Sez Who?

http://www.brittenpears.org/?page=britten/repertoire/opera/furnace.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Britten_operas

http://www.naxos.com/composerinfo/Benjamin_Britten_27104/27104.htm

Are we allowing Fairies, Faeries, and their kin?   I suppose they are secular angels

Might I suggest that Hoffmann's Muse is a secular angel?  He/she has been guarding him from the outset, and leads him off into an apotheosis....

You could make a case for suggesting that Annina in THE SAINT OF BLEECKER STREET is an angel who walks among men, unbeknownst to them.  (Blimey, I think I must have been a Festival Of Nine Lessons & Carols in an out-of-body-experience - I haven't used "unbeknownst" for a long while, and the spelling looks horribly incorrect...)

Although he hasn't got a note to sing and isn't mentioned in the castlist, the closing stage-direction (AFTER the choir have sung "Sauvee!") of Gounod's FAUST is ""Mephistopheles is barred by the shining sword of an archangel."   (Immediately prior to this Marguerite has been singing "Anges Pures! Anges Radieux!", which hints at their presence - real or imagined).

Full marks to Gian Carlo Menotti for NOT using an Angel in AMAHL & THE NIGHT VISITORS.  Laudable self-restraint

Are we allowed apparitions of the B.V.M.?   In which case the end of SUOR ANGELICA (in the stage directions, anyhow).

Dear Virginia Ironside,

I worry I might be turning into a Catholic...  it happened when someone on an internet forum started talking about angels, and...

And Paul Bunyan's a 'Choral Operetta', Oz, but all four figure in the Britten-Pears Foundation's operas list, whereas The Golden Vanity, ('A Vaudeville') doesn't.

The libretti are included in the standard work on Britten's operas, and they were written for, and premiered by, the English Opera Group. It's true that they may present a new departure in performance and staging, but their direct antecedent in his output is Noye's Fludde ('The Chester Miracle Play set to music', according to the title page, if I'm not mistaken), which is also counted amongst the operas.

 The Parables contain dramatic dialogue that's sung throughout by soloists and and chorus to move the plot forward; they're staged, costumed (even originally masked) and accompanied by musicians: there's nothing there that isn't within the standard definition of an opera. The nomenclature 'Parable' seems to have been chosen at least partly to emphasise the devotional nature of the trilogy's components: they go beyond standard opera rather than falling short of it.

 They require extraordinarily detailed levels of concentration from the cast in particular, since they were devised to be performed without a conductor, relying instead on a complex system of clues and gestures to ensure that the performers synchronise at important points.

 'Parables' they may be by exact definition, but their place within the genre 'opera' seems pretty difficult to deny. 

Wouldn't that test rule out most of Wagner as well, Oliver?  That might please Der Meister but I think you'd get a reputation as something of a pedant if you insisted on correcting anyone who described Parsifal as an opera.  I saw Curlew River at the SBC many years ago and I seem to remember the publicity describing it as a 'chamber opera'.  All three are included in my Dictionary of Opera & Operetta and in each case the initial description is 'opera in one act'.

Angels must exist because 79% of Americans believe in them, according to this reliable source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,173838,00.html


I think I thought that the Church Parables wouldn't count as operas because they were written to be performed in a church, but that's as foolish as thinking that something written for the concert hall can't be a mass 

Anywa, if we're counting people likened to angels we could have Florestan's vision of Leonore in Fidelio

Ah, well, the starting point here has to be the various operas featuring the Faust legend and therefore Mephistopheles.  So we have:

Gounod - Faust
Boito - Mefistofele (a seriously underrated masterpiece, IMO)
Busoni - Doktor Faustus
Spohr - Faust
Berlioz - La Damnation de Faust (assuming you count it as an opera)

Others:

Verdi - Giovanna d'Arco has a scene in which a chorus of demons (in an improbably jolly tune accompanied by harmonium and triangle) tempt Joan of Arc;
Dvorak - The Devil and Kate
Penderecki - The Devils of Loudon
Ward - The Crucible (if you are allowed imaginary devils and demons)

Are furies demons?  If so, count in Gluck's Orfeo.

D'OH!  Samiel in Freischutz

Well, the last could be Jerry Springer: The Opera, as a slightly oblique guess?