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How many complete operas do you own at home in any media?

  • 0-20

    Votes: 72 41.6%
  • 21-50

    Votes: 37 21.4%
  • 51-100

    Votes: 19 11.0%
  • 101-200

    Votes: 14 8.1%
  • 201-300

    Votes: 7 4.0%
  • 301 or more

    Votes: 24 13.9%

Poll - how many complete operas do you own?

37K views 303 replies 86 participants last post by  Pugg 
#1 ·
We've been talking about spending sprees, the dreaded Unwatched Police, and so forth, so I thought it would be fun to get a sense of the size of users' opera collections at home. This can be a matter of pride or shame... LOL... so, better make it anonymous under the form of a poll.

How many complete operas do you guys own, all media considered? (vinyl, CD, VHS, DVD, blu-ray, iPod download, etc)?
 
#4 · (Edited)
My current object of desire is newly acquired Callas deluxe studio set........



Total CD collection is massive 40% classical/opera, I have several of these 1500 CD racks

Whoa!!!:eek:

I was thinking of you when I was making the voting categories, I thought, "Dark Angel must have more than 500, but it's probably a unique case so I guess I can set the highest category as more than 300..."

I guess I grossly underestimated you collection!

Oh... my... God...

Would you accept me as a guest in your house for a short period, say, a sabbatical year? :p I'll bring my own headphones and sleeping bag!
 
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#5 ·
Awesome collection. I wonder how archaic such collections will look in another 10 years or so, when everything is digital. I'm including myself as one such archaic; I have approximately 1500 books that take up many, many bookcases and am already starting to feel like a bit of a relic when compared to a Kindle. Still, there's something about the heft of a book and the smell of the pages that digital just can't replicate.
I suspect you feel the same way about your collection :)

As to the poll question, it's probably about 10. But I'm an opera neophyte and I prefer to thoroughly plumb the depths of and appreciate a single work before moving on to another, so slow and steady is my preferred pace.
 
#34 ·
Awesome collection. I wonder how archaic such collections will look in another 10 years or so, when everything is digital. I'm including myself as one such archaic; I have approximately 1500 books that take up many, many bookcases and am already starting to feel like a bit of a relic when compared to a Kindle. Still, there's something about the heft of a book and the smell of the pages that digital just can't replicate.
I suspect you feel the same way about your collection
I do..........

May take longer than 10 years but eventually "almost" all media will be streamed from content providers and users will pay various subscription fees.
 
#7 ·
DarkAngel...I am positively DROOLING over your collection! And I'm the same way...opera is a small portion of my total collection, but most of what I've listened to in the last two months. Do you listen to progressive metal? I love Dream Theater, Evergrey, Queensryche and Pain of Salvation. You should check them out.

I have only five operas in their entirety: La Boheme, Madame Butterfly, La Traviata, Tristan und Isolde, and Fidelio. I have highlights albums of Rusalka and Marriage of Figaro. I have Suor Angelica in its entirety, but did not include it in the five because it's part of Il Trittico and I do not have the other two in the set.

Despite my modest numbers, I also have three compilation albums. All told, it's about 24 hours of opera. All of these are digital music downloads (I know....I can hear the *boooos* and *hisses* in the background!) That said, I'm making sure my next one will be a hard album with libretto.
 
#8 ·
Less than 20 for me... I somewhat doubt I could bring myself to break the 100 mark, given my aversion to 1) most operatic conventions and 2) having a lot of stuff around; you'd be pretty shocked to know how many of my CDs I left at my mom's house when I went to college (incidentally, that number includes the Solti Ring cycle).
 
#11 ·
I own only four complete operas that I can think of two by C19th Hungarian composer Ferenc Erkel & Berg's Wozzeck (which I've had since I was a teenager) & Schoenberg's Moses und Aron (acquired in the last 1-2 years). Needless to say, opera is my least favourite genre. I'm pretty much equally into solo instrumental, chamber, choral, orchestral & I have been developing an interest in electronica & art songs, but opera is by far at the very bottom of my "totem pole." Perhaps it's the length, less intimacy and the stifling conventions (hence me liking the less traditional "atonal" operas) that put me off big time...
 
