Thank you. I'm Virgin Media/V+ but Sky Arts 1 and 2 are part of my TV package, I'll look out for it.

Hi Linda. I have to admit some things do go over my head, but the music is so thrilling, I am more than happy to take my time soaking it all in and learning at my own pace.



I knew you would appreciate another Soprano fan.



I know! To make it worse, sometime yesterday evening, youtube started playing up for me, so I have nearly 24 hours worth to catch up on.

The Bastianini recording was wonderful. I think that is the first time I have followed a link to this star, but I have learned the lesson of not bookmarking and will be listening to more of him in future. Thank you.

I have a love/hate relationship with Youtube comments. I don't have to explain the hate, but they are a necessary evil if I want to learn more about a singer/performance etc. So there I was, listening to another of Bastianini's peformances and browsing the comments when I came upon this 'gem:'


I was but for some reason it gave me the giggles. It was just that silly, I guess.

(Please don't be cross at me for giggling).



I feel spoiled this evening. Unsurpassable! and another bookmark.


Now, if quoting a Youtube comment wasn't lowering the tone of the thread enough, how about this:

OperaStar to PopStar anyone?

Bastianini was a fantastic FANTASTIC singer - my favourite baritone (most days anyway). When that Rigoletto was performed he was already diagnosed with the throat cancer that would eventually kill him in his mid 40s, although he'd kept it secret. He was booed at La Scala for a Rigoletto that was more than usually affected by the illness, but he never went public with it or made excuses.

By far the best of his performances would be anything pre about 1961 (he died in 1965 after being ill for a few years) and some of the stuff with Corelli from the late 50s is fantastic, although there's not enough of it really.

Try this for size.....Poliuto with Callas and Corelli live at La Scala (and I do love a good ovation )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgCnHsnlitw

Smokey, I LOVE the new name of the thread. It is now officially impossible to go off topic, and it's clear that we're treading on no one else's toes. (You're just a little mad, y'know, but loveable).

Dmitry's a bit mad too -- great link!

Speaking of beserk, Youtube comments drive me mad. I remember listening to Pavarotti and reading someone's comment where they're gleefully anticipating Domingo's funeral. Just sick. So in that company, randomly criticising a modern tenor who isn't exactly linked with Verdi whilst listening to a vintage and deeply Verdian (can I have this word?) baritone is only mildly unpleasant. Think you're right though, the only thing left to do is giggle at the utter daftness of it.

If DFI comes in, hullo, can you tell us the Maria Callas story again please? I've forgotten the details... the one where she's singing so quietly she's bound to crack the note... Tar! Oh, there you are... ^

PS your Poliuto link made my supposedly deaf dog jump. Think he's been fooling us...

I read about that in the comments and it struck me that a disproportionate amount of opera singers are taken before their time. I didn't think opera singing particularly hazardous (OK, the larynx is more vulnerable than in non-singers) so can only hope my perceptions are way off.


Wow! That is some noise...both the singer and the audience At first I thought people were stamping their feet, the applause was that loud. Bravo!



I'm so impressed with the mods. I dashed off an email when I got home from work tomight...I had been worrying all day we would be merged...and they sorted us out most promptly!

Then when I saw the new title, it struck me someone might think I was having a dig at classical, so I have had a little worry about that. *Sigh* All in all, I can only agree with you, I am mad. Quite neurotically mad.


And it was your Bastianini link which brought me to it!



Oh that's quite horrible. What is it about the internet that people lose all sense and decorum? Not that it is ever excusable, but when said about someone who brings such beauty to the world, it is incomprehensible.


Haha, I love your dog.

Right, time for a dinner break. I am often reluctant to post links as, though they are new for me, I know many of you will have seen them time and again. However, I came across this video of Joyce DiDonato - an interview with snippets from a Handel recital. What an utterly charming woman she is, I just had to post the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_KAnTzIRNE

Thanks so much for this link, Smoke. There never can be enough Handel. Never.

(Seeing things again? No reason for caution there. There's a joy that comes with sharing, as the previous thread and this one prove amply and often. I enjoy being introduced to new stuff, but I reserve a special joy for being reintroduced to familiar stuff by a different voice. 'Ahhhh, you love that too... ' Again is always a gain in my book.)

Love DiDonato here, so impressive in conveying madness and maintaining such dextrous control. I am impressed with how articulate she is in explaining her art, in particular her approach to this Handel, ''There's no half way, if it's not right it's wrong,' but then she goes on to talk about the emotion, 'If you stay on the surface, you cannot live there... you have to go deep into the bone marrow.' And there we have it, the precision of the surgeon and the rage of the bone-cruncher.

