# Your favourite opera choruses



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

*What are your favourite opera choruses?* (Please post youtube clips if you can) Mine are all by *Verdi*, my knowledge of this area not being that great:

"Va, pensiero" from *Nabucco*





"Urli, rapine" from *Attila*
(doesn't look like it's on youtube, surprisingly)

"Vedi! le fosche notturno spoglie" (Anvil chorus) from *Il trovatore*





"Zitti, zitti" from *Rigoletto*





"Nella guerra e la follia" & "Ratalpan, ratalpan, ratalpan!" from *La forza del destino*
(could only find the second one on youtube)





"Patria oppressa!" from *Macbeth*


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## Almaviva (Aug 13, 2010)

Verdi too, sure, and your list hit the high marks, but I'd add, pretty much the entire _Les Troyens _is shockful of beautiful choral music. Another one with unusually frequent use of chorus is _Guglielmo Tell. _Also, _I Lombardi, _to a point that I actually find excessive.


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## Falstaft (Mar 27, 2010)

Wagner Hagen's "Rallying Cry" from _Gotterdammerung _-- be afraid, be very afraid.

Mussorgsky "Coronation Scene" from _Boris_

Verdi "Una Vela" from _Otello_, the best of his apocalyptic choruses, IMHO.


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## dmg (Sep 13, 2009)

Love _Dieu! Dieu d'Israël!_ from *Samson et Dalila*.


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## sospiro (Apr 3, 2010)

I love the plotting murderers in Macbeth - Chi v'impose unirvi a noi


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## myaskovsky2002 (Oct 3, 2010)

Ruslan and Liudmila






Martin


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

myaskovsky2002 said:


> Ruslan and Liudmila
> 
> 
> 
> ...


This will totally get you Brownie points with Almaviva.


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## Almaviva (Aug 13, 2010)

mamascarlatti said:


> This will totally get you Brownie points with Almaviva.


100 points lalala


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## karenpat (Jan 16, 2009)

Does oratorio count??? I love "Go, gen'rous pious youth" from Händel's Theodora. there are other great choruses in there as well.


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## Gualtier Malde (Nov 14, 2010)

"Was gleicht wohl auf Erden" from Weber's Freischutz:


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

Falstaft said:


> Wagner Hagen's "Rallying Cry" from _Götterdämmerung _-- be afraid, be very afraid.


Yup- "The Summoning of the Vassals" was the first thing _I_ thought of...

But you know what? The one mentioned in *this post*, 
(from an opera that's really been on my mind a lot lately), is pretty damm good, too!


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Andre said:


> *What are your favourite opera choruses?* (Please post youtube clips if you can) Mine are all by *Verdi*, my knowledge of this area not being that great:


Verdi was pretty good when it came to writing fine opera chorus. Though it might be useful to point out that late Romantic opera used the chorus a lot more than earlier periods throughout the unfolding drama, unlike the Barqoue where the chorus in the opera was almost non-existent often until the end of the Baroque opera when all the singers unite to do a closing piece.

The Verdi ones you posted all are nice. I also quite like this by Borodin, Polovtsian Dances from _Prince Igor_.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Chorus after Lohengrin defeats evil ******* in Lohengrin

Final chorus in Fidelio 

Mass scene from King Roger 

and the one from Schoenberg's Erwartung


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## Almaviva (Aug 13, 2010)

The chorus in the prologue of Boito's Mefistofele is rather impressive.


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## sospiro (Apr 3, 2010)

Almaviva said:


> The chorus in the prologue of Boito's Mefistofele is rather impressive.


 looking forward to it


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## Poppin' Fresh (Oct 24, 2009)

I enjoy the choral work in _Der Fliegende Holländer_ across the board. The segment at the beginning of Act III in particular, where the Norwegian crew and the the Dutchman's ghost crew are attempting to drown each other out, is a lot of fun.


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