# Final last theme or single note of an opera...



## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

...that immediately stuns you into silence

1. Dialogues of the Carmelites
2. Madama Butterfly
3. Manon Lescaut
4. La Boheme
5. The Consul


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Let's put it this way: After seeing a performance of _Dialogues des Carmélites_, all of a group of mixed adults who had gone to the opera and sat together and who knew the piece and the libretto prior seeing / hearing it -- afterwards had, all of us together, left the opera house and were walking outside the hall and down some streets, likely to drop in at some bistro or another for the aftershow snacks, drinks and talks.

_*From the end of the opera, leaving the house and all during that walk, not a one of us spoke a single word for about fifteen minutes until one of us finally uttered an quiet but intense, "Wow."*_

_Dialogues des Carmélites_ it is then, hands down, the whole piece a sustained ambiance of horrific anxiety, the very times and the air all breath uncertain, an unrelenting chain of nervy and unsettled half-recitatives and no real arias or tunes, the story element a complete and unrelieved atmosphere and generalized fear (with but one tiny bit of comic relief when a novice goes naively on about the mother superior's rather ugly death, saying it is as if God had made a mistake, the mother superior getting the wrong death like when you are handed the wrong cloak checking out of a theater's cloak-room -- while that in itself is very black humor) and the supposedly uplifting but gruesome end, the orchestral effect of a cut off cymbal roll never elsewhere having that effect, and not one atom or iota of 'cathartic release' anywhere in sight.

I don't think there is anything to quite match it, (though Berg's Lulu is also wildly chilling.)

Compared to which, _Madama Butterfly_ is a generically cheap-shot melodrama / _Manon Lescaut_ is another similarly formulaic soaper / Ditto _La Boheme_ / and _The Consul_ is like a sophomoric supernatural - sci fi story one might find in a monthly pulp collection of the genre.

If you had listed _Lulu_, I might have thought I'd need to flip a coin to decide between it and _Dialogues des Carmélites,_ but in the realms of _Lulu,_ the personages are more skating through toss and tumble flaky events outside their control, they are more urbane, matter of fact, while the end is as horrifying and _nearly_ non-cathartic.

_Dialogues des Carmélites_ starts out worriedly anxious, continues and waxes the same without relief, and there is 0 catharsis. _"Winner!_


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

PetrB:
I was ONLY referring to the last note or theme. Say what you will about Butterfly and The Consul but there is no possible way to be dissing that last shattering and horrifying note of both operas regardless of your opinion of the entire work.


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## sospiro (Apr 3, 2010)

nina foresti said:


> ...that immediately stuns you into silence
> 
> 1. Dialogues of the Carmelites
> 2. Madama Butterfly
> ...


Are you asking us to choose our favourite last note from this list? Or of any opera?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Schoenberg's Moses und Aron also has one of the most powerful endings of any opera I know as the orchestra becomes reduced to a single line and then a single note. I'm not sure that any prospective third act could have bettered it.


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

I'm also very fond of the ending of both Dialogues and Lulu.

Just to mention another great one, what's about "Saint François d'Assise"?. 
_
CHOEUR 
Autre est l'éclat de la lune, autre est l'éclat du soleil, 
Alléluia ! Autres sont les corps terrestres, autres sont 
les corps célestes, Alléluia ! 
Même, une étoile diffère en éclat d'une autre étoile ! 
Ainsi en va-t-il de la résurrection des morts, Alléluia ! 
Alléluia ! 
De la douleur, de la faiblesse, et de l'ignominie : il 
ressuscite, il ressuscite, il ressuscite de la Force, de la 
Gloire, de la Joie !!!

_In a gleaming C major, and in a seemingly endless chord on "Joie", accompanied by the trumpets... I just love it!.


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

The very last notes of ELEKTRA are like two final heartbeats -- true catharsis!


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Die Walkure
Gotterdammerung
Tristan
Parsifal
Meistersinger

Wagner knew how to end an opera.


