# A "Perverse Approach" To Opera?



## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

It has been 2 months since I started my blog and I am surprised at the number of private emails I've gotten in response to my first entry titled "The Purest and Deepest Form of Opera Love" which can be read here

http://genevievecastleroom.blogspot.com/[/u]

And here is one of the emails:

*"Your approach to opera is perverse of course. You have to admit that anyone who claims to appreciate an artform (never mind appreciate "deeply") and then in the very next breath freely confesses he literally ignores the essence and very _raison d'être_ of that artform (the libretto) is being thoroughly perverse about the thing. You are not an opera-lover. This is not to say that you don't derive a deeply felt aesthetic pleasure from indulging your perversity. Clearly, you do, otherwise you wouldn't indulge at all. It's merely to say precisely what I've already said: You cannot by any stretch be said to have gained an understanding of opera generally or any opera in particular by such an approach, nor can you be fairly designated an opera-lover. You clearly haven't and you clearly aren't"*​
I couldn't believe it. And a few others were hostile.

Why do they not understand that for some people opera is first and foremost a musical phenomenon. Essentially an AUDITORY experience. And there are others who find the visual component distracting. And there are some who enjoy nothing more than sitting at the score desks at the opera house. And there are some who believe that one expressive musical and vocal phrase is worth a thousand words of opera text. And there are a few who feel that by adjusting controls with a recording at home they come closer to an ideal performance and reach a depth of aesthetic experience unattainable at a live performance (minus all visuals and text)

All of them are still opera lovers. They are just of a different type.

What do you make of the above email?


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

The essence of opera is the libretto? Was this written to you in green crayon? Or by a librettist? I never heard anything so literally stupid in all my life. Of course, the libretto is important, and through them we get the play, the dialogue, the story, but this is ALL at the service of the music, which is the 'essence and raison d'être of opera.'

I mean, not even Wagner would claim his librettos were the important part if the piece. Without a libretto there's no opera, and there have been great librettists but...does this really have to be explained?


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Xavier: are you 'geneviv castle' or are you just quoting this blog by her?


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## Cavaradossi (Aug 2, 2012)

Ha! I thought this was going to be another _Regie_ thread.


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> Xavier: are you 'genevieve castle'?


Yes. Just because one of my favorite characters in opera happens be a matronly woman (Genevieve) doesn't mean anything. My other screen name is "The Wistful Pelleastrian". And my twitter name is @CMadruscht. See my blog there also

https://mobile.twitter.com/CMadruscht


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

I suggest that people get upset by the fact that you say that this is the *purest and deepest* form of opera love.

What does that make the rest of us who like all aspects of opera? Impure? Shallow? That is the clear implication for me, and what you say makes me feel angry inside.

Please don't get me wrong, every one has the right to like opera in whatever way they choose. You choose the auditory recorded way, and a lot of the time so do I.

But there is no superior way and I don't like the implication in your title that your way is such.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

"I could use a little more lovin' in my opera, if you get my drift."

View attachment 11772


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Xavier said:


> It has been 2 months since I started my blog and I am surprised at the number of private emails I've gotten in response to my first entry titled "The Purest and Deepest Form of Opera Love" which can be read here
> 
> http://genevievecastleroom.blogspot.com/[/u]
> 
> ...




What you are advocating is what you think is the best way to _experience_ operas.

As in Greek drama, Western music was always coupled with drama. Even Church music was an aid in the telling of the liturgy.

The reality is, opera is conceived as drama, much like cinema.

Although the soundtrack might be good by itself, its reason for being is drama.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

I think it's fair to say that the essense of opera is drama. The libretto and music both serve that.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

What's wrong with comedy, or has that already been dealt with, and dissed? Drama is forever present in life (Don't we know?), but it's "haw haws" that right the ship.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

I mean drama in the sense of media, not genre. Of course comedy is part of drama.


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

I like listening to tragic opera with librettos I don't understand, and interpreting what I think they are saying. Now that's comedy, and the purest form of opera love IM(NS)HO. "Kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit!"


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*La traviata-ignorance is bliss?*

I played in a pit orchestra for a production of Verdi's _La traviata_ when I was in college. It was sung in English. Listening to Violetta prancing around the stage singing, "My God why must I die so young" ruined the opera for me.


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

Some translate well, I thought Mackerras conducting the Magic Flute in English was great, as is the Goodall ring. But others, like the English version of Pagliacci reveals what a terrible old pot-boiler it is.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

I dislike traditional opera sung in English, and subtitles in the theater.


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## JRI (Jan 5, 2013)

Vaneyes said:


> I dislike traditional opera sung in English, and subtitles in the theater.


I agree 100% with that statement.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

JRI said:


> I agree 100% with that statement.


