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perfect wagnerite
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« Reply #660 on: 12:53:12, 03-06-2008 » |
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I was going to count Pilgrim's Progress, but pw has mentioned it. The scene opens with a boy singing He that is down, and he must be a shepherd.
I've a nagging feeling that he's a woodcutter's boy, but I could be wrong ... You really don't like Act 1 of Tannhauser, do you, pw? Not a work I have heard for years, and your reiterated comments, like the drip drip of water on a stone, convince me not to bother in future apart from the hit numbers.
Act I of Tannhauser is great once the hero has got out of the Venusberg and the plot proper begins - I just think that the Venusberg scene was a huge mistake; in the Dresden version you're going back over material in the overture, in the Paris version it seems to me that Wagner extends it beyond endurance to no dramatic purpose. The fact that Wagner revisited it suggests that he realised that there was a problem - even if he just made it worse! But the text makes it clear - Tannhauser is bored out of his skull in the Venusberg. He wants to return to the joys of nature, fresh, fecund and pure and (one might infer, especially in the light of the nature worship of German romanticism) echt-Deutsch - like the stolzer Eichwald to which Wolfram compares the knights of the Wartburg. |
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« Last Edit: 12:55:12, 03-06-2008 by perfect wagnerite »
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At every one of these [classical] concerts in England you will find rows of weary people who are there, not because they really like classical music, but because they think they ought to like it. (Shaw, Don Juan in Hell)
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Don Basilio
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« Reply #661 on: 13:25:25, 03-06-2008 » |
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I've a nagging feeling that he's a woodcutter's boy, but I could be wrong ...
I have a nagging feeling you may well be right. I can dig out the boxed set, or wait until I see the programme at Sadlers Wells. |
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To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh: a time to mourn, and a time to dance
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Don Basilio
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« Reply #662 on: 15:40:45, 03-06-2008 » |
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The only time I have seen Tannhauser was yonks ago at the ROH (am I right in thinking that other opera companies leave it and Lohengrin well alone?)
I remember vividly two phrases from the FT review. One was a comment on the staging of the Venusberg scene, which was on some sort of raised circle, IIRC. "This louche menage" sniffed the FT.
The tenor as the hero was described as limiting his acting to adopting "the fixed grin of an axe murderer."
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To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh: a time to mourn, and a time to dance
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George Garnett
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« Reply #663 on: 16:58:26, 03-06-2008 » |
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The only time I have seen Tannhauser was also several yonks ago, 1971 at the Vienna State Opera when I was a scruffy student. It was also the first time I had ever heard the Vienna Philharmonic in the flesh and was absolutely blown away by the sound they made. You may, ahem, wish to avert your eyes here. I have a clear recollection of being a bit annoyed and disappointed at the end of the Venusberg scene when two people on stage spoiled it all by starting to sing over it.   Gosh! I see Rita Streich, no less, was the shepherd boy in that performance. Shome shepherd. |
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« Last Edit: 17:04:00, 03-06-2008 by George Garnett »
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Ruth Elleson
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« Reply #664 on: 23:33:53, 03-06-2008 » |
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The only time I have seen Tannhauser was yonks ago at the ROH (am I right in thinking that other opera companies leave it and Lohengrin well alone?) Lohengrin's back at the ROH next season for the second time since the new house opened... Tannhauser on the other hand hasn't been staged in London since goodness only knows when  (I enjoyed Zurich Opera's performance at the RFH four or five years ago, but it was only a concert). |
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Oft hat ein Seufzer, deiner Harf' entflossen,
Ein süßer, heiliger Akkord von dir
Den Himmel beßrer Zeiten mir erschlossen,
Du holde Kunst, ich danke dir dafür!
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #665 on: 21:40:10, 18-06-2008 » |
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A very, very late entry for the Latin American settings q... Purcell's THE INDIAN QUEEN is set in both Peru and Mexico.
Now perhaps you can tell us about operas set in the remote future... or at least some time in the future?
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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Ruth Elleson
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« Reply #666 on: 22:13:51, 18-06-2008 » |
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Errrr... does Maazel's 1984 count, Reiner? Though the source text is futuristic, it was all in the past by the time the opera was written...
