Ten Operas

This is a list, and you know I love lists.  These 10 operas are all operas which I had never heard before I began blogging and have never seen a second time.  All stand out in my mind as outstanding memories.  None of them came to me by way of the Met and none are even close to the top 100.  I have listed them in order of their premier dates.  They cover the entire history of opera, and all of them deserve to be revived IMHO.

Francesco Cavalli's La Calisto (1651) in Italiian.  The musical style is late Monteverdi.  I acquired this from a pirated source in a production that involved René Jacobs.  I understand there is a legitimate DVD of this production that with some effort might be acquired.  This opera production seems to try to show us a true Venetian opera production with gods who descend through stage machinery and transform from baritones to sopranos.  I loved it for its sense of  fun.  Venice is the land of carnival so entertainment is the order of the day.  To present this opera you would need a baritone with a fabulous falsetto.

Jean-Philippe Rameau's Comédies lyriques Platée (1745) in French.  The musical style is French Baroque.  I saw this live at the Santa Fe Opera and thought it was great fun.  Since we are in France, the title character cross dresses from a male tenor to a female, instead the usual Italian arrangement at that time which involved mainly sopranos.  Maybe comedy is a theme for me.  I think perhaps operatic comedy was more significant in times gone by.  This plot is also about gods and magic beings. The title character is written for a French type of tenor called a haute-contre.  To present this opera you might need one.  He isn't falsetto.

Gioachino Antonio Rossini's Maometto Secondo (1820) in Italian. The musical style is early bel canto.  This was also seen live at the Santa Fe Opera with marvelous performances by Luca Pisaroni, Leah Crocetto and the rest of the cast.  It's a serious opera of great significance and an important political plot.  It's one of the operas composed for Isabella Colbran.  This needs to return, but to present it you might need someone who can be Isabella Colbran.

Heinrich Marschner's Der Vampyr (The Vampire) (1828) in German.  The musical style is German romantic.  I saw this live at the Komische Oper Berlin.  Is it a comedy, a tragedy, a soap opera, a horror movie?  What?  So Germans aren't as serious as we thought.  Who knew vampires were popular in the 1820s?  Our heroine is also a modern girl who dares all and triumphs in the end.  There's no cross-dressing.  There are no vocal oddities here or particularly difficult roles.  Present this in your local company.

Hector Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini (1838) in French.  The musical style is French romantic.  This is from a DVD from Salzburg that just happened to be in the opera shop in San Francisco when I was there.  The story takes place in Rome during carnival, creating many opportunities for frivolity. The title character is an actual historical figure, an artist from Florence who wrote a famous autobiography.  His bust is on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. The Pope is a character. Cellini gets into lots of trouble but always finds his way out.  I see no severe difficulties with presenting this opera and don't think it has to be comedy.  Of this set of operas this is the only one that appears in the Met On Demand.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's The Maid of Orleans(1881) in Russian.  The musical style is Russian post-romantic.  Perhaps the reason this opera is not popular is because it is in Russian.  The Verdi Joan of Arc is more popular, but I think this one is a better opera.  For one thing this plot is a lot less ridiculous than Verdi's.  I saw it live at the San Francisco Opera and loved it.  Joan is a mezzo.  Is that the problem?  The difficulty with presenting this opera would be finding a singer to be Joan.  Dolora Zajick might not be available.



Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Die Tote Stadt (1920) in German.   In this list I think it is the closest to standard repertoire and would be classified as post-romantic or what I have called post-Wagnerian.  I saw it live at the San Francisco Opera.  I sat next to someone at the Cosi HD who thought this was the opera she hated most.  The more repulsive parts of the story suit the world view of the early twentieth century.  Maybe you shouldn't revive this for your local company.

Gian Carlo Menotti's The Last Savage (1963) in English.  Menotti's musical style is closest to American musical, but here he approaches bel canto. Modernism makes an appearance.  I saw this live at the Santa Fe Opera.  The plot most resembles a Tarzan movie.  I don't know if you would want this without the production.  The voice parts are not unusual, but you need a baritone who can pass for Tarzan.  Try it.

Philip Glass's Orphée (1993) in French after the Cocteau film of the same name.  In fact the dialog comes from the movie.  The musical style is modified minimalism.  I saw this live at Glimmerglass where they advised that you first see the movie.  I did not.  It seems the most like a real opera of Glass's operas.  It is an angel of death plot, except the angel falls in love with a mortal and tries to cheat fate. I see no barrier to producing this opera.

Oswaldo Golijov's Ainadamar (2005) in Spanish.  The musical style is South American modernism.  I saw this live in San Francisco presented by Opera Parallèle.  It jumps the time frame a couple of times, a problem that was easily solved in this production by displaying the year in the super-titles.  It is a biography of the playwright Federico García Lorca.   The music is exciting and fun and incorporates dance genres.  You will need dancers.
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Rameau’s Le Temple de la Gloire

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Le temple de la Gloire (The Temple of Glory) is an opéra-ballet by Jean-Philippe Rameau with a libretto by Voltaire.  This is all rather well explained in the Mercury News.  This performance by Philharmonia Baroque and the New York Baroque Dance Company was of the 1746 version in a prelude and 3 acts.

