Thread: Regarding Opera As Pure Music

Greetings opera lovers,

I am new here and would be very interested in hearing your responses to the following 3 questions.


1) Have you ever met anyone who regards opera as pure music without any regard at all to the words, drama and visuals? In other words someone who adores opera solely for the aesthetic value of the orchestral and vocal sounds? Or to put it another way: someone who is solely interested in exploring the expressive qualities of the vocal and orchestral web.


2) Have you ever met anyone who generally (and I stress the word generally) prefers to experience opera at home via audio recordings as opposed to hearing it live at the opera house?


3) Have you ever seen this type of opera lover shake his head while looking on with total bemusement at other opera lovers, critics and directors who constantly fuss about productions and all stage business?


Thanks,

Nigel

Yes, I think you will find opera lovers like you described on this forum.

I look at them in total bemusement.

Hi Nigel.

1) Not in the flesh.

2) Yes - me. I am an armchair music fan and as regards opera I like to envisage the action in my mind's eye when listening to it.

3) Not quite sure I totally grasp the third question but personally speaking I am the kind of person who would whinge if I thought stage settings/costumes etc. for older operas were beyond the pale in the arty-farty/pretentiousness stakes (i.e Wotan lumbering about in shirt and braces looking like a redundant nightclub bouncer).

Hi elgar,

Originally Posted by elgars ghost

3) Not quite sure I totally grasp the third question

What I meant is that since that type of opera lover generally views opera production as a sort of frill they can't understand why so much space is devoted to discussing it.

Originally Posted by NigelKesteren

1) Have you ever met anyone who regards opera as pure music without any regard at all to the words, drama and visuals?

Never to my knowledge.

2) Have you ever met anyone who generally prefers to experience opera at home?

Kind of a complex question. There are good reasons to listen at home - it's comfy, the beer is right there in the fridge, you can watch or hear the best that ever were recorded, the sound is better, nobody in the next seat will refuse to shut up or stop unwrapping the sweet they've been unwrapping for the last twenty minutes, and it doesn't cost $100 a seat. And there are good reasons to listen at the opera house - the immediacy, the stage brings a different experience, the community of the audience, the ability to say you were there when. All these factors and others have to be balanced out. It's all economics, really.

3) Have you ever seen this type of opera lover shake his head while looking on with total bemusement at other opera lovers, critics and directors who constantly fuss about productions and all stage business?

Never.

I certainly fall into the 2nd category. I wish to know no more of the plot than the synopsis provides, do not wish to understand the words, and avoid seeing any stage action. All this qualifies me for the 3rd category, except that I don't feel bemusement, it's amusement. I sometimes express my amusement, which causes Natalie bemusement.

I certainly prefer the music over and above the visuals and plot of an opera. I'm certainly no purist but Mozart was known for his musical skills and not his set design skills, Rossini wasn't a costume designer (I don't think) and Wagner may have written his libretti but it is the music setting which is the essential part I think. Watching an opera usually makes me switch off from the visuals after a while unless they are particularly remarkable.

Ideally listening at home is preferable, but even for a squillionaire like me it is difficult to get the cast at La Scala over on a wendesday week so rubbing shoulders with the hoi polloi becomes a necessity but I might well close my eyes and enjoy the music if nothing dramatic is happening.

Originally Posted by quack

I certainly prefer the music over and above the visuals and plot of an opera. I'm certainly no purist but Mozart was known for his musical skills and not his set design skills, Rossini wasn't a costume designer (I don't think) and Wagner may have written his libretti but it is the music setting which is the essential part I think. Watching an opera usually makes me switch off from the visuals after a while unless they are particularly remarkable.

I don't feel this argument holds water, although I'm not trying to deny your right to enjoy listening rather than watching. Mozart was intimately involved in the stagings of his operas, and Wagner went to the trouble of designing and building a theatre (not a concert hall) to put on his works, and left copious stage directions. So they both had a vision and took pains to ensure that the staging reflected this (not sure about Rossini though, maybe he was more laissez-faire).

No

No

No

I am one of those who first and foremost regards any and all music from that perspective of its being 'absolute' music. Any vocal music, to me, must first make some complete sense without regard to its textual content, or I find it 'meaningless,' regardless of the import of the text.

