Thread: Is it important to see opera? And where to see it?

I am an aspiring Baritone- cliche I know. I have seen only one opera in my entire life, and it was magnificent. Ive really wanted to see my first Puccini for a long time, but Im not sure if I want to go to /any/ theatre to see my first staging of say... La Boheme? Idk.. I dont know if its important or not the quality of which you see it, and how you would know.

And where would I go, within reason of my mediocre income??

Please please please help!!!

where do you live? nearby colleges sometime perform operas, traveling productions are good.
i saw the canadian opera company perform "the marriage of Figaro' in pnie bluff, ar and it was great.
i attended a met performance of 'la boheme' in memphis and it too was fine.

dj

Eroica

I would recommend seeing the best production you can possibly afford so you have a benchmark. See other productions later then you can compare.

Where to go? Depends where you live. I've never seen Tosca live before & I want to see the best so if I can get tickets I'll see it next year with Kaufmann & Terfel at ROH.

There is nothing like seeing it live, or rather hearing it live, and that obviously depends on where you live. I know that many opera houses offer cheap tickets - here in NZ we have catch-22 (NZ$22) tickets to fill up the empty seats.

Barring that, second best are the Live in HD cinema transmissions from the Met. I know that they are doing La Fanciulla del West this season (Jan 8th) which is a wonderful Puccini opera with a feisty heroine, poker, cheating, a first kiss, a bandit with a heart of gold, a villainous but sexy baritone role, beautiful melodies, and for once, a happy ending. You still get the buzz of watching it with an audience and of course the sound quality is good.

If you want to explore the repertoire a cheap way of doing it is subscribing to Met Player. Plenty of Puccini there.

Even if you live near a big opera house cheap tickets can still be had. I went to La Scala for 26 Euros. Not the best seats but it was still great.

Met in HD is an option, it broadcasts to several cinema theaters in the world.
Another option is to rent opera DVDs from a DVD rental company like Netflix.

I live in Houston. Do you know of any good companies that are worth seeing around Texas? I really want to be introduced to live opera the way i was introduced to recorded opera.... The right way.

The Houston Grand Opera is very highly regarded. If not on the level of the Met in NY or the San Francisco opera, it's probably in the next tier down, with such others as the Chicago Lyric Opera.
http://www.houstongrandopera.org/singletickets
Tickets start at $23.

Originally Posted by Eroica

I am an aspiring Baritone- cliche I know. I have seen only one opera in my entire life, and it was magnificent. Ive really wanted to see my first Puccini for a long time, but Im not sure if I want to go to /any/ theatre to see my first staging of say... La Boheme? Idk.. I dont know if its important or not the quality of which you see it, and how you would know.

And where would I go, within reason of my mediocre income??

Please please please help!!!

Membership with Netflix costs about $8.99 per month with the unlimited 1-out-at-a-time plan and they have at least some 200 different operas on DVD, with practically all the most important works. If you see one and return it the next day, you'll be able to see some 9 different operas per month, effectively bringing the cost per opera to $1 per performance, you can't get any cheaper than this and in a matter of one year you'll have seen practically all the most important operas.