# Do you like Opera Librettos



## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Basically, there are a lot of operas I like. But most of the time I cannot stand the librettos. I'm not talking about the story, there are plenty of operas that I think have good stories, in theory. But so many times how the story is told is incredibly monotonous, at least to me. I remember when I sat down and listened to Tristain und Isolde with the English translation of the libretto in hand. I loved the music of course it's brilliant, but the libretto is such a sludge to get through. Oh man  The entire 2nd act from what I remember is basically Tristain and Isolde coming up with 5,000 different ways to say "I really love you a lot", for over an hour. I'm sitting there thinking, OK I GET IT can we move on?

Maybe you guys don't feel this way. I'm currently listening to Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex. I was going to listen with the libretto but gave up, because I'm 10 minutes or so in and I'm reading: I spoke to the oracle, I have the answer, the answer I have, because I have spoken to the oracle, I, Creon, have the answer from God, the Oracle let me speak to God and I have the answer.

Okayyyy...never mind, I'm just going to sit back and enjoy the music like I usually do. 

Basically, does anyone feel the same? Or do you like Opera librettos generally? And what do you like about them? Or which ones do you feel are not mind numbingly repetitive like this? Give me your thoughts.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

When I first tried to get into opera (in the 90s), I would listen to the opera and read the libretto from the booklets. After a few tries with about a dozen of operas, I gave up. When I moved to Singapore in 1999, I gave my opera CDs to my nephew.

In the past 10 years or so, I have tried operas again. But without the libretto. I treat them now as musical compositions with voices, and I started to enjoy many of them.


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## Sieglinde (Oct 25, 2009)

Wagner really could have used an editor. Is it REALLY necessary to have a "previously on" in every part of the Ring? We literally just saw that yesterday, Richard. We remember. 

Also: French grand opera are usually an hour longer than they should be.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Art Rock said:


> When I first tried to get into opera (in the 90s), I would listen to the opera and read the libretto from the booklets. After a few tries with about a dozen of operas, I gave up. When I moved to Singapore in 1999, I gave my opera CDs to my nephew.
> 
> In the past 10 years or so, I have tried operas again. But without the libretto. I treat them now as musical compositions with voices, and I started to enjoy many of them.


This is my experience as well, but not that exact timeline obviously.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

I think that Alessandro Striggio's libretto for Monteverdi's L'Orfeo is an interesting text in its own right.

http://www.earlymusic.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Orfeo-Texts-Translations-for-Web.pdf

I suppose, however, that once one has listened to an opera many times it's hard to read it without the music coming into one's head unbidden.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

violadude said:


> But so many times how the story is told is incredibly monotonous, at least to me.


To add tones is the work of the composer.


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

Some of them I do. Some I don't.


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

In general once I can follow the action in my mind's eye I don't worry about following the libretto word for word, but I do try harder with some libretti as the text becomes something like an equal partner with the music - Wagner being the most obvious example for me. Another example is Ludovic Halévy/Henri Meilhac's librettos for Offenbach, because the jokes are usually good enough to make the whole libretto worth following.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

In the vinyl area they where beautiful, lavish with color covers, lots of pictures and text you could actually read, bigger letters so they where great, nowadays they put a CD rom with info in the case, as if one read on you PC whilst listening.


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

^
^

I guess it's better than not having one at all, though (unless you can understand what is being sung). I have a number of vocal works which I really like but not able to source the translated texts leaves them a little naked, I think.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Like following the scores of operas, and assuming that a person has already read a synopsis of the opera and become familiar with it, a case certainly can be made for librettos which serve a fulfilling purpose for those who wish to make their experience more of an intellectual exercise rather than a feeling one.
To close one's eyes and just let the music and the singing wash over you is the way I prefer to enjoy my operas.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

For some operas I will read the libretto once, maybe twice, but for the most part I get my libretto from subtitles in the DVD, which I understand typically may be somewhat abridged compared to the actual libretto.