#26 ·
Haha! No wonder you do not enjoy opera that much, if all you have are those three works, which I have none of! :lol:
 
#16 ·
How many complete operas do you guys own, all media considered?
(vinyl, CD, VHS, DVD, blu-ray, iPod download, etc)?
I take it that the "all media considered" stipulation means we're allowed to count duplicates.

If so, I fall into the "51-100" range. Heck, my Wagner alone gets more more than halfway to that span.;)

If not, I'm solidly in the "21-50" range. I think I can justify counting Cav & Pag as two separate operas, but I'm a bit more uncertain about the status of Sortilèges and Duke Bluebeard..... No matter, I'm still in that category even if removing all these from the tally.:cool:
 
#41 ·
Of course Cav & Pag are two separate operas!
And yes, why not count L'enfant et les sortilèges which is one neat well packed beautiful little thing? Runtime is not a condition to define whether something is or is not an opera. L'enfant et les sortilèges is not only one opera, but also a very good one!
I'd count Gianni Schicchi, Il Tabarro and Suor Angélica as three separate operas as well.
We don't count the really long operas as more than one, so why shouldn't we count the short ones as one?
A little trickier is Les Troyens. There is something to be said to count it as two operas, La Prise de Troie, and Les Troyes à Carthage, just like we count the Ring as four operas. Still, I count Les Troyens as one opera, because while Wagner meant his Ring to be indeed presented as four different operas, Berlioz always wanted Les Troyens to be only one, and was forced to divide it for reasons beyond his own wishes.
 
#21 ·
I've never thought to add them up, but a quick look around the house suggests that it's just tipping over 100. And then there are all the Ring CDs and DVDs on top of that. Watching opera on DVD is a relatively new activity for me (for which Gaston is almost singlehandedly to blame), so I only have about 30 DVDs, plus three sets of Ring operas (my Barenboim set has just arrived).

The CD sets are a peculiar bunch though. This collection wouldn't suit anyone else, I think. 4 Ring sets; loads of Handel (20 or so); a sprinkling of Vivaldi; 10 Mozart; about 15 French nineteenth century (predominantly Massenet); a few Puccini; a dash of Bellini; about 10 French baroque; 3 or 4 Monteverdi. The omissions are startling: no Strauss (except several Rosenkavaliers); only one, rarely played, Verdi; no Rossini (except Cenerentola on DVD); no Donizetti - so there are huge, huge gaps, like these. Nothing modern at all.

So really I'm only a remarkably patchy opera dabbler.
 
#28 ·
I have over 100 operas on CD and I think I'm fairly sated now - I can only think of a handful more I'd be interested in owning but they're not a priority.

Oh, could I borrow your battleaxe, Dark Angel? The downstairs neighbour's collection sounds as if it could do with a little judicious pruning...
 
#33 ·
Oh, could I borrow your battleaxe, Dark Angel? The downstairs neighbour's collection sounds as if it could do with a little judicious pruning...
Sharp eyes notice those fantasy swords and battle axes......I have several spread out in various rooms

About 10 years ago I was really into Xenia Warrior Princess and Lord of the Rings phase, to feel a battle sword in your hands takes you back in time and makes you wonder about how barbaric and driven men were to actually use these instruments of death
 
#42 ·
How the hell I'm supposed to count it?
Here's how to do it: line them up on a table, and then name the first one, 1. The second one, count it as 2. Next comes 3, and 4, and 5... etc. In any elementary school math book you can find a list of the whole numbers from one to 100 so that you see what number comes next. Proceed like this, always attributing to each opera you count the next whole number after the preceding one. When you get to the last one of your operas, see what number you got, and report it here. Got it?

:D
 
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#38 ·
I am so envious of DA. That is one stonking collection but it's the quality of your canon which matters rather than its size. :p That's my excuse anyway.

I have 86 on CD, 32 on DVD & 1 VHS. This includes the same opera but different productions but not accidental duplicates :)rolleyes: yeah I know).

I've put my one and only unwatched DVD by my PC & it's sitting accusingly at me.

