# Best operas to test my French listening skills on?



## Manok (Aug 29, 2011)

I want to grab a libretto of an opera, and follow along. My reading skills in French are near fluent. My listening skills are a bit below my reading. I thought it might be fun to try out a few operas in French. What are some recommendations?


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

For serious, go for Massenet: Werther er Thais for some more "fun" Donizetti: La Fille du Regiment', or Offenbach - Les contes d'Hoffmann. Good luck.


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## Taplow (Aug 13, 2017)

There are many great French operas. Something light and fun to begin with, as Pugg suggests, might be the way to go. It is important to find a recording (or DVD performance) with a French cast. If it's oral comprehension and training you're after then diction would likely be paramount. There are a great number of world-class singers out there who unfortunately butcher the French language.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Étienne Nicolas Méhul, “the French Beethoven,” wrote a great number of operas before his death in 1817. A friend of Napoleon’s, he was much lauded by Berlioz and even Wagner had a good word for him. I have no idea whether any of his operas are still performed but am curious.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

I'd go for Pelleas et Melisande by Debussy.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

A good choice, as Debussy wanted the vocal lines to follow natural speech patterns, so that the text would be as intelligible as possible.


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

You can try this one. Poulenc wrote, in his own words, an 'orchestration très claire pour laisser passer le texte". A great work, and with a fully French cast.


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## Manok (Aug 29, 2011)

I had no idea Poulenc wrote an opera! I must listen.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

In my ignorance of languages, might I suggest an Italian's opera that he wrote in French, such as La Fille du Regiment (Rossini)


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Fritz Kobus said:


> In my ignorance of languages, might I suggest an Italian's opera that he wrote in French, such as La Fille du Regiment (Rossini)


I guess you mean Donizetti 

On topic, Carmen would also suit very well.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Pugg said:


> *I guess you mean Donizetti *
> 
> On topic, Carmen would also suit very well.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

Manok said:


> I want to grab a libretto of an opera, and follow along. My reading skills in French are near fluent.


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## Guest (Feb 28, 2018)

Berlioz - "_Les Troyens_"

Let me just say this about the work...

In the history of French music, _"Les Troyens"_ stands out as a grand opera that avoided the shallow glamour of Meyerbeer and Halévy, but therefore paid the price of long neglect. In our own time the opera has finally come to be seen as one of the greatest operas of the 19th century. There are several recordings of the work, and it is performed with increasing frequency.

If _"Les Troyens"_ doesn't lift your French listening skills nothing will...

Also try Charles Trenet - the tunes are really quite catchy... but quite difficult to get out of your head once there in there... be especially leery of "Boum" which is insanely catchy... good luck getting that one out of your head...

Here are the lyrics to "Boum" so that your French reading skills will actually be "fluent" rather than "near fluent"...

_La pendule fait tic-tac-tic-tic
Les oiseaux du lac font pic-pic-pic-pic
Glou-glou-glou font tous les dindons
Et la jolie cloche ding-din-don, mais boum

Quand notre cœur fait boum
Tout avec lui dit boum
Et c'est l'amour qui s'éveille

Boum
Il chante "Love in Bloom"
Au rythme de ce boum
Qui redit boum à l'oreille

Tout a changé depuis hier et la rue a des yeux qui regardent aux fenêtres
Y a du lilas et y a des mains tendues, sur la mer le soleil va paraître

Boum
L'astre du jour fait boum
Tout avec lui dit boum
Quand notre cœur fait boum-boum

Le vent dans les bois fait hou-hou-hou
La biche aux abois fait mê-mê-mê
La vaisselle cassée fait fric-fric-frac
Et les pieds mouillés font flic-flic-flac, mais boum
Quand notre cœur fait boum
Tout avec lui dit boum
L'oiseau dit boum, c'est l'orage

Brrr, boum
L'éclair qui lui fait boum
Et le Bon Dieu dit boum
Dans son fauteuil de nuages

Car mon amour est plus vif que l'éclair
Plus léger qu'un oiseau, qu'une abeille
Et s'il fait boum, s'il se met en colère
Il entraîne avec lui des merveilles

Boum
Le monde entier fait boum
Tout avec lui dit boum
Quand notre cœur fait boum-boum

Boum
Le monde entier fait boum
Tout avec lui dit boum
Quand notre cœur fait boum-boum

Boum, je n'entends que boum-boum
Ça fait toujours boum-boum, boum, brrr, boum

WARNING: Watch this video at your own risk - it is insanely catchy...






