Only honest answers. Open to anyone who -good for them - isn't it*lian, still any it*lian could spam it.

Other suggestions are welcomed on the tags, if someone is indecisive can put the various choices on the tags.

Honestly if an opera doesn't leave you a little bit deranged was it even a good opera.

Is the brooding jester painting even about Rigoletto or did everyone just wake up one day and decide to assign it to him?

A 110% Shameless Iestyn Davies Appreciation Post

Feat. Glyndebourne's Saul (2015) and Bayerische Staatsoper's Agrippina (2019)

BONUS to prove he's actually very chill and can smile:

just dreamt of working at an italian opera themed restaurant called Largo al Factotum and customers were just like "uhhhh can I get a cavaradossi steak with fries"

floria tosca

Opera stream alert!!

What? Das Rheingold, the Copenhagen production

Time? 6th march 19.00 CET

English subs? Yes!

Naked man in aquarium? Yes! You will see his dongdong and everything!

Who is welcome? Everyone and anyone, as long as you're polite. :)

I saw this production when I was a teenager, it was.... a formative experience. Rewatching it was superfun. You will get mad scientists, Albrecht turns into a marshmallow, Wotan is a bit too much into torture, and these people really shouldve made sure they had the funds to build their house before contracting some guys to build it.

Also taking potshots at Wagner is welcomed and appreciated. I'm all for getting new reasons to hate the guy.

EDIT: forgot to add kosmilink

Hey operablr, I need your recs.

Recently @smile-at-the-stars and @revedebeatrice harassed me about Andrea Chenier so much I finally dedicated myself to it, and listened to 6 different productions in about a week. It proved a very successful way to finally click with an opera that had eluded me and help me discover some recordings I'm excited to return to.

So, now I'm going to try the same thing with Otello! So far, this is what I have saved on my Spotify to try.

Drop me some more Otellos to try! But keep in mind there are some singers I just do. not. like. This means, you can recommend recordings with, say, Pavarotti or Tebaldi all day, but the chances of me listening to them hover somewhere between no and absolutely not.

In honor of orchestra week for Cavalleria, have a thing. I made this diagram of the similarities between our current and previous performances for my chorus Facebook group and I keep forgetting to post it for operablr, the other group of people I know that might appreciate the humor! (The chorus did -- I got a lot of compliments on and off Facebook)

I think it mainly tells us that a) opera composers tend to draw on the same types of numbers for choruses to sing and b) opera runs largely on tenors not having their shit together. Tenors, man.

The audience should be allowed to mosh during “Le veau d’or” in Gounod’s Faust

If you ever think that you're stupid, please remember that the first time I listened to Largo al Factotum from "The Barber of Seville", I commented "hey idk why but I think Figaro would get along great with Susanna from Nozze, pity she already has a husband tho".

Susanna.

From "Le Nozze di Figaro".

The person Figaro is supposed to be marrying.

I FICCED AGAIN. But this definitely requires some explanation.

Simply put, I am a huge nerd. I'm in a huge phase of a) adoring the music of Handel and b) adoring the skill of countertenor Iestyn Davies, and so a while back I wrote a thing about the sweet triad of Rodelinda (queen), Bertarido (her king/husband, incorrectly thought dead) and Unolfo (Bertarido's still-loyal counsellor). Davies has played both Unolfo - in the 2011 Met production of Rodelinda that informed that first fic - and Bertarido, as I heard him do at Carnegie Hall just last week and in several other productions.

The images above are from him playing Bertarido in an English National Opera (ENO) production from 2014. If anyone out there happens to know if a video of this show exists, I will literally kill for it. And here is a little fangirl take on the sheer awfulness that exists at the heart of this opera, regardless of its happy ending. Massive thanks, as ever, to @agarthanguide for being my best enabler.

Unolfo’s blood is drying on his palm, tacky, heavy as mercury. Bertarido closes his fist, and the tide crashes in. Gundeberto had always been the soldier of the three of them. His brother the king, The Avaricious; the crude hacker of limbs, the bloodletter. Eduige, stern and straight-backed, was more suited to politics, the game of shadows and false appearances. Bertarido had always felt himself the one left over, the reluctant ruler, the Platonic striver after moderation. Gundeberto had died as he lived, gasping and cackling through the blood in his mouth, while Bertarido had been swept away from him on the battlefield and left for lost as the corpses rotted and stank. Passive. Weak. Concerned overmuch with virtue. These epithets have followed him all his life. I shall string their guts along my gates, he thinks, and the words become fire within him as he stares at his trembling hand. Unolfo, his dearest counsellor, his only loyal friend. He had been warm to Bertarido’s touch when the wayward knife slipped between his ribs, his blood quickened, Bertarido now knows, by the excited hope of saving his sovereign. His own name, splattered across Unolfo’s shoulders, has been tainted by the dark fears that had grown around Bertarido in his prison, in the filthy, festering dungeon of his enemies’ making. They have done this. Bertarido whispers it to himself as he stalks through the palace, striding from shadow to shadow, his vision narrowing and swimming at its edges. He has spent months railing against fate, against fortuna, against unshaped forces he has until now believed ruled his destiny as it was sadly cut short. He believes that no longer. Them. Grimoaldo, the tottering, frightened, pathetic usurper. Garibaldo, the true cruelty behind the false king, shorn of principles, delighting in misery. He puts names to previously blank faces. These men, these horrors, are real. It was not Fortuna who put a knife to the throat of Bertarido’s son, who oppressed his cabinet and ignored his people. Who has done God only knows what to his wife. Bertarido nearly stumbles, his breath caught in his throat. The pain rises, choking, and he clutches at a nearby doorframe as he lets out a dry retch, wracked into immobility for a brief moment of his rampage. They must die. The words swim through him so naturally that, were he not so overwhelmed, he would chastise himself. Mercy be damned. Until this moment, sweet, melancholy daydreams of what should have been have always risen to the forefront of his thoughts. Rodelinda, resplendent, smiling gently, maternal, catching his eye in a flash of passion as Flavio, dutiful and strong, nods to him. Unolfo hovering, immaculate as ever, promising and providing stability. His mind reaches, grasps – but it is gone, the peaceful world of his past shattered. Bertarido takes in a sharp breath, and something within him mocks all his hopes; mocks the very idea that it could ever have been thus again, what with everything that has happened in between. His bare, torn feet have somehow known where to take him. He stands back at the threshold of the dungeon, staring at the cooling pool of blood where Unolfo had so recently lain. Someone else has been here since – he can see other footprints on the grimy floor – but he cares not to speculate on who it might have been. Bertarido leans down; hefts the sword that was so recently pressed with glee against his own chest, the absurd weight of it. They will pay for what they have taken from me. His God is a forgiving one, he has been told. He turns away to seek his quarry, and sets out to put his reputation to rest.

Hi! Do you like operas? Do you like discord servers? Well i have some good news for you!

Anyone who's interested is free to join. You don't have to be an opera expert or anything, because i certainly am not. It's a very new server so i'm still setting up some things, but i do hope to see some members! Cheers.

oh and it'd be great if you could reblog this so more people see it. But only if you want to

Invite link expires on march 24th, 2024. Just dm me if you want a new link after that date!