[Woodduck]

I would have to go with the opening scene of Das Rheingold, in which Alberich the dwarf steals the gold from the Rhinemaidens. This scene sets in motion the greatest drama, perhaps, in all of opera. The opening four minutes contain the seed that gives birth to virtually every motif that you hear throughout the duration of the 15-hour cycle. It is impossible for me to imagine a more effective and dramatic musical beginning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Iuf1NOAWvug#t=28

You beat me to the punch, Celloman. There's magic down there in the depths of the Urwasser. I'll never forget the thrill of hearing that low Eb in the opera house. It came from everywhere and nowhere. Pace Anna Russell, it was nothing like the Hudson or the Thames.

 

[Woodduck]

While I can strongly agree with Das Rheingold, Die Meistersinger & Otello, perhaps the greatest opening of any opera is the 'sneeze' in Kodaly's Hary Janos!

Perhaps that's Kodaly's way of encouraging the audience to get it's upper respiratory business over with quickly so that the evening's entertainment can proceed.

 

[Woodduck]

Not strictly an aria but every time Otrud turns she scares the hell out of me.

With a great mezzo-soprano like Christa Ludwig hurling it across the footlights, Ortrud's "Entweihte Gotter" is about the most fearsome minute and a half you could live through.

 

[Woodduck]

"Hagen's Watch on the Rhine" from Gotterdammerung makes me shiver and shudder. Here's some pure blackness from Ludwig Weber in 1936:

 

[Woodduck]

What the...? Last I checked, today's subject is "scary arias." Why are people naming unscary orchestral passages? Does this thread need moderator intervention, as in:

This thread has gone off-topic.

It isn't tomorrow anywhere in the world.

 

[Woodduck]

I always feel sorry for poor old Grane!

Don't worry. Valkyrie horses don't feel pain. How could they, carrying around all those armed amazons and fallen warriors, and having to listen to "Ho-jo-to-ho" day after day?

 

[Woodduck]

The things that pop into my head first are when Wotan summons Loge to create a magical fire ring around Brunnhilde at the end of Walkure, the entrance of the Gods into Walhall across the rainbow bridge at the end of Rheingold, and the Transformation scenes in the outer acts of Parsifal, when the forest transforms to the temple, as time becomes space.

That last one might not count as supernatural depending on whether your interpretation of the transformation is primarily a literal one or a metaphorical psychological one though. I guess I'll go with the magic fire music, the most ostentatiously magical of these scenes, although the grandeur of the entrance of the Gods and the beauty of the Transformation scenes are hard to pass up.

To some of us the whole of Parsifal would qualify as the greatest magical moment in opera. But then there's the Ring...

I mean, after all, to the gods fourteen hours is only a moment.

 

[Woodduck]

Alberich's curse on the ring brings the whole world crashing down. Top that.