# Which era do you prefer in an opera (Poll)



## Artran (Sep 16, 2016)

I'm wondering, what is the taste of Talk Classical regarding the operatic era? Please vote (you have 2 votes).

For the record, I'm voting baroque and modern (my most favorite era). Next would be classical and the last would be the romantic era.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

If there were a choice of "all of the above," then I would vote.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

I voted Baroque and Classical; Romantic-era operas are at the bottom.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

..................................


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Romantic because of Verdi, Baroque for Handel.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Romantic and modern.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Romantic and early Modern. I enjoy the music of all periods, including the music written for opera, and all periods have produced great operas, but I think the melding of significant music and significant drama, with music reaching its maximum potential to explore and express a wide range of human experience, emotional and philosophical, reached its apex between the mid-19th and early 20th centuries.

If that sounds like the confession of a Wagnerite, it certainly is. Wagner's contributions to musical drama are many, including - to speak only of the music - the obliteration of the formal aria and connecting recitative, resulting in a more naturalistic, "real time" treatment of stage action and dialogue, and the raising up of the orchestral score, with all its resources of thematic development, instrumental color and harmony, to full equality with the singer as a conveyor of dramatic meaning. No operatic composer of worth failed to take note of these achievements and of the way in which they opened up new poetic and dramatic possibilities for the art form, and the most noteworthy opera composers of the period - Verdi, Bizet, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Dvorak, Debussy, Puccini, Mascagni, Leoncavallo, Strauss, Berg, and Britten, among others - all found individual ways of enriching their own traditions by integrating aspects of the Wagnerian revolution into their musical and dramatic thinking.

For me, aside from a few works of Monteverdi and Mozart, opera as a deeply meaningful art form begins, more or less, with _Fidelio, Der Freischütz_ and _Norma_, and probably ends with _Peter Grimes _and_ Billy Budd._


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Wagner, Verdi, Puccini, Strauss
nuff said


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## Monsalvat (11 mo ago)

The three opera composers with whom I've spent the most time are Mozart, Wagner, and R. Strauss. Those three probably comprise the majority of the time I've devoted to opera, though certainly not everything. For the purposes of this poll I'll pretend Strauss is a Romantic; some of his music does sound like it even though I am in no doubt that he was at least as progressive as Mahler and likely stepped further into Modernism than Mahler with _Salome_ and _Elektra_. So, that proviso aside, I would vote for Classical and Romantic. But not without some heartache about the marvelous music that those choices leave out.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Monsalvat said:


> The three opera composers with whom I've spent the most time are Mozart, Wagner, and R. Strauss. Those three probably comprise the majority of the time I've devoted to opera, though certainly not everything. For the purposes of this poll I'll pretend Strauss is a Romantic; some of his music does sound like it even though I am in no doubt that he was at least as progressive as Mahler and likely stepped further into Modernism than Mahler with _Salome_ and _Elektra_. So, that proviso aside, I would vote for Classical and Romantic. But not without some heartache about the marvelous music that those choices leave out.


I'd say Strauss is a Romantic, despite the harmonic spice he adds to his lush orchestration and waltzy tunes. _Elektra_ is his most "Modernist" opera, but given half a chance it lapses back into faux-Johann Strauss. Speed up the tune in Elektra's recognition scene, and you're in the satin-draped, crystal-chandeliered Viennese salon of the next opera, _Der Rosenkavalier. _The big waltz tune in_ Salome _swallows up the final scene. Strauss began as a Romantic and ended as a Romantic, and to my ear never strayed very far afield.


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## Artran (Sep 16, 2016)

Monsalvat said:


> The three opera composers with whom I've spent the most time are Mozart, Wagner, and R. Strauss. Those three probably comprise the majority of the time I've devoted to opera, though certainly not everything. For the purposes of this poll I'll pretend Strauss is a Romantic; some of his music does sound like it even though I am in no doubt that he was at least as progressive as Mahler and likely stepped further into Modernism than Mahler with _Salome_ and _Elektra_. So, that proviso aside, I would vote for Classical and Romantic. But not without some heartache about the marvelous music that those choices leave out.


