# First opera you've ever attended



## TudorMihai (Feb 20, 2013)

Which was the first opera you've ever attended and when. For me was Verdi's Aida in 2009.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

"Giulio Cesare" in 2010.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Lucia di Lammermoor. not sure the year.
Ruth Ann Swenson was Lucia and she was fantastic.


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## Novelette (Dec 12, 2012)

Beethoven's "Fidelio": Opera Garnier, December 2009.

One of my happiest memories.


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## MrCello (Nov 25, 2011)

"Hansel and Gretel" by Engelbert Humperdinck at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in 2006.


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

Janacek's Makropolous Case


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

Barber of Seville at ENO, sometime around 1983. I had just started liking opera and it felt like a big step to actually go to a live performance - not to mention expensive with my just-out-of-university salary.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Verdi's _Aida_... quite some years ago... and I was immediately a convert... if not to Verdi (I prefer Wagner)... certainly to opera as an art form.


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## Lunasong (Mar 15, 2011)

_Die Fliedermaus_ when I was 14.


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## cmudave (Feb 19, 2013)

_Tosca_ in 1995.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Turandot, but I can't remember the year. I think it was 2002, in Dublin...


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## sospiro (Apr 3, 2010)

Lots of Gilbert & Sullivan when I was a child & didn't really like it, still not that keen. Then _Carmen_ when I was about 14.


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## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

_Eugene Onegin_ two days ago.


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## Ravndal (Jun 8, 2012)

Die Fledermaus, New years eve 2012.


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

_Parsifal_, in late 2010 if I remember correctly.


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## Orange Soda King (Sep 14, 2010)

La Traviata by Verdi, put on by the opera company at Brevard's summer music festival in 2011! I loved it


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## Tristan (Jan 5, 2013)

That would have been La Boheme, back when I was 6 if I can remember properly.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

The first one I have attended was Carmen, five or six years ago. The first one I have _enjoyed_ was Siegfried, in December 2012. It was staged by a Bulgarian opera company here in Minsk, and the singers had a terrible accent, but it was my first live Wagner, and I loved it!


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

I really loathe going to concerts, so I've never been inclined to attend an opera.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

The legendary Verdi/Visconti "Don Carlo" ,Covent Garden ,1958.
The next one was at the other end of the spectrum, Haydn's "The World on the Moon" at the Camden Festival.


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

Crudblud said:


> I really loathe going to concerts, so I've never been inclined to attend an opera.


The opera is more like the cinema than a concert. Everyone sits in the dark, you can thank Mr. Wagner for that :tiphat:


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

By the way, I am going to my first classical concert (of the abovementioned Mr.'s music, of course) in a week. And another one of Beethoven two days later.


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

emiellucifuge said:


> The opera is more like the cinema than a concert. Everyone sits in the dark (*and coughs*), you can thank Mr. Wagner for that :tiphat:


too true, but it needed a slight fix...


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Carmen, a community production back when I was in college. Come to think of it, that's the last opera I've been to. No reflection on the performance; it's just something I never thought about until now.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Tosca in 2009. I decided in my late fifties it was time to try opera, having been brought up as a child to regard it as stupid warbling only fit for posh people. Well, wow - I enjoyed it. Since then I've seen Madame Butterfly, Aida & Carmen, & would like to see more. But I have to wait till another subsidised touring company visits East Anglia.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

Ingenue said:


> Tosca in 2009. I decided in my late fifties it was time to try opera, having been brought up as a child to regard it as stupid warbling only fit for posh people. Well, wow - I enjoyed it. Since then I've seen Madame Butterfly, Aida & Carmen, & would like to see more. But I have to wait till another subsidised touring company visits East Anglia.


Or make your way to Aldeburgh to see Peter Grimes on the beach. I'd kill for that one.


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## AndyS (Dec 2, 2011)

le Nozze di Figaro in 2010... I was a bit bored to be honest. Since then it's been Rigoletto, The Barber of Seville, Tosca, the Magic Flute and the first 2 acts of Tristan und Isolde (the Scottish Symphony Orchestra have been doing it act by act, the 3rd act is in April). Got Werther in a week's time


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

SiegendesLicht said:


> By the way, I am going to my first classical concert (of the abovementioned Mr.'s music, of course) in a week. And another one of Beethoven two days later.


Well give us a report when you've been.


