[ScottK]

Now THAT’s zaftig!

 

[wkasimer]

I have an irrational fondness for Pfitzner's PALESTRINA.

 

[ScottK]

I have an irrational fondness for Pfitzner's PALESTRINA.

Next new opera music is set! I'll let you know how it hits me.

 

[Becca]

I'm surprised that I haven't already added to this thread as there are a few which I think highly of...

Nielsen - Maskarade
Vaughan Williams - Sir John in Love
Holst - At the Boar's Head

I also think that Berlioz' Benvenuto Cellini would qualify as an underrated work.

 

[Seattleoperafan]

I am featuring one in my contest next week: Medea in Corinto by Mayr. I LOVE some of the music.

 

[SixFootScowl]

 

[Tsaraslondon]

I also think that Berlioz' Benvenuto Cellini would qualify as an underrated work.

Absolutely, though, like a lot of Berlioz, it's hard to get right.

 

[Art Rock]

The Search in Thread option is still AWOL, so no clue whether this one was posted before:

Ethel Smyth: The Wreckers (BBC Philharmonic, Odaline de la Martinez, Anne-Marie Owens, Justin Lavender, Peter Sidhom et al, Conifer, 2CDs)

The main opera by Ethel Smyth (she wrote six). The overture was actually my first encounter with Smyth's works about 35 years ago, by its inclusion on an EMI CD coupled with British tone poems. The opera was completed in 1904. It is well worth hearing.

 

[CLO]

Prokofiev's Betrothal in a Monastary is in my opinion the best comic opera kind since Verdi's Falstaff. It shows Prokofiev in full command of a style perfectly suited to it -- one that reconciles the hard-edged gestures of his youth to the lyricism that had always been an important part of his gift. The resultant operatic language is fresh and surprising, yet tugs at the heart. It shifts marries wonderfully with every turn of the dramatic situation, and wraps it in mysterious and sensuous hues and saturates it with a melancholy and ache for romantic fulfillment that is finally released in the exhilarating resolution. Besides all that, it's genuinely funny, crackling with a wit that is ironic but never cynical.

 

[BalalaikaBoy]

The Medium (Giancarlo Menotti)

 

[Woodduck]

The Medium (Giancarlo Menotti)

Wonderful production. That was TV then, and that was opera without gimmicks. Sigh.

 

[BalalaikaBoy]

Wonderful production. That was TV then, and that was opera without gimmicks. Sigh.

Apart from all of the cast being great singers, I loved how the composer captured the delightfully creepy quality. It feels very much like something you would listen to around Halloween, with an ominous, almost schizophrenic quality.

 

[hammeredklavier]

It feels very much like something you would listen to around Halloween, with an ominous, almost schizophrenic quality.

Yeah, look at this horrifying scene (@40:40)
watch?v=Ni6Ugouya0o&t=40m40s

 

[hammeredklavier]

1. Endimione, Act I: Quel ruscelleto

Quel ruscelletto che l'onde chiare or or col mare confonderà, nel mormorio del foco mio colle sue sponde parlando va.
Quell'augelletto ch'arde d'amore, e serba al piede, ma non al core la libertà, in sua favella per la sua bella, che ancor non riede, piangendo sta.
This little brook, whose limpid waves shall soon be mingled with the sea, converses with its banks, murmuring about my fire.
This little bird, burning with love, whose feet know freedom, but not its heart, weeps and laments in its song for the beautiful lover who has not returned.

 

[Bernamej]

Not an opera but an Oratorio but that’s a very contigent minor difference given the format and style.
I give you the sublime great German composer: Franz Schmidt.
He’s pretty known, but not so much this:

A true masterpiece.

 

[Ludwig Schon]

 

[Bernamej]

I have become a big fan of Salieri's operas, particularly Falstaff, La Scuola de' Gelosi, Tarare, Les Danaïdes and La grotta di Trofonio. Some fantastic music, and we are blessed with top record labels, conductors, orchestra and signers recording his works, finally.

I also love Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles and the new recording on the Versailles label is fantastic.

Leonardo Vinci's Artaserse in my opinion is one of the greatest, and certainly most fun, baroque opera. I also love Porpora's Germanico in Germania. Two gems.

Harnoncourt's recording of Schubert's Alfonso und Estrella is absolutely wonderful.

There are so many works, outside the main repertoire that are fantastic and if one doesn't venture outside, one misses out.

I‘m curious about your impressions of those works (that I don’t know), would you put them on par almost with Mozart ?

 

[hammeredklavier]

I‘m curious about your impressions of those works (that I don’t know), would you put them on par almost with Mozart ?

Have a look at:

Les Danaïdes is terrific.
Bold and imaginative, from the stormy, turbulent, string-heavy overture to the tableau of the Danaides in Hell. The young Berlioz was blown away, and one can hear echoes of the final scene in La damnation de Faust. In between, there are massive choruses, great arias for the soprano, and a handful for her father and her lover.
If this is mediocrity, let's have more of it.
I wrote it up here: https://operascribe.com/2018/03/11/56-les-danaides-antonio-salieri/

The contemporary music public in Mozart's time knew what they were doing when they acknowledged Salieri as a worthy peer of the boy genius. Check out Les Danaides or Les Horaces if you are not familiar with his work. Maybe they don't reach the Olympian heights of Don Giovanni or La Nozze di Figaro - but they are at least on the level of Cosi Fan Tutte and better than some of the lesser Mozart operas IMO (and I like Cosi very much).

 

[Bernamej]

Have a look at:

And there goes the ruining of my rubbles again.

 

[Woodduck]

I‘m curious about your impressions of those works (that I don’t know), would you put them on par almost with Mozart ?

I've listened to Salieri's Falstaff. It isn't on a par, not even almost, with Mozart's best-known operas (I haven't heard most of his early ones), and it definitely can't stand alongside Verdi's comic masterpiece of the same name. It's pleasant, though, and might make for a good theatrical evening.