Favourite Opera

So let's talk opera. What is your favourite opera - name - composer - performance - and why?

I can't really narrow it down to a favorite opera or composer, as I love so much and my "favorite" often depends on my mood.

But I can tell you about some of my favorite performances:

One was seeing Natalie Dessay in Lucia di Lammermoor at Lyric Opera of Chicago. The mad scene was so real, and she inhabited the role so completely, that you felt you were actually watching someone who had just committed a murder and gone mad. At the point in that scene when she stops singing for a moment, and Enrico comes in, when she stopped, the only sound was that of the entire audience letting out its collective breath.

Another, also at Lyric, was John Adams' Doctor Atomic, at the end of which the audience was so stunned that it was a good minute before the rapturous applause started.

Recently, I saw a lovely production of Madame Butterfly at La Fenice. The set was abstract and minimalist, and the costuming was not the traditional Japanese kimono, but everyone in (mostly) white robes with a hint of Japanese aesthetic. (Some images here: https://www.teatrolafenice.it/en/event/madama-butterfly/ and some video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leMW6wpRuPU). It wasn't an updating; it was what I might call a "universalization".

ETA: Perhaps you'd like to come and wake up the Opera group? https://www.librarything.com/ngroups/742/Opera-or-Nobody-Knows-the-Traubel-Ive-S...

Not my favourite opera, but Mrs H and I had a great Christmas in Vienna pre-pandemic with a performance of La Bohème at the Staatsoper on Christmas night. Wonderful singing and all. I also remember a Tosca at the Sydney Opera House with Peter Coleman-Wright as Scarpia; really terrific—when he came on, a little black cloud of malevolence seemed to be hovering over him.

Best of all though: The Barber of Seville at the Savonlinna Opera Festival in Finland a few years ago. Terrific, high energy performance, and it was actually funny!

Favourite opera for (as distinct from performances) real thought: The Marriage of Figaro. I’ve seen it live a couple of times, but the performance that sticks in the memory was one on TV, from the Met, with Cecilia Bartoli as Susanna, Renee Fleming as the Countess (looking so impossibly gorgeous that one couldn’t imagine why Almaviva could possibly fancy anyone else) and Bryn Terfel as Figaro. The overture to this opera is the most utterly happy music I know; it just makes it impossible to be gloomy.

I am more of a ballet & symphony fan, having only been to one opera. That was La Traviata performed at the Kennedy Center. I found it fascinating, especially the costumes.

My favourites are light opera, anything by Gilbert and Sullivan, particularly Pirates of Penzance, HMS Pinafore and Yeomen of the Guard. I've sung in amateur school and college productions of Pinafore and Yeomen, and one outstanding experience was watching Pirates performed at the Minack Theatre just outside Penzance, a natural amphitheatre on top of the cliffs overlooking the ocean. Magnificent.

In November, 2019, I was very fortunate to see a performance of Philip Glass's Akhnaten at the Met in New York. That ENO/LAOpera co-production was stunningly good.

A runner-up would be a performance of Peter Grimes that I saw years ago with, I think, Jon Vickers.

Pagliacci.

and anything by Curly Joe. Love his opera lip syncing.

I'm not a huge fan of opera, but several years ago I saw the Opera North production of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream and it was one of the most incredible, moving experiences of my life. I've got the work on CD but it isn't the same as seeing/hearing it live on stage, of course.

>5 John5918: Saw The Mikado in Edinburgh with my non-opera-loving daughter a few years ago. She laughed herself silly.