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The Radio 3 Boards > The Music Boards > The Opera House > Royal Opera 2008/09 season announcement...
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Author Topic: Royal Opera 2008/09 season announcement...  (Read 716 times)
harmonyharmony
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« Reply #30 on: 13:11:47, 20-03-2008 »
Quote from: Don Basilio on 12:49:57, 20-03-2008
Quote from: Reiner Torheit on 12:43:12, 20-03-2008
But it would be desirable that the original also remains in the repertoire too... and in the case of THE BEGGARS OPERA, the original's been shunned Sad

But it the ROH the place to do it?  I am not being elitist, etc.  It was never intended for the sorts of voices which would sing contemporary operas at all.  (Refrain from jokes about lack of balls.)  The vocal quality of the players is not that important.  But here is dear old Covent Garden saying "This is Frances McCafferty's debut as Diana Trapes" as though it was an analogous part to Third Maid in Elektra.  I'm sure Ms McC will do both roles justice, but they are different ball games.

How about "anti-opera" rather than "musical".

Note to mods, administrators - should you shunt this Beggar's Opera debate off into a separate thread?

I'm not sure that I want to wade very much further into this debate but...
The vocal quality of the performers may not have made much difference to the original audiences, but this doesn't mean that it isn't important.
Retrospectively, it's not an 'anti-opera' because it effectively forced (via financial means) on contemporary impresarios and composers the necessity of reforming operas.
In the liner notes for Shadowtime, Fabrice Fitch describes it as possibly an ante-opera. We get so tied up in knots with definitions and pigeon holes that in the end don't really matter (IMO).
To what extent does it matter if the ROH view the role of Diana Trapes as being analogous to the Third Maid in Elektra?
To what extent is a role in Handel's Rinaldo (for example) analogous to a role in Puccini's Tosca?

Opera, like most categorisations, is a pitch on which the goalposts are constantly moving, yet at such a pace that it often appears static. We all have ideas about what opera is, isn't and shouldn't be, but in the end that will be decided by composers, librettists, impressarios and audiences (i.e. all in the plural).
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« Reply #31 on: 13:30:18, 20-03-2008 »
PS with ref to HH's very apposite note...

... reform of opera seria was obviously "in the air" in the 1720s-30s.  Although THE BEGGAR'S OPERA was the first (1728) to spoof the conventions of the Handel/Porpora/Bononcini stranglehold on opera,  it nevertheless presented an entirely seriously-intentioned work...  the visceral cruelty and amorality in the piece (Macheath, the "hero", is a murderer, cut-throat and unreformed philanderer) has social and judicial reform in mind.  But much more successful at the time (if we count numbers of performances) was Lampe's spoof-opera THE DRAGON OF WANTLEY (1732).  Rather than spoofing the social status of the characters, Lampe (another Saxon emigre working in Handel-era London) burlesqued the musical style instead... the absurdity of da capo arias etc.  THE DRAGON was so successful that Lampe followed it up with PYRAMUS & THISBE,  a work in which a "Mr Semibreve" (a composer of operas) introduces his latest piece to "A Lady & Gentleman Of Quality", in the hope they might support it financially?  Pyramus has an entire aria that he sings once already dead, and the Lion has an aria apologising in advance for any anxiety his costume might cause ("Ladies, don't fright ye!").  And of course there's a Singing Wall, 250 years before Britten's Smiley
« Last Edit: 13:32:16, 20-03-2008 by Reiner Torheit » Logged
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Don Basilio
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« Reply #32 on: 16:25:41, 20-03-2008 »
Quote from: harmonyharmony on 13:11:47, 20-03-2008
To what extent does it matter if the ROH view the role of Diana Trapes as being analogous to the Third Maid in Elektra?
To what extent is a role in Handel's Rinaldo (for example) analogous to a role in Puccini's Tosca?