_


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Manok said:


> I had no idea Poulenc wrote an opera! I must listen.


OMG!! Don't forget to have your hankies with you. This one is possibly the most powerful ending of any opera ever written (save maybe Butterfly)


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## Manok (Aug 29, 2011)

Nudge and a Wink said:


> Berlioz - "_Les Troyens_"
> 
> Let me just say this about the work...
> 
> ...


Reading through the lyric made me think of a pop song, not really an opera I can see it going well with modern styles. I haven't watched the video yet though. I also didn't know that Berlioz wrote an opera.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Manok said:


> I had no idea Poulenc wrote an opera! I must listen.


More than one. He also wrote *La voix humaine* and *Les mamelles de Tirésias*.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Fritz Kobus said:


> In my ignorance of languages, might I suggest an Italian's opera that he wrote in French, such as La Fille du Regiment (Rossini)


Just don't go for the Sutherland recording if the language is important to you. Sutherland's singing is spectacular, but, not to put to fine a point on it, diction is not her strong point. I speak and read French and I find it hard to follow along with the libretto. Pavarotti's diction is better, but his French pronunciation is terrible.


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## Guest (Feb 28, 2018)

Manok said:


> Reading through the lyric made me think of a pop song, not really an opera I can see it going well with modern styles. I haven't watched the video yet though. I also didn't know that Berlioz wrote an opera.


My apologies for not making it clear enough that I was merely being me typically being me much to everyone's annoyance which I personally find to be just too hilarious for words...

I thought that the juxtaposition of a work of such profound significance as "Les Troyens" paired with French singer/songwriter Charles Trenet singing his 1938 Grand Prix du Disque winning pop song "Boum" with it's light, irreverent lyrics expressing a joie de vivre typical in French popular music produced during the late 1930's made for a really first-rate pairing because for all of it's alleged profound significance "Les Troyens" actually has very few tunes which are as insanely catchy as "Boum" and allow me to wish you good luck in finding a tune in "Les Troyens" that you can actually dance to... trust me... don't ask...

Watch the video at your own peril, my friend... I heard it six weeks ago and I still can't get it out of my head.. it really is insanely catchy and many of you if not all of you will agree that I am indeed the forum's resident foremost authority on all things relating to insanity especially the expression and manifestation of... So I should know, eh?


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Nudge and a Wink said:


> and allow me to wish you good luck in finding a tune in "Les Troyens" that you can actually dance to... trust me... don't ask...


Naaw: What was it that you said this morning?


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Manok said:


> Reading through the lyric made me think of a pop song, not really an opera I can see it going well with modern styles. I haven't watched the video yet though. I also didn't know that Berlioz wrote an opera.


Not just an opera, but a masterpiece. Mind you it wasn't his only opera. He also wrote *Béatrice et Bénèdict*, based on Shakespeare's _Much Ado About Nothing_ and *Benvenuto Cellini*.

His take on Goethe's _Faust_, *La Damnation de Faust*, which he called a _Légende dramatique_ was not intended to be staged, but it often is.

He also wrote a fair amount of vocal and choral music.


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## Guest (Mar 1, 2018)

Becca said:


> Naaw: What was it that you said this morning?


Not this time, Becca, my friend, not this time... because finally... finally... you have been bested on this forum - finally!

And worst of all not bested by one of the forum's great minds....not bested by one of the forum's resident "geniuses"...not bested by one of the forum's relatively lucid and somewhat coherent members... but bested by someone who's grip on reality can charitably be considered by one and all to be "tenuous" at best and that someone... is me! (...that was supposed to sound a lot more "triumphant" than it sounds but it somehow seems vaguely insulting... maybe it's just me...)

Trying to best me with some obscure "dance" tune from "Les Troyens", eh?

