’s the worst representation of walküre’s general vibe and i hate it, thank u
