# Question for this forum



## Sandy (Dec 23, 2009)

I have a question for opera lovers. My friend from California has told me that her sister has been an opera lover for 70 years. She is very old now and I suggested she order a satellite radio and listen to opera 24 hours a day. These are recordings from the N.Y. Metropolitan Opera archives. I even offered to send her the daily opera lists.

My friend said her sister would be unable to sit through even one opera.

I feed on these operas and have the station on daily from 4 am (mountain time) with a break for news and in the afternoon back to the radio. I need this input to feed my soul. I too am old and will never lose my intense love of opera.

There is no reason to force opera on anyone. I will ignore this request and will offer nothing to anyone.






The above link is to Lucia Popp's Song to the Moon by Dvorak that I found yesterday. Good stuff!

Sandy


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Hi, thanks for the YouTube link - I'm an avid fan of all things Dvorak 

Unfortunately, I think I misunderstood you, because I couldn't see a question anywhere in your post, and was confused by the following two sentences which are apparently contradictory :/



Sandy said:


> My friend from California has told me that her sister has been an opera lover for 70 years.





Sandy said:


> My friend said her sister would be unable to sit through even one opera.


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## Guest (Feb 11, 2010)

Yes, I, too, am puzzled as to what the question is. Is it whether or not to have the person listen to opera? 

I enjoy some opera, but can't listen to it constantly. Additionally, my tastes seem to be very narrow - I enjoy Mozart's operas, and Beethoven's Fidelio, but little else. I keep attempting with Wagner, but to no avail. I end up just listening to the overtures.

Religious music, on the other hand (oratorios, masses, requiems, cantatas, etc.) are wonderful, and I can listen to them all day.


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## Sandy (Dec 23, 2009)

I question my friend's problem too. One cannot be an opera buff and then not be able to listen to an opera all the way through. I decided to ignore her problem and enjoy my opera daily. I had planned to send her the Sirius list of operas on a daily basis but will not bother. She lives in the north east and should be able to get to New York if she wants to hear the good music. Apparently listening to Opera takes some getting use to which is impossible for me to understand.


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## Guest (Feb 11, 2010)

Sandy said:


> I question my friend's problem too. One cannot be an opera buff and then not be able to listen to an opera all the way through. I decided to ignore her problem and enjoy my opera daily. I had planned to send her the Sirius list of operas on a daily basis but will not bother. She lives in the north east and should be able to get to New York if she wants to hear the good music. *Apparently listening to Opera takes some getting use to which is impossible for me to understand.*


Really? Opera is an interesting musical medium. It incorporates both music and theatre. Now, most of us can't get to the opera, and our primary exposure is through audio recordings. Imagine experiencing a movie solely through listening to it, without seeing any of the action. Add on top of that that it is performed, in many instances, in a language you may not speak or understand (e.g. Italian, German, Russian). In that case, you can certainly still enjoy the music, which is why there are so many recordings of the overtures alone. Now, for someone who is familiar with the story, understands the words, has seen the opera performed, the experience would be much different. I can listen to the words alone for a movie I have previously seen, and know exactly what is going on, and follow along. But without that, it is incoherent (this is the case with many of the movies my son watches in the back seat of our mini-van).

To truly enjoy an opera, it takes either attending performances, or taking the time to read the libretto and understand the overall story, as well as, in general, what is being said at various points. Certainly people can enjoy the music alone, but then I don't really consider that listening to the opera, rather listening to excerpts. The operas I do enjoy by Mozart and Beethoven are generally those in German (The Magic Flute, Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail, Fidelio), as I am somewhat fluent in German and can follow the dialogue. Mozart's Italian operas are harder for me to follow, so in general I stick primarily to the overtures and arias. Wagner is an exception - it isn't due to not understanding the language, so much as I just don't feel anything.


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

I dont understand why most people cannot get to the opera as you claim?

Most large towns or cities have their own opera houses.?!


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## Guest (Feb 11, 2010)

emiellucifuge said:


> I dont understand why most people cannot get to the opera as you claim?
> 
> Most large towns or cities have their own opera houses.?!


Cost, maybe? Tickets are not cheap. And they are not quite so easily accessible.

But ultimately it isn't that people can't come to appreciate opera, I was responding to the comment that the poster made about not understanding why some people might have some difficulty appreciating opera. While a live performance of, say, a symphony might greatly enhance the experience, you can theoretically experience all that you need to experience with a recording (assuming the quality is good enough). Not so for an opera. Simply listening to it is not fully experiencing it. So that leaves attending a performance, or viewing one on TV or a DVD. It takes a lot more effort. Plus if you don't speak the language it is performed in, that makes it even more difficult. Who wants to sit there and read along in the libretto to a translation while also trying to follow the action?

