Thread: What Are The Best and/or Your Favorite Puccini Operas?

Is this an "adaptation" (to our modern life world) or a falsification? As the latter, it works fine...and it may provide some fun, not a...heart attack at all.

Principe

Saw a clip of the Oslo La Boheme. Any good? I see they are releasing it on DVD. Mimi is a cancer patient i think. Interesting.

Originally Posted by Krummhorn

I'll cast my vote for La Boheme ... I have only heard two operas in my lifetime - Wagner's Tannhauser was the other. I have La Boheme on a LP from the 60's.

jhar26- If you would like additional choices added, please PM me with the list and I can add them to the current poll

Oh my, I wasn't expecting to hear that from you. I'd have thought that you had listened to more than two operas. No offense.

Originally Posted by Yashin

Saw a clip of the Oslo La Boheme. Any good? I see they are releasing it on DVD. Mimi is a cancer patient i think. Interesting.

Yes, it's amazing!

Originally Posted by Aksel

Yes, it's amazing!

Re Oslo Opera House, have any of you been?

Opera_Oslo.JPG

Originally Posted by Vaneyes

Re Oslo Opera House, have any of you been?

Opera_Oslo.JPG

Regularly.

Originally Posted by jhar26

Anyway, I ended up voting for La Boheme, Madama Butterfly and Turandot. If I could have voted for four Tosca would have been one of my choices.

I voted before I read any of the comments, but I came to exactly this conclusion, down to the thought about Tosca!

Originally Posted by Aksel

Yes, it's amazing!

You sure? Saw small clips of it. Is the Rodolfo any good?

Originally Posted by Yashin

You sure? Saw small clips of it. Is the Rodolfo any good?

He's all right. I'm not a particularly great fan of him myself, but there are people that really, really like him.
But on the whole the singing is very good, especially the Mimí, Marita Sølberg. And the production is really, really great.

I agree with several of the comments so far about Tosca, that it has a kind of harsh appeal. That's why it was one of the three I voted for. Not to mention that I liked the music in it. I didn't find the music too sappy, like some others had told me when we went to see it.

Originally Posted by Aksel

He's all right. I'm not a particularly great fan of him myself, but there are people that really, really like him.
But on the whole the singing is very good, especially the Mimí, Marita Sølberg. And the production is really, really great.

Ok, thanks for the tip. Will check it out again on youtube and then think about buying it if i see it on my travels. Could do with a decent La Boheme.

Originally Posted by Yashin

Ok, thanks for the tip. Will check it out again on youtube and then think about buying it if i see it on my travels. Could do with a decent La Boheme.

A kindly soul has uploaded it onto the Youtubes. Definitely worth checking out. Can't remember the last time I was that moved by an opera production.

Anyone else find it peculiar that there was a 20 year gap between the premiere of Madama Butterfly and Turandot? If you knew nothing about Puccini's biography you'd think that La Boheme, Tosca, Madama Butterfly and Turandot were composed in proximate succession as Tristan, Meistersinger, Gotterdammerung, and Parsifal were; but no, it's La Boheme, Tosca, and Butterfly in quick succession and then Turandot decades later.

Originally Posted by brianwalker

Anyone else find it peculiar that there was a 20 year gap between the premiere of Madama Butterfly and Turandot? If you knew nothing about Puccini's biography you'd think that La Boheme, Tosca, Madama Butterfly and Turandot were composed in proximate succession as Tristan, Meistersinger, Gotterdammerung, and Parsifal were; but no, it's La Boheme, Tosca, and Butterfly in quick succession and then Turandot decades later.

He did also other operas in that gap. Musically, La Fanciulla it to me superior to Butterfly, and should deserve some love too. The problem is the plot for me.

Also in this gap of 20 years or so, we must consider a few thigs:
-Music was changing fast. After the wagnerian bomb exploded, music went all nuts and old music formulas became obsolete and the audience became more demanding. Debussy, Stravinsky and Schonberg were breaking paths in such velocity that composing music started to seem like a job from hell (Thoma Mann's Doktor Faust describes that feeling)

- More imporantly the world was changing:
1- Communism spread all over the world, abolishing everything that was a reference of the aristocracy. Puccini, even in his quiet place in Torre del Lago, felt this opression by the local people;
2- World War I - One of the most terrible moments in the history, which made a deep impact, not just in opera, as well in everything else.

Originally Posted by dionisio

He did also other operas in that gap. Musically, La Fanciulla it to me superior to Butterfly, and should deserve some love too. The problem is the plot for me.

Also in this gap of 20 years or so, we must consider a few thigs:
-Music was changing fast. After the wagnerian bomb exploded, music went all nuts and old music formulas became obsolete and the audience became more demanding. Debussy, Stravinsky and Schonberg were breaking paths in such velocity that composing music started to seem like a job from hell (Thoma Mann's Doktor Faust describes that feeling)

- More imporantly the world was changing:
1- Communism spread all over the world, abolishing everything that was a reference of the aristocracy. Puccini, even in his quiet place in Torre del Lago, felt this opression by the local people;
2- World War I - One of the most terrible moments in the history, which made a deep impact, not just in opera, as well in everything else.

Damn, i forgot another important thing. If one has read Puccini's biography, one knows that he had a major familiar/private problem which lead to the suicide of one of his housemaindens. It was a scandal, it went to trial and Puccini had lots of problems. This episode had a deep impact in Puccini and had him stopped from composing for a while.