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## DrKilroy (Sep 29, 2012)

Madame Butterfly, I was about 8 or 9, I think.

Best regards, Dr


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

Way back in the late seventies, Mozart's Die Zauberflöte at the Drottningholm Court Theatre, a Saturday matinée with the Youth choir I was singing in.
Not a fad that will catch on I believe I thought... 

/ptr


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## MAuer (Feb 6, 2011)

The Cincinnati Opera production of _La Traviata _in 1980 with Patricia Craig and Joseph Evans.


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## RobertoDevereux (Feb 12, 2013)

Donizetti's "Il Campanello" for some weird reason... In 1995.


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## suteetat (Feb 25, 2013)

La Boheme with New York City touring company, 1990, I think. Can't remember the singers. That was before I got really interested in opera. After I got interested, it was a semi stage Don Giovanni with Barenboim/Chicago Symphony Orchestra with Furlanetto, Waltraute Meier, Sherri Greenawald, Joan Rodgers. First full stage performance was Rigoletto at Metropolitan opera I think in 1991-2. It was also Ruth Ann Swenson debut at the Met if I am not mistaken with Richard Leech, Luis Quilico.
I still remembered as I was still student and had standing room ticket with another college friend. We were in sneakers, sweaters. At intermission, a doctor and his wife came up to us and gave their tickets to us as he was called to the hospital. A nice pair of 6th row center seats on the main floor! What a way to be introduced to live opera!


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## sospiro (Apr 3, 2010)

suteetat said:


> La Boheme with New York City touring company, 1990, I think. Can't remember the singers. That was before I got really interested in opera. After I got interested, it was a semi stage Don Giovanni with Barenboim/Chicago Symphony Orchestra with Furlanetto, Waltraute Meier, Sherri Greenawald, Joan Rodgers. First full stage performance was Rigoletto at Metropolitan opera I think in 1991-2. It was also Ruth Ann Swenson debut at the Met if I am not mistaken with Richard Leech, Luis Quilico.
> *I still remembered as I was still student and had standing room ticket with another college friend. We were in sneakers, sweaters. At intermission, a doctor and his wife came up to us and gave their tickets to us as he was called to the hospital. A nice pair of 6th row center seats on the main floor! What a way to be introduced to live opera!*


:tiphat:

What a great story!!


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

RobertoDevereux said:


> Donizetti's "Il Campanello" for some weird reason... In 1995.


That's a rare one,how was it ?


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

AndyS said:


> le Nozze di Figaro in 2010... I was a bit bored to be honest.


wow, and here I thought that one could never be boring (although it can and was made unfunny in the past)!


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## RobertoDevereux (Feb 12, 2013)

moody said:


> That's a rare one,how was it ?


Well, for one thing, it was very short - just one act! It was well sung though! Having said that, if that's your first opera, and you find out that you are the "opera type", the experience itself is so powerful that nuances don't matter, wouldn't you agree? 

RD


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## dionisio (Jul 30, 2012)

Tchaikovsky's Iolanta. Concert version.

Although i knew some operas already by recordings, this was my first to attend. I felt for opera right there. I went with someone that was truly special to me (but she didn't know). Everything seemed magical.

The first staged opera was Rigoletto or Macbeth, i guess.


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## AndyS (Dec 2, 2011)

deggial said:


> wow, and here I thought that one could never be boring (although it can and was made unfunny in the past)!


It was all just a bit bland, there was nothing in the production that excited me. Plus the lassie playing Susanna, while absolutely stunning to look at, had really poor sound projection, it was a struggle to hear her - she was the understudy that night, the main lass I saw as Gilda a year later, and I thought she was rubbish too, but she seems to be getting a gig at Covent Garden so what do I know


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## guythegreg (Jun 15, 2012)

First opera ever: Carmen, which my parents took me to when I was a kid. Didn't get it at all, and still don't enjoy Carmen (although I have since figured out what was going on). First opera after beginning to enjoy opera: the last production of the old Baltimore Opera Company, Norma, in November of 2008. Hasmik Papian as Norma, Ruth Ann Swenson as Adalgisa, Frank Porretto (??) as Pollione. I attended two performances and remember thinking two things: wow, that was great ... and if I'd been paying for the whole thing, I'd be pretty disappointed. But yeah, it was great. Awesome.