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## Dongiovanni (Jul 30, 2012)

Very impressive last chords:
1) Tristan
2) Matthew Passion 
3) Boheme

After this a moment of silence is also impressive.

Not the last theme but almost at the end, when the Count sings 'Contessa perdono'.

The last chord of the Commendatore scene and the Don's final cry.


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## Volve (Apr 14, 2013)

PetrB, any particular DVD versions you (or anyone else) would recommend for a first time viewer of Dialogues des Carmélites?


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Hi Annie:
No, of course not. Those are examples of my choices. So what are yours?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

nina foresti said:


> PetrB:
> I was ONLY referring to the last note or theme. Say what you will about Butterfly and The Consul but there is no possible way to be dissing that last shattering and horrifying note of both operas regardless of your opinion of the entire work.


If saying the others pale in comparison to the Poulenc is dissing, then dis it is


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## Bruce (Jan 2, 2013)

For me, two operas stand out:

Strauß - Salome
Wagner - Tannhäuser


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

adding Rheingold.

no one does endings like RW.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Volve said:


> PetrB, any particular DVD versions you (or anyone else) would recommend for a first time viewer of Dialogues des Carmélites?


Sorry, I'm not an active follow the current opera scene guy, at all. I don't consume DVD filmed performances and would not know where to start.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

A mention for Falstaff.
And William Tell.

great endings.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Volve:
You didn't ask me but I will suggest the version with Anne-Sophie Schmidt as a pretty decent one.
But only till you get to see it live, because the last scene is a stunner.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

Tristan. After 4 hours the damn thing resolves. OMG.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

mamascarlatti said:


> Tristan. After 4 hours the damn thing resolves. OMG.


You're so impatient. :lol:


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## Posie (Aug 18, 2013)

Itullian said:


> You're so impatient. :lol:


Indeed! It's not a matter of "Will they or won't they?" because we already know.


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

Volve said:


> PetrB, any particular DVD versions you (or anyone else) would recommend for a first time viewer of Dialogues des Carmélites?


I think there two outstanding versions in the market. The one with Anne-Sophie Schmidt and Patricia Petibon, directed by Koenig, Strasbourg Opera, staged by Marthe Keller and mentioned before, and my favorite, the DVD from La Scala, with Muti directing, with Dagmar Schellenberger, Laura Aikin and Anja Silja, with a superb staging by Robert Carsen.


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## Sonneteer (Aug 3, 2014)

I thought the ending of La Boheme very powerful, in fact I included it with my poem of of my mom's death. Recently I attended a performance of Barber of Seville where Dr. Bartolo's maid was called "Marcellina" (not "Berta"), so when Rosina threw the bouquet and Marcellina caught it, I laughed, as she gets married (to Bartolo) in the multiple wedding in The Marriage of Figaro.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

The quiet dying close of Verdi's *Otello* is one of the most moving in all opera, for me anyway.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

mamascarlatti said:


> Tristan. After 4 hours the damn thing resolves. OMG.


And what a resolution! Richard Strauss called the organlike final chord of _Tristan_ the most beautifully orchestrated chord in all music. Since the question asked about a theme or chord, not about a final scene or an opera as a whole, I'll have to choose this very chord, with a nod toward the similarly glorious final chords (and the themes that resolve into them) of _Parsifal_ and _Gotterdammerung_. In such moments Wagner's ear for the rich and subtle blending of instruments into something unimaginably deep and beautiful is matchless.


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> And what a resolution! Richard Strauss called the organlike final chord of _Tristan_ the most beautifully orchestrated chord in all music. Since the question asked about a theme or chord, not about a final scene or an opera as a whole, I'll have to choose this very chord, with a nod toward the similarly glorious final chords (and the themes that resolve into them) of _Parsifal_ and _Gotterdammerung_. In such moments Wagner's ear for the rich and subtle blending of instruments into something unimaginably deep and beautiful is matchless.


What other composer has academic philosophers writing whole books on just one chord of theirs?

http://www.amazon.com/Tristan-Chord...&qid=1407175391&sr=1-1&keywords=tristan+chord


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