It doesn't matter at all, but that is the rather quaint way the ROH presents matters, possibly giving the impression of Opera as Sport and the works as athletic events for the competitors to show their paces.

I suspect Ron is right and The Beggar's Opera is being done for the sake of Britten, with appropriate singers.  If it was being done for the sake of Gay, then operatically trained voices are not the highest priority.
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« Reply #33 on: 16:47:44, 20-03-2008 »
The B.O. (and initials have never been more appropriate) is a mouldy old piece of populist tat, which the ROH should not be going anywhere near. 

Just because it's old and just because it's British seems to be the rationale behind the programming. 

However, doggerel is doggerel in anyone's language.  Why don't they leave it to ENO to put this fusty old dog on instead? You'd have thought it was their natural territory.

I shall be giving this one a very determined miss. 
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« Reply #34 on: 17:04:39, 20-03-2008 »
Quote from: George Garnett on 09:38:17, 20-03-2008
Gosh! Alfie Boe in Elektra. That'll cause much spluttering over the breakfast kedgeree and kippers.

Not really. Alfie Boe was one of the ROH's 'young artists' scheme a couple of years ago so it's entirely natural he should get cast in some roles there now, a bit like Marina Poplavskaya and Darren Jaffrey are getting.
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« Reply #35 on: 08:13:54, 21-03-2008 »
The ROH is wearing Lincoln Green for its new pricing policy:

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/theatre/news/story/0,,2266761,00.html
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Don Basilio
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« Reply #36 on: 13:15:56, 22-03-2008 »
Quote from: Swan_Knight on 16:47:44, 20-03-2008
Just because it's old and just because it's British seems to be the rationale behind the programming. 

That is the usual reason for theatres putting on Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labour's Lost and Titus Andronicus.

Quote
However, doggerel is doggerel in anyone's language.

Mrs Trapes' one song may technically be doggerel:

In the days of my youth, I could sigh like a dove,
Fal la la la, la la lalelady
In the days of my youth, I could sigh like a dove
Like a turtle at all times was ready for love.
Fal la...

The life of all mortals in kissing should pass
Fal la la la, la la lalelady
The life of all mortals in kissing should pass
Lip to lip while we're young, then the lip to the glass.
Fal la...

However, with its maudlin melody, it sums up the tragic waste of human life in a clapped out old tart hung up on the bottle without sentimentality, melodrama or moral condemnation.  I think it is brilliant.  I'm hope Frances McC will do it justice.

I have my doubts whether the ROH are the right people to do The Beggar's Opera, because of the nature of the work.  Ron has convinced me that the Britten version in the Linbury is perfectly right.

The ENO could do it perhaps, but for heavens' sake not in their aircraft hanger in St Martins' Lane.
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« Reply #37 on: 14:25:01, 22-03-2008 »
Ho!  The only thing here that causes my eyebrows to rise is to learn, in my ignorance, that "Die Tote Stadt" is, at long last, to have its Royal Opera House premiere - after some 88 years.  Amazing!   A sad pointer to the rather po-faced days of the 1940/1950 era and on into the 1960s.
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« Reply #38 on: 19:57:55, 22-03-2008 »
Quote from: Soundwave on 14:25:01, 22-03-2008
Ho!  The only thing here that causes my eyebrows to rise is to learn, in my ignorance, that "Die Tote Stadt" is, at long last, to have its Royal Opera House premiere - after some 88 years.  Amazing!   A sad pointer to the rather po-faced days of the 1940/1950 era and on into the 1960s.

Entirely agreed with that, SW!  I suppose the chance to rent someone else's existing production (and also monitor its success when played elsewhere) has provided an easy-in for poor old Korngold at last.  I wonder if they will ever get round to that other piece of the same era, which was competing for production at the same time...  JONNY SPIELT AUF?   Personally I'd rate JONNY the better piece of the two (both musically and dramatically - and especially for Zeitgeist),  although they're both very worthwhile operas Smiley
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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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