June 6th, 2011 7:51 pm
A composer is a fellow who writes music. An opera composer is a fellow who writes opera music. In opera, the composer is the main guy. He is viewed as the sole author of his operas. That’s because in opera the music is EVERYTHING – characters, action, scenery, the rage of the elements, etc.
For instance. There was once a play by Victor Hugo, a nineteenth century French playwright, titled “The King’s Amusements.” It was about this medieval French King, Francois the First, who made it a habit to seduce other people’s wives (and/or innocent daughters) and then abandon them. Those who disagreed with this mode of action ran the risk of having their heads chopped off. He was a hell of a guy. The story revolves around Francois’s jester, Tribulett, and his beautiful daughter, whom the king seduced. The jester swore to take revenge on his king. Strong stuff.
Now this composer fellow, Giuseppe Verdi, an Italian, read the story and liked it. He thought there was just about enough dramatic material in it to make a good opera. So he asked his librettist, a fellow called Piave, to rewrite it as an opera libretto. Piave did. There was a problem with the story not being politically correct (in those days, it was called, simply, censorship), so Piave had to make some changes, moving the story away from the French throne and closer to home. He turned the French king into an Italian duke. He changed the lead character’s name from Tribulett to Rigoletto. And so forth.
After that, Verdi composed the music.
If you look at any opera program today, you’ll see that “Rigoletto” is an opera by Giuseppe Verdi. Not Verdi and Hugo, or Verdi and Piave. Just Verdi. That’s fair. In opera, the music is really EVERYTHING.
Download Ricardo’s astounding “Getting Opera – become an opera expert in less than three hours,” a unique audio guide.
Ricardo is also the author of fiction and non-fiction books, among them “A Fat Girl’s Guide to Thinness and Happiness,” “Jenna Jameson: the Robber Chief,” “The Kept Women of New Orleans,” “In Bed with the President,” and others. All of his books are available on the Mighty Niche Books company site.
Händel Opera Amadigi di Gaula Aria ”Ah’ spietato, e non ti move” HWV11 by Sandrine Piau
|
|
Soprano Warbles 1893 Photo Mugs A lady singer belts out an aria. She holds the libretto (song sheet) in her hand just in case she forgets the words. …. |
|
|
Ambroise Thomas – Hamlet – Barcelona Opera $13.30 DESSAY, N/DE BILLY, B – THOMAS: HAMLET… |
|
|
Parade (1998 Original Broadway Cast) $6.83 The big winners at the 1999 Tony Awards were revivals or old dance numbers recycled into new shows. Yet earning the most nominations, nine (and taking home two awards, for book and original score), was an honest-to-goodness new American musical by a young American composer-lyricist, Jason Robert Brown (who was 28 when the show premiered at Lincoln Center in December 1998 and was best known for hi… |
|
|
Verdi – Rigoletto / Sutherland, Pavarotti, Milnes, LSO, Bonynge $21.74 No Description Available.Genre: Classical MusicMedia Format: Compact DiskRating: Release Date: 1-JAN-2002… |
|
|
Puccini – La Bohème / Severini, Pavarotti, Freni, San Francisco Opera [VHS] $9.00 In 1989 when this production was taped, Luciano Pavarotti and Mirella Freni had already enjoyed long, distinguished careers. In other words, they were considerably older than La Bohème’s romantic young couple, Mimi and Rodolfo. If you find this consideration important, it might be wise to skip this Bohème and invest instead in the bright, youthful, and energetic Sydney Opera production or t… |
|
|
La Serva Padrona [VHS] $19.98 Music: Giovanni Battista Pergolesi Comic Opera (Intermezzo) in two acts Libretto by Gennaro Antonio Federico The Rome Philharmonic Orchestra Conducted by Franco Ferrara Serpina, Anna Moffo, soprano Uberto, Paolo Montarsolo, bass Giancarlo Cobelli, mute (mime) Anna Moffo, the renowned Metropolitan Opera star, is at her most charming, and in brilliant voice in this historic 1958 film of Pergolesi… |
|
|
Verdi: Il Trovatore – Part 1 [VHS] The grandeur of the Arena Di Verona is the superb setting for Il Travatore – one of Verdi’s greatest masterpieces and truly a singer’s opera. In this production Rosalind Plowright, the great British soprano, makes her Verona debut in which she is joined by Giorgio Zancanaro’s strong portrayal of the count and Franco Bonisolli’s fine singing of Manrico, the troubadour. Il Travatore is irresistible … |
|
|
Gilbert & Sullivan: The Mikado $6.54 Jonathan Miller set his well-known production of The Mikado, staged for the English National Opera, in a British seaside resort of the 1920s. The result, complete with a chorus of gentlemen of Japan as cartoon-like British peers, emphatically underscores the Englishness of the satire. The occasional non sequiturs, like a bunch of gentry dressed for Ascot and singing in Japanese, are loonily f… |
|
|
Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier $22.31 After the tonality-stretching dissonance of Salome and especially Elektra, Richard Strauss moved onto a different musical path with his next opera. The epic grandeur of Der Rosenkavalier stems not just from its immense length (over three hours) but from the all-too-human complexity of its characters–each of whom is smitten with someone else–and the endless stream of graceful melodies the co… |
|
|
The Ring Disc: An Interactive Guide to Wagners Ring Cycle (Solti, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra) $80.00 Richard Wagner’s entire “Ring of the Nibelungen” on one CD-ROM. The definitive Vienna Philharmonic recording, Sir Georg Solti conducting. * Complete piano-vocal score, German libretto with English translation, and running commentary-all synchronized to the music. * All 14.5 hours of pristine digitized sound captured by The Media Café’s new audio compression technology. * More tha… |
Tags: libretti, libretto, music, opera, opera libretto, opera libretto translations online, opera librettos english, opera librettos in english, opera librettos translations, reference