I saw my first opera when I was 14. It was Wagner’s Parsifal at the Metropolitan Opera. I did my homework before the performance by reading about the opera and relentlessly playing and re-playing Georg Solti’s Decca recording of the work.
The Solti recording was a five-LP set and an expensive purchase for a high school student, but I saved my lunch money (why eat when you can feed your love for music?). It’s still one of my favorite performances, mostly for the fine Gurnemanz of Gottlob Frick and the gorgeous sound of the Vienna Philharmonic. Fast forward nearly forty years and my shelves hold over a dozen CDs of the opera (four conducted by Hans Knappertsbusch—I offer no excuse), as well as two DVDs.
DVDs and high-definition broadcasts shown in movie theaters have become the chief ways for people to enjoy opera outside the opera house. Sure, operatic performances are still released on CD, but these recordings are mostly reissues of older performances or are archival, such as Sony’s terrific Metropolitan Opera broadcast series or Orfeo’s Wiener Staatsoper collection.
Metropolitan Opera chief Peter Gelb is the mastermind behind the HD broadcast series, and it’s certainly opened up the world of opera to many who can’t afford high ticket prices (you can get a ticket to an HD broadcast for about $20) or are just curious about what opera is actually like.
But what do you do after you leave the movie theater? What if you want to experience Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, Mozart’s Don Giovanni or Glass’ Satyagraha again? Pushing the question further, what if you just want to listen in your car or in your office? There was a time when you could go to a CD store and pick up an opera recording, but as more brick-and-mortar shops disappear, your options are limited. Opera CDs take up lots of shelf space too—just ask me about those dozen Parsifal recordings!
Lossless downloads are certainly a way to feed that opera hunger. Besides the high-quality sound, downloads don’t take up shelf space and they appeal to your sense of instant gratification because you can watch an opera in the theater, love it, then go home and download it. Sure, the casts may not match up, but isn’t watching Anna Netrebko singing Anna Bolena and then going home to download Maria Callas singing the same role part of the fun? Give it a try; you won’t be sorry.
Here are some of the operas the Met has featured in this season’s HD broadcasts, plus select recordings of these works available as downloads.
Donizetti: Anna Bolena
The Met launched their season with Anna Netrebko in the title role. I opt for the singer who put this opera back in vogue, Maria Callas.
Mozart: Don Giovanni
The superb Polish baritone Mariusz Kwiecien headlined the Met production and I hope he gets around to recording it some day. But if you are looking for an ideal baritone Don, the brilliant Swedish baritone Peter Mattei is going to make your day on this electrifying live recording conducted by Daniel Harding.
Wagner: Siegfried and Götterdämmerung
The Met’s new Ring Cycle has been the subject of debate; because of all opera lovers Wagnerites are the most contentious. With a cast that includes Astrid Varnay, Wolfgang Windgassen, Hans Hotter, Regina Resnik and Gustav Neidlinger, Clemens Krauss’ 1953 Bayreuth Ring ends all debate; it’s easily one of the best Rings available.
The dazzling soprano Natalie Dessay will sing Violetta in an upcoming screening of Verdi’s La traviata. Why wait when you can be dazzled now with a download featuring Callas, Giuseppe di Stefano and Ettore Bastianini in Verdi’s masterpiece?
Verdi: Ernani
There’s lots of buzz about soprano Angela Meade and Marcello Giordani in Verdi’s Ernani and I can’t wait to see the performance. Right now a new recording of a 1962 Met radio broadcast starring Carlo Bergonzi, Leontyne Price and Cornell MacNeil conducted by Thomas Schippers mesmerizes me. Yes, gods did once walk the earth.
You can discover opera through recordings or HD broadcasts, but the thrill of attending a live performance is unparalleled. Beatrice Di Francesco, a new member of the Ariama team, talks about her first operatic experiences and selects an opera "conversion playlist" of arias and favorite scenes.
Finding my way through opera
by Beatrice Di Francesco
I went to my first opera at age eleven. It was Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and I don’t remember much except that the stage was huge, making Cio-Cio San seem even more fragile. The story didn’t make much sense to me but the soprano’s voice, so pure and tragic, slowly making its way to my ears and telling a story of its own, did.
That was opera for me: raw emotion. Puccini’s music is exactly that, as I discovered in Tosca and La bohème and in picking up some Donizetti, Bellini and Rossini on the way. The formula seemed simple enough: star-crossed soprano and tenor lovers facing baritone’s opposition; plots of revenge with pretty arias generating lots of applause and ending, ideally, with a climactic death.
Of course, Verdi’s La traviata quickly became my favorite -- can you blame the operatic emotion junkie I was becoming? Anna Netrebko looked every bit the tragic heroine in Willy Decker’s 2005 Salzburg Festival production opposite Rolando Villazón. They were young (which made the story credible) and as expected, she died in the end. I watched the production over and over, paying closer attention to the sets, the director’s choices, the cast and the characters’ psychologies.
Mozart expanded my interest to deeper voices and intricate plots: the sextet in Le nozze di Figaro and especially Don Giovanni’s Commendatore scene, became operatic obsessions of mine. Baroque opera and its virtuosic demands also impressed me: Handel, Vivaldi and Rameau prepared me for Rodelinda and The Enchanted Island at the Metropolitan Opera.
At last I was ready for the real test of the opera enthusiast! Wagner’s Tannhäuser and Die Walküre erased any doubts I might have had about the composer; my dream is now to go to the Bayreuth Festival. I would probably single-handedly lower the audience age by a few years, but I should be used to that by now.
I recently saw Madama Butterfly again. It was a different production, a different opera house and a different expectation, but it had the same overpowering impact. I am not one for effusive shows of emotion, but I’ll admit I did cry. Some things should never change.
My “conversion moments” playlist:
“Un bel di” from Madama Butterfly. My first recording was Liping Zhang’s.
Act II finale from La traviata (Violetta’s “Che fia? Morir mi sento” always gets me).
Commendatore Scene from Don Giovanni. There’s an awesome YouTube video from the 1990 Met production with Kurt Moll, Samuel Ramey and Ferruccio Furlanetto. If I have one lifelong regret, it's not to have seen this live (not that I could have, since I wasn’t even born). The Furtwängler recording is definitive though.
“Les Sauvages, Danse du Grand Calumet de la Paix” from Rameau’s Les Indes Galantes.
I’m pretty new to Wagner, so I’d love to hear your suggestions of definitive recordings!
by Craig Zeichner, Ariama Editor