Regarding R. Strauss you're definitely partly right. It's hard to draw a precise line.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

starthrower said:


> Romantic and modern.


Me too, although my appreciation for modern opera tends to end after Britten, Tippett and Shostakovich. I love lots of later composers in orchestral and chamber music, but in opera not so much. Baroque and classical period operas are not interesting for me.


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## Artran (Sep 16, 2016)

Art Rock said:


> Me too, although my appreciation for modern opera tends to end after Britten, Tippett and Shostakovich. I love lots of later composers in orchestral and chamber music, but in opera not so much. Baroque and classical period operas are not interesting for me.


I didn't divide modern era into more parts, because I could do the same with baroque and romantic and I wanted to have a simple poll.


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## Otis B. Driftwood (4 mo ago)

I went with classical and romantic.

PS: I'm not sure I would classify Rossini as a romantic era composer, at least with his early career.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Verdi/Puccini/Tchaikovsky/Poulenc/Boito/Menotti/Wagner
(Bellini/Donizetti)


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Otis B. Driftwood said:


> I went with classical and romantic.
> 
> PS: I'm not sure I would classify Rossini as a romantic era composer, at least with his early career.


Rossini is definitely in the Classical period. Even though he lived long into the 19th century, his last opera was written around the time of Beethoven's death. And stylistically his operas are closer to Mozart than Verdi.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

SanAntone said:


> Rossini is definitely in the Classical period. Even though he lived long into the 19th century, his last opera was written around the time of Beethoven's death. And stylistically his operas are closer to Mozart than Verdi.


True, but he is also part of the _bel canto _era, and is usually grouped with Bellini and Donizetti, who are really part of the Romantic movement. On the other hand, both Cherubini and Spontini would be considered Classical composers. It's quite hard to categorise composers active at the turn of the nineteenth century. Although a Classical composer, many would argue that Beethoven paved the way for the Romantic movement in music at least. The movement was already underway in literature and art. Berlioz was less than ten years younger than Rossini and he is most definitely a Romantic composer. Weber was older than Rossini but we would hardly class *Der Freischütz* as a Classical work.


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## Artran (Sep 16, 2016)

SanAntone said:


> Rossini is definitely in the Classical period. Even though he lived long into the 19th century, his last opera was written around the time of Beethoven's death. And stylistically his operas are closer to Mozart than Verdi.


I hear this for the first time. History of Music: Classicism (Šišková, 2012) doesn't contain Rossini, and even Encyclopedia Britannica counts Rossini among romantics. For me, he's one of those early romantic composers.


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

Each period is heterogeneous. Barocco includes Monteverdi and his close successor Cavalli, Purcell unlike anyone else, great and self sufficient Bach and Händel, many illustrious French like Saint-Colomb (but he, like Bach, didn't write operas), Marais, Lully, Rameau, German - Telemann, Graupner, Hasse, Spanish Nebra, Russian Bortniansky, and endless list of Italians like Vivaldi, Porpora, Vinci etc. 
Classicism has less names but it was shorter, even only Mozart and Glück would be enough. But there were also the Haydns, Paisiello, Cherubini, Salieri (Beethoven seems to mega bridge to romanticism). 
I voted for these two periods having the names written above in mind. It doesn't mean I avoid later music. Not at all, just now I listen to Wagner more and more. Again, there is the same heterogenity, from belcanto and Schubert and Weber to Verdi and Wagner, and all the French and Russian romantic opera. For example, I prefer Tchaikovsky in the theater or at least on video, his dramas are too whole to be listened separately from staging or in pieces. 
The modern period is much more variegated. Like with modern art in general I have complicated relationship with modern or contemporary opera. But there are some glimpses like Les dialogues des carmelites or Written on skin.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Tsaraslondon said:


> True, but he is also part of the _bel canto _era, and is usually grouped with Bellini and Donizetti, who are really part of the Romantic movement. On the other hand, both Cherubini and Spontini would be considered Classical composers. It's quite hard to categorise composers active at the turn of the nineteenth century. Although a Classical composer, many would argue that Beethoven paved the way for the Romantic movement in music at least. The movement was already underway in literature and art. Berlioz was less than ten years younger than Rossini and he is most definitely a Romantic composer. Weber was older than Rossini but we would hardly class *Der Freischütz* as a Classical work.