I know many enjoy opera. I'm just saying it is, to me, easily understandable why some have a harder time appreciating it than other forms of music.


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

DrMike said:


> Cost, maybe? Tickets are not cheap. And they are not quite so easily accessible.


The old and perhaps slightly exaggerated quip goes that War is mankind's costliest endeavor 
...but Opera is a close second!

Here in the Philadelphia area, Opera Company of Philadelphia is running a truncated 5 production season- and tickets still can set you back over $120.00 per, if you're looking for anything closer in than the parquet circle.

The Lyric Opera of Chicago runs a pretty complete opera season- but when I had the option of subscribing to a series, the fact that I could go to more than twice the number of Chicago Symphony Orchestra concerts for the same price, combined with the fact that the Orchestra is generally a more well-regarded ensemble, made the decision to subscribe to the Orchestra instead a pretty easy one for me.

Then, of course, there's the Metropolitan Opera. A pair of tickets in ordinary seats there (e.g. Dress Circle) will run over $300.00+. To balance this out, though, it bears mentioning that the MET does a terrific job at outreach, between the MET-in-HD theatre-casts (not much more that $20.00 a ticket), plus of course the Saturday-afternoon broadcasts, free to anyone whose network carries the signals.

For my own curiosity, I decided to compare the operating budget of the MET to that of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, historically the most well-funded of the American orchestras (to look at the musicians' roster in a BSO program is an almost surreal exercise in the roll-call of 'endowed seats' funded by a stunning number of named contributors)- 

Last year's MET budget was c. 291 million dollars.

The 2007 Boston Symphony Orchestra budget was 77+ million dollars.


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

Alright fair enough.. as for the language problems most opera houses provide supertitles or some form of translation.

Here at home they have them projected on a small screen above the stage, conveniently placed yet invisible if you are not watching it.
And the Met has a nice screen system in the seats with many different languages available.


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## Il Seraglio (Sep 14, 2009)

emiellucifuge said:


> Alright fair enough.. as for the language problems most opera houses provide supertitles or some form of translation.
> 
> Here at home they have them projected on a small screen above the stage, conveniently placed yet invisible if you are not watching it.
> And the Met has a nice screen system in the seats with many different languages available.


I needed the supertitles seeing Tristan at the ROH. They were very convenient, but made it difficult to keep your eyes on the action on stage at all time. A totally different experience to seeing subtitles on TV.


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## OperaSaz (Feb 12, 2010)

I've never been to an opera with supertitles, but I think it would be a bit of a distractiong and etract from the main performance. However, it is nice to know what the performers are singing about in your own language.

Saz
_______
Opera is my life!


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## Sandy (Dec 23, 2009)

Since I posted the question, I have given more thought to why Opera is so important to music lovers. I was from a very classical music family and several of my cousins chose voice training over musical instruments. My mother accompanied Nadine Conner, a very popular soprano in our location of California. In our home, the voice was as important as any musical instrument. We would drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco for many of their opera presetations and had season tickets to their performances at the Shrine Auditorium when they toured our area. Life without opera was never experienced. It took me many years to realize this was not common even in California. There were pockets of opera buffs everywhere I have lived but not in Arizona. This area is a wasteland of empty classical culture.

One cannot experience opera without listening to or watching it. From the age of 9, I was enchanted first with the music and then with the sets and costumes. I learned Shakespeare from Verdi opera. It was opera that opened my eyes to Hebrew history. Between Nabucco and Samson and Delilah, I caught the essence of Israeli history.

I tried to pass this on to my kids and succeeded with one. "The Beatles" got to my older girl before her ear could to be tuned to grand opera. It was good music to me and I was sorry it turned her away from the good stuff. I found that the internet was no place for this most difficult subject.

I had a wonderful collection of 78 glass records until they simply wore out. 33 1/3 proved to be better but not perfect. My CD collection is wonderful but I want to hear more variations of the operas themselves. My kids went to a fund raiser in D.C. and put a bid on a Satellite Radio and won it. They brought it to me here in Arizona and the first thing I did was contact the NY Met about their possible airing of their live Saturday performances. It took some letters and eventually when Sirius bought into the system, I had full 24/7 reception of the entire NY Met recordings. These are live performances and hearing the audience reactions adds to the glory of having this brought into my home.

Phoenix has an Opera company but the drive is too long for this old lady. Being raised on the San Francisco Opera every year for the last 60 years as spoiled me. I bought the recording of Norma which has some of the most beautiful music but I miss the audience reactions. I began to read the histories of the great singers and composers.

I am not selling Satellite radios but I must share their system of delivering non-stop operas.

http://www.sirius.com/metropolitanoperaradio

Here is the morning menu for their presentations. No commercials just dialog about the presentations themselves.

Sandy


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