YES! Handel (Yay Kansas! )

By the way, unlike Monkey who declares it's impossible to go off topic, I'm slightly worried that (given the new thread title) I'll never be fully on topic. I'm sure this must have been posted in the other place, but it bears repetition:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdDla0QW844

This too, but here goes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94akv9jDX8c

And I still haven't worked in a reference to knitted Rolando. Zut!


EDIT: These two are feeling it more:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChRSY8TSliw&feature=

Correction to the above....he died in 1967 some months short of his 45th birthday, although the throat cancer had been diagnosed in early 1962 and in reality had probably been present for a while before that

My two favourite opera singers ever are both gorgeous blondes from Kansas and Joyce is one of them...Its no secret that I love her to pieces (I've told her so myself )

You have to love someone who's not afraid to bounce off the walls singing Handel . This is scary stuff, but she never loses sight of the fact that you still have to sing it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOFHI...eature=related

And here I am too

The story goes that, opening a new production of Traviata at Covent Garden, she cracked the opening note of Violetta's last act death. The following night the same thing happened.

The director, a bit hacked off that she might be spoiling his new production, pulled her over to one side and said something along the lines of "Look Maria, love....you could avoid that annoying cracking business if you just attacked it with a little more volume"

Her response was something like "She's supposed to be dying. Where does she get the extra volume from? If it cracks, it cracks"

And indeed the discussion up there ^ about Bastianini is a perfect example of the advantages of these compilations.

The first time I ever heard his voice was on a compilation CD that I picked up for next to nothing in a supermarket. It was called "Ten Top Baritones and Basses" and it introduced me for the first time to singers (and music) I'd never heard before. Not only to Ettore Bastianini but to the magnificence of Martti Talvela singing this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlMqz-PFI84

and Nicolai Ghiaurov singing this (although not this version)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4vxQiA8Ghk

and many more too. Singers I couldn't be without

An absolute bargain, that was!

And then I discovered that there was a Ten Top Baritones and Basses 2, as well as a Ten Top Sopranos and a Ten Top Tenors as well.........

Whether any or all of these individual performances lights your candle isn't really the point though.....for people looking to stick a toe in the water, those sorts of compilations (and YouTube these days!) are a great way to find out what you like and why, and then see where the ripples take you to

No? You've met her? Do tell...


Bloody brilliant: character fully inhabited, music fully inhabited (tick, gold star). One thing, what do you think about the production (staging, I mean)? To my mind, the sparse setting is a gift for a singer who knows how to imagine and make the audience imagine.

Hi Smokey. Certainly no toe treading & if there are enough posts to sustain an opera thread, I would stay as you are. There is often a bit of a gulf between classical music & opera people, all that singing gets in the way of some good music & all that .

Hi Dave, I like your mischievous last comment. Perhaps the two threads can coexist with occasional bunburying between (just to explore that gulf). Could you post a link to the Classical thread for those of us (me for example) too lazy to search. Thanks

(Prepare for the occasional invasion)

I posted this in "the other place" but a lot of people tuned out of the "off topic" stuff surrounding the "Cardiff Singer of the World" which was going on at the same time. There were a few clips posted of her performance in Barber of Seville in Paris in 2002, which was the first time I ever saw her live, and I was hooked. Seen her a few times since and loved her every time.

I was at the Cardiff Singer final, where Joyce was a guest commentator and I managed to catch a chat with her before the broadcast started.

She told me that she was singing a series of concert performances of Don Giovanni in Baden-Baden in the coming weeks, with the lovely Rolando, no less, as Don Ottavio as well, and (read em and weep, Gneiss) Anna Netrebko . Joyce said she'd be delighted to see me there <swoon>

After a few weeks of putting the thing together it actually all came into place only today, so I'll be at the performance seeing Joyce DD in BB on July 24. Its Mrs DFI's birthday weekend too so we're making a bit of a long weekend of it.

And, I understand it will be recorded for a future CD release


It's minimalist for sure, which is not to everyone's taste, but which is a million miles better than some of the masturbatory crap (forgive my French) you see sometimes from opera directors, particularly in Europe.

Aida with - literally - Star Wars Stormtroopers, anyone? That was a particular "WTF????" moment

Just let the bloody opera tell the story, PUHLEEZE!!!