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Oft hat ein Seufzer, deiner Harf' entflossen,
Ein süßer, heiliger Akkord von dir
Den Himmel beßrer Zeiten mir erschlossen,
Du holde Kunst, ich danke dir dafür!
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Ruth Elleson
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« Reply #667 on: 22:16:04, 18-06-2008 » |
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Just thought of The Handmaid's Tale (Ruders)
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Oft hat ein Seufzer, deiner Harf' entflossen,
Ein süßer, heiliger Akkord von dir
Den Himmel beßrer Zeiten mir erschlossen,
Du holde Kunst, ich danke dir dafür!
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #668 on: 22:42:08, 18-06-2008 » |
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1984 is a hard once since the libretto was written before the date of the action, but the opera was written with the benefit of chronological hindsight  I think I am prepared to take any operas which attempted to portray something of what the future might be like, vis-a-vis the date of composition It's a rather interesting question to me, because although literature is stacked with works about hypothetical futures, opera doesn't seem to have tackled these topics very often? I wonder why, when the fantastical and speculative is the stock-in-trade of the opera stage? Yet there are a few examples...
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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harmonyharmony
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« Reply #669 on: 22:50:14, 18-06-2008 » |
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I want to say Gavin Bryars' Doctor Ox's Experiment because it's based on Jules Verne's pseudo sci-fi tale, but the 'based on' is the issue here..
There is Philip Glass's The Making of the Representative For Planet 8 with libretto by Doris Lessing and Tippett's New Year is partly set 'somewhere and tomorrow'.
Could we add Stockhausen's Licht? (Except for Donnerstag which is told through autobiography, there's a futuristic feel to it all, even the extra-temporal creation mythology stuff in Montag)
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'is this all we can do?' anonymous student of the University of Berkeley, California quoted in H. Draper, 'The new student revolt' (New York: Grove Press, 1965) http://www.myspace.com/itensemble |
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thompson1780
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« Reply #670 on: 23:22:24, 19-06-2008 » |
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Is Glass's The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 distant future, or just distant?
Tommo
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Made by Thompson & son, at the Violin & c. the West end of St. Paul's Churchyard, LONDON
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perfect wagnerite
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« Reply #671 on: 23:39:55, 19-06-2008 » |
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Ligeti: Le Grand Macabre (although Kobbe tells me that the time is "nebulous", it is about the end of the world) The only time I have seen Tannhauser was yonks ago at the ROH (am I right in thinking that other opera companies leave it and Lohengrin well alone?)
I remember vividly two phrases from the FT review. One was a comment on the staging of the Venusberg scene, which was on some sort of raised circle, IIRC. "This louche menage" sniffed the FT.
The tenor as the hero was described as limiting his acting to adopting "the fixed grin of an axe murderer."
This sounds like Elijah Moshinsky's production of IIRC around 1984, which took a terrible panning from the critics and never resurfaced. The axe-murderer tenor was, I think, Klaus Konig; Gwyneth Jones and Thomas Allen were in it too. Can't remember who conducted. The Venusberg was on a sort of raised circle, on which the entire budget appeared to have been blown because the rest of the show, to the best of my recollection, took place in front of a wrinkly grey cyclorama. I think that was the last time it was done in London. |
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At every one of these [classical] concerts in England you will find rows of weary people who are there, not because they really like classical music, but because they think they ought to like it. (Shaw, Don Juan in Hell)
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Don Basilio
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« Reply #672 on: 11:11:27, 20-06-2008 » |
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The Venusberg was on a sort of raised circle,
That's the one! |
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To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh: a time to mourn, and a time to dance
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #673 on: 11:19:51, 20-06-2008 » |
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I'm tempted to think of Mr Broucek's episodic visit to the Moon as being futuristic in nature too  |
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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harmonyharmony
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« Reply #674 on: 17:51:32, 21-06-2008 » |
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Is Glass's The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 distant future, or just distant?
Tommo
Wikipedia says that the whole Canopus in Argos series of books (of which tMotRfP8 is the fourth) are set in the same future history which implies that they are set in the future. |
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'is this all we can do?' anonymous student of the University of Berkeley, California quoted in H. Draper, 'The new student revolt' (New York: Grove Press, 1965) http://www.myspace.com/itensemble |
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