# Best Opera Storylines



## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

Music aside (gasp!) which operas have the best story-lines, libretto or dramaturgy?

Let's be honest; some of our favourites do not have the greatest plots, and some with poorer music can have a really engaging story.


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## sospiro (Apr 3, 2010)

_Il trovatore_ ... 

Seriously operas based on the classics have probably some of the best storylines. _Les Troyens_ based on Virgil's Aeneid and any of Verdi's Shakespeare operas are great. My favourite is _Falstaff_ and the final fugue is very satisfying, _Tutto nel mondo è burla ..._


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## GioCar (Oct 30, 2013)

I honestly find not so easy to separate the dramaturgy from the music. Anyway I picked up eight operas (by composer - there could be more...) that IMO have a storyline/libretto more effective (dramaturgically speaking) than the average.

Monteverdi: L'incoronazione di Poppea
Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro
Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen (the entire cycle)
Verdi: Otello
Bizet: Carmen
Puccini: Tosca
Strauss: Salome
Berg: Wozzeck


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Strauss: Elektra, Mozart: Le Nozze de Figaro, Mozart: Don Giovanni,Wagner: The Ring, Levy's: Mourning Becomes Elektra


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## Danforth (May 12, 2013)

Strauss: Die Frau ohne Schatten and Die ägyptische Helena
Wagner: Tristan und Isolde


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## rgz (Mar 6, 2010)

No one has mentioned Il Trovatore yet?


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

Arrigo Boito's libretto for Verdi's Otello is imo the best exampe of a fine adaptation to the operatic stage. It includes Boito's own Iago's Credo, which fits seamlesslessly into the woof of the Shakespearean story line and characterization.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

The best opera storylines are those I've made up, though I still have to set them to music. 

Or do I have to... a person I know is going to send me 20 GBP so I buy and send him something, I have decided though that I will run away with the money and start a life of luxury in southern France, never going back to the difficult life of creative genius.


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

Aramis said:


> The best opera storylines are those I've made up, though I still have to set them to music.
> 
> Or do I have to... a person I know is going to send me 20 GBP so I buy and send him something, I have decided though that I will run away with the money and start a life of luxury in southern France, never going back to the difficult life of creative genius.


That's it!! An opera titled Aramis, about a creative genius who, Faust-like, forsakes art and runs away with 20 GBP and goes to the south of France. It would relate his adventures in Provenza il mar e il sol, until visited by Old Germont who lectures him into repentance and sanity.


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## LancsMan (Oct 28, 2013)

Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress. Certainly one of the few operas with a truly 'literate' libretto - jointly written by WH Auden and Chester Kallman.


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## howemj (Jan 30, 2014)

Peter Grimes? Violence, intrigue, and a really interesting group of characters from a dramatic perspective.


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

rgz said:


> No one has mentioned Il Trovatore yet?


only the first reply...


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

Britten: The Turn of the Screw, Billy Budd, (Peter Grimes was mentioned above)
Heggie: Moby Dick 
Birtwistle: The Minotaur 
Benjamin: Written on Skin
Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin
Charpentier: Louise 
Janáček Jenůfa 
Korngold Die Tote Stadt
Poulenc: Dialogues des carmélites (especially the libretto)
Shostakovich: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

and if you want a laugh

Shostakovich The Nose.


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

From the first I was captivated by the story of _Rigoletto_. When I first heard it I was 20 years old and a dramatic literature student at a university, and to me it sounded exactly like the plot of a Shakespearean tragedy.

I've always been a bit puzzled by claims that _Otello_ has a more believable plot than some other operas -- because if one really considers the actual events, they are pretty improbable. I'll quote London Green in _The Metropolitan Opera Guide to Recorded Opera_: "Try to give a plot summary of _Otello_, and you end up with a narrative of nonesense. The events are trivial beyond belief: the theft of a handkerchief, a misunderstood conversation, and then death. Yet" -- and this is key -- "it is the very triviality of the events in contrast to the depth of what they reveal that is the central irony of the tragedy." Make no mistake, I love _Otello_. But I wouldn't claim that its _storyline_ is more credible than that of other operas. (I think people tend to do this because it's based on Shakespeare, and everyone knows that Shakespeare was one of the greatest if not the greatest dramatist.) As is usual in opera, what really matters is not so much the _events_ as the "issues" they bring up and the emotions they evoke.

Like GioCar above, I find it _very_ hard to seperate the plotline of an opera from its music. People say things like, "It has a stupid story but the music is great" -- as though the music and the story are experienced seperately rather than as one entity, which is how they are experienced in an opera house. I also think that somewhat different standards have to be applied to opera plots than to, say, novel plots. Many stories are perfectly efffective when told through music but would be inadequate for a novel (would need a lot of "filling out" to be the basis of an effective novel).

For me an opera plot need not resemble "real life"; it just needs to be dramatically effective in and of itself. It needs to "hang together." Other particularly good storylines, in my opinion, include those of _Elektra_, _La Traviata_, _Lucia di Lammermoor_, _Tosca_, _Pagliacci_, and _Luisa Miller_. They all have that tragic inevitability about them that I associate with Shakespeare. Of course, comedies can have good plots, too; I've always thought of _Il Barbiere di Siviglia_'s as especially good.