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## WildThing (Feb 21, 2017)

nina foresti said:


> Like following the scores of operas, and assuming that a person has already read a synopsis of the opera and become familiar with it, a case certainly can be made for librettos which serve a fulfilling purpose for those who wish to make their experience more of an intellectual exercise rather than a feeling one.


Ummm. I always read along with a libretto while listening to an opera, and wouldn't describie my experience as "more intellectual" -- anymore than watching an opera on stage is "more intellectual" than closing one's eyes in the theater and only listening to the music. Opera is a dramatic art form that conveys its emotional content through its music, so as far as I'm concerned, I'm getting the full emotional impact of the music by understanding the dramatic context and relationship between what the characters and saying and the way the music is enhancing the story and dialogue.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Librettos aren't meant to be read or performed without the music, and in all the years I've listened to opera it's never occurred to me to read them as I would read a play or a novel, with the same hope of a rewarding literary encounter. That isn't to say that no librettos have literary merit, but music is the boss in any relationship between words and music, and if a libretto gives a composer the opportunity for his best musical inspiration it's done its proper job. All those variations on "I love you" in _Tristan_ are mainly a scaffolding for a flood of ecstatic music. It's amusing that Wagner himself, sitting with someone at a rehearsal of the opera, said something like "close your eyes and just listen to the orchestra."

The best reason to read most librettos is to provide a frame for enjoyment of the music. Once you know what's going on onstage and what the characters are talking about you can just forget the librettos and whether they read well. It's generally pretty much impossible to hear a lot of the words being sung anyway.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

WildThing said:


> Ummm. I always read along with a libretto while listening to an opera, and wouldn't describie my experience as "more intellectual" -- anymore than watching an opera on stage is "more intellectual" than closing one's eyes in the theater and only listening to the music. Opera is a dramatic art form that conveys its emotional content through its music, so as far as I'm concerned, I'm getting the full emotional impact of the music by understanding the dramatic context and relationship between what the characters and saying and the way the music is enhancing the story and dialogue.


I apologize to you if you thought my post was written in an insulting tone. Your "ummmm" made me think that perhaps I expressed something that you felt was necessarily a negative thing, and I never meant it to be.
I guess that, for me, doing just one thing (listening) instead of two things (reading and listening) works better for my enjoyment of an opera when I cannot see an entire production.
Like you, I too feel that opera is a dramatic art form and further is one meant to be seen with one's eyes as well as heard with one's heart.


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## WildThing (Feb 21, 2017)

nina foresti said:


> I apologize to you if you thought my post was written in an insulting tone. Your "ummmm" made me think that perhaps I expressed something that you felt was necessarily a negative thing, and I never meant it to be.
> I guess that, for me, doing just one thing (listening) instead of two things (reading and listening) works better for my enjoyment of an opera when I cannot see an entire production.
> Like you, I too feel that opera is a dramatic art form and further is one meant to be seen with one's eyes as well as heard with one's heart.


No no, I didn't feel it was insulting or feel insulted: the "ummm" was more of a quizzical one, because the suggestion that reading along with the libretto was a kind of intellectual excercise does not correspond to my experience at all. I don't read along wih the libretto to gain some sort of understanding for understandings sake, I do it to enhance my emotional response to the work. Reading a libretto allows me to see the action in my mind's eye.


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## vivalagentenuova (Jun 11, 2019)

Libretti are a mixed bag like anything else. I do think that they are always better appreciated in the original language. I know some Italian and French, but very little German, and I have no doubt based on my experience reading those libretti in the original that I would appreciate Wagner's texts much more if I could read them in the original. It also enhances my appreciation of the music, since the best opera composers wrote music that was intimately connected to the text.

