# What opera should have been written?



## silentio (Nov 10, 2014)

So I think: 

Mozart should have composed Don Quixote and Candide
Verdi: Hamlet and The Robbers 
Berlioz: Faust II
Britten: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Debussy: Phèdre
Janacek: Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment
Poulenc: Madame Bovary
Schoeneberg: anything by Kafka


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Verdi, Hunchback of Notre Dame


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

Itullian said:


> Verdi, Hunchback of Notre Dame


That would have been awesome- and with an early fifties-era Callas as Esmeralda?: 'beyond awesome.'


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Wagner, The Odyssey


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Marschallin Blair said:


> That would have been awesome- and with an early fifties-era Callas as Esmeralda?: 'beyond awesome.'


Gobbi as QM?..............


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

silentio said:


> Janacek: Anna Karenina


He briefly considered it, actually:



Vogel said:


> Between 5 and 29 January 1907 [Janacek] began writing an opera on [Anna Karenina] directly to a Russian text, intending it, it seems, for Russia. He may have put his hopes in that country after having been continually neglected at home. However, in spite of some interesting sketches, especially for the characters of Levin and Kitty, the work was left as a small fragment.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Bernstein, Of Mice and Men


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## MoonlightSonata (Mar 29, 2014)

Hardly an opera, but what about Bach setting the whole Bible to music?


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

I'm always sad Verdi never did end up writing "Il Re Lear".


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## DonAlfonso (Oct 4, 2014)

Aaron Copeland - Huckleberry Finn


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I think Britten should have tackled _King Lear_. He treated some of its themes powerfully in _Peter Grimes_ and _Billy __Budd_: alienation, prejudice, madness, purity of spirit, malevolence, forgiveness.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Poulenc to have composed an opera about La Goulue - I think he would have been the man to capture the frivolous, carefree world of her heyday at the Moulin Rouge during La Belle Epoque (Toulouse-Lautrec would obviously feature in it as well) and also her sad decline into poverty and alcoholism when she tried and failed to strike out on her own.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

The opera of my life: The Days of the Week


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Boito & Verdi: _Germinal_


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

mamascarlatti said:


> I'm always sad Verdi never did end up writing "Il Re Lear".


That makes two of us.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Strauss: _Also Sprach Zarathustra (The Opera)_


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## The nose (Jan 14, 2014)

Modest Mussorgsky or Sergei Prokofiev on Dostoyevsky's _Crime and Punishment_
Alban Berg on Salinger's _Catcher in the Rye_
Olivier Messiaen on Abbott's _Flatland_
And a lot anachronistic but:
Wagner on Asimov's _Fondation Serie_


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Benjamin Britten - Turn of the Shrew


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## JACE (Jul 18, 2014)

I don't think anyone has ever adapted a Charles Dickens novel. It seems like there would be a lot of opportunities there. Maybe _A Tale of Two Cities_? Or _Great Expectations_?

A different composer might also adapt Thomas Hardy. It seems to me that _Tess_ would make a great tragic opera.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

JACE said:


> I don't think anyone has ever adapted a Charles Dickens novel. It seems like there would be a lot of opportunities there. Maybe _A Tale of Two Cities_? Or _Great Expectations_?


I'm sure some of you gays would really get into them!

Kafka's Castle sounds like a good one: a man must strive for his destiny, even against seemingly insurmountable odds... and win!


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Unfortunately, Wagner did not live long enough to write his planned opera "Die Sieger" (The Victors), 
based on Buddhism and reincarnation . That would have been interesting !
Prokofiev was planning to write an opera about the life of the nomadic Kazakh tribes of central Asia using Kazakh folk music , but died leaving only a few sketches . Too bad .


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Kafka didn't live long enough to complete the Castle, either. But the hero never gave up!


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

What the???? Someone gave this thread one star? This is a great thread!!!:tiphat:


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## Celloman (Sep 30, 2006)

_The Lord of the Rings_ - Richard Wagner

Oh, wait...I'm having a weird deja vu...


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

I've got one. Holst _Star Wars_. He composed the soundtrack. Why not the opera?


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## Celloman (Sep 30, 2006)

arpeggio said:


> I've got one. Holst _Star Wars_. He composed the soundtrack. Why not the opera?


George Lucas could write the libretto.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

Itullian said:


> Verdi, Hunchback of Notre Dame


Wow! A Verdi opera that maybe even I would like.