Well... allow me to throw down the gauntlet and heartily shout - _"En garde!"_... (I'm sorry I have to pause here again to announce that I'm not entirely sure exactly what a "gauntlet" actually is but whatever it was that I threw down was... well...thrown down I reckon is the word I'm looking for ... let's just say for the sake of argument that it actually was a "gauntlet" so that we can move on, eh? - Thanks!)... Where was I?... Oh yeah! - _"En garde"_!

Allow me to throw back an equally obscure "Les Troyens" reference by quoting from one of the lesser known arias that usually gets cut because "Les Troyens" is already too long to begin with (at least I think so) but I've restored because none of the other arias that Enée sings made any sense when I tried to use them to best you so I chose this one which is quite frequently cut as mentioned previously because five acts of "Les Troyens" is probably four more than you really need and thus known to very few (you might almost say "no one") except by well-known and well-regarded Berlioz scholars such as myself, Winton Dean, Siobhan Black, Barbara Hannigan, and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla... all of whom are "smokin' hot" by the way... except for Winton Dean of course...who was kind of homely looking...

This is taken from Act Six Scene One... Enée and Didon are in the cafeteria... and someone told someone who told someone else that Didon was planning to break up with Enée and thus he begins this aria which is entitled "déjà allé" - (which is French for "Already gone" for those of you who are not fluent in reading and speaking French like Greg Mitchell who seems hellbent on letting everyone know that he is indeed fluent in reading and speaking French... like that's supposed to mean something to English-Canadians who dated knife-wielding car-thieving French-Canadian girls who were scary and crazy and sometimes both at the exact same time...One of these days I'll have to tell you about Lisette who was an artist... and a really quite talented one at that... and also "smokin' hot"... but she had a tendency to draw pictures of me holding my own severed screaming head which quite frankly I found somewhat disconcerting to say the least but that is a story for another day... oh yeah and she also threw a bicycle off of the roof of the six-floor apartment building that I was living in when I was playing for the Edmonton Oil Kings and it landed on a car and smashed the windshield which sounds as if I should have been really upset but I wasn't because it wasn't my bicycle that she threw off of the roof and it wasn't my car that it landed on so I really didn't care ... but I digress...) -

_Well, I heard some people talkin' just the other day
And they said you were gonna put me on a shelf
But let me tell you I got some news for you
And you'll soon find out it's true
And then you'll have to eat your lunch all by yourself
'cause I'm already gone
And I'm feelin' strong
I will sing this vict'ry song, woo, hoo, hoo, woo, hoo, hoo
_

and thus Becca, my friend, Enée's "vict'ry song" is thus my "vict'ry song" and I shall taunt you by singing woo, hoo, hoo, woo, hoo, hoo..because what you presented was not now nor will it ever be considered "dancing"... This, my friend... now this is dancing... -






What a hoot, eh?... and a not too shabby swansong either...


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

_Pelléas_ is a fine opera, but may be an acquired taste.

Massenet is another composer who let form determine content, but whose operas have traditional opera numbers (arias, duets, ensembles), although generally not marked as such; his "line" tends to follow natural speech patterns.

For idiomatic French, Offenbach; there's a delightful _Brigands_.

Berlioz is wonderful; _Benvenuto Cellini_ is my favorite, but _Troyens_, _Damnation de Faust_ (not really an opera), and _B & B_ are all great.

Don't be frightened off trying Meyerbeer (especially _Huguenots_, _Prophète_, _Dinorah_, _Vasco da Gama_) or Halévy (_Juive_).

The French tradition is declamatory; audiences wanted to understand what was said, and thought about it as drama. Try Gluck for starters - _Iphigénie en Tauride_ and _Aulide_ - and then branch into people like Salieri and Sacchini.

There's opéra-comique, of course, with acres of spoken dialogue!

And as a Francophone, let me recommend: 
www.artlyriquefr.fr - which has Félix Clément's Dictionnaire (write-ups of thousands of operas), and dossiers on selected works
http://operacritiques.free.fr/css/
https://www.forumopera.com
Avant Scène Opéra (http://www.asopera.fr/) has published a fantastic series, one opera to an issue, for the last 40 years
And Piotr Kaminski's _Mille et un opéras_


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