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## Hesoos (Jun 9, 2012)

Gustavo III by Verdi (Un ballo in maschera "in original version"), Teatro San Carlo, Naples 2003.

In Catalonia I lived 200 km from Barcelona, I was young and going to the opera was difficult to me. I went to study to Italy and I lived 1 year in Naples, then, going to the opera was easy, 15 minues on foot. I went to the opera alone, I didn't find anyone who go with. I enjoyed it a lot and one week later I went again to see the same opera. My first impression at the opera house was that all the people was staring at me! And some people wanted to talk to me: I was 21 years old, alone and with casual dresses... and all the people was more than 50 years old at least and so nicely dressed. The people speak a lot there in southern Italy and was so fun speaking with some opera fun in there. One women told me that Pavarotti sung in there before he was famous. There was not surtitles, the opera is in Italian and I was in Italy, but I remember a funny thing: before the act 2 a group was speaking about the plot, they didn't understand exactly what happened and the "leader" of the group told them all the story because he read the libretto 2 times at home.


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## bassClef (Oct 29, 2006)

Dvorak's Rusalka in Prague - still the best I've seen


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## Cavaradossi (Aug 2, 2012)

1991 - Robert Carsen's glorious production of _Mefistofele_ with Samuel Ramey at the Chicago Lyric Opera.

Fortunately I survived my second opera a few weeks later, Samuel Barber's noted flop _Antony and Cleopatra_, also in Chicago, in only its 3rd revival since premiering for the grand opening of the new Metropollitan Opera at Lincoln Center in 1966.


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## Radames (Feb 27, 2013)

Rigoletto by Teatro Lirico D'Europa when they were touring. Sparifucile missed his low note.


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## Barelytenor (Nov 19, 2011)

moody said:


> The legendary Verdi/Visconti "Don Carlo" ,Covent Garden ,1958.
> The next one was at the other end of the spectrum, Haydn's "The World on the Moon" at the Camden Festival.


Finally, somebody who seems to be about my age. La Boheme, Dallas ("Civic" at that time) Opera, student performance, about 1961, we got on big yellow school buses. When the tenor and soprano sang "Amor, amor, ah-ah-mor" at the end of Act I, both going up to high C's, my life changed forever. Even at age 12 I knew the Italian word for love, of course the music expressed it perfectly as well. I was transported. I went home and joined Columbia Record Club. I remember the first albums I ever ordered. Bolero by Ravel, Jan Peerce singing operetta classics ("Thine is my heart alone/Dein ist mein ganzes Herz," "In our secluded rendezvous"), choral classics with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir (Hallelujah from the Mount of Olives, Come, Come Ye Saints, In Deepest Grief from Bach Mass in B Minor), a complete Handel Messiah, and most memorable of all, Joan Sutherland in The Art of the Prima Donna, I think this was the original version where she squeaks out a high F in the Queen of the Night before she took that cut off of subsequent editions, but there was also the Jewel Song, The Solder Tir'd, Let the Bright Seraphim, Casta Diva, the Lucia Mad Scene, Martern aller Arten. I remember the sound of every cut today, more than 50 years later.

I thank God that His Music has so incredibly enriched my life and continues to this day. Music speaks to us in a language too intimate for words.


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## waldvogel (Jul 10, 2011)

Stravinksy's "The Rake's Progress" at the University of Toronto in 1971or 1972. I went in knowing little of Stravinksy other than the three great early ballets. 

I loved the opera - it was absurdly funny and featured a spare neoclassical writing that also fused in elements of Weill's Threepenny Opera.


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## musicican (Mar 7, 2013)

I've attended my first opera when I was a child, sometime in the 80's (1982 or something like that).
I don't remember which opera, but I think Rusalka by Dvorak or the Bartered Bride or the Kiss by Smetana or another opera by these two Czech composers.


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## zeszut (Aug 9, 2012)

Siegfried
Richard Wagner
Chicago Lyric Opera 1973

Mime - Gerhard Unger
Siegfried - Jean Cox
Wanderer (Wotan) - Theo Adam
Alberich - Klaus Hirte
Fafner - Ottokar Schoefer
Forest Bird - Jan Redick
Erda - Lili Chookasian
Brünnhilde - Birgit Nilsson
Conductor - Ferdinand Leitner


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

I like Theo Adam. I'd like to have seen this for him.


