Opera Music

**silvertonebetty** · 07-06-2017, 09:42 PM

So I'm fairly young mid twenties and have a broad range of musical interests but who'd guess opera music would ketch my attention. I'm a huge dean Martin fan my favourite song from him is " come back to sorrento" . I was listening to it then on YouTube I noticed another version of it in Italian sang by Luciano Pavarotti and was blown away by it. So I started listening to some of his stuff and can't get enough of it . The orchestra in the background and the powerful voice he drives with such passion. I have no clue what he is saying but I really don't care it's just beautiful stuff. I all ready knew I liked "phantom of the opera " what a masterpiece that song is . I am really looking forward to finding more of these amazing singers that most of the people my age just pass and miss out on.

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**citizenk74** · 07-06-2017, 10:12 PM

Follow your heart and your ears. It never hurts to broaden your musical horizons.

**silvertonebetty** · 07-06-2017, 10:14 PM

Originally Posted by citizenk74

Follow your heart and your ears. It never hurts to broaden your musical horizons.

You will never know unless you try .

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**rictroll** · 07-06-2017, 11:37 PM

Another good one

**silvertonebetty** · 07-06-2017, 11:41 PM

Originally Posted by rictroll

Another good one

Lmao that's playing on my phone right now lol

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**Jazzstdnt** · 07-07-2017, 01:07 AM

Nessun Dorma. That was a big hit for him after he sang it at a World Cup I believe. It's from Turandot which is playing at The Met this season, by the way.

Nessun Dorma was featured prominently in the last Mission Impossible movie, not only the opera itself in a big early scene but Nessun Dorma was weaved into the soundtrack throughout.

**christianm77** · 07-07-2017, 08:55 AM

Apparently Miles Davis was a huge opera fan and one of his unrealised projects was a version of Tosca (IIRC) with Gil Evans. Would have loved to have heard that....

**christianm77** · 07-07-2017, 08:57 AM

Btw @silvertonebetty Tosca is an opera by Puccini who composed the aria Nessun Dorma (which is from Turandot). I would suggest checking out his stuff. Some great, unusual harmony in there as well.

I love Puccini which is funny because I can take or leave Verdi and I tend not to like romantic opera that much... I think it's the way he blends the Italians tunefulness with his modern harmonic sensibility...

Btw amazing though Pavarotti was, the daddy of all tenors for me is Caruso....

**Jonah** · 07-07-2017, 09:15 AM

So I'm fairly young mid twenties and have a broad range of musical interests but who'd guess opera music would ketch my attention. I'm a huge dean Martin fan my favourite song from him is " come back to sorrento" . I was listening to it then on YouTube I noticed another version of it in Italian sang by Luciano Pavarotti and was blown away by it. So I started listening to some of his stuff and can't get enough of it . The orchestra in the background and the powerful voice he drives with such passion. I have no clue what he is saying but I really don't care it's just beautiful stuff. I all ready knew I liked "phantom of the opera " what a masterpiece that song is . I am really looking forward to finding more of these amazing singers that most of the people my age just pass and miss out on.

I am a big fan of opera...

But there are different types of it... some arias are very similar to typical song froms.

But I enjoy the most the dramatic opera... meaning it has through all the opera the dramatic development of characters and story described with musical means.

Good operatic arias are usually much more complex... seemigly simple Verdi... but most of his arias are impossibble for separate concert performance becasue musically they are too perplexed with the rest of the oper, you will have to edit it to make it a separate 'song'.
Wagner has no arias at all in common sence...

But nobody surpassed Mozart... his operas are real musical Shakespeare, everything about human kind in music...

**Jonah** · 07-07-2017, 09:32 AM

Btw @silvertonebetty Tosca is an opera by Puccini who composed the aria Nessun Dorma (which is from Turandot). I would suggest checking out his stuff. Some great, unusual harmony in there as well.

I love Puccini which is funny because I can take or leave Verdi and I tend not to like romantic opera that much...

Puccini is great for sure... and not only about harmonies he used but also dramatic musical means... you can understand what is going on without without watchinh the scene or understanding the text.

