What is your favourite Opera, Veeky Forums?
Favourite Opera
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Carmen
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So far, La Traviata.
Verdi does some good ones if were talking about grand opera.
The Yeomen of the Guard is probably the best English opera (it isnt a grand opera, but it isnt an operetta or musical comedy either)
I'm adding to my post to keep the thread alive and discuss why I like Yeomen so much.
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I'll start with some of my favorite songs, this one is probably my most favorite. The character singing is Colonel Fairfax, who isn't really the "main" character so to speak, since there aren't any, but he's one of the most important ones. He's sentenced to death for supposed witchcraft because of inheritance politics and the associated intrigue, and when some of his friends who work in the Tower of London (where he is being kept) he consoles them about his impending death (or so they think) by saying that he doesn't really mind it too much. The song itself is probably one of the most beautiful instances of the English language set to music, it flows even better than Italian here.
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This song is the superstitious and plain old Dame Carruthers singing the praises and history of the Tower of London with the Yeomen Warders. It reveals something of a bloodthirsty side to her character and it helps establish a bit of the oppressive atmosphere of the tower itself, giving it context in the way that it looms over everyone like a cloud of death. It's basically a character of its own. Also it's a contralto number and there aren't enough of those.
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This quartet requires a bit of context. Jack Point (the Jester) is in love with his partner Elsie who is in love with Colonel Fairfax who escaped execution disguised as Leonard Meryll, the brother of the the other woman (Phoebe Meryll) who is in love with Fairfax and knows that it's him because she helped bust him out of prison. Jack wanted Leonard to help him woo Elsie so that they could be married, but Fairfax had different plans.
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The opera is made in its final scene, where the happy ending is brought on its head when one thinks of everyone losing out
This or the Rape of Lucretia
Really the opera was something of a reversal of most operettas and comic operas at the time, which would start light, become tragic, and then everything is sorted out in a wedding where everybody is married.
Yeomen starts grim, becomes light hearted but also confused, and at the ending nobody ends up with the partner they want (sometimes even becoming betrothed to people they loathe in the case of Phoebe) except for Elsie and Fairfax.
There is some debate over whether Jack Point is supposed to die at the end of Yeomen. The libretto only instructs him to "fall insensible" but many performers who worked with W.S. Gilbert (notably Henry A. Lytton) said that when asking, Gilbert had intended for Point to die, but the original actor (George Grossmith) was too much of an established comedian for it to work in a way that the audience took it seriously. Many of the actors playing Point on tour took the liberty to have him die, which made it so that the London audiences saw what may have been a completely different opera from what the others saw.
The Magic Flute, Pirates of Penzance, Nixon in China, Einstein on the Beach and HMS Pinafore are all my favorites.