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Peter Grimes
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« on: 09:49:10, 27-10-2007 » |
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What is the most violent opera ever written?
For me, it must be Birtwistle's Punch and Judy, closely followed by Berg's Wozzeck.
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"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #1 on: 10:12:46, 27-10-2007 » |
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I'm slightly concerned by the pecuniary offer (of a groat) in exchange for offers of increasing violence?  However, the end of Mussorgsky's KHOVANSCHINA (in which the entire cast walk into a fiery furnace) must be "up there" amongst the most violent of operas, I'd've thought? Tchaikovsky's MAZEPPA is another grand guignol mainstay of the repertoire...  ... not forgetting this little charmer, either:  |
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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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oliver sudden
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« Reply #2 on: 10:54:00, 27-10-2007 » |
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A cherry!
Where's my groat?
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Ruth Elleson
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« Reply #3 on: 12:14:29, 27-10-2007 » |
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I'll second the recommendation for Wozzeck, though if being musically violent strengthens an opera's case, I'd suggest Elektra.
(Edited to say: and the ending of Khovanschina has never struck me as being violent at all. By that argument Carmelites would have to be in there. When people go willingly to martyrdom it somehow doesn't seem violent. How about the end of Götterdämmerung!??)
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« Last Edit: 13:46:16, 27-10-2007 by Ruth Elleson »
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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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martle
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« Reply #4 on: 15:53:05, 27-10-2007 » |
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That's a useful distinction I think, Ruth. Carmelites probably scores highest in terms of dead bodies, but the effect is far from violent. Punch and Judy, on the other hand, simply revels in malicious and really rather nasty violence and violent imagery. So I'm with PG on this one.
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Green. Always green.
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Antheil
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« Reply #5 on: 15:56:49, 27-10-2007 » |
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I think Lady McBeth of Mtsensk is pretty violent, particularly the rape scene.
Salome is a bit gut wrenching too.
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Reality, sa molesworth 2, is so sordid it makes me shudder
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perfect wagnerite
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« Reply #6 on: 16:07:35, 27-10-2007 » |
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I'll second the recommendation for Wozzeck, though if being musically violent strengthens an opera's case, I'd suggest Elektra.
Hmmm - much though I admire Elektra, I always feel that the music is really that violent - more loud in the sense of a middle-class Oxbridge student noisily winding-up Mummy and Daddy before settling down to a lifetime of City-commuting conservatism. The musical language is strikingly similar in some respects to Rosenkavalier (but without all the long-windedness) ... Anyway, violent operas. Punch and Judy and Wozzeck, certainly; Pelleas et Melisande has one of the most sickening (if not fatal) scenes of violence when Golaud attacks Melisande, because it's all too credible; Jenufa likewise; and Kat'a Kabanova has more mental cruelty than almost any opera I know. |
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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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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #8 on: 17:07:48, 27-10-2007 » |
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Jenufa likewise; and Kat'a Kabanova has more mental cruelty than almost any opera I know.
Yes, most of the Janacek repertoire is imbued with violence... HOUSE OF THE DEAD (the three principle prisoners who tell their stories - Filka, Skuratov & Shishkov - are all vicious murderers, Goryanchikov is lynched by the Guards, Alyeya is attacked by the Short Prisoner), and even OSUD has the bizarre suicide (?) of the mother who drags her own daughter off the balcony with her. IL COMBATTIMENTO DI TANCREDI E CLORINDA is an early example - one of the first operatic pieces written about normal mortals. Unlike pieces that had gone before it there's no intervening Deity to save the soul of the dying Clorinda, and no apotheosis... she dies alone at the roadside. (Contemporary accounts relate that the audience "wept uncontrollably" when the piece was first given). BTW the ending of IL COMBATTIMENTO foreshadows a highly analogous moment in Italian opera 300 years later when a baritone would uncover the face of a dying soprano, to learn of her identity and his own culpability in her death... (and surely that one should also be in our list of "violent operas"). |
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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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George Garnett
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« Reply #9 on: 17:11:03, 27-10-2007 » |
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Doctor Atomic?
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #10 on: 17:12:41, 27-10-2007 » |
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I'll see your DOCTOR ATOMIC, George, and play my trump card... ... LE GRAND MACABRE |
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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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Antheil
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« Reply #11 on: 17:21:57, 27-10-2007 » |
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Le Grand Macabre?
Personally I find this Opera hilarious - such delights as "Spit or Kiss" and the spider episode, the S&M, the vampiric episode, etc., all good clean fun I thought.
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Reality, sa molesworth 2, is so sordid it makes me shudder
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Il Grande Inquisitor
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« Reply #12 on: 17:44:07, 27-10-2007 » |
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Yes, I think the events of Le Grand Macabre are more comic, a bit like Bernstein's Candide: In Act I of Candide, everyone is massacred: the Baron, Maximillian, Paquette and Pangloss are cut to pieces. Cunegonde is raped repeatedly before she is bayoneted to death. Pangloss is brought back to life in the mortuary, but reveals his syphilitic condition. He and Candide are arrested as heretics and brought to an auto-da-fé, where Pangloss is hanged and Candide flogged. On being reunited with Cunegonde, Candide stabs both her lovers, Don Issachar and the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris. Their acquaintance, The Old Lady, is minus one of her buttocks which, when under siege from Turks, had been cut off and cooked for emergency rations! And that’s just in Act I! I see Candide is coming to ENO next summer!  For sadistic violence, I think Scarpia's got to be up there, and all three principals in Tosca end up dead by the final curtain. |
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« Last Edit: 17:46:18, 27-10-2007 by Il Grande Inquisitor »
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Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #13 on: 18:38:55, 27-10-2007 » |
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Of course, the Final Solution in THE BIG MAC (aka LE GRAND MACABRE) is botched by Death, so no-one actually dies. However, I think it depends on the production... although dealt with in a surreal and humorous (note to self, must surrealism always be humourous?) way, it treats the serious topic of a nuclear holocaust head-on... perhaps it's just too appalling to deal with it seriously? But the point I'd like to make about "BIG MAC" is that it remains a viciously violent piece, despite being done as a comedy. Violence is not necessarily terrifying - look at the appalling violence in "Tom & Jerry" or "Roadrunner", or even more so in "Ren & Stimpy" or "Duckman"... the whole humour arises from the ghastly level of violence, which it's not possible to deal with on a "serious" level. "Violence" and "humour" aren't mutually exclusive, and the simplest humour ("banana" gags and "gonzo" stunts) is based on violence.  For the blackest of humour, allied with violence, there is the end of Ullmann's THE EMPEROR OF ATLANTIS... the people are so weary of the viciousness of the "Emperor" (who is clearly an analogy of Hitler) that they plead with Death (who has gone on strike, due to the unreasonable workload created by the Emperor) to come and kill them in the normal way, and save them from the Emperor. (This is sung to a ghastly parody of the Lutheran Chorale "Come, O Christ, Into Our Hearts", but to the text "Come, O Death, & Kill Us Now"). Again, there is something grimly humorous in this, and even something uplifting and redeeming... but it's nevertheless rooted in extreme violence. |
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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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pim_derks
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« Reply #14 on: 18:49:33, 27-10-2007 » |
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"Duckman" "Duckman" was a great cartoon. I loved the farting granny in the corner of the living room.  Wasn't the music for this series composed by Frank Zappa? Ullmann's THE EMPEROR OF ATLANTIS Have you heard Suk's "Asrael Symphony" by now, Reiner? |
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"People hate anything well made. It gives them a guilty conscience." John Betjeman
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