So what happens, we translate Britten into French and Handel oratorios into Italian?


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## Aksel (Dec 3, 2010)

mamascarlatti said:


> So what happens, we translate Britten into French and Handel oratorios into Italian?


I want the Beggar's Opera in Portugese.


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## JRI (Jan 5, 2013)

mamascarlatti said:


> So what happens, we translate Britten into French and Handel oratorios into Italian?


No,not at all,leave the libretto in the original language it was written in. To me,when the opera was originally written in German,Italian,and then is translated to English,it doesn't sound the same,nor have the same meaning to me.

.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Well, you set yourself up for the criticism, after all, by 'claiming' that the audio only was the 'purest' form of loving opera (while casting that as 'perverse': which of course is both silly and pretentious, or at least severely inflated (More a self conceit than a well-put point of dialogue?) What you wrote is a kind of de facto manifesto of sorts which leaves any and all others who do not listen as you do at least as 'impure' listeners.

I'm audio first All The Way - if the music does not express something to me first and through it, the text (song, cantata, oratorio, opera) is not going to add what for me is either 'there' or not.

If I am in the theater, I'm going to fully participate: the opposed argument to your approach is very much about lack of full participation!

I do recall saying that as a form of musical theater, I think the FULLEST way to enjoyment is to hear and see it live. You're in a seat, the lights go down, the overture starts, and then you're "In It." The full and direct experience is, uh, the fullest.

What people like thee and have if only listening to the music by itself, and not as one soul sitting with that audience and communally experiencing a fully staged performance, is a 'distilled' version, with those other elements absent. Barely a good argument for a most 'pure' way of experiencing opera, don'tch think?


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## Sieglinde (Oct 25, 2009)

The Hell? Some opera have ridiculous libretti. Forza. Ernani (sorry Hugo). Lohengrin (how did they even marry if he didn't give a name). L'Africaine. But they are still awesome because the music makes it work.

Very few operas have a great libretto. Boito was a master on this, as was Da Ponte and Giacosa/Illica. Britten also tends to have good librettos.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

Sieglinde said:


> Lohengrin (how did they even marry if he didn't give a name).


Will you, Elsa, take "Insert Name Here" to be your wedded husband?


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## sospiro (Apr 3, 2010)

mamascarlatti said:


> Will you, Elsa, take "Insert Name Here" to be your wedded husband?


Haven't the foggiest what you you're talking about but that had me chuckling into my porridge


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

sospiro said:


> Haven't the foggiest what you you're talking about but that had me chuckling into my porridge


From the synopsis of Lohengrin: A boat drawn by a swan appears on the river and in it stands a knight in shining armour. He disembarks, dismisses the swan, respectfully greets the king, and asks Elsa if she will have him as her champion. Elsa kneels in front of him and places her honour in his keeping. He asks but one thing in return for his service: *she is never to ask him his name or where he has come from.* Elsa agrees to this.

Of course it all turns to custard by act 3.


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## guythegreg (Jun 15, 2012)

Sieglinde said:


> The Hell? Some opera have ridiculous libretti. Forza. Ernani (sorry Hugo). Lohengrin (how did they even marry if he didn't give a name). L'Africaine. But they are still awesome because the music makes it work.
> 
> Very few operas have a great libretto. Boito was a master on this, as was Da Ponte and Giacosa/Illica. Britten also tends to have good librettos.


Well ... with all operas you do have to suspend disbelief somewhat, but really, Lohengrin, I think it's a genius libretto. I've been having a hard time articulating why, but the whole thing reverberates with such completeness, to me ... of course, I like looking at plots from different points of view, and bringing a little cynicism to the game too, to try to imagine the drama was taken from a real story and if so what the librettist changed for political reasons ... in a time when a man's word that he had a witness was acceptable, in a court of law, to the actual witness; in a time when men would fight a duel to determine whose side God was on; in a time like this it's not so hard to imagine a man could marry without a name.


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## AlexD (Nov 6, 2011)

I find Opera works best for me as a combination of drama and music. I can enjoy overtures and such like as pieces of music, but I tend to find that I need to have watched an opera to understand it. Having seen it, I can listen to the CD till the cows come home as I know how the music "fits" with the opera - I understand the context. 

I've been irritated by operas where the music is lovely, but the drama doesn't work.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

AlexD said:


> I find Opera works best for me as a combination of drama and music. I can enjoy overtures and such like as pieces of music, but I tend to find that I need to have watched an opera to understand it. Having seen it, I can listen to the CD till the cows come home as I know how the music "fits" with the opera - I understand the context.
> 
> I've been irritated by operas where the music is lovely, but the drama doesn't work.


Other options, Mahler Symphonies 6 & 7, with cowbells.


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