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## Loge (Oct 30, 2014)

Richard Wagner - Frankenstein

The book has that Gothic feeling along the same lines as the Flying Dutchman. It would have had everything. A bass baritone monster, the tenor Frankenstein and the soprano Elizabeth who redeems Frankenstein. Imagine Jonas Kauffman singing the title role. And the music would have been the greatest.

Giacomo Puccini - Phantom of the Opera

But wait a minute he did! Move this movie to the 59 seconds mark!


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

arpeggio said:


> Itullian said:
> 
> 
> > Verdi: Hunchback of Notre Dame
> ...


I'm not sure. I've heard enough "Hump-pa-pa, Hump-pa-pa" arias and choruses for one lifetime


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## Celloman (Sep 30, 2006)

I wish Mahler had written an opera with Hofmannsthal as the librettist...


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## anmhe (Feb 10, 2015)

Short-time lurker, first time poster.

the Hangover - Music by John Adams, libretto by Alice Goodman.
I know Adams is capable of elevating great topics, but can he elevate low comedy? Is Goodman up to the challenge? If done right, this could possibly be as fun as Cosi Fan Tutte.


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## anmhe (Feb 10, 2015)

Another idea, though I don't know of a contemporary conposer who would tackle the subject: Conan the Barbarian (adaptation of the John Milius film).

Don't dismiss the idea so quickly. Conan is a MUCH more likeable and relatable character than Siegfried, and multitudes flock to see his story played out on stage.


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## Loge (Oct 30, 2014)

anmhe said:


> Another idea, though I don't know of a contemporary conposer who would tackle the subject: Conan the Barbarian (adaptation of the John Milius film).
> 
> Don't dismiss the idea so quickly. Conan is a MUCH more likeable and relatable character than Siegfried, and multitudes flock to see his story played out on stage.


Unfortunately Basil Poledouris is dead. But there is another problem. In your imagination Conan probably looks like this..










But when it comes to the opera version, Conan will end up looking like this....


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## anmhe (Feb 10, 2015)

If I can deal with a bald, sexagenarian Parsifal, or a 300-pound Mimi, I'm sure I can deal with an out-of-shape Conan.

Also, haven't there been many a performance of Siegfied where his muscles were a foam padded suit?


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

_The Pickwick Papers_ is sufficiently episodic to make a good libretto. As to who, perhaps Ralph Vaughan Williams?

Back in my pre-historic university days I thought that W.W. Jacobs' _The Monkey's Paw_ would make a good libretto - György Ligeti ??


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Tom Holt wrote a very amusing book based on characters from Wagner's Ring _Expecting Someone Taller_ which is set in contemporary England...

_"The story involves Malcolm Fisher, a hapless auction clerk in modern-day England, who runs over a badger one night. The badger turns out to be the giant Ingolf, brother of Fafnir, and Fisher becomes the new owner of the Ring of the Nibelung and the Tarnhelm, and, thereby, ruler of the world."_

Can you imagine what Rossini could have done with that? OK, so the timing is a bit awkward, but then this IS opera that we are talking about!


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## Celloman (Sep 30, 2006)

Has _Madame Bovary_ been turned into an opera? I'll bet Poulenc could have done a good job with it.


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

Wagner
- A Song of Ice and Fire 
- Lord of the Rings
- The Iliad 

Tchaikovsky: 
- Ivan the Terrible

Verdi:
- Nefertiti
- David (King of Israel)
- Genghis Khan

Meyerbeer:
- The Inferno


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## anmhe (Feb 10, 2015)

Dolemite
Music by Thomas Adès
Libretto by Byron Minns

A tale of revenge, and politics set in early 1970's LA.

I chose Adès because of the way he wrote for his brass section in Powder Her Face. Byron Minns for the libretto (in spite of his inexperience with opera) because he knows how to get the language correct without it becoming cringe-worthy.


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## GioCar (Oct 30, 2013)

mamascarlatti said:


> I'm always sad Verdi never did end up writing "Il Re Lear".


Me too, but not as his last opera... I think Falstaff is perfect where it is, as his farewell to the world...

and I'm always sad Wagner didn't go beyond his sketches for Die Sieger.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

I remember reading a play written in the 1960s by Spike Milligan and John Antrobus called the Bed-Sitting Room, a surreal post-apocalyptic story about a man who is mutating into a Bed-Sitting Room due to nuclear fallout. As this was 'selective interest' theatre it was something to be seen performed rather than just read, but I think the potential was/is there to turn it into a musical work. Were he alive Ligeti, or maybe Schnittke, could have been the man to make it viable (assuming they could attune themselves to the Milliganesque humour). Now? Perhaps someone like Gavin Bryars.