Some libretti stand out, though. I think Puccini had better libretti on average than almost any other composer (though, as I said, it's harder for me to evaluate Wagner's). Even an opera like _La Rondine_, which is generally dismissed as fluff, actually has some excellent craftsmanship and dialogue in it. For one thing, it's built up as a series of meta-theatrical episodes, hardly a conventional libretto. But even more, there is some thematic weight to it. Critics often complain that it is an opera that doesn't know whether it is a tragedy or a comedy, and this is treated as a failure by Puccini, and even ascribed to his personality being incapable of seeing love as anything other than tragic even when that doesn't fit the story, or whatever. (Whenever a musicologist starts psychoanalyzing, run.) But these critiques miss that this is exactly the point. The opera begins with the following conversation:

[As is made clear subsequently, Prunier is telling some women the story of how sentimental love has spread in Paris of late]


> Three ladies: Ah, no no, don't say that!
> 
> Prunier: Ladies, I dispute your right to laugh.
> 
> Ladies: And we your right of speaking seriously.


So at the beginning, the characters are talking about whether or not a sentimental love story is a frivolous joke or a serious matter. That's what the rest of the opera is about, and that's why the overall gesture of the story is so ambiguous. The characters are trying to figure out if they're in a comedy or a tragedy, and it ends up being neither a classical comedy or tragedy, but a more modern and ambiguous story about disillusionment.

Few opera libretti have that level of craft, but several of Puccini's do. I attribute this both to the quality of the writers he had access to through Ricordi, and also to his meticulous and exacting (and for the librettist, infuriating) standards. I think the libretti of _La boheme_, _Madama Butterfly_, and _La Rondine_ are well above average for opera libretti, and _La fanciulla del west_, _Il tabarro_, and _Gianni Schicchi_ are excellent (_Fanciulla_ being both the most profound and the one with the roughest edges), and among the best in opera. _Gianni Schicchi_ is, to my taste, the funniest libretto in all opera.


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## WildThing (Feb 21, 2017)

vivalagentenuova said:


> Few opera libretti have that level of craft, but several of Puccini's do.


I would add Hugo von Hofmannsthal's librettos to that category. They are expertly crafted; subtle and nuanced in their use of language and full of beautiful poetry, with clarity of characterization and overarching symbolism.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

WildThing said:


> No no, I didn't feel it was insulting or feel insulted: the "ummm" was more of a quizzical one, because the suggestion that reading along with the libretto was a kind of intellectual excercise does not correspond to my experience at all. I don't read along wih the libretto to gain some sort of understanding for understandings sake, I do it to enhance my emotional response to the work. Reading a libretto allows me to see the action in my mind's eye.


Well now I feel a bit better. Each has his/her own subjective experience with and reason for liking or disliking a libretto. And I say, "vive la difference!"


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

In opera of course usually the libretto is swamped by the music largely because the composer is a far greater genius than the librettist. This even applies to cases like Wagner who wrote his own libretto but whose musical genius far outstripped his literary genius. Leoncavello wrote a pretty masterly little libretto for Pag but the music is even better The best librettists were da Ponte for Mozart and Boito for Verdi but they don’t tend to be remembered. Verdi argued intermidably with most of his librettists till he got what he wanted. The one librettist who is remembered equally is WS Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan fame, largely because he was partnering a composer of lesser genius.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

WildThing said:


> I would add Hugo von Hofmannsthal's librettos to that category. They are expertly crafted; subtle and nuanced in their use of language and full of beautiful poetry, with clarity of characterization and overarching symbolism.


Hofmannsthal deserves praise for literary talent, but I'm not sure Strauss deserves praise for trying to set all the conversational dialogue he was given. I have little doubt that Verdi or Puccini would have made Hofmannsthal cut out a good bit of it. That this was a question in Strauss's mind may be dramatized in one of his least engaing operas, _Capriccio,_ for which, interestingly, Hofmannsthal did not write the libretto.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Verdi may have argued "interminably" with most of his librettists but his fulfilling partnership with Arrigo Boito, once he put past irrational angers behind him, were legend. The two were meant to be together.


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## WildThing (Feb 21, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> Hofmannsthal deserves praise for literary talent, but I'm not sure Strauss deserves praise for trying to set all the conversational dialogue he was given. I have little doubt that Verdi or Puccini would have made Hofmannsthal cut out a good bit of it. That this was a question in Strauss's mind may be dramatized in one of his least engaing operas, _Capriccio,_ for which, interestingly, Hofmannsthal did not write the libretto.