I had the same problem with Verdi.. but revelation came with this Don Carlos performance... some singers are weak.. but here Pavarotti is in extremely good temper... and Ricardo Mutti did a great job on orchestra...
Verdi's scores are not so easy to perform in balance.. and Don Carlos has a lot of seemingly heavy (strangely orchestrated) places.. but Mutti made it in a way you just do not notice it

Check this duo from this performance... especially check the form how Verdi puts a few dramatic lines together in one aria, how mastefully he mingles them and how subtle is the expression, the changes of temper and character...
How differntly sounds duo chorus after intervinience of the king, background monastry vision and sudden confession of Don Carlos...
the music is the same but everthing changed.
And Pavarotti here is exceptionally good. (Baritone is poor)

Check this fantastic climax counterpoint between Rodrgo, Don Carlo and Monk (bass)... each sings about his own and which is great music stylistically illustrates the meaning of waht they sing!

Though this duo has quite clear beginning and ending it is still much connected with previous musical material

The duo starts from 15:50 (but of course it is better to hear all the scen as a lead in.

**destinytot** · 07-07-2017, 09:36 AM

Originally Posted by silvertonebetty

So I'm fairly young mid twenties and have a broad range of musical interests but who'd guess opera music would ketch my attention. I'm a huge dean Martin fan my favourite song from him is " come back to sorrento" .

Hope you enjoy this, too!:

**Jonah** · 07-07-2017, 09:46 AM

One of the greatest baritones ever to me... it's the death of Rodrigo... the character of Don Carlos who probably was the only one to stay fair to his friends and to himself and is to be killed. (Check the musical duo with Don Carlo as a reference to their frienship and ideals)

Tito Gobbi is so powerful... he has fantastic voice but at the same he is the voice actor. He almost speaks and whispers and still he sigs and intonates. He sings full voice and sounds like he speaks.

**Jonah** · 07-07-2017, 09:48 AM

Puccini's Tosca... with Gobbi and Callas

exceptional performance

**destinytot** · 07-07-2017, 09:54 AM

Big Mario Lanza fan here. Music to weep to:

**christianm77** · 07-07-2017, 10:02 AM

Originally Posted by Jonah

One of the greatest baritones ever to me... it's the death of Rodrigo... the character of Don Carlos who probably was the only one to stay fair to his friends and to himself and is to be killed. (Check the musical duo with Don Carlo as a reference to their frienship and ideals)

Tito Gobbi is so powerful... he has fantastic voice but at the same he is the voice actor. He almost speaks and whispers and still he sigs and intonates. He sings full voice and sounds like he speaks.

Yeah Gobbi, the acting singer par excellence....

As with Gobbi's singing, you are correct to say Puccini's scoring is completely at the disposal of the drama... That's what opera is right? Papering over the cracks of an inherently ludicrous narrative using the power of music. (See also Star Wars.)

I will be sure to check out that Don Carlo. Some Verdi I do like - Falstaff for instance, the Requiem (I'm always a sucker for oratorio though.) I think I liked that because it's more contrapuntal - he really shedded that stuff over his life, wonder how much it was to with being rejected from the academy...

At one point in my life I was seriously thinking about being a professional classical singer. Where I struggled is that I wanted to be a musician and was interested in the score themselves and wasn't so excited by the challenges that need to be met by a singer - text, acting and so on. Also languages was a struggle. Probably for that reason I leaned more towards oratorio in my tastes.

OTOH I didn't have the musical chops or the voice for choral stuff... My voice is not a tidy blending sound. It's a huge, booming, weapon of mass destruction that tends to go flat unless it's going on at full tilt. So good for opera, but not so much Palestrina. (Although these days I sing jazz and BV's for pop/soul with a lot of falsetto.) A lot of singers would love to have a bigger voice for the serious dramatic roles, but I was wanted to have a beautiful English tenor voice - sound like Ian Bostridge LOL.

That's the hilarious thing about singing. You can't choose your voice type, and great tenors like Pavarotti are especially rare and special and lionised because of it. Baritones need to be good actors. And you may want to have a voice like a cello, but be stuck with a voice like a trombone...

Anyway, enough about me LOL. Oratorio is considered to be a few notches below Opera work in the singing world, probably because theres no sets, costumes or lighting and the texts are all 'thus sayeth the Lord' and 'Tuba, Mirum Spargens Sonem' and don't give you much to work with dramatically (Bach Passions being one exception.)...

But I liked all the choral bits with the cool counterpoint. Thinking like a guitarist, right? Not a singer.

**destinytot** · 07-07-2017, 10:10 AM

(EDIT) Not an opera fan (I think they're too long and life's too short), but I love the music of Puccini.

AndI love Neapolitan popular song even more.