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## Fagotterdammerung (Jan 15, 2015)

Boulez: anything? To be fair, it's not entirely his fault; his librettists kept dying if I remember correctly.


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## Fagotterdammerung (Jan 15, 2015)

The nose said:


> Olivier Messiaen on Abbott's _Flatland_


The score was great, but I found the libretto very one dimensional.


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## Guest (Feb 12, 2015)

Someone named Conrad's Heart Of Darkness as an ideal subject for an opera once, and I couldn't agree more. Also, Dracula. Both 20th century. I'd take Conrad in the 21st century form too. 

And, although I don't find his music to be as interesting as a few other opera composers of the time, I think John Adams should keep it up with the modern American content. Now he's gotten Nixon and Klinghoffer out of the way, maybe a more domestic sort of affair? Joseph McCarthy? Martin Luther King? ...2015's "Bill And Monica"?


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

BalalaikaBoy said:


> Wagner
> - A Song of Ice and Fire


just for fun, the parts for some of the characters might look something like
*Ned Stark:* lyric baritone (though a more masculine one, like, say, Robert Merrill)
*Khal Drogo:* basso cantante
*Olena Tyrell:* contralto (Ewa Podles would make a PERFECT Olenna!)
*Khaleesi:* dramatic coloratura soprano 
*Cersei Lannister:* dramatic mezzo
*Robb Stark:* full lyric tenor
*Tywin Lannister:* dramatic baritone


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## Belowpar (Jan 14, 2015)

I wish Bernstein and Sondheim had followed up Candide with this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guilty_Mother


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## anmhe (Feb 10, 2015)

I am a huge fan Adams, but he needs a subject where he can have fun again. There is a great amount of joy in NIC that is absent from DOK and DA, and I miss that. I want more opera that makes me think without constantly bumming me out, and I know Adams is capable of such things.
Great subjects or events do not automatically make a great opera.


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## Belowpar (Jan 14, 2015)

Jerry Springer....

Yes really?


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

I wrote in the "least favorite opera" thread before that my least favorite one is Handel's "Arminio", the story of Arminius or Hermann, the legendary Teutonic tribal leader who defeated the invading Roman legions, and of his wife and child taken prisoner in Rome. I wish Wagner had done this opera instead of Handel. The story of Arminius' war, love, despair and betrayal by his own kinsmen is tragic enough in history books, in Wagner's hands it could have become high drama. And I can envision some fine choral parts in it. Plus, in Wagner's time, with German patriotism on the rise, it would have been much more popular that in Handel's days.

But then there is a theory among historians, that Arminius and Siegfried were really one and the same person...


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## anmhe (Feb 10, 2015)

@belowpar
Isn't there a Springer Opera already?


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## Levanda (Feb 3, 2014)

Ana Karenina opera would be good. I hope so.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

SiegendesLicht said:


> I wrote in the "least favorite opera" thread before that my least favorite one is Handel's "Arminio", the story of Arminius or Hermann, the legendary Teutonic tribal leader who defeated the invading Roman legions, and of his wife and child taken prisoner in Rome. I wish Wagner had done this opera instead of Handel. The story of Arminius' war, love, despair and betrayal by his own kinsmen is tragic enough in history books, in Wagner's hands it could have become high drama. And I can envision some fine choral parts in it. Plus, in Wagner's time, with German patriotism on the rise, it would have been much more popular that in Handel's days.
> 
> But then there is a theory among historians, that Arminius and Siegfried were really one and the same person...


This sounds like a subject Wagner's son Siegfried would have chosen to set. He tended more toward legendary history than toward his dad's mythology (wise enough not to compete) and wrote some accomplished and beautiful, if not awfully original, music. It's pretty hard to find productions of Siegfried Wagner's operas - they're said to lack good librettos and effective dramatic pacing - but there are some decent recordings. Any kid of Richard Wagner is to be commended for daring to write any music at all, but what I've heard of Siegfried's - mainly some tone poems - surprises me pleasantly. Apparently Schoenberg thought he was pretty good too.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Levanda said:


> Ana Karenina opera would be good. I hope so.


There are several operas based on Anna Karenina.
I can recommend David Carlson´s Anna Karenina one of my favourite contemporary operas.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Frankenstein, Wagner


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

An opera that should have been written long ago, has been three times in the last 60 years but is almost totally unknown ... La Mere Coupable, the 3rd of the Beaumarchais Figaro trilogy. I know that Darius Milhaud did a version in 1966, does anyone know anything about it?