I believe Joseph Kerman actually had a special category for Der Rosenkavalier: opera as sung play. I think much of Strauss' music for it is striking, but some of it is certainly facile.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

DavidA said:


> In opera of course usually the libretto is swamped by the music largely because the composer is a far greater genius than the librettist. This even applies to cases like Wagner who wrote his own libretto but whose musical genius far outstripped his literary genius. Leoncavello wrote a pretty masterly little libretto for Pag but the music is even better The best librettists were da Ponte for Mozart and Boito for Verdi but they don't tend to be remembered. Verdi argued intermidably with most of his librettists till he got what he wanted. The one librettist who is remembered equally is WS Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan fame, largely because he was partnering a composer of lesser genius.


Leoncavallo always wrote his librettos. He was by the way a doctor in literature.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Sieglinde said:


> Wagner really could have used an editor. Is it REALLY necessary to have a "previously on" in every part of the Ring? We literally just saw that yesterday, Richard. We remember.


This is an old joke, but there's really very little time spent on actual recaps of things we've witnessed in the _Ring_, and what's there usually serves important dramatic purposes. Recapitulation of events and backstory are used commonly in Greek drama, on which the _Ring_ is largely modeled, and have several functions: they allow for reflection on the meaning of present events, they emphasize that the past is an essential part of the present, and they subordinate chronological time to "mythical time," a sense that all things are simultaneously present and eternal, inevitable and not merely contingent. Extensive bits of backstory - e.g. the narratives of the norns and Waltraute in _Gotterdammerung_ - tell us things we wouldn't otherwise know, things which enlarge the dimensions of the _Ring'_s mythical world and contribute to its mystery and grandeur.

The ultimate test of whether a libretto needs an editor is the success with which the composer sets it to music. There are few passages from the _Ring_ I'd want to be without. Others may differ.


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## txtrnl341 (Jan 21, 2020)

Librettos are a necessary evil for listening but thankfully unnecessary on DVDs with subtitles. Seldom are they well translated and if you started with Tristan-yikes! At least with others he's trying to tell a story and you might try something like Lohengrin if you like Wagner. To him librettos mattered. Salome is another example of one that moves the story along whether you like it or not. But yay for subtitles for those unfamiliar with the story.


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

WildThing said:


> I believe Joseph Kerman actually had a special category for Der Rosenkavalier: opera as sung play. I think much of Strauss' music for it is striking, but some of it is certainly facile.


And apparently _Rosenkavalier_ was performed as a straight play, without music.


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

Sieglinde said:


> Wagner really could have used an editor. Is it REALLY necessary to have a "previously on" in every part of the Ring? We literally just saw that yesterday, Richard. We remember.
> 
> Also: French grand opera are usually an hour longer than they should be.


That's the ballet! And I'll gladly take the extended _Vasco de Gama_ over _L'Africaine_, or the critical edition of the _Prophète _over the standard version.


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

DavidA said:


> In opera of course usually the libretto is swamped by the music largely because the composer is a far greater genius than the librettist. This even applies to cases like Wagner who wrote his own libretto but whose musical genius far outstripped his literary genius. Leoncavello wrote a pretty masterly little libretto for Pag but the music is even better The best librettists were da Ponte for Mozart and Boito for Verdi but they don't tend to be remembered. Verdi argued intermidably with most of his librettists till he got what he wanted. The one librettist who is remembered equally is WS Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan fame, largely because he was partnering a composer of lesser genius.


Well, yes. Gilbert was one of the greatest users of the English language; but Sullivan is not to be sneezèd at. He was a skilful composer; indeed, moi qui vous parle, I have read Enlglish writers of the 1930s who thougt that Slullivan was a better composer than Giblert, and that the operas suffered accordingly.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Dr. Shatterhand said:


> Well, yes. Gilbert was one of the greatest users of the English language; but Sullivan is not to be sneezèd at. He was a skilful composer; indeed, moi qui vous parle, I have read Enlglish writers of the 1930s who thougt that Slullivan was a better composer than Giblert, and that the operas suffered accordingly.


