That's an impressive list for a few minutes whiling, Martle. 

Does Purcell's The Tempest (or The Enchanted Island) j u u u u rst about fall into the category of an opera (in the seventeenth century sense )? 

Hmmm. Thinks. I wonder if Martle left it out deliberately and I have tumbled clumsily if innocently into the warm embrace of his capacious trap. 

Berlioz' Les Troyens, part 2 and Purcell's Dido and Aeneas tell the same story.

I've said it twice before at least and I'll go on saying it.  Purcell's is less than an hour, written for amateur adolescents and saddled with a book of mind-blowingly sillly doggerel ("Thus on the fatal banks of Nile Weeps the deceitful crocodile").  But for my money Purcell knocks spots off Berlioz any day.

There's loads of operas based on post-Troy events, but usually with different stories.

And any other Fall of Troy operas?

         

 

I did have a listen to this later on and enjoyed it, especially the Labyrinth with all its comings and goings. Reading some online reviews of recent productions (Scottish Opera and the Linbury) I see that some people find it dated (What was radical 35 years ago now seems dated and occasionally dubious - Tim Ashley, Grauniad), but as it was premiered in the year I was born, I don't feel qualified to comment! I like the allusion to The Tempest, with its rehearsal/performance in the final act, and Mangus putting himself in the role of Prospero right from the start of the opera, almost moving/ controlling the characters as if they were the chess pieces which feature in the charade.

More operas based on the same plot/ source, but only in pairs this time:

Puccini and Leoncavallo: La bohème - I have heard the Leoncavallo version as well and understand that it is more closely based on La Vie de Bohème by Henri Murger than Puccini's is. Anyone going to stand up for the Leoncavallo?

Mozart and Gazzaniga: Don Giovanni (although I suppose we could add Dargomyzhsky's The Stone Guest, based on the Pushkin drama written after he saw the Mozart opera).

Paisiello and Rossini: Il Barbiere di Siviglia

Anyone know the Gazzaniga or Paisiello? Worth hearing?

It has a bigger cast, a quarter of the humour and a tiny fraction of the inspiration. (The opening to a review of the Gazzaniga, comparing it to the Mozart... )

After The Tempest, continuing on a Shakespearean note, there are several Falstaff operas: Salieri’s Falstaff, ossia Le tre burle , Nicolai’s Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor, Vaughan Williams’ Sir John in Love, Holst’s At the Boar’s Head, Verdi’s Falstaff. The only one I don’t know is the Salieri, although there have been at least three recordings. Verdi’s comedy is matchless and is usually regarded as the Shakespearean opera where he outdoes the Bard himself. I’m very fond of the RVW, however, especially after seeing it staged so well at ENO. I'm sure the Holst would make a good half of a double bill.

Othello has operatic versions by Rossini and Verdi, the former set entirely in Venice, the latter entirely on Cyprus. The Rossini has some very fine music (and four tenor roles) but there are some things which just jar about the plot – the handkerchief becomes a love-letter, Desdemona is stabbed, Emilia is not Iago’s wife. I find the characterisation in Verdi so much greater and the decision to ditch the Venetian portion of the play means he opens up with that great storm.

Now, there must be other multiple operas based on the Bard for you to be going on with?  

Romeo and Juliet.  For starters there's Gounod, R&J, Bellini I Capuleti e i Montecchi and Bernstein West Side Story.

Bernstein's got more tunes.

I know Purcell did not set a word of Shakespeare in his The Fairy Queen, but it is based on A Midsummer Night's Dream * as more comprehensively set by Britten.

* Or at any rate sets scenes to be interpolated into a performance.  The words are less awful than Dido, (Dryden was a competent Poet Laureate) but they are no great shakes, and again Purcell triumphs with wonderful music.  If love's a sweet passion is drooly.

Dargomyzhsky is worth including, certainly.  I've seen it staged (very, very badly) at the Bolshoi, and despite the ham-fistedness of their production there's good music in the score.  Sadly it's mainly known in the annals of spoof for the "PDQ Bach" piece "The Stoned Guest".  Also worth adding to "Giovanni" lists...    in Janacek's HOUSE OF THE DEAD, the convicts perform an opera-within-an-opera, "The Opera of Don Juan & Kedril" as an intermezzo within the piece.  And we shouldn't forget (as if I would let you!) that THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW is also the Don Juan story, cast as follows:

Don Juan - Frank'n'Furter
Leporello - Riff-Raff  (who gains an accomplice in a sister new to the plot, Magenta)
Commendatore - Dr (Von) Scott
Donna Anna - Janet Weiss
Ottavio - Brad Majors
Zerlina - Columbia
Elvira - Rocky
Masetto - Eddie (although he, too, has been previously seduced by Frank - he attempts revenge and is murdered in Act One)




The Paisiello was written for St Petersburg, where Paisiello had secured an engagement for a magnificent fee.  It's still occasionally done in Russia (largely from a sense of it being "ours") and it's in rep at the Pokrovsky Theatre (whose musical reputation I've questioned already further above).  There is some very nice music in it - Figaro has an elegant serenade to his own guitar accompaniment, and the ensembles are well-written.  Although it's slightly contrived, there's an amusing Sneezing Trio