Except for a few sacred works, Rossini stopped composing by 1829 and I still maintain that his operas are closer stylistically to Mozart, than composers of even the early Romantic era. But I will grant you he is among the bel canto composers, although his operas are less Romantic sounding than Bellini (most which came after 1825, the tail end of Rossini's career) and Donizetti, whose most famous operas were well after _Guillaume Tell_. 

Just listening to Rossini, his style is older than either Bellini or Donizetti, no matter how historians classify them chronologically. He wrote in the opera buffa style of Domenico Cimarosa and Giovanni Paisiello, both of whom are of the Classical period.

Where we strongly agree is with the difficulty in classifying composers during the transition from Classical to Romantic eras.


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

I met somewhere a sentence that Semiramide was "the last baroque opera, beautiful, but the last". I think it was an opinion of a contemporary. 
Indeed, those beauty and joy of life and a certain pragmatism have much in common with baroque, almost Hollywood level flow line production and recycling on one hand and unbelievably beautiful melodies and attention to singing on the other.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Romantic and early Modern. I enjoy the music of all periods, including the music written for opera, and all periods have produced great operas, but I think the melding of significant music and significant drama, with music reaching its maximum potential to explore and express a wide range of human experience, emotional and philosophical, reached its apex between the mid-19th and early 20th centuries.
> 
> If that sounds like the confession of a Wagnerite, it certainly is. Wagner's contributions to musical drama are many, including - to speak only of the music - the obliteration of the formal aria and connecting recitative, resulting in a more naturalistic, "real time" treatment of stage action and dialogue, and the raising up of the orchestral score, with all its resources of thematic development, instrumental color and harmony, to full equality with the singer as a conveyor of dramatic meaning. No operatic composer of worth failed to take note of these achievements and of the way in which they opened up new poetic and dramatic possibilities for the art form, and the most noteworthy opera composers of the period - Verdi, Bizet, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Dvorak, Debussy, Puccini, Mascagni, Leoncavallo, Strauss, Berg, and Britten, among others - all found individual ways of enriching their own traditions by integrating aspects of the Wagnerian revolution into their musical and dramatic thinking.
> 
> For me, aside from a few works of Monteverdi and Mozart, opera as a deeply meaningful art form begins, more or less, with _Fidelio, Der Freischütz_ and _Norma_, and probably ends with _Peter Grimes _and_ Billy Budd._


Holy s*** I forgot that I also like Wagner!


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## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

You made a poll about opera and didn't include Wagner's name...

Wagner is the crossroads of all opera (of music in general truthfully).

Anyway, ...I love all the main operas of Mozart and Wagner.

I also love Beethoven's "Fidelio", Debussy's "Pelléas et Mélisande", Ligeti's "Le Grand Macabre", Bartok's "Bluebeard's Castle", and several other later 20th Century operas.

Basically other than Mozart and Beethoven, the operas I love most don't begin until Wagner.


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## Ice Dragon (Jun 20, 2018)

I voted Romantic and Baroque. All the operas I own (admittedly not many) are from the Romantic era except one, which is Baroque. I like the Romantic era best out of the four listed. I like seeing Baroque operas staged the way they would have been when they premiered, with the retro costumes and sets; I find the effect very pleasing.


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## Artran (Sep 16, 2016)

lextune said:


> You made a poll about opera and didn't include Wagner's name...
> 
> Wagner is the crossroads of all opera (of music in general truthfully).
> 
> ...


Sure, because the names of mentioned composers only mark the particular period's beginning and end (and I was aware that some names could be part of both periods). Wagner is in the middle. Don't take the names too seriously it's only a simple guideline.
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I'm not surprised that the romantic era wins, but it's interesting how evenly votes are distributed between the remaining periods.