He was a skilful composer of pastiche. Perfect for Gilbert in fact. When he tried his hand elsewhere he was less successful. Gilbert and Sullivan opera's are in fact great fun and They do have the advantage that even a modest offer a company or a school even can put them on. They certainly have given great fun to generations of students and also an awful lot of pleasure to a lot of people so I certainly wasn't denigrating Sullivan and his contribution. It's just that you couldn't compare him with someone like Mozart


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Dr. Shatterhand said:


> And apparently _Rosenkavalier_ was performed as a straight play, without music.


I can believe that. I might actually prefer it. Witty repartee and word-play isn't a natural for musical setting; words and music are processed by different parts of the brain, and music tends to get in the way of the mind's comprehension of complex verbal formulations. Opera is the most emotion-centered form of theater, and librettos should generally be crafted to maximize the direct appeal of music and stage action. _Rosenkavalier_'s best music occurs predictably when that talkative boor, Baron Ochs, is nowhere in sight.


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

I wouldn't judge opera libretti by _Tristan und Isolde _or _Oedipus Rex _- both are atypical! You might as well judge opera by _Satyagraha _or _Akhnaten_. Both sublime, but far from the mainstream.
(How many operas are written in Latin? Besides Mozart's _Apollo et Hyacinthus_?)

I don't like _Tristan und Isolde_ much as an opera - too much Schopenhauer, too much death/life, day/night, real/false - but Act II is the musical highpoint of the opera. That whole sequence from "O sink hernieder, Nacht der Liebe" is extraordinary. If it doesn't give you goosebumps, few things in music will. And as for Brangäne's Watch...! Then earthly Märke sends the whole sublime, rapturous, tenderly yearning music crashing. One of the greatest coiti interrupti in music, as someone - Forman? - remarked.

If you're just listening to opera as lovely music, you are missing a lot of the joy of opera. Sure, the music should be wonderful - or at least tuneful - but you're missing out on the story, the drama, the message, the text, the subtext. Or, to be less pretentious, the way the musician fits the music to the words.

An opera is a drama. In the same way that Shakespeare and Jacobean plays are written in poetry and iambic pentameter, opera is a story told through verse and music. That's what an opera is. So long as it is told in music, an opera can tell any story. It can be a monologue about a woman breaking up with her lover over the phone; it can be a historical epic with exploding ships, erupting volcanoes, massacres, battles, religious processions, and human sacrifice. It can be a drawing-room comedy, a knockabout farce, or a Greek tragedy. It need not even be melodic; a lot of 17th/18th century French opera is largely recitative. An opera is one of the few surviving popular forms from the past four centuries; few people will sit down and read Scott, but we'll gladly go to _La donna del lager_, Rossini's lovely opera about a woman who emerges from a lake of beer. (Not to be confused with pallid Athena, who emerged from Zeus's head-splitting hangover the morning after.)

In general, I prefer to follow along with the libretto, ideally with the score. I want to understand the story; more, I want to understand the opera. Some, obviously, are dull; some stop working halfway through; some tread water for half the opera; some are inane; some are ridiculous or boring; some are racist, sexist, or designed to show why Jews are evil. (Thank you, M. D'Indy.) But many are gripping drama; many are comic masterpieces; many have something to say about life, the world, the human condition. (Ah, the human condition! Whatever the hell that is.) Can you imagine listening to Gluck or Wagner or post-Wagnerian opera without understanding what's being said? Even with bel canto, you'd lose half the detail.

Eugène Scribe is a forgotten master of the libretto. He was also remarkably versatile; he could write anything from light comedy to historical epic dealing with religious and racial persecution. He was particularly brilliant at plot construction. From a premise, he can create a wonderfully elaborate design, then resolve it with an ingenious twist. (It's the same intellectual pleasure we get from a good detective story.) He wrote great libretti for Meyerbeer, Auber, Halévy, and Verdi, while his libretti were used by Donizetti and Cilea, among others.

