Puccini = Opera
That's not right, but it's a starting point. An astonishing number of operas that are performed today are by Puccini. This is perhaps his greatest work, which premièred on this day in 1904. It's his Best Work. Perhaps.
Of course, Puccini is not the sum total of opera, and Madame Butterfly is not the sum total of Puccini. But it's not a bad start at all, which is why you hear this all the time.
Opera is beyond my poor powers to appreciate.
ReplyDeleteI hope it is not on the midterm.
+1 on Libertyman, I've been to one opera in Venice, and the lack of translation, bad hearing and the 'attitude' of opera goers just turned me off to it.
ReplyDeleteyou set the video's height, the width...not so much.
ReplyDeleteAlso, check your email for a long reply.
Tosca.
ReplyDeleteShort opera - maybe 90 minutes. My favorite recording is the Callas.
No short, sweet love story this. A story of infatuation and fixation, betrayal, revenge, murder, and suicide in Rome just before Napoleon invades Italy. Fun stuff!
And the quickest death scene of a bad guy in ANY opera: Scarpia (what a great name for a baddie!) is stabbed and dies within seconds... of REAL time. Stab. Fall down. Die. Done.
GREAT story. GREAT music. And one of the best lines sung by the bad guy in all of opera, in a church, while the procession is preparing for mass... and he realizes that his obsession with Tosca has made him oblivious to what's going on around him:
"Tosca, mi fai dimenticare Iddio!"
("Tosca, you make me forget my God!")
Gonna go listen to it now...
The best aria ever. Also mentioned in a poem by Kenneth Rexroth, "the Father of the Beats."
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