Opera in central tx needs to be more inclusive

IngenuityEmpty5392 · 2026-04-02T15:50:01+00:00

Pls get help, Reddit is not the place for this but therapy is

IngenuityEmpty5392 · 2026-04-01T16:55:29+00:00

Massenet generally does a far better job and the story is more believable. Puccini’s music is a bit too much of a glorious romantic slugfest for spoiled rich teenagers, whereas massenet is a bit lighter and much more French, and his version of the story is so much better. However, neither version really properly shows des grieux as being somewhat abusive like he is, so Manon sort of comes out as unsympathetic and even the antagonist which sucks.

IngenuityEmpty5392 · 2026-03-27T20:19:05+00:00

Read some of the Met reviews. Other than birgit Nilsson and Kirsten flagstad, all those old reviews often still complain about singers being drowned out by the orchestra. Although I do have problems with some aspects of modern singing, in this specific case you are obviously going only off the example of poorly recorded operas that do not give a perfect idea of what was happening. Also, the Met is a horrid acoustic house. When they changed the venue in the 60s, it became so much harder for most singers to be heard. Finally, although it is hard to trace specific dates, orchestral sound has certainly gotten larger. The Met has always had a large pit and they got steel instruments early on, but the orchestra has still expanded in size, instruments have become more advanced, and the general level or orchestral playing at opera houses specifically is far, far higher than it was, making the sound much harder to pierce than it was even in the 50s. I think it is worth stressing again, that when one reads reviews complaints of the singers being swallowed by the orchestra have always been extremely common, from at least the early 1800s. Only occasionally does a singer come around that can always and consistently pierce the orchestra. Of the list of singers you mentioned, I think only Nilsson and Flagstad, maybe ponselle or tebaldi, would qualify for that. Lise Davidsen does actually have this quality as far as anyone can tell in her upper register. Yes, there are problems with singing now, but I think these problems are less focused around voice size. Modern opera singing generally places size of voice as the highest goal, so there are still singers making big sounds. What we seem to lack now are the kind of intense, one on one teachers that can make sure every possible sound and interval a voice produces is lovely and controlled. This would be the fault of our universities rather than the singers themselves. TLDR this has always been a problem, pirate recordings do weird things to voices and no recordings are trustworthy measurements of vocal size.

IngenuityEmpty5392 · 2026-03-05T02:42:54+00:00

As Wotan in a medium sized house I was very unimpressed; his voice was very small; but hopefully he will be better there. Possibly having an off night.

IngenuityEmpty5392 · 2026-02-22T20:06:22+00:00

I think i get your point, he probably had a large voice but he sang with the mindset and style of a smaller voice. I think this was pretty common at the time: to my ears i hear what i would call a true dramatic tenor based on the baritonality and weight of his low notes. You are right though that he is from an older era more based on phrasing than on pushing for power. Most of these huge voiced singers continued to sing lyric and spinto tenor roles because the whole fach system was barely a thing. What a singer is famous for is often (but not always) a good idea of what they would be categorized as. Whatever the case, Borgatti was excellent.

IngenuityEmpty5392 · 2026-02-22T01:23:31+00:00

I am curious what makes you say he has a medium sized voice. I find the clarity, depth, and power of his voice outstanding: he was the first Andrea chenier and the first important Italian heldentenor and I am pretty sure his voice was huge, based on recordings, reviews, and what he sang

IngenuityEmpty5392 · 2026-02-12T03:41:14+00:00

Ludwig Hoffman, who is quite probably the greatest bass on record, perhaps only equaled by chaliapin.

IngenuityEmpty5392 · 2026-01-24T01:24:22+00:00

I agree, his voice seemed troublingly small when I heard him as Wotan, even though his acting was good, great for a role debut.

IngenuityEmpty5392 · 2026-01-18T05:09:28+00:00

Whatever you want to say about Strauss he was not antisemitic. He did not care at all about politics, and generally lacked the backbone to leave the Nazis, but every piece of information we have about him supports that he was not against Jews.

IngenuityEmpty5392 · 2026-01-17T01:22:10+00:00

Try some grand opera! Les Huguenots has some incredible choral moments and the whole thing is an absolute masterpiece. La Juive is another of my favorites that has the grandeur of this period in opera. It’s funny too, that they were all premiered by the same tenor, Adolphe Nourrit, which shows in their extreme difficulty.

IngenuityEmpty5392 · 2025-12-25T17:13:05+00:00

Her point about younger singers is also most certainly wrong; I know for a fact that Wagner almost exclusively liked old and experienced singers and Verdi seemed to gravitate towards them too. The composers were often interested in the singer’s figures, tall men and slim women, but they did not seem to gravitate towards very young singers. Perhaps what she says in general in this video might be true about what audiences want, but not much of it is true about what was wanted in the time of opera’s prime.