Recently, I was impressed by Beaumarchais's libretto for Tarare, by Salieri. It's a revolution in five acts. Despots dethroned; popular uprisings; anti-clericalism; and cries for liberty, equality, and an end to absolute monarchy … two years before the Assemblée nationale and the storming of the Bastille. For light relief: homicidal mania, stabbings, eunuchs, and a tenor hero with a nonsense name who spends the last three acts covered in mire and seaweed. It's at once the most politically ferocious opera before Le prophète, and the cleverest satire before Offenbach. And to top it all off, it's almost entirely through-composed: 60 years before Wagner. C'est du génie.

Speaking other languages means one appreciates libretti more. I'm bilingual in French and English, so French opera is more immediate to me than to most native Anglophones. That opens up an entire world of opera that is seldom performed in the US or the Commonwealth. It also means I'm aware of operas that haven't been performed for a century and a half, which ought to be. Why are not all of Halévy's operas at the repertoire? I can also hear, to some degree, Italian and German - certainly enough to follow the words, enough to have the gist.

Not really sure what emotions and heart have to do with opera. I had a feeling once; I shot it. (This may explain why I walked out of the Met screening of _Eugene Onegin_. I needed two or three.)


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

^^^Great post, but the last paragraph is incomprehensible.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Frankly, for me, that last paragraph states it all. 
It shows the very reason I was stating before about some who prefer opera as an intellectual exercise (wanting to learn more about the story -- getting deeper into the characters, etc.) which is all very acceptable and admirable but precludes the sitting back with one's eyes closed and picturing in one's mind the characters as "I" see them and the story line and scenes as "I" see them in my mind's eye. 
Unlike Dr. S, I very much require that "Eugene Onegin" feeling of passion and heart.
(Of course, this belief is predicated on the assumption that I am very familiar with the work already.)
For me, opera is dramma per musica and that drama is right there in my head and of course when exhibited live, is played right there on the stage. 
Without the dramatic feeling, for me, opera is only 1/2 of the pleasure.


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

schigolch said:


> Some of them I do. Some I don't.


As with everything. One thing has to be taken into account when considering a libretto and that is what a libretto isn't and that is it isn't a play text. We all know that opera is a staged story told through music, but less people realise that opera is also a story told through poetry. In some periods of Italian opera there were two separate libretto writers, the librettist who wrote the scenario and the poet who wrote the actual words that would be set to music.

Act two of Tristan is a great example of a great piece of poetry that may not mean much in terms of plot, but is full of allusions to a dialectic between day and night, light and dark and other pairs. It's philosophy in poetry and music rather than a very long love duet.

N.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

A friend of a friend read the libretto to _Tristan_ and said, "I'll believe this when I hear it!"

That IS the essential point.


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> A friend of a friend read the libretto to _Tristan_ and said, "I'll believe this when I hear it!"
> 
> That IS the essential point.


And some will only hear it when they believe it. Fortunately part of me has always believed in Wagner's themes (whether literary or musical).

N.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The Conte said:


> And some will only hear it when they believe it. Fortunately part of me has always believed in Wagner's themes (whether literary or musical).
> 
> N.


You're getting mystical.


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> You're getting mystical.


Should I have posted that in the Parsifal thread?

N.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The Conte said:


> Should I have posted that in the Parsifal thread?
> 
> N.


Why not? It's where time becomes space.


