# Great operas without love affair in centre of the plot



## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Not that I would underestimate love and colosal affections (so necessary for operas) it can provide but just of curiosity, let's try to find out how many good operas have been written without romance in their plots.

By "good" operas I mean those that we really enjoyed, it would be too easy to find some modern composer who wrote totally uninteresting opera with some pseudo-philosophical plot. So let's focus on those works which can be considered valuable and have something more interesting about them than just unusual plot.

At first I was thinking about Das Rheingold. But though one couldn't point out major pair of lovers it's still too much about love - it begins with Alberich's courtships, then the story comes forward with one of giants' love for Freyja. So it doesn't count. 

Then I recalled King Roger of Szymanowski and so far it's the only opera I can think of that completely fills the requirement. There are only two people in relationship in the opera, Roger and his wife but the plot doesn't concern their relationship, there is not one aria expressing their feelings towards each other, not one love duet, not even sentence. The world "love", if I remember well, appears only one in the whole opera and it's totally without connection to any particular person/affair.

Edit: I've forgotten Parsifal


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## MAuer (Feb 6, 2011)

Aramis said:


> Not that I would underestimate love and colosal affections (so necessary for operas) it can provide but just of curiosity, let's try to find out how many good operas have been written without romance in their plots.
> 
> By "good" operas I mean those that we really enjoyed, it would be too easy to find some modern composer who wrote totally uninteresting opera with some pseudo-philosophical plot. So let's focus on those works which can be considered valuable and have something more interesting about them than just unusual plot.
> 
> ...


How about _Macbeth_? The two principal figures are a married couple, but the focus is not on any romantic love between the two -- rather on their ambition and ruthlessness.


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

Ravel's L'enfant et les sortileges - if one doesn't count the cats duet.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Elektra. Not a lot of courtship there.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Busoni's Doktor Faust is a strange and fascinating opera, vastly different from the Gounod,
which pales by comparison. It concentrates on philosophical debates and sorcery rather than romance. 
Verdi's Macbeth also has no conventional romance, as well as Wagner's Parsifal, which is actually about anti-romance, avoiding being seduced by Kundry.
Janacek's The Makropoulos Case is all about a bizarre dispute in court over a legacy left by the mysterious Emilia Marty, who is over 300 years old, but still looks young !


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Poulenc's _Dialogues des carmélites_. Vow of chastity and all.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Britten- _The Turn of the Screw_


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

Landi: Il Sant'Alessio

Humperdinck - Hansel und Gretel.

Glass - Akhnaten, Satyagraha

Adams - Nixon in China, the Death of Klinghoffer


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## Jeremy Marchant (Mar 11, 2010)

Gyorgy Ligeti _Le grand macabre_
According to Wikipedia: "Its central subject is mortality and its central character is Death, in the form of the character Nekrotzar, who arrives in a city of skyscrapers. The streets are strewn with litter and populated by vagrants, giving the audience the impression that they are in a land on the verge of an apocalypse. Along with the drunkard and the astrologer, Nekrotzar proceeds to the court of Prince Go-Go, and a series of disjointed scenes raises the question of whether they are witness to the impending doom or it has all been a farce."

Hans Pfitzner _Palestrina_
Biog of Palestrina. More here: http://www.talkclassical.com/14503-pfitzners-palestrina-monumental-mystical.html

Peter Maxwell Davies _Taverner_
Biog of Taverner.

Olivier Messiaen _St Francis of Asissi_

A number of works called by their composers operas, but lacking developed characters: eg Philip Glass _Akhnaten _and _Satyagraha_, Helmut Lachenmann _The little match girl_


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Britten- _The Turn of the Screw_


Au contraire! The Turn of the Screw is all about Peter's horrifically inappropriate love for those poor little children!


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## Almaviva (Aug 13, 2010)

Aramis said:


> Not that I would underestimate love and colosal affections (so necessary for operas) it can provide but just of curiosity, let's try to find out how many good operas have been written without romance in their plots.
> 
> By "good" operas I mean those that we really enjoyed, it would be too easy to find some modern composer who wrote totally uninteresting opera with some pseudo-philosophical plot. So let's focus on those works which can be considered valuable and have something more interesting about them than just unusual plot.
> 
> ...


King Roger has the love of his wife for the profet.
Parsifall has a lot of love, temptation, etc.