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

I only took one vote - Romantic. I also like a significant amount of baroque, classical and modern works, but there are very few romantic operas that are still performed (even if infrequently) that I don't like. I'd much rather listen to Rossini's Bianca e Falliero, Bellini's Straniera, Donizetti's Gemma di Vergy, Verdi's Stiffelio or Giordano's Fedora than Monteverdi or Gluck's Orfeo for instance.

N.


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## ALT (Mar 1, 2021)

Too bad only 2 choices are allowed b/c I would have also selected the Classical era. As hauntingly beautiful and moving as some _isolated_ scenes and arias can be, Baroque I can live w/o.


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## Artran (Sep 16, 2016)

ALT said:


> Too bad only 2 choices are allowed b/c I would have also selected the Classical era. As hauntingly beautiful and moving as some _isolated_ scenes and arias can be, Baroque I can live w/o.


C'mon people, you have 2 votes from 4 choices. That's enough! At least you have to think about your preferences.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

My spontaneous love for opera has been triggered by the romantic era. The rest of the stuff was usually "educating myself".


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

I went for Baroque opera, although it's an interest that's been dormant for the past five years. It's an acquired taste that stays.


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## dko22 (Jun 22, 2021)

I would regard Janáček as Romantic and not modern. But as I like almost exclusively 20th century opera, I guess I'd have to say modern, even though I disagree with the definition (in fact all my favourite operas are in what I would class a late-romantic style, irrespective of when they were actually written)


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## Aerobat (Dec 31, 2018)

Hmmmm.

I've voted classical and romantic as these are what I listen to most. I do also love a lot of the music, not just opera, from the Baroque era though.

Modern gives me a problem. I have to split 'modern' into two groups: "Wagner" and "Everything else". Wagner will get my vote every time. "Everything else", with one or two exceptions, will not.


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## Tinker (4 mo ago)

What about Gershwin's _Porgy and Bess_, which is an authentic opera and a masterpiece? It's world-class status become clear in the complete, uncut version as recorded by Lorin Maazel (Decca) and Simon Rattle (EMI Classics). Those two recorded performances make the best case for Gershwin as a great composer of opera. (Maazel's with the Cleveland is a concert performance, but the musical values are impeccable.)


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## damianjb1 (Jan 1, 2016)

ColdGenius said:


> I met somewhere a sentence that Semiramide was "the last baroque opera, beautiful, but the last". I think it was an opinion of a contemporary.
> Indeed, those beauty and joy of life and a certain pragmatism have much in common with baroque, almost Hollywood level flow line production and recycling on one hand and unbelievably beautiful melodies and attention to singing on the other.


I've also heard Aida described as a late example of Opera Seria.


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## damianjb1 (Jan 1, 2016)

damianjb1 said:


> I've also heard Aida described as a late example of Opera Seria.


As far as the plot goes it kind of is an Opera Seria.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

Are the modern operas not serious ? I have seen the opposite statement, that buffa is rare in modern work.

What is the Innocence or The love from afar by Saariaho ?


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

damianjb1 said:


> As far as the plot goes it kind of is an Opera Seria.


Well, in _opera seria _everything is too serious in general to take it seriously indeed. It often evokes a smile. But one could say it about the most of opera plots and libretti, from Monteverdi through Wagner to modern ones.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Tsaraslondon said:


> many would argue that Beethoven paved the way for the Romantic movement in music at least.





ColdGenius said:


> (Beethoven seems to mega bridge to romanticism).


What do you think of this, written shortly after Mozart's death. Are we by any chance mistaking things of the "German Enlightenment" (in which Beethoven took part) for "Romanticism"?

"Mit vollen Athemzügen Saug' ich, Natur, aus Dir. Ein schmerzliches Vergnügen. Wie lebt, Wie bebt, Wie strebt, Das Herz in mir! ..." 
"With full breaths I suck, nature, out of you. A painful pleasure. How lives, How trembles, How strives, The heart in me! ..."






There is this free fantasy section, starting at 3:06
C major -> F minor -> A flat major (-> A flat minor, borrowed) -> A minor -> C minor


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