Hello,as I mentioned earlier, not only am I highly interested in and deeply passionate about history, my other great love is for opera. Although this blog will be mainly dedicated to publications of historical research I've been doing in my spare time, every now and then I'll be publishing some opera-related material.
Even though I've been listening to opera for about 10 years as of now, until now, I still can't understand why some people listen to the same old arias, duets and ensembles sung over and over again. These people claim that there's something different if there are different singers singing them but honestly, how different can it get? Okay, I understand that some singers take liberties with the notes, omitting some, raising the pitch and so on..but the words will always be the same. It's true that there are different styles of singing but if everyone's singing the same song, how different can a Russian singer be from a French singer? They might be using different ways to produce the sound but the sound that comes out is more or less the same. As for the music, no matter how inventive or radical a conductor might be, he can't stray too much from the music or else he will be performing his music rather than interpreting the composer's music. Toscanini and Furtwanger might have different styles of conducting but essentially, their performance of the same piece has to sound the same.
Could these people be so accustomed to their comfort zone of the arias, duets and ensembles they've been listening to for decades that they're hesitant to venture out. They know all the popular operas by heart, plot, music, libretti and all. If they hear of an opera they've not listened to before that was performed centuries ago, they feel that this opera must have fallen out of the repertoire so there's not much worth listening to it. What I hope to do is change this perception. I have to admit that some of the rarer and more obscure operas I've listened to deserve to fall out of the repertoire like Spontini's La Vestale and Gretry's Richard, Le Coeur de Lion but even then, though the opera as a whole doesn't have much to offer, there's still something worth listening in it. I hope to try as many of these rarer and more obscure operas as I can so that I can sieve out all the highlights in order for them not to be written off completely.
Besides,I'm also hoping to use the blog to put up highlights and extracts from genres of opera that aren't as popular as others. I do listen to the popular ones like Verdi, Wagner and so on but my heart lies more with the less popular ones like Rossini, bel canto, operetta, zarzuela and so on..
Verdi, Wagner and so on will never die out in the opera house, they're being performed all over the world and will be for decades to come so long as the opera house remains a place where high society can show off how ''sophisticated'' and ''civilized'' they are. However, it's a different story for the other genres of opera. Most people know this side of opera, the side where the most popular ones are but do they know the other side of it, the side with the less popular ones? Let me give an example of this: everybody knows Pavarotti for belching out the Neapolitan songs on stage but do they know him for his performance in ''La Fille du Regiment'' which gave him his big break. Only the opera diehards, I suppose. It's this lack of attention given to and awareness of this less popular side of opera, the side which lies truer to my heart, that makes me want to show it to others on my blog.
The last thing I'd like to do on my blog is to trace the history of opera singing. This is something I'm not as passionate about or interested in but this is something I hope to change as time goes by.
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