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## Fortinbras Armstrong (Dec 29, 2013)

Speaking of the plot of Othello, I'm reminded of my Shakespeare professor at university explaining the idea of the "tragic flaw". He said that if you switched Hamlet and Othello in their respective plays, the plays would have been much shorter. Hamlet would have seen through Iago in an instant, and in the same instant, Othello would have killed Claudius.


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

Sometimes the plot can sound a bit naff in its premise but when well executed it is really gripping. I'd nominate Bluebeard's Castle as an example of that, since what ought to be repetitive and tiresome actually becomes great drama in the hands of Bela Bartok and his librettist.


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## Fortinbras Armstrong (Dec 29, 2013)

My favorite story line is probably Carmen. Each of the characters does what he or she does, not because of the needs of the plot, but because of who they are.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Yes, I too find 'Carmen' unbeatable in terms of plot & characterisation. It has everything.


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## rgz (Mar 6, 2010)

deggial said:


> only the first reply...


Whooooops  
In my defense, I've recently given up coffee


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## Autumn Leaves (Jan 3, 2014)

Wagner's _Ring_. Although the plot does have its illogical moments, in general the characters are fully depicted, the storyline is clear and there are no loose ends (but, sadly, all this is time-consuming, to say the least...)


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

The best libretti were written by Boito (for Verdi) and da Ponte (Mozart)
Carmen is also very good indeed as is Leoncavello's for Pagliacci. 
Fidelio is a wonderful story.


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## Fortinbras Armstrong (Dec 29, 2013)

A quick comment on Da Ponte. He was an Italian priest who was kicked out of his diocese by the bishop when it was found that he was supplementing his income by running a brothel. He wound up in New York City, where he became a teacher of Italian at Columbia University.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Fortinbras Armstrong said:


> A quick comment on Da Ponte. He was an Italian priest who was kicked out of his diocese by the bishop when it was found that he was supplementing his income by running a brothel. He wound up in New York City, where he became a teacher of Italian at Columbia University.


I strongly recommend his memoir--recently published in the NYRB Classics series--to anyone interested in him.

http://www.amazon.com/Memoirs-Loren...qid=1393876534&sr=8-1&keywords=da+ponte+rosen


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

As far as Socialist Realism goes, Prokofiev's Semyon Kotko isn't bad at all - you can imagine a WWI Ukranian village being caught in that kind of violent upheaval. It's quite creepy in the way the story starts off in light-hearted rusticity mode and then gets really sinister what with the reactionary patriarch Tkachenko collaborating with the marauding Germans and the bride-to-be Lyubka going mad after her sailor fiance is lynched as a direct result of his treachery.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

One that hasn't been mentioned yet is Janacek's *The Makropolos Affair*. OK, a woman living through several centuries isn't particularly credible, but the intricacies of the plot are brilliantly thought out.

The libretto of Debussy's *Pelleas et Melisande* is a great piece of writing.

Henze's *Elegy for Young Lovers* has an interesting libretto by W H Auden and Chester Kallmann


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

GregMitchell said:


> One that hasn't been mentioned yet is Janacek's *The Makropolos Affair*. OK, a woman living through several centuries isn't particularly credible, but the intricacies of the plot are brilliantly thought out.


I really like the premise. Too bad I don't like the music too much.


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

I mentioned Strauss's _Elektra_ before but want to elaborate on it. It's great because it truly does follow the conventions of Greek tragedy: it takes place in one day, in one place, and involves a single subject (no subplots).


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

deggial said:


> I really like the premise. Too bad I don't like the music too much.


I love the music!


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## sospiro (Apr 3, 2010)

*Eugene Onegin*

I'm sure people can identify with the story


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## katdad (Jan 1, 2009)

Well, The Ring has a great, arching storyline, of course, drawing on Nordic mythology. And it's an epic and therefore understandably long and complex (some might say tedious) and requires more attention. But The Ring definitely is on the "best 10 story" list.

Also: Rigoletto (very reminiscent of Poe's "Hopfrog"), likely the single most intense opera ever, the climax judged by many the most dramatic, too.
Le Nozze di Figaro, clever and humanistic, very funny at times
Il Tabarro, a short masterpiece, sadly underperformed
Tosca, excellent story of obsession, and quite realistic
Of Mice and Men, a superb version of the great novel

and of course, "The Voyage" (just kidding, partly)


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## katdad (Jan 1, 2009)

Fortinbras Armstrong said:


> Speaking of the plot of Othello, I'm reminded of my Shakespeare professor at university explaining the idea of the "tragic flaw". He said that if you switched Hamlet and Othello in their respective plays, the plays would have been much shorter. Hamlet would have seen through Iago in an instant, and in the same instant, Othello would have killed Claudius.


Wonderful! Funny and quite true.
I'm a deep fan of Hamlet and have studied it for years. I wrote a paper "Hamlet and Laertes" that compared the two, how Shakespeare took a melodrama (shoot-em-up) story with lotsa sword fights and turned it into a resolute drama by altering the protagonist, taking an original hothead Hamlet, transferring that psyche into Laertes for comparison, turned Hamlet into a moral, questioning modern antihero.

How perfectly matched are they? Remember the scene after the mousetrap play when Hamlet finds the King praying.. "Now might I do it" but he talks himself out of it. Contrast this with what the King asks Laertes after coming back from Paris to avenge his father's death... "What would you do with someone who'd killed your father?" "I'd slit his throat in the church!" says Laertes, and we all realize that Claudius had indeed murdered Hamlet's father yet Hamlet had let him live. Keen, eh?


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