These are intended for humour only:

**destinytot** · 07-07-2017, 10:21 AM

Mario sings Come Back to Sorrento @1m15:

**henryrobinett** · 07-07-2017, 10:55 AM

The first concerts I ever went to were both operas. My mom was/is a huge fan, and I became one too. The first was Tosca with Leontine Price. Historical. My favorite piece of music, hands down, is the ride to the abyss from Damnation of Faust by Berlioz. La Boheme is the opera I use to get people into the form. Heart achingly romantic and beautiful.

**destinytot** · 07-07-2017, 11:13 AM

Originally Posted by henryrobinett

The first concerts I ever went to were both operas. My mom was/is a huge fan, and I became one too. The first was Tosca with Leontine Price. Historical. My favorite piece of music, hands down, is the ride to the abyss from Damnation of Faust by Berlioz. La Boheme is the opera I use to get people into the form. Heart achingly romantic and beautiful.

My mum was, too. She had a trained voice (but never sang in public) and so did her brother, my uncle - who kept singing into his eighties - and used to give me voice tips over the phone (he lived in Germany).

Likewise for me La Bohème - I'm glad I'm not living in an artist's garret here (but it's not far off - and just as Romantic).

**oldane** · 07-07-2017, 11:17 AM

Talking about La Boheme, here's Rolando Villanzon in "The Cold Hand" (Che Gelida Manina). Some consider those Pucini arias to be the "pop" music of opera but when done well - as here - they send chills down my spine. I'm sure Puccine has been a great inspiration for many film composers and even directors such as Sergio Leone. Both the story and the music of "Once upon a Time in the West" could have been cooked up by Puccini.

**robertm2000** · 07-07-2017, 01:38 PM

Opera, eh? I've been a musician for most of my life - 60-plus years - and I don't like opera! It's supposedly a "dramatic art" and most of the time the drama gets left by the side of the road! Incongruities like Beverly Sills, at 200 lbs and 50 years - singing "La Boheme" and trying to convince us that she is a 19 year old tuberculosis patient! Or a row of Valkyries in Wagner's "Die Walküre," who are voice teachers from the community and every one of them over 60, in ridiculously revealing costumes that show way too much dilapidation. And trying to keep up with the action in Italian or German - tends to leave you wondering what is going on. I've been waiting 40 years to say this!

**christianm77** · 07-07-2017, 03:19 PM

Originally Posted by robertm2000

Opera, eh? I've been a musician for most of my life - 60-plus years - and I don't like opera! It's supposedly a "dramatic art" and most of the time the drama gets left by the side of the road! Incongruities like Beverly Sills, at 200 lbs and 50 years - singing "La Boheme" and trying to convince us that she is a 19 year old tuberculosis patient! Or a row of Valkyries in Wagner's "Die Walküre," who are voice teachers from the community and every one of them over 60, in ridiculously revealing costumes that show way too much dilapidation. And trying to keep up with the action in Italian or German - tends to leave you wondering what is going on. I've been waiting 40 years to say this!

Opera is a fucking stupid artform. Anyone who likes opera accepts this and has moved on. :-)

I was never a huge Opera fan personally. But when it's done well, nothing else quite like it...

**christianm77** · 07-07-2017, 03:20 PM

Originally Posted by oldane

Talking about La Boheme, here's Rolando Villanzon in "The Cold Hand" (Che Gelida Manina). Some consider those Pucini arias to be the "pop" music of opera but when done well - as here - they send chills down my spine. I'm sure Puccine has been a great inspiration for many film composers and even directors such as Sergio Leone. Both the story and the music of "Once upon a Time in the West" could have been cooked up by Puccini.

I thought Villanzon was a striker for AC Milan?

**Jazzstdnt** · 07-07-2017, 10:22 PM

Originally Posted by destinytot

(EDIT) Not an opera fan (I think they're too long and life's too short), but I love the music of Puccini.

AndI love Neapolitan popular song even more.

These are intended for humour only:

Ah yes, The Catalina Wine Mixer - pow!

**Jazzstdnt** · 07-07-2017, 10:24 PM

Originally Posted by robertm2000

Opera, eh? I've been a musician for most of my life - 60-plus years - and I don't like opera! It's supposedly a "dramatic art" and most of the time the drama gets left by the side of the road! Incongruities like Beverly Sills, at 200 lbs and 50 years - singing "La Boheme" and trying to convince us that she is a 19 year old tuberculosis patient! Or a row of Valkyries in Wagner's "Die Walküre," who are voice teachers from the community and every one of them over 60, in ridiculously revealing costumes that show way too much dilapidation. And trying to keep up with the action in Italian or German - tends to leave you wondering what is going on. I've been waiting 40 years to say this!

Yep. There's some truth to that. This is for you.