Thread: English-speaking Opera - Extended Project (EPQ)

One of the courses I am going to take (not even sure if I'm allowed yet; only 30 places available in my school) is that of the EPQ, or the Extended Project Qualification.

The art and fun of such a task is to put 90 hours of work and then write a 5000-7000 word written piece. We have a year to do this.

Why do I tell you this? Well, I am yet to come up with the title but it will be something like "The significance English Opera" (and I mean, not just Operas from England but all over the Anglosphere). The whole point in it is to have an rather narrow title, so I was also thinking of including Tragedy or Contemporary in there somewhere, if needed.

Why do I tell you THIS? Well, I'm not actually an Opera-lover, and past Verdi's Othello, Monteverdi's L'orfeo, some Puccini, Rossini - as well as the odd bits of Mozart and of course Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin... I am totally unfamiliar with much of the Opera world - let alone that with an English vernacular.



This thread exists so I could ask for help from some Opera Gurus or teachers, if ye can find generous time to spare. I want to locate something more than good ol' Porgy and Bess and I can't keep name-dropping Mark-Anthony Turnage every 5 sentences...

Anyway, hope you're interested in assisting and maybe we'll learn something new together. Poor mother will spend many a day on Amazon whilst I hurl names at her, requesting DVDs and what have you...

I'll update this thread soon.

Have you heard or seen any of Britten's operas? In my opinion the greatest British opera composer.

There's also the singularly british phenomenom of Gilbert and Sullivan. That should provide a very unique and culturally relevant perspective.

Britten, definitely.

Smyth is a good suggestion.

Very British: Boughton's The Immortal hour.

Purcell: Dido and Aeneas. The Fairy Queen and King Arthur are closer to masques with extended non-singing passages.

Handel wrote mainly oratorios in English - eg Theodora, Solomon, The Messiah, Joshua, Judas Maccabeus. Some of these have been staged successfully. Hercules is an opera though.

The Rake's Progress by Stravinsky is in English, based on a series of Hogarth Prints.

The Beggar's opera by John Gay - a ballad opera.

Many contemporary composers write in English - eg
Philip Glass - Kepler, Waiting for the Barbarians (some of his operas are not in English)
John Adams - Dr Atomic, Nixon in China, Death of Klinghoffer
Lorin Maazel - 1984
Adamo - Little Women

And yes, you can't go wrong with Britten. My favourites are Billy Budd and Turn of the Screw.

All very good suggestions indeed, AND YE HAVE SPURED A LOVE FOR ETHEL SMYTH

I will be sure to actually gain a focus title tomorrow or the day after and I am humbly grateful for the help already supplied.

The best thing about Britten is also that he's quite a character... All mini-biographies of Britten from books I've read have taught me something new each time.

I think Contemporary Opera is too large a gambit. I imagine that living-Composers nowadays wouldn't appreciate me ripping-off-their-music-because-I'm-all-poor-and-have-an-uncultured-background like (although I would like to go and see this). However, I will include it in my project, as one would hope I'd be able to contact genial members of the movement for information as it fascinates me grossly. I think a quick trip down to the ICC CD rack is in order. If you get any more information about modern composers, be sure to inform me.

Two more great English Operas you might like to look at:

The Midsummer Marriage by Sir Michael Tippett





and Sir Michael's King Priam