# Fairy Tale Operas--



## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

I did not see a thread on this and thought to do a poll but the number of fairy tale operas seems larger than the 13 choices a poll allows. Also there may be a grey area. I don't want to limit this to just operas based on fairy tales, but rather any fairy tale-like opera. And it does not have to have fairies in it. My top pick (though I have not heard a lot of the fairy tale operas) is Strauss' Die Frau Ohne Schatten.

EDIT: In this thread we could also work on defining what is a fairy tale opera. I want to say that it has to have some kind of supernatural action to qualify, but maybe not. Is Wagner's Ring a fairy tale opera?


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## Radames (Feb 27, 2013)

Antonín Dvořák's Rusalka would be my favorite. The Tale of Tsar Saltan Opera of course. I love Russian stuff. The Golden Cockerel is based on Pushkin too. Great stuff. Do those count as fairy tales? Rimsky is vastly underrated as an opera composer. He's one of the best. Hansel and Gretel is pretty well known. Die Kluge by Orff is a good one.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Turandot by Puccini
La Cenerentola


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## Op.123 (Mar 25, 2013)

Respighi - la campana sommersa


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## Vasks (Dec 9, 2013)

Humperdinck did a second fairy tale opera. "Sleeping Beauty"


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

*Cendrillon*, *Hansel und Gretl *, *Alcina*, *Orlando*, , *Die Zauberflöte*, *The Cunning Little Vixen*, *Königslinder*, could all count, though they're not all by Hans Christian Anderson, or Aesop, or the Grimms, or Perrault.


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

This is a fascinating topic. At first my thoughts went to Rimsky-Korsakov and Russian operas mostly based on Pushkin.

Ruslan and Lyudmila
Cherevichki
Iolanta?
The Snow Maiden
Sadko
Kaschey the Immortal
The Love for three Oranges
(And others already mentioned.)

Then there are the western fairy tales that gave us the Cinderella operas and Hansel and Gretel. I wouldn't have thought about the operas based onAriosto such as Handel's Orlando and Alcina, but they do contain fantastical elements and so we should also add his Rinaldo as well as Rossini's Armida and Gluck's Armide.

N.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

SixFootScowl said:


> In this thread we could also work on defining what is a fairy tale opera. I want to say that it has to have some kind of supernatural action to qualify, but maybe not. Is Wagner's Ring a fairy tale opera?


I'll venture the following distinction: a _fairy tale _is a story in which supernatural beings intervene in the lives of human beings, bestowing gifts, blessings, curses, challenges, victory, deliverance from danger, or death. A _myth_ is a story in which natural or supernatural beings and events enact, or represent, fundamental, archetypal facts of human existence and the universe in which we live. A story might have qualities of both myth and fairy tale.

Of Wagner's canonical operas, the most fairy-tale-like is _Lohengrin._ The _Ring_ and _Parsifal_ are fully mythic. _Tristan_ is a romance in which the "supernatural" element of the love potion is merely symbolic.


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## gvn (Dec 14, 2019)

The vast majority of 17th and 18th century operas, from Monteverdi's _Orfeo_ to Gluck's _Iphigénie en Tauride,_ include supernatural characters who "intervene in the lives of human beings" (to use Woodduck's useful formulation). I can scarcely watch any opera by Lully or Rameau without feeling that it comes from the same cultural environment as Perrault's fairy tales.

Among later operas in which supernatural characters appear and intervene (for good or ill!) in the lives of humans, some of my favorites are:

Mozart, _Don Giovanni_
Wagner, _Lohengrin_
Wagner, _Parsifal_
Verdi, _Macbeth_
Gounod, _Faust_
Boito, _Mefistofele_
Dvořák, _The Devil and Kate_
Dvořák, _Rusalka_
Rimsky-Korsakov, _Christmas Eve_
Rimsky-Korsakov, _Kashchey the Immortal_
Strauss, _Die Frau ohne Schatten_
Stravinsky, _The Rake's Progress_
Britten, _The Turn of the Screw_
Britten, _A Midsummer Night's Dream_
Hoiby, _The Tempest_

I also have great favorites in which the whole drama is understood to spring from the intervention of supernatural characters, even though those characters don't actually appear or are only briefly glimpsed, e.g.:

Mozart, _Idomeneo_
Mozart, _Die Zauberflöte_
Weber, _Der Freischütz_
Berlioz, _Les Troyens_
Rimsky-Korsakov, _The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh_

Yet on reflection perhaps many of the above might be better regarded as myths than fairy tales. To me, the term "fairy tale" tends to imply playfulness, fanciful invention, childlike make-believe, childlike fun. I'm happy to describe _Die Zauberflöte_ or _Der Freischütz_ or _The Devil and Kate_ as fairy tale, but it seems odd to apply the term to _Macbeth_ or _Idomeneo_ or _Kitezh_. But perhaps I'm being too rigid in trying to categorize so fluid and intangible a realm!

I also think that the fairy tale quality of any opera depends largely on how it's staged. Some stagings make _Zauberflöte,_ _Rusalka,_ _Midsummer Night's Dream,_ etc., look much more fairy tale than others do. In some cases (e.g., _Kitezh_) I don't think _any_ of the commercially available stagings handles the fantasy side of the work well. I fear we, in our culture, tend to be too prosaic, too leaden-footed, too earthbound and matter-bound, to be able to do fairy tales. With occasional exceptions, of course!


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

I would add Ravel's _L'enfant et les sortileges_, assuming it fits the criteria.


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## Radames (Feb 27, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> I'll venture the following distinction: a _fairy tale _is a story in which supernatural beings intervene in the lives of human beings, bestowing gifts, blessings, curses, challenges, victory, deliverance from danger, or death.


Don't fairy tales have to have happy endings too?


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## gvn (Dec 14, 2019)

Radames said:


> Don't fairy tales have to have happy endings too?


Good question! I think it depends on what period we're talking about.

1. In the 18th & 19th centuries (i.e., in the golden age of opera), a sizeable proportion of fairy tales--either a large minority or the majority--did NOT have happy endings! Many of Grimm's fairy tales have horrendous endings. Many of Hans Christian Andersen's end in abject misery. (Of course, most children have always relished horror stories. We adults are the softies, in that respect as in others.)

2. Nowadays, by contrast, I think there is an expectation that a fairy tale should have a happy ending. Many of the classic fairy tales are now always told in expurgated versions, with horrors omitted and happy endings added. (Little Red Riding Hood is a familiar example.)


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## zxxyxxz (Apr 14, 2020)

How about Boughton: The Immortal Hour?


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## Dick Johnson (Apr 14, 2020)

Woodduck said:


> Of Wagner's canonical operas, the most fairy-tale-like is _Lohengrin._ The _Ring_ and _Parsifal_ are fully mythic. _Tristan_ is a romance in which the "supernatural" element of the love potion is merely symbolic.


Siegfried, in particular, has a subplot based in part (or at least influenced by) a story of the Brothers Grimm: "The Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was"


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## Dick Johnson (Apr 14, 2020)

Would add Turandot to the list. More than any other opera by Puccini, it feels like the plot proceeds along fairy tale lines. Some have criticized the libretto as unrealistic - but I think for Puccini that was the goal in that particular opera. 

The libretto was based on an ancient Persian fairy tale, The Seven Beauties (Haft Peykar), a poem by 12th-century Persian poet Nizami that was reinterpreted by François Pétis de la Croix’s in The Thousand and One Days (Les Mille et un jours).


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

zxxyxxz said:


> How about Boughton: The Immortal Hour?


I don't know it well enough, but with an aria like "The Faery Song" I expect it's a contender.


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