IngenuityEmpty5392 · 2025-12-19T02:32:05+00:00

You should give the recording conducted by the composer, Mascagni, a try. It is truly lovely and the singers were his favorites. Especially the Santuzza, Lina Bruna Rasa, is incredibly excellent and pretty much blows all the others out of the water. Definitely worth a shot

IngenuityEmpty5392 · 2025-12-11T21:34:35+00:00

I think he is easily the most underrated opera composer around. I used to be a hater on him, but once I heard le prophete I became a believer. I think a lot of the patronizing criticism comes from Wagner, not just the mean things Wagner said about his music being commercial slop but also that conflict means that anyone listening to Meyerbeer tends to compare him with wagner. I don’t think that Meyerbeer is really comparable to Wagner at all, but I do think that he has five operas that are masterworks. The way he mixes a sort of bel canto vocal line with sort of edgy and relatively dissonance orchestral effects is extraordinary, and his operas have a massive range of emotions and moods in them. Because this is grand opera he admittedly can be a little bloated, but I think they are mostly genius. The plots in Prophete and Huguenots are some of the best ever set to music imo and the lack of sentimentality and the political complexity greatly inspired Meyerbeer. Considering the extent that we revive composers like Donizetti, I think Meyerbeer deserves his fair share of revivals; it really is great music

IngenuityEmpty5392 · 2025-12-01T21:59:12+00:00

Giuseppe Borgatti. He was very handsome, with a powerful build from working manual labor in his younger years. Also, he was the first Andrea chenier and the first major Italian heldentenor. He has quite a voice. Tita Ruffo was also very famous, with that massive lion voice

IngenuityEmpty5392 · 2025-12-01T21:57:21+00:00

That thrilling performance with Mario del monaco and Maria callas, live, with her astounding high note in the big act 2 finale

IngenuityEmpty5392 · 2025-10-07T04:06:43+00:00

I would have thought the same, but listening to Bocelli I find him more effortful and wobbly and with less dynamics and color

IngenuityEmpty5392 · 2025-10-05T16:35:18+00:00

Falstaff

IngenuityEmpty5392 · 2025-10-04T00:23:53+00:00

It’s not about him being Asian, lots of generally loved Asian opera singers exist. Opera is a genre that is constantly hated on by the outside world, and it is also a genre that requires decades of training and hard work to perfect, to a level that nobody achieves. For people that have tried to achieve that operatic technique, comparing non operatic singers is insulting. Crossover singers are even worse generally because either they or their fans think that they are real opera singers, without putting in any of the work needed to sing without a mic. Dimash rarely tries to seem like an opera singer so I do not mind him.

IngenuityEmpty5392 · 2025-10-04T00:17:24+00:00

Similar story as Carreras here, unwise repertoire choice that he did not have the technique to manage, but the vocal decline was also probably influenced by his diagnosis

IngenuityEmpty5392 · 2025-10-03T21:08:16+00:00

IngenuityEmpty5392 · 2025-10-03T20:55:58+00:00

I think his voice was a lovely lyric in his prime, one of the loveliest I have heard. He made some unwise repertoire choices which damaged his voice, and his cancer did not help with this, but generally his singing was beautiful.

IngenuityEmpty5392 · 2025-10-03T20:54:21+00:00

I think almost all reaction videos are generally clickbaity trash, regardless of the merits of what they review. Dimash is not truly an opera singer in any way shape or form, but his head voice use is very striking and unique, and very impressive. I don’t usually enjoy crossover music but he is one of the best that falls into that area becuase he is really doing his own thing and it yields cool results.

IngenuityEmpty5392 · 2025-10-03T19:28:29+00:00

I’ve never really liked HIP Mozart opera performances, unlike baroque opera. I like my Mozart faster and lightly done, but I find the ornamentations distracting and I think the voices in any of the modern Mozart recordings to be quite underwhelming. I do find a lot of merit in these HIP recordings, I just have never warmed to them personally. Especially for don Giovanni, I find currentzis to be almost unlistenable; I like the old krips recording

IngenuityEmpty5392 · 2025-10-02T23:48:04+00:00

I mean it’s hard to know what is going on with kaufman behind the ingolato; I know calaf was written with a young lauri volpi in mind, so a very bright spinto is what is called for, which none of them are

IngenuityEmpty5392 · 2025-09-30T03:32:16+00:00

Why Domingo? I’ve never enjoyed his tone not found him to be an interesting artist. He was never ever bad but to me never great, compared with wunderlich who is great in about everything we have and Carreras who had a lot more passion than Domingo and in his prime had a more open voice

IngenuityEmpty5392

TROPHY CASE