# Your "alternative" opera season



## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

Opera houses are increasingly under threat these days and tend more and more towards the safe option, which means the same old repertoire gets recycled over and over. (The three offerings from NZ Opera this year are all in the top 10 most performed operas),

What would be your ideal "off the beaten track" season? Choose up to twenty operas. The only criterion is that they should not appear in this "Top 100 most performed operas of the previous year".

Here's mine:

Vivaldi: Motezuma
Handel: Tamerlano
Monteverdi: Il Ritorno D'Ulisse in Patria
Cherubini : Medea
Mozart: Il re Pastore
Weber: Oberon
Chabrier: Le Roi malgré lui
Thomas: Mignon
Saint Saens: Henry VIII
Charpentier: Louise
Massenet: Le Cid
Catalani: La Wally
Puccini: La Fanciulla del West
Tchaikovsky: Mazeppa
Prokofiev: War and Peace
Rimsky Korsakov: The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya
Rubinstein: the Demon
Britten: Albert Herring
Glass: Akhnaten
Benjamin: Written on Skin


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

Respighi, La Fiamma
Delius, Koanga
Ralph Vaughn Williams, Hugh the Drover
Weill, Aufstieg and Fall der Stadt Mahagonny
Offenbach, La Belle Helene
Handel, Saul
Tippett, King Priam
Chabrier, L'Etoile
Martin, Le Vin Herbe
Chausson, Le Roi Artus
Bolcom, A Wedding
Britten, Curlew River
Prokofiev, The Fiery Angel
Hindemith, The Harmony Of The World
Berio, Un re in ascolto
Marschner, Der Vampyr
Szymanowski, King Roger
Musgrave, Mary, Queen of Scotts
Rameau, Les Boréades
Schreker, Der Schatzgräber
Cavalli, La Didone
Gretry, Richard Coeur de Lion
Orff, Der Mond and Die Kluge
Weber, Euryanthe
Argento, Postcards from Morroco
Krenek, Jonny Spielt Auf


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## rgz (Mar 6, 2010)

Verdi, La Traviata
Puccini, Tosca
Mozart, Nozze
Puccini, La Boheme
Mozart, Don Giovanni
Verdi, Il Trovatore
Bizet, Carmen
Puccini, Madama Butterfly
Wagner, Tristan und Isolde
Donizetti, Lucia di Lammermoor
Rossini, Barber
Mozart, The Magic Flute

Most successful opera season ever and I retire to a private desert island after pocketing the huge cash surplus.

e: didn't see your last line criteria  Still, I'll flout your conventions with my truly unorthodox staging.


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

Fiery Angel - Prokofiev
Die Gezeichneten - Schreker
Dead City - Korngold
Krol Roger -Szymanowski
Three Sisters - Eotvos
Lulu - Berg
Lear - Reimann
L'enfant et les sortileges - Ravel
Katya Kabanova - Janacek
Grand Macabre - Ligeti
Billy Budd - Britten

Reigned in my more modernist instincts for some good (should be) standard fare ;-)


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Mefistofele-Boito
Andrea Chenier-Giordano
La Juive-Halevy
The Consul-Menotti
Nerone-Boito
L'amore dei tre re-Montemezzi
Polliuto-Donizetti
Fanciulla del West-Puccini
The Passenger-Weinberg
Adriana Lecouvreur-Cilea
Bank Ban-Erkel
The Death of Klinghoffer-Adams
The First Emperor-Tan Dun
Louise-Charpentier
Billy Budd-Britten


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Iris- Mascagni
Der Vampyr - Märschner
Euryanthe - Weber
L'amore dei tre re - Montemezzi
Giulio Cesare - Malipiero
Bluebeards Castle - Bartok
Le Villi - Puccini
Stiffelio - Verdi 

Then I would like to say this about the top hundred list of most performed operas. It is a very huge span the number one opera La Traviata have 553 performances i Puritani on place 100 have only 39. Some operas are also performed nearly only in one or a few countries.


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## SalieriIsInnocent (Feb 28, 2008)

Salieri - Axur, re d'Ormus
Rimsky-Korsakov - Mlada

That's listing operas you never see performed. Both have recordings, but not exactly any to be proud of.


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## perempe (Feb 27, 2014)

nina foresti said:


> Mefistofele-Boito
> Andrea Chenier-Giordano
> La Juive-Halevy
> The Consul-Menotti
> ...


i've seen Bánk bán 3 times and Mefistofele twice this season.


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## Don Fatale (Aug 31, 2009)

More Dvorak!

_Of all his operas, only Rusalka, Op. 114, which contains the well-known aria "Měsíčku na nebi hlubokém" ("Song to the Moon"), is played on contemporary opera stages with any frequency outside the Czech Republic. This is attributable to their uneven invention and libretti, and perhaps also their staging requirements - The Jacobin, Armida, Vanda and Dimitrij need stages large enough to portray invading armies._

More Rimsky Korsakov, Mascagni, Glinka's Russlan and Lyudmila

and Boito's Nerone obviously.

There are so many operas to choose from. The great dilemma for opera houses is surely that if the can sell out with La Traviata and La Boheme and Tosca they're going to keep putting them on, to help with finances and bums-on-seats statistics. Personally as an _opera-spotter_ I like to see an opera I haven't seen before, or not in a while. Spending £100 to see a routine performance of an opera I've seen dozens of times in a theatre I've been to dozens of times, doesn't work for me.


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

king arthur (purcell)
sancta susanna (hindemith)
licht (stockhausen)
der schauspieldirektor (mozart)
lucrezia borgia (donizetti)
alahor in granata ( - // -)
la favorita ( - // -)
daphne (strauss)
francesca da rimini (zandonai)
l'heure espagnole (ravel)
semiramide (rossini)
oedipus rex (stravinsky)
tancredi (rossini)
la serva pedrona (pergolesi)
la pietra del paragone (rossini)
lucio silla (mozart)
die frau ohne schatten (strauss)
il ritorno d'ulisse in patria (monteverdi)
nabucco (verdi)
the makropulous case (janacek)
iphigenie en tauride (gluck)


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## JohnGerald (Jul 6, 2014)

I would like:

Donizetti's "Three Queens" with Radvanovsky
Verdi's Ernani, I Lombardi and Stiffelio
Rossini's La Donna Del Lago and La Siege de Corinth
Bellini's Il Pirata and i Capuletti ed i Montecchi
Donizetti's Maria Padilla and Gemma di Vergy

I'd need the operatic equivalent of the Betty Ford Treatment Center after the last performance, though ...


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## rgz (Mar 6, 2010)

Kinda bummed to see only mama s. with any Philip Glass on her list  Satyagraha is so good, y'all.


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## BaronScarpia (Apr 2, 2014)

Szymanowski: Król Roger

Bellini: Adelson e Salvini

Handel: Poro

Mascagni: Lodoletta

Orlandini: Berenice (discovered in 2012, never before recorded or even performed - save for 2 arias!)

Tchaikovsky: The Maid of Orleans

Puccini: Le Villi

Weber: Euryanthe

All of these are operas I've never heard but would very much like to!


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