Opera: The Extravagant Art discussion

Just listened to a fine performance of Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette on France Musique:

https://www.radiofrance.fr/francemusi...

Review of the production here:

https://operawire.com/opera-national-...

Owing to enterprising companies such as Australia’s Pinchgut Opera, I’ve been getting the chance to hear a lot of long-buried Baroque operas, such as Giovanni Legrenzi’s 1683 Giustino, fresh and spirited:

https://www.abc.net.au/classic/progra...

My reaction to George Benjamin’s Picture a Day Like This was about the same as to Gyorgy Kurtag’s Fin de partie - I was far from bowled over, in fact a little underwhelmed, but I was listening without a libretto and would give the piece another try.

https://www.radiofrance.fr/francemusi...

When one hears the phrase “19th Century oratorio”, the immediate reaction is apt to be “solemn and a little dull”; yet Mendelssohn’s long and seldom performed Paulus is dark and dramatic, not the least bit dull.

https://www.rte.ie/radio/lyricfm/oper...

Ferenc Erkel is the Hungarian Verdi, pretty much, so if you enjoy the one…

Hunyadi Laszlo, like Erkel’s better-known Bánk bán, is a fine example of the sort of nationalist opera that virtually every European nation spawned in the late 19th Century.

https://operavision.eu/performance/hu...

I’ve been listening on Spotify to the classic 1976 recording of Meyerbeer’s extraordinary Le prophète, with a cast for the ages - Marilyn Horne, James McCracken, Renata Scotto, and Jerome Hines. That this great opera and others by Meyerbeer are not staged more often must be attributed to the huge, indeed Wagnerian cost of putting together adequate casts and stagings. Meyerbeer doesn’t draw like Wagner and Verdi, and has to be carefully marketed.