A slightly more thought provoking Aida (in the sense that it got you wondering whether the director was on drugs, rather than what drugs he was taking) was one I saw which was set in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, where all the protagonists were exhibits come to life, with Verdi himself walking silently through the production at every possible moment (this was years before "Night at the Museum" by the way )

And then there was the Turandot, set in the time that it was written (1920s) where the three clowns, Ping Pang and Pong were all replicas of Charlie Chaplin with the cane and bowler hat, and were Liu's body after her death was put into the grand piano that was on stage for the rest of the whole performance.

The singers got to the point where Puccini's death had left the score unfinished, and where, at the premiere, Toscanini put down his baton and said "This is where the Maestro put down his pen". (The score had subsequently been finished by Alfano, but Toscanini didn't think the ending worthy of being included in the premiere of his friend's final work)

Anyway, in this production the singers just stopped dead, as did the orchestra, with everyone looking blankly at each other in silence for several seconds.

A doorbell rings and the soprano goes to answer it, whereupon a uniformed bellhop enters, carrying two packages a little like telephone directories wrapped in brown paper.

The bellhop gets his tip and departs as the tenor and soprano (the only two left on stage) unwrap the packages and flick through them (they are of course revised scores with the completed ending) and then step front and centre as the curtain comes down behind them, delivering the ending of the opera in a concert performance, while singing from the freshly delivered scores.

I have to say I quite admired the ingenuity of that one.....the director was clearly showing that he knew something about the history of the opera......a level of intelligence clearly lacking in the Aida Stormtroopers fiasco

Hang on....I've just realised....you were probably taking the p there, weren't you?

Bad BAD windsock!!

Know what, we should take an opera... one that will be familiar to all, and committee-design a) the perfect production b) the most ludicrous, tacky and therefore likely to appear soon production. (Animation, cgi, sticky-back plastic and inter-stellar travel all permitted). I believe we have the talent.

(By the way, I did remember your previous post about meeting Joyce. I was half teasing with 'do tell', because I enjoyed how effusively happy you were afterwards.)

True true. I apologise with all appropriate grovelling.

Now this I did not know. Congratulations to you on a successful mission-plan and to Mrs DFI on an approaching birthday. And, stop press, WOW at future CD release (a boon for those of us whose pockets are not so deep). I'm excited about the prospect.

Just taking a moment to sincerely thank everyone who has participated in this thread and shared recs and links, and helped lay to rest some of my fears about the "snottiness" of opera.

I've decided to start with La Traviata, having found a live 1955 recording with Maria Callas, since I'm at least vaguely familiar with the story (thanks to Pretty Woman) and have heard Maria before.

It's going to be interesting to see where I go from there.

At last I managed to rescue a shred of dignity by realising it before you confessed <sniff>

Thank you for keeping us up to date and please let us know how you get on with it. This is a voyage... both you and DFI have travel plans tonight! I'm convinced that being familiar with the story is the right way in, or you're bombarded with too much gorgeousness at once to remember which way is up. (Parenthetically, I believe you're right that there can be some snottiness among opera 'fans', but think that it's frowned upon in principle here. This thread is snotty about snottiness . In fact, the gentleman below is FAMOUS for his contention that good singers 'blow the snot' out of an aria.)


You did... you did. (See, he's sniffing!)

I'm thinking a "Somewhere in Time" approach to La Boheme. Ever seen "Somewhere in Time"? Not a dry eye in the house. Rather than summarise it myself, I'm going to blatantly plagiarise some of the Wikipedia summary of the plot.

In May 1972, college theater student Richard Collier (Christopher Reeve) - our Rodolfo - is celebrating the debut of a play he has written. During the celebration, he is approached by an elderly woman who places a pocket watch in his hand and pleads with him to "come back to [her]". Richard does not recognize the woman, who returns to her own residence afterward.

Eight years later, Richard is a successful playwright living in Chicago, but has recently broken up with his girlfriend and is struggling with writer's block. Feeling stressed from writing his play, he decides to take a break and travels out of town to the Grand Hotel. While looking at a display in the hotel's museum, Richard becomes entranced by a photo of a beautiful woman. With the assistance of Arthur Biehl, an old bellhop who has been at the hotel since 1910, Richard discovers that the woman is Elise McKenna, a famous early 20th century stage actress - our Mimi.