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## Lord Lance (Nov 4, 2013)

*The Greatest Mozart Opera*

A Mozart opera on the life and trials of a child _Straßenmädchen_ who grows up to be resent his parents who abandoned him. In the anger and angst of his teenage years, he p_hysisch__ kastriert und Ausführung_ both his parents. _In prison - vergewaltigt_. The circumstances develop our hero into a _emotionslos_ Serienmörder. After 10 days of blizzard, the sun shines bright and that is the day, our _Hauptfigur _decides to enlist his fellow _Huren_ and immolate their _Master-Zuhälter_. The epilogue takes place outside the _Hurenhaus_. The _Huren_ surround the _Haus der Huren_ with Benzin. On the count of ten, the Menschen achieve their letzten großen Orgasmus.

*curtains close*

In case you can't read German, use Google Translate [German --> English].


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

Hilarious but still.


Lord Lance said:


> A Mozart opera on the life and trials of a child _Straßenmädchen_ who grows up to be resent his parents who abandoned him. In the anger and angst of his teenage years, he p_hysisch__ kastriert und Ausführung_ both his parents. _In prison - vergewaltigt_. The circumstances develop our hero into a _emotionslos_ Serienmörder. After 10 days of blizzard, the sun shines bright and that is the day, our _Hauptfigur _decides to enlist his fellow _Huren_ and immolate their _Master-Zuhälter_. The epilogue takes place outside the _Hurenhaus_. The _Huren_ surround the _Haus der Huren_ with Benzin. On the count of ten, the Menschen achieve their letzten großen Orgasmus.
> 
> *curtains close*
> 
> In case you can't read German, use Google Translate [German --> English].


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

A Schoenberg opera about 9/11 would be very moving.


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## GioCar (Oct 30, 2013)

Schnittke should have written an opera based on The Master and Margarita, not only the soundtrack for an obscure Russian film based on Bulgakov's novel.


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

GioCar said:


> Schnittke should have written an opera based on The Master and Margarita, not only the soundtrack for an obscure Russian film based on Bulgakov's novel.


York Holler wrote an opera The Master and Margarita - quite enjoyable. I imagine the time has passed for Boulez's much rumoured Waiting for Godot - an opera that really should have been written


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## Belowpar (Jan 14, 2015)

Becca said:


> An opera that should have been written long ago, has been three times in the last 60 years but is almost totally unknown ... La Mere Coupable, the 3rd of the Beaumarchais Figaro trilogy. I know that Darius Milhaud did a version in 1966, does anyone know anything about it?


See post 46 above.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Gurnemanz's story from Act I of Parsifal should have been acted out as prologue act unto itself. In fact, since that story contains more plot than the rest of Parsifal combined, it should have been two additional acts prior to "Act I". The whole thing ought be at least 7 hours long!


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## GioCar (Oct 30, 2013)

Did anybody write an opera based on the Mahabharata or the Ramayana?

Wagner had in mind Die Sieger, which was based on an Indian Buddhist story, and Philip Glass wrote Satyagraha, somehow based on Gandhi's life, but I don't have in mind anyone who wrote an opera based on the great epics of ancient India.


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

for the hell of it, an opera "dream cast" 


BalalaikaBoy said:


> just for fun, the parts for some of the characters might look something like
> *Ned Stark:* lyric baritone (though a more masculine one, like, say, Robert Merrill)


Robert Merrill



> *Khal Drogo:* basso cantante


Samuel Ramey



> *Olena Tyrell:* contralto (Ewa Podles would make a PERFECT Olenna!)


Ewa Podles



> *Khaleesi:* dramatic coloratura soprano


June Anderson (a voice heroic and powerful enough to command respect....but also capable of being a little bit girly  )



> *Cersei Lannister:* dramatic mezzo


Maria Callas (yes, I said dramatic mezzo ideally, but the two are so damn similar)



> *Robb Stark:* full lyric tenor


Nicolae Gedda



> *Tywin Lannister:* dramatic baritone


Hans Hotter

a House of Cards opera wouldn't be too bad an idea. let's do a dream cast for that as well 
*Frank Underwood:* basso cantante (Boris Christoff)
*Claire Underwood:* dramatic mezzo (Kristel Lindstat)
*Zoe Barnes:* lyric mezzo (Fiorenza Cossotto)
*Lucas:* lyric tenor (Alfredo Kraus)
*Peter Russo:* lyric tenor (maybe we could have a _tenor_ mad scene for once XD)
*Christina:* lyric coloratura soprano (Natalie Dessay)
*Doug:* lyric baritone (Simon Keenlyside)


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