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## Almaviva (Aug 13, 2010)

What are you taling about, Nat? The Death of Klinghoffer has lots of love.


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## rgz (Mar 6, 2010)

The Nose. 
(padding for length)


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## MAnna (Sep 19, 2011)

Iphigenie en Tauride
Oedipus Rex
Suor Angelica


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

*Schoenberg* - _Moses und Aron_, not much about love in that, it's mainly a dialogue between the two main characters...


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Almaviva said:


> King Roger has the love of his wife for the profet


It's not love, it's fascination by ideas represented by this character. She follows him as follower not as a lover.


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## waldvogel (Jul 10, 2011)

_Billy Budd_ - at least on the surface... and if you go below the surface it's pretty sick.

_From the House of the Dead_

the original version of _Boris Godunov_


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## myaskovsky2002 (Oct 3, 2010)

Lulu...not exactly a love story
Wozzeck, not better...

Both are stories about death rather than love.

Martin, daydreaming


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## myaskovsky2002 (Oct 3, 2010)

waldvogel said:


> _Billy Budd_ - at least on the surface... and if you go below the surface it's pretty sick.
> 
> _From the House of the Dead_
> 
> the original version of _Boris Godunov_


The original version? Both are Pushkin stories, love is not a very important element indeed.

Martin


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## Almaviva (Aug 13, 2010)

Aramis said:


> It's not love, it's fascination by ideas represented by this character. She follows him as follower not as a lover.


Well the version I saw was rather ambiguous about this point, and she clearly had the hots for him. There is even a near kiss.


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## Almaviva (Aug 13, 2010)

MAnna said:


> Iphigenie en Tauride
> Oedipus Rex
> Suor Angelica


Oedipus Rex? It has a love affair of a son with his mother!


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## Almaviva (Aug 13, 2010)

Sid James said:


> *Schoenberg* - _Moses und Aron_, not much about love in that, it's mainly a dialogue between the two main characters...


With this one I do agree. There's an orgy, though.


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## Aksel (Dec 3, 2010)

waldvogel said:


> _Billy Budd_ - at least on the surface... and if you go below the surface it's pretty sick.


Judging from recent productions, the man-love is pretty obvious in this one.


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

Aramis said:


> It's not love, it's fascination by ideas represented by this character. She follows him as follower not as a lover.





Almaviva said:


> Well the version I saw was rather ambiguous about this point, and she clearly had the hots for him. There is even a near kiss.


This is again a stage director imposing his vision on the opera. There are not sexual urgings between Roxana and the Shepherd in the libretto or the music, just an spiritual awakening.

If there were intended messages of sexual double meanings in the opera, the prospective lovers are King Roger and the Shepherd.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Almaviva said:


> Well the version I saw was rather ambiguous about this point, and she clearly had the hots for him. There is even a near kiss.


Like Schigolch already wrote, it's shameful overinterpretation.


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## terpsichandre (Oct 20, 2011)

Stravinsky, _Nightingale_


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## tannhaeuser (Nov 7, 2011)

Nixon in China!

Is there any in I Lombardi...? Rather rusty on that.

And of course Tristan und Isolde


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

i don't know if everybody would agree, but i'd say peter grimes too.


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## MAuer (Feb 6, 2011)

Philip Glass's _Appomattox_ is another. While Julia Grant, Mary Todd Lincoln, and Mary Curtis Lee all appear in the opera, the work's main focus is not on the marriages of the Grants, Lincolns, and Lees, but on the end of the Civil War (narrow sense) and slavery's legacy of violence and injustice (broader sense).


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

tannhaeuser said:


> Nixon in China!
> 
> Is there any in I Lombardi...? Rather rusty on that.
> 
> And of course Tristan und Isolde


I Lombardi is all about the love of Arvino and Pagano for Viclinda and what transpires because of it.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

What about Verdi's Jeanne D'Arc ?


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Britten' _marvellous_ chamber opera "Albert Herring!" A fantastic opera without a love affair! Even though you didn't ask for one, a great opera with a plot that's _based around_ a love affair is "Bliss" by Brett Dean.


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## Bardamu (Dec 12, 2011)

Gianni Schicchi

The love relationship between Rinuccio and Lauretta is just an excuse so that Schicchi can mock the relatives greed.


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