Only after the music having said something to me of and by itself will I then begin to consider the text.

That is the same for me when I listen to a supposed 'tone poem' or 'program music.' The program is the last thing I think about when listening, again only giving it a cursory thought if the music has spoken directly to me in sheer musical terms.

It seems I have always listened this way, and 'I just can't help it.'

Originally Posted by PetrB

I am one of those who first and foremost regards any and all music from that perspective of its being 'absolute' music. Any vocal music, to me, must first make some complete sense without regard to its textual content, or I find it 'meaningless,' regardless of the import of the text.

Only after the music having said something to me of and by itself will I then begin to consider the text.

That is the same for me when I listen to a supposed 'tone poem' or 'program music.' The program is the last thing I think about when listening, again only giving it a cursory thought if the music has spoken directly to me in sheer musical terms.

It seems I have always listened this way, and 'I just can't help it.'

Im like this to an extent too, I have to feel a connection to the music before I can bother with getting involved more than superficially with the plot.

Saying that I definitely love to experience it live, which is something I don't get the chance to do often

Well I wouldn't deny that some composers have a very distinct vision that they wish to fulfill with their operas right down to every aspect of the stagings, just that Mozart isn't remembered today for his set designing skills, his operas live on primarily due to the music. Although some people will complain, a re-staging of Wagner's work with a change of setting will still be regarded as a Wagner opera without his staging notes being followed.

It is the same with Shakespeare, a great dramatist, but also an actor who was probably involved with all aspects of the theatre. Seeing his work staged or filmed is pretty essential to understanding and appreciating it but it is still his mainly his words that have lived on after him.

Originally Posted by quack

just that Mozart isn't remembered today for his set designing skills, his operas live on primarily due to the music. Although some people will complain, a re-staging of Wagner's work with a change of setting will still be regarded as a Wagner opera without his staging notes being followed.

It is the same with Shakespeare, a great dramatist, but also an actor who was probably involved with all aspects of the theatre. Seeing his work staged or filmed is pretty essential to understanding and appreciating it but it is still his mainly his words that have lived on after him.

Yes, that's true, and a poor plot with great music lives on whereas a great plot with poor music will probably not (wonder how long Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire will last).

Originally Posted by NigelKesteren

I am new here and would be very interested in hearing your responses to the following 3 questions.

1) Have you ever met anyone who regards opera as pure music without any regard at all to the words, drama and visuals? In other words someone who adores opera solely for the aesthetic value of the orchestral and vocal sounds? Or to put it another way: someone who is solely interested in exploring the expressive qualities of the vocal and orchestral web.

2) Have you ever met anyone who generally (and I stress the word generally) prefers to experience opera at home via audio recordings as opposed to hearing it live at the opera house?

3) Have you ever seen this type of opera lover shake his head while looking on with total bemusement at other opera lovers, critics and directors who constantly fuss about productions and all stage business?

Good question.

1 No, I’ve never met anyone like that.

Since composers of operas write the music to illuminate the text and the plot – and expect listeners to expect that to be the case – a listener who cuts themselves off from that dimension of the performance is, at best, denying themselves the experience of that interplay between libretto/action and music. But you confuse the issue in the way you word the question. How is it possible to be “solely interested in exploring the expressive qualities of the vocal and orchestral web” and not have a “regard at all to the words...”?

2 Yes.

I prefer to listen to opera at home on audio (not video) recordings. But this isn’t because I don’t want to see them staged, it’s because the live operas I have attended and the many videos I’ve watched, either in full or excerpted, have almost invariably received productions which are crap. (See the thread on this forum about Regietheater.) I’m not a big fan of opera – I am certainly not asking for traditional, conservative, old fashioned productions. I would just like to see a few productions in which the ego of the director did not obscure the stage.

3 No.

Jeremy:

Originally Posted by Jeremy Marchant

How is it possible to be “solely interested in exploring the expressive qualities of the vocal and orchestral web” and not have a “regard at all to the words...”?

How? Very simple.

The sophisticated opera lover listens differently by always focusing on the form, line and shape of the sounds while completely ignoring the text/drama.

Music succeeds or fails on purely musical terms, including opera. No opera has ever remained in the repertory because it has a great libretto. It remains because the music is great.