 
#44 ·
I've known the standard operas backwards and forwards for many years, so most of my complete opera recordings are of really interesting rarities such as
Padmavati by Roussel,Enescu's Oedipe, Nielsen's Saul and David, Schreker's Der Ferne Klang(The distant sound), Notre Dame by Franz Schmidt, based on the famous Victor Hugo novel the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Dvorak's Armida, The Devil and Kate, Smetana's The Kiss, Libushe,
and The Devil's Wall, Krenek's Jonny Spielt Auf, The Birds by Walter Braunfels, The Charlatan by Pavel Haas, Flammen by Erwin Schulhoff,Francesca Da Rimini by Riccardo Zandonai,
the less familiar Richard Strauss operas Intermezzo, Die Liebe der Danae,Friedenstag,
and The Egyptian Helen, Gluck's Armide, Handel's Riccardo Primo, Janacek's Excursions of Mr. Broucek and Osud(Fate), Catalani's La Wally, Tiefland by Eugene D'Albert, Pfitzner's Palestrina,
Rossini's Il Signor Bruschino , Nixon in China by John Adams, Undine by Albert Lortzing,
Der Vampyr (Yes a vampire opera !) by Heinrich Marschner, Mozart's Lucio Silla,
Mazeppa by Tchaikovsky, The Gambler and Semyon Kotko by Prokofiev, and the Fiery Angel,
The Demon by Anton Rubinstein, and the Rimsky-Korsakov operas Sadko, Kashchei the Immortal,
The Maid of Pskov, and The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh.
I also have the Levine/DG/Met Ring complete in one convenient set, the classic Furtwangler/Flagstad Tristan&Isolde, Fricsay's Flying Dutchman on DG, the La Scala Ring with Furtwangler, and several other standard operas.
I also have the Vox set of the original version of Madama Butterly,which includes all the music
left out of the familiar version.
Lots of cool operatic stuff.
 
#50 ·
The only operas I own are a complete set of the Wagner operas from Dutchman to Parsifal, all world-class Bayreuth recordings. It's a great set and I love Wagner, I just haven't been able to get into other opera composers as much. I have heard several Italian operas, my favorite of which is probably "Tosca," and I know the Mozart operas pretty well.

However, the vast majority of my CD collection (350+ discs) is instrumental music.
 
#58 ·
Haven´t made an exact count, but about 100. More a reference library actually, own most of the major works in composer´s oeuvres from Jacopo Peri and Monteverdi onwards, and often as inexpensive LP-buyings, and some off-the-beaten-track repertoire. In general I listen mainly to instrumental music, but opera is a genre I expect to return to later.

Most listened to through the years have been "Die Entführung"/Solti or Beecham, "Die Zauberflöte"/Böhm, "Der Freischütz"/Kleiber, "Boris Godunov"/Nesterenko+Ermler (I prefer that to Christoff), "Parsifal"/Barenboim and Busoni´s "Doktor Faustus"/Leitner. Am certainly not much into the Italian ones, but own perhaps 20 of them.

I also like Rameau and Monteverdi (am looking forward to explore him much more), and sometimes play a bit of "King Roger", "Lucia di Lammermoor", "Turandot" and "Madame Butterfly", and I´ll probably explore more of Massenet´s.

Rarities includes Tigranian´s somewhat exotic "Anush" (apparently a fine work, but it is an elder recording), Reyer´s Wagnerian "Sigurd", and Haydn´s playful "Il Mondo della Luna". I found Magnard´s "Guercoeur" (emi) disappointing, but regret getting rid of it a bit. The Deliuses seem too introvert and subdued to me, at least so far. Vaughan-Williams´ "Hugh the Drover" appears to be nice as well.
 
#72 ·
Amen to that - well I want to go and try out DarkAngels sword and music collection, all of it. I'd love to go and visit Mama and go to the Opera then invite her back and go to the ROH here.

............. Barry drifts off into a dreamworld :lol:
 
#77 ·
I think I'd prefer that Dark Angel slept over at your house so I myself may sneak over to Dark Angel's home and steal the whole collection....

:)
Unfortunately I don't think Dark Angel would want to sleep over here. My meager collection can't compare...:(
 
#75 ·
I want to stay over at the house of anybody who's posted here, since I'd be rather jealous of anyone's opera collection larger than mine and could learn a lot from them. Who knows, maybe I'd get closer to understanding Italian opera that way (can't bring myself to buy DVDs of any).
 
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