Nicholas McGegan, conductor
New York Baroque Dance Company, Catherine Turocy, director
Philharmonia Chorale, Bruce Lamott, director
Catherine Turocy, stage director and choreographer

Gabrielle Philiponet, soprano:  Arsine, Une prêtresse, Plautine
Chantal Santon-Jeffery, soprano:  Lydie, Une bacchante
Camille Ortiz-Lafont, soprano:  Une bergère, Érigone, Junie
Artavazd Sargsyan, haute-contre:  Un Berger, Bacchus
Aaron Sheehan, haute-contre:  Apollon, Trajan
Philippe-Nicolas Martin, baritone:  Bélus, Un guerrier
Marc Labonnette, baritone:  L'Envie, Grand prêtre
Caroline Copeland, principal dancer.

This is a large and complex undertaking.  There is at least as much dancing as singing.  There are three supplicants to enter the temple of glory:   Bélus, a conqueror who forces the kings he has defeated to carry him in on a sedan chair; Bacchus who celebrates love and wine; and the emperor Trajan, who forgives and releases those he has conquered.  Only Trajan is deemed worthy.  We are viewing Voltaire's outlook on virtue.  I understand it to have been a failure because it did not enjoy the king's approval.

This is something that modern commercial opera productions simply don't do--an attempt at an authentic reproduction of a Rameau theatrical work as it would have been presented at the time.  A modern company like the Santa Fe Opera will make the frog Queen look as much like a real frog as possible, such as in Platée here.  Or Glyndebourne will stage his characters inside a refrigerator, such as in Hippolyte et Aricie here.  Or the Bayerische Staatsoper will choreograph break dancing, such as in Les Indes Galantes here.  So an attempt to show something as it might possibly have been in the eighteenth century is a rare treat. The period style dancing was pleasant to see.  A peak part of the dance experience was when someone danced an ostrich in the Bacchus act.

The music still sounded very sweet and nothing like Handel.

The stage is well populated and the stories complex and a bit hard to follow.  There is an intended political message.  Our kings should be seeking more than their own glorification.
 

Weekend in Paris

American Bach Soloists presented a program of French Baroque music in Davis with Jeffrey Thomas conducting.  French music is not as known as German or Italian music of the same period, so for me this was a treat.  Only Rameau is familiar to me.  The program points out that the end of Lully's monopoly made this explosion of music possible.

Les Indes Galantes

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Conductor Ivor Bolton
Director and Choreography Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui

Lisette Oropesa:  Hébé and Zima (soprano)
Ana Quintans:  L'Amour (soprano en travesti) and Zaire (soprano)
Tareq Nazmi:  Osman and Ali (baritone)
Anna Prohaska:  Phani and Fatime (soprano)
Mathias Vidal:  Don Carlos and Damon (haute-contre, a French high tenor?)
Goran Juric:  Bellone (baritone en travesti)
François Lis:  Huascar and Don Alvaro (bass)
Cyril Auvity:  Valère and Tacmas (haute-contre)
Elsa Benoit:  Emilie (soprano)
John Moore:  Adario (tenor)
Many dancers, supernumeraries and an invisible chorus.

Les Indes galante, an opéra-ballet by Jean-Philippe Rameau, came to me by way of the Bayerische Staatsoper.  From an historical perspective this is Rameau's most significant theatrical work, though I think it's only rarely produced.  In music history he is most famous for his invention of the idea of the fundamental bass.  [I'm not going to try to explain this.  Complain in a comment.]  Harmonically he is quite complex.

Opera production in the twenty-first century consists of two contrasting parts:  historically meticulous musical production accompanied by clumsy, often unsuccessful, attempts to transfer the staging of the story into modern times.

The musicology was impressive.  The parts that show up most distinctly are the period sound of the orchestra and the beauty of the sung ornaments.  The conductor describes this as a big Baroque orchestra:  strings, bassoons, brass, theorbo, very busy harpsichord, etc. The singing is remarkable in how it does not sound like Handel.  If I were to compare it to something, it would be bel canto.  Light and beautiful.  Lisette was especially lovely.

We are in a timeless twentieth century, I believe, for our three love stories.  It is all about tangled love affairs among the native populations.  It's all very chaotic, as can be seen in the photo above.  There is much modern dancing and what looked to me like break dancing.  Don't trust me on this.  The break dancer was the janitor.  Cross dressing, both female to male and male to female, was a frequent feature here, and was from the original.  This opera is from the French Baroque, so there were no castrati.