Upon digging deeper, Richard learns that she was the aged woman who gave him the pocket watch eight years earlier, but subsequently died later that same evening. Traveling to McKenna's home, he discovers a music box she had made, in the shape of the Grand Hotel, that plays his favorite melody. (As if there wasn't enough tear jerking going on already, this melody is Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini)

He also discovers among her effects a book on time travel written by his old college professor, Dr. Gerard Finney (George Voskovec), and learns that McKenna read the book several times. Richard becomes obsessed with the idea of traveling back to 1912 and meeting Elise McKenna, with whom he has fallen in love.

Richard hypnotizes himself with the tape recorder hidden under the bed, and allows his absolute faith in his eventual success to become the trigger for the journey back through time. He drifts off to sleep and awakens to the sound of whinnying horses on June 27, 1912.

Richard looks all over the hotel for Elise, even meeting Arthur as a little boy, but he has no luck finding her. Finally, he stumbles upon Elise walking by a tree near the lake. She seems to swoon slightly at the sight of him, but then suddenly asks him if he is "the one". (how cold are her hands?)


McKenna's manager, William Fawcett Robinson, abruptly intervenes and sends Richard away. Richard stubbornly continues to pursue Elise until she finally agrees to accompany him on a stroll through the surrounding idyllic landscape. Richard ultimately asks why Elise wondered aloud if he was "the one". She replies that Robinson somehow knows that she will meet a man one day who will change her life forever. Richard then shows Elise the same pocket watch which she will eventually give him in 1972, but he does not reveal its origin, merely saying it was a gift.

Upon returning to the hotel, Elise invites Richard to her play. He attends the comedic-farce and she, in an almost trance-like state, recites an impromptu monologue dedicated to him. During intermission he finds her posing formally for a photograph. Upon spotting Richard, Elise breaks into a radiant smile. The camera captures what we realize is the same portrait that Richard will see 68 years later on a wall at the Grand Hotel. He later receives a letter from Robinson asking to meet him immediately and saying that it is a matter of life and death. Robinson tricks Richard and has him tied up and thrown into the stables. Later, Robinson tells Elise that Richard has left her and is not the one, but she replies that she does not believe him and he is wrong. Elise admits to Robinson that she loves Richard and that he will make her very happy. Dispirited, Robinson leaves her dressing room and reminds her that they leave within the hour.

Richard wakes up the next morning and escapes his constraints. He runs to Elise's room and finds that her party has left. Despondent, he goes out to the hotel's porch. Suddenly he hears Elise calling his name and sees her running towards him. They return to his room together and make love. The next morning they agree to marry. Elise tells him that the first thing she will do for him is buy him a new suit. (The suit Richard has been wearing the entire time in 1912 is about ten to fifteen years out of style.) Richard begins to show her how practical the suit is because of its many pockets. He is alarmed when he reaches into one and finds a shiny new Lincoln penny with a mint date of 1979. Seeing an item from his real present wrenches him out of his hypnotically-induced time trip, and Richard feels himself rushing backwards with Elise screaming his name in horror as he is pulled inexorably out of 1912.

Richard then wakes up in the same room he just left, instead now back in 1980. He is drenched in sweat and very weak, apparently exhausted from his trip through time and back. He scrambles desperately back to his own room and tries to hypnotize himself again, without success. Heartbroken and after wandering around the hotel property and sitting interminably at the places where he spent time with Elise, he eventually retires to his room and remains there unmoving for days until discovered by Arthur and the hotel manager; they send for a doctor and paramedics. Richard sees himself drifting above his body and is drawn to a light shining through the nearby window, where he is reunited with Elise.

<sniff>

It's La Boheme with Rodolfo dying of a broken heart to rejoin Mimi

<sobbing uncontrollably>

Snotty opera is bad opera, I always say......

SNOT OUT! SNOT OUT! SNOT OUT!

I hope to be selling signed copies at a frankly exorbitant markup via a DS forum near you in the not too distant future.....

This could work, but only if Rodolfo is dressed as Superman. Mimi should be in shimmering blue (probably a construct of tissue paper and cling film) to symbolise how very very very cold her little hands are. Throughout, she appears most secure when encapsulated within the giant artificial flower that is grotesquely intrusive on the stage, but then she weakens visibly when she leaves this environment. When real flowers fall from above the stage (often) she must stumble.

Now, the pocket watch: surely its tick has to be loud enough to actually distract the audience's attention from the orchestra.

Where's the irrelevant nod to relevancy? You forgot to mention that Parpignol should be a disturbingly saccharine abuser, clearly on the sex-offenders' list. And yet, the magnetic attraction that he has for youth (symbolised, of course, by a giant magnet) has to be established as an illusory antidote to the inexorable march of time.

Nearly there, but it does need some more work.