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## Gizmo (Mar 28, 2013)

The first opera I attended was Aida with Richard Tucker, Elinor Ross, Mignon Dunn, and Carlo Meliciani at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia in 1971.


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## MagneticGhost (Apr 7, 2013)

Saw Britten's Paul Bunyan when I was 13 - an amateur production.

First professional performance was at the Royal Opera House, in 1989 or 1990, of
Beethoven's Fidelio.


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## Ebab (Mar 9, 2013)

"Hänsel und Gretel", Bayerische Staatsoper Munich. I was not older than 10, so it was no later than 1976. It's only been this year (2013) that Bayerische Staatsoper replaced this production from 1965!

My great-aunts had invited me; they were opera (and specifically Wagner) lovers. It certainly took a while, but maybe their plan has succeeded!


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## sabrina (Apr 26, 2011)

Il Trovatore, looong time ago, I guess I was in high school, but I could have been grade 8


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## Ritter (Apr 11, 2013)

Il Barbiere di Siviglia, but I don't remember the date. It was a modest and funny production at a small theatre and the singers were not very good, but this first live opera experience helped me to get into opera


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## katdad (Jan 1, 2009)

Bizet's Carmen. And incidentally, years later, it was the first opera I ever performed in (chorus, baritone).


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## GiulioCesare (Apr 9, 2013)

Manon by Massenet at La Scala.


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## Peterinch (Apr 24, 2013)

Khovanshchina at Covent Garden, 1982. I was in my teens and don't remember much about it other than it was spectacular and it remains one of my favorite operas.


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## Aksel (Dec 3, 2010)

My first live opera was back in 2009, when I, at the tender age of 16, saw Aïda at the Wiener Staatsoper.
I later discovered to my great surprise that Violeta Urmana, Johan Botha and Ambroglio Maestri had been part of the cast.


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## Kari (May 13, 2012)

Boris Godunov starring Martti Talvela, the Savonlinna Opera Festival 1971 or thereabouts. I was thirteen and didn't much care about it. It was long, the benches were hard, I didn't understand a word of it, the music wasn't exactly hummamble...


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## Guest (May 2, 2013)

Carmen, 1970, local am-dram production. I remember enjoying it (free tickets helped) but not thinking to myself that it was something I'd do on a regular basis. But I didn't attend my first proper rock concert until 1977 (Genesis) and classical concert (Robert Mayer concerts) until about 1984, so opera got at me first!


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## MagneticGhost (Apr 7, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> Carmen, 1970, local am-dram production. I remember enjoying it (free tickets helped) but not thinking to myself that it was something I'd do on a regular basis. But I didn't attend my first proper rock concert until 1977 (Genesis) and classical concert (Robert Mayer concerts) until about 1984, so opera got at me first!


How I'd've loved to see Genesis in 1977. The year of Seconds Out, the best live rock recording of all time.
Alas, I was 4 and my parents refused to take me.


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## Guest (May 2, 2013)

MagneticGhost said:


> How I'd've loved to see Genesis in 1977. The year of Seconds Out, the best live rock recording of all time.
> Alas, I was 4 and my parents refused to take me.


I can see that perhaps 4 is a little young!

Now I think back, I'd forgotten that I went to see 10cc in 1974 (_Sheet Music_ tour) and it was great, but Genesis (_Wind and Wuthering_ tour) was a proper show - awesome with _lasers!!!_ Coo!! Next time I went back to that venue - just a few months later - was to see _Star Wars_ (not that 'New Hope' nonsense, but the original) also totally awesome...

...oh to be 18 again!


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## maestro57 (Mar 26, 2013)

Puccini's Turandot, in 2008. The prod'n was amazing - it set the bar too high for other operas I was to see later on that year. Oh, Ping, Pang, and Pong.


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## guythegreg (Jun 15, 2012)

where was that production, if you don't mind my asking?


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

I saw both _Carmen_ and _The Magic Flute_ when I was very young, but I don't remember the order.


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

Boris Godunov about a decade ago on a date with a girl I met at college. From what I remember it was a mix of the 1869 and 1872 versions, but more closely following the 1869 plot as the entire Polish act was left out.


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## maestro57 (Mar 26, 2013)

guythegreg said:


> where was that production, if you don't mind my asking?


Vancouver, Canada.


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