# Favorite couple in an opera



## Diminuendo (May 5, 2015)

I started thinking about this and realized this is hard. In many operas there are couples that you like or root for. But even though many of them are very much in love, they are not perfect. Many get jealous or are easily convinced that the other one has someone else. Like Otello has really little faith on Desdemona. And in Lucia di Lammermoor Lucia doesn't have faith in Edgardo. There are so many couples like this.

So what is your favorite couple? What couple messed things up really good? Should the soprano got together with another character or something else entirely?

So far I have only heard/seen the operas that Callas recorded or performed live and some others. So my knowledge is limited and I may have missed the best couples all together. Of course that doesn't matter since the forum is full of people with diverse knowledge  So now is your chance to educate me and others on operatic love life.

My favorite couple are maybe Rodelinda and Bertarido from Rodelinda by Handel. Even when under enormous pressure Rodelinda was loyal to her presumed dead husband and Bertarido had faith on Rodelinda almost through the entire opera. 

I watched the 2011 Met production with Fleming. A superb opera and performance. And my first foray to 18th century operas. 

The couple that made the biggest mistakes has to be Romeo and Juliet from Roméo et Juliette by Charles Gounod. Nobody bothered to tell Romeo about the plan. What a huge blunder. Even though the end is just unbelievable, I still like the opera very much.


P.S. Not even one month and 133 posts and Senior member. Thank you all for your warm welcome and especially to those who participated on my threads :tiphat:


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## Azol (Jan 25, 2015)

Very interesting topic to discuss... there are not that many perfect couples in opera genre, but I would venture to say Minnie and Ramerrez is one of my favorite couples. They got some damn hard (and beautiful!) music to sing, but Puccini clearly was very sympathetic towards both of them and it shows... they are very humane. That's the reason I like Fanciulla so much.


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## graziesignore (Mar 13, 2015)

Zerlina and Masetto (Don Giovanni).

On this note... believe it or not, I just discovered there is such a thing out there as opera fanfiction. Yes. Where people write stories about their favorite opera couples. Or couples they wish were couples. We live in a strange world...

http://operafanfiction.tumblr.com/


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## Cesare Impalatore (Apr 16, 2015)

Diminuendo said:


> My favorite couple are maybe Rodelinda and Bertarido from Rodelinda by Handel. Even when under enormous pressure Rodelinda was loyal to her presumed dead husband and Bertarido had faith on Rodelinda almost through the entire opera.


Very good choice! This rather underrated opera shows Handel's exceptional talent for operatic drama among baroque composers. Another favourite couple of mine from a Handel opera are Romilda and Arsamene from Serse (Xerxes). Their love successfully withstands Xerxes' tyrannical whims, no matter how hard he tries to break it; a happy ending for all is the reward. 

My favourite dysfunctional lovers are probably Carmen and Don José. I love the realistic simplicity of this fatalist relationship. Don José as the previously proper, responsible man who once taken by Carmen's untamed charme becomes possessive, mad of jealousy because he can't deal with her free-spirited nature.

One of the couples that I find sincerely moving is Rodolfo/Mimì from Puccini's Bohème. Especially the final scene is so intimate, yet so powerful. Gigli and Licia Albanese always manage to pull my heartstrings in the purest kind of way - 



.

But number one spot of all opera couples - surprise, surprise - for me goes to Andrea Chénier and Maddalena de Coigny. The way Chénier gives his speech about the societal problems but also the power of love as mover and possibly salvation for the world after the short skirmish with Maddalena particularly got to me. I don't think I have to say anything about the final duet, that pretty much speaks for itself.


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## Diminuendo (May 5, 2015)

Cesare Impalatore said:


> Very good choice! This rather underrated opera shows Handel's exceptional talent for operatic drama among baroque composers. Another favourite couple of mine from a Handel opera are Romilda and Arsamene from Serse (Xerxes). Their love successfully withstands Xerxes' tyrannical whims, no matter how hard he tries to break it; a happy ending for all is the reward.
> 
> My favourite dysfunctional lovers are probably Carmen and Don José. I love the realistic simplicity of this fatalist relationship. Don José as the previously proper, responsible man who once taken by Carmen's untamed charme becomes possessive, mad of jealousy because he can't deal with her free-spirited nature.
> 
> ...


Good choices. All though I prefer Callas and Di Stefano in La Boheme. Di Stefano is so great at the very end, well throughout the whole opera, when he first thinks that Mimi is sleeping and then realizes that she is dead.






Speaking of La Boheme here is Renata Scotto speaking on Mimi's death from 2010


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Senta and the Dutchman.
I really like how the Dutchman finally finds a faithfull woman and how faithfull Senta is and sacrifices herself for the Dutchman.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I love Fenton and Nanetta in Verdi's _Falstaff._ Their music breathes a delicacy that only an old man like Verdi could have brought to it; I hate to think of how he'd have composed it forty years earlier. I also like them because they're young and have no idea what life has in store for them. Sort of like when I was 16 and thought I could just spend the rest of my life listening to music and playing the piano.

Ha.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Tosca and Cavaradossi, 'cause they're willing to die for each other.
Handel's Giulio Cesare and Cleopatra, who sing rings around each other, and survive at the end of the opera.


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

forget Almaviva, Rosina and _Figaro_. 





...tell me that's not chemistry


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## Celloman (Sep 30, 2006)

Tristan and Isolde.

Didn't see that coming, did ya?


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Gosh, there are so many and just about all screwed up.
Romeo et Juliette takes the cake, especially as played by Villazon/Netrebko.
Then comes Lucia and Edgardo. What a sad state of affairs.
But for the shot from a too-fast trigger finger, there goes the romance of Leonora and Don Alvaro.
And of course the stomach wrenching mess that becomes a real tragedy in Madama Butterfly.
For the Svengali-like evil of Iago, look how that gullible hero Otello destroyed his entire life with Desdemona.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Lulu and Rodrigo from Berg's second opera masterpiece, Lulu


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## Cavaradossi (Aug 2, 2012)

Musetta and Marcello seem like they'd be a lot more fun to go on a double-date with than Mimi and Rudolfo. The latter pair's cooing and pining at the table would get old pretty quick, while Musetta and Marcello seem to have found a way to make their dysfunctionality work. Besides, their endless break-ups and reconciliations are vastly entertaining.


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