We begin in a school with students.  There are many small flags but only one large flag, the stars and stripes.  So an American school?  For our love stories we go to Turkey, Peru and North America.  The Peru section includes a religious ceremony which has been translated into a catholic mass.  The priest goes around on a Segue and gives people wafers that are drugged.  They fall down.  This is designed to scare the girl he wants.

It's one of those operas that you just have to go along with.  It was fun, but a little long.  If I require the production to explain the opera, that has not happened here.  The chaos seems to have been enhanced.  It's still entertaining.
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Hippolyte et Aricie from Glyndebourne

Jean-Philippe Rameau's opera Hippolyte et Aricie (1733) is basically the same plot as Phèdre by Jean Racine (1677), a play that was done at my college when I was an undergraduate. This is only my second experience of a Rameau opera--the first was Platée at Santa Fe, a comedy.


Hippolytus Ed Lyon, high tenor
Aricia Christiane Karg, soprano
Phaedre Sarah Connolly, mezzo
Theseus Stéphane Degout, bass
Diana Katherine Watson, soprano
Pluto/Jupiter/Neptune François Lis, baritone
Œnone Julie Pasturaud, soprano
Cupid/A female sailor Ana Quintans, same voice type as Hippolytus but sung by a mezzo
High Priestess/Huntress Emmanuelle de Negri, soprano

Conductor William Christie
Production Jonathan Kent

"It has an extraordinary quality of meandering."  Phaedre, wife of Theseus, falls in love with her step son Hippolytus who wishes to marry Aricia.  This is a serious opera, filled with gods and mortals.  Cupid and Diana vie for the souls of men, and Jove grants that one day a year Cupid will reign.  Racine is dark and very tragic, but we are now in the high Baroque which demands its happy ending. 

In this production the mortals are modern and the gods are Baroque.  In the beginning Diana's servants live inside a refrigerator and proceed to prepare broccoli and cauliflower.  Cupid pops out of one of the eggs.  Theseus and Phaedre live in an ordinary small apartment with a fishless fish tank.  Perhaps that's their fish poking their heads out of the radiator below.




Hell is the most fun.  Pluto whose realm is pictured as a giant radiator is served by a variety of insects, include two spiders who perform a charming duet.  We aren't sure what Theseus is doing in hell, but the change of scene is welcome.

After Phaedre kills herself, the young lovers are reunited to happy rejoicing.

Though they are contemporaries, you will not hear the wondrous variety of Handel here.  If the tempo starts to pick up a bit, it must be a ballet.  There are, of course, no castrati in French opera and little of the intense display of coloratura that is present in Italian opera.  Perhaps we might even call this the Rococo.  It is graceful, elegant and formal above all else.  Rameau is pleasant but not particularly exciting.

This opera came to me via a live stream from Glyndebourne.  If it is considered a success, the opera and its production may start showing up other places. Between the scenes is the head of an old bald guy staring out at us.  If they make a DVD, they could think about leaving him out.
 

You may be curious to know that the version on YouTube with Emmanuelle Haim is traditional in its staging.  Diana descends from above just as she should.  The subtitles are in French.

Platée

It is astounding to think how little changed in France between the 1745 of Rameau's Comédies lyriques Platée, the Swamp Queen, and the banana dance of Josephine Baker. The mind boggles. The taste for absurdity and low comedy is exactly the same.

The work is more a ballet than an opera. At its premiere it was called a ballet bouffon. In the San Francisco Bay Area it was presented by the Mark Morris dance company. Folly, a coloratura soprano here sung by Heidi Stober, presents some spectacular singing, but hers is the only truly operatic role.

The set begins looking like a section of portable bleachers borrowed from the neighborhood high school and gradually disintegrates into the swamp.

The chorus enters in couples led by suspiciously thin ushers and is seated in the bleachers in a way that mirrors the audience it is facing. Then the ushers go berserk and start forcing everyone to change seats, sometimes crawling on the floor, sometimes climbing over the rows.

The plot is an attempt to reconcile Jupiter and Juno by making it seem that Jupiter is marrying a hideous monster. To avoid offending women by presenting an ugly woman as a character, the role of Platée is composed for a tenor and always played by a man. At the Santa Fe Opera the role is sung by Jean-Paul Fouchécourt, the current master of this role wherever it is presented. He is what I would incorrectly call a Spieltenor. (I would call him that because I am ignorant of French opera and don't know what they call anything. This blog is subtitled the education of DrB.) He was very funny and quite unselfconscious.

The jokes came thick and fast, and the ballet numbers were very creative. Gods descended from the ceiling. Scum gradually grew until it covered everything. When she was rejected by Jupiter and ridiculed by everyone, Platée vowed to get her revenge.

And the music? Varied and amusing in a late Baroque, early Rococo way, very suitable for dancing.


See pictures of Santa Fe Opera's Platée here. It's almost like being there.