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

In the early stages of my opera voyage, I've mostly tried to follow along with the libretto. But when I'm working or doing something else where I can't devote my attention to reading along, I find that familiarizing myself with the plot (courtesy of Wikipedia or my highly treasured AllMusic Guide to Classical Music) is all I need to really enjoy an opera. I do love literature and wish I could find literary qualites in libretti, but let's be honest...few opera libretti could actually count as such (except for Wagner, whose libretti I find deeply poetic and find essential to follow along with for full comprehension). Right now I'm making my way through Don Giovanni, and I find the music engaging enough by itself. Besides, I'm finding that skilled singers can convey the dramatic and emotional demands of the libretto through their performances, distinguishing between passion, anger, joy, etc. through control and adjustment of such things as timbre and projection.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Art Rock said:


> In the past 10 years or so, I have tried operas again. But without the libretto. I treat them now as musical compositions with voices, and I started to enjoy many of them.


That's my approach as well. I enjoy the music and the great vocalists. I'm not that interested in the dialog or subject matter for the most part. But I usually read the synopsis at the very least.


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## sharkeysnight (Oct 19, 2017)

Some opera texts are absolutely phenomenal. Alice Goodman's libretto for Nixon in China is a work of art on its own merits, as is Montagu Slater's libretto for Peter Grimes, which is funny because both are probably denser than a libretto should be, but the music they're affixed to gives the ideas plenty of space. Elektra, Eugene Onegin, and Meistersinger are all up there as well.

I think I prefer opera texts that are more ruminative, moody, or narratively playful than flatly dramatic, particularly when it's about a man and woman waffling over whether or not they're in love. La traviata is torture for me.


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## gellio (Nov 7, 2013)

Art Rock said:


> When I first tried to get into opera (in the 90s), I would listen to the opera and read the libretto from the booklets. After a few tries with about a dozen of operas, I gave up. When I moved to Singapore in 1999, I gave my opera CDs to my nephew.
> 
> In the past 10 years or so, I have tried operas again. But without the libretto. I treat them now as musical compositions with voices, and I started to enjoy many of them.


This is how I have always done it. If I really really love an opera, I'll study it. The operas I know really well are Mozart's mature operas, the Ring, Carmen, Traviata, Artaserse, and Boris Godunov. Aside from that, I probably have well over 100 opera recordings, and although I listen to a lot of them regularly, I only know the stories of some and of others I (mainly Verdi, Puccini, Donizetti and Bellini) I don't even know the stories.

For me, it takes such a long time to study these works and know what is happening while I'm listening. It's just not worth it unless I really love the work. I probably spent years getting to know The Ring intimately.

I want to get to know most of them intimately, but that will have to wait until I have more time on my hands, which will be when I retire. So a long time from now.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

sharkeysnight said:


> I think I prefer opera texts that are more ruminative, moody, or narratively playful than flatly dramatic, particularly when it's about a man and woman waffling over whether or not they're in love. La traviata is torture for me.


You might like Strauss' Capriccio.


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## Phantoms of the Opera (Feb 5, 2020)

This is a fascinating discussion. If I may give a singer’s opinion — ideally I would prefer the audience to understand every word just as I do, because I phrase and colour and shape the notes to fit the text. When I started learning to sing, I hadn’t learnt my languages yet, so I had only a basic knowledge of the meaning of the song, but not every word. My teacher pointed out that this is not enough, and now I know why she was right. The words might seem simple, unnatural or even inappropriately comical on the page, but if a composer has set them well, they suddenly become more expressive, when sung, than they would be when spoken.

I suppose, having said this, there is an argument for a great singer-actor being able to make the audience feel the meaning of the text without understanding the words. But it’s a rare talent that can do that. 

I agree that Puccini’s libretti are generally superior. He felt it was as important as his music. ‘La Bohème’ was not a hit in the English-speaking world for years because of, according to him, a poor translation that didn’t capture the humour of the original. It wasn’t until it was performed in Italian (and with Nellie Melba starring, which helped), that the opera, and its composer, became established favourites on an international level. 

In conclusion, my advice is this: don’t try to enjoy the libretto on its own, because it was never meant to be taken that way. Read it because it will heighten your enjoyment and appreciation of the music. Knowing, understanding, and feeling the words — in the context of the story — completely changes the way I sing a piece, compared to if I were just learning it as a pretty concert number. It will change the way you hear it, too.


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