|
Post by hifidez on Jan 13, 2016 14:53:07 GMT
Michael Nyman you can file under 'Weird'. You can file Ute Lemper under 'Weird' too. Put the two together and it's fabulous. Rabbit... what can you tell me about this song? What makes it sound so unusual and yet beautifully musical? Apart from recognising a word or two from this song (well, two actually) I don't understand German... but this can almost bring me to the edge of tears.
I have the details of my CD version of this... pm me. I'll send the details to you.
|
|
Rabbit
Administrator
Posts: 7,087
|
Post by Rabbit on Jan 13, 2016 15:03:35 GMT
Derek. I LOVE that track. I have the album somewhere. She has an amazing voice that for some reason sounds slightly 'Germanic' to me. It's not just the language.
One reason it sounds 'odd' is that Michael Nyman's band isn't exactly yer standard band. Wailing saxes going on in an aria type of music. It's in what we call a dorian mode, but there are some strange notes or 'out of key' notes in there which distupts the sense of a key base. It kind of allows the music to float without a teally strong key to hold it together.
It uses patterns in the backing to hold it together and has some really amazing contrasts of timbre and tempos that suddenly lift it and get it into another 'plane'. Phrase lengths and time signatures also vary a lot. There's a shot of Michael counting it out with his mouth, so he looks like he's really concentrating. All that stuff makes it sound like it's not really strongly based on a key and is kind of 'free', almost like she's speaking sometimes, like what we call recitative in opera.
What an amazing piece of music. Her voice is staggering. Wide range as well.
|
|
|
Post by hifidez on Jan 13, 2016 15:14:14 GMT
Derek. I LOVE that track. I have the album somewhere. She has an amazing voice that for some reason sounds slightly 'Germanic' to me. One reason it sounds 'odd' is that Michael Nyman's band isn't exactly yer standard band. Wailing saxes going on in an aria type of music. It's in what we call a minor key, but there are some strange notes or 'out of key' notes in there which distupts the sense of a key base. It kind of allows the music to float without a teally strong key to hold it together. What an amazing piece of music. Yes, my pre-O level music did allow me to recognise the sound of a minor key... I score 1 point ! Are there unexpected key changes? The tune goes nicely somewhere you didn't expect. Which is something I always enjoy :-) And isn't she gorgeous? There are plenty of talented people in the world... there are plenty of beautiful people in the world. Some individuals are so damn' fortunate in that they have both of these characteristics.
|
|
Rabbit
Administrator
Posts: 7,087
|
Post by Rabbit on Jan 13, 2016 15:24:22 GMT
Yes, it does suddenly shift 'tonal base' instead of what we refer to as changing key. It kind of gives 'humps' of sound that get higher in pitch as it progresses so that gives it its musical shape. She build up to a higher pitch and then kt drops down but not as low as the part before so the piece sounds as though it's climbing in this random kind of way. It's a great piece. I do like Michael Nyman's work. Minimalism. I firat heard his stuff in a film called, 'The Cook, The Thief and The Lover' I think it was called. He had his own touring band and I met his pianist. He certainly knew how to choose them.
|
|
Rabbit
Administrator
Posts: 7,087
|
Post by Rabbit on Jan 13, 2016 15:30:38 GMT
I was once booked to do the oboe for Madame Butterfly. It was this single opera that gave me a love for Puccini and His realismo style. The idea that the opera should reflect real life and emotions. So all of his heroines and heros die of real things that the audience would connect with. Gorgeous operas. Mimi dies of consumption. Madame Butterfly kills herself because of her boyfriend betraying her, and Tosca where a nasty twist happens when a supposed execution happens. Supposed to be fake, but it's real.
The biggest problem for me though, is when Butterfly dies, I actually couldn't play. It is unbelievably sad. In another opera, Tosca, when the executioner's rifles go off, I couldn't play because I knew that they had killed him whereas Tosca thought it was a sham.
Here, the hero contemplates his death .......
I saw Placido Domingo at the Royal Opera house. He got into trouble for his accent. He had a heroine who was 'quite nice' and he told her that she had 'nice asss'.
As in ... Ju hab nice assss. (That's an attempt at his accent.)
She smacked his face and he had not one idea what was going on. It turned out that she thought he'd said, 'You have a nice arse!!!!'
|
|
Rabbit
Administrator
Posts: 7,087
|
Post by Rabbit on Jan 13, 2016 15:39:35 GMT
And poor Pagliacci, whose wife has been having an affair......
My Dad loved Mario Lanza and every time I hear him, I think of Dad.
|
|
Rabbit
Administrator
Posts: 7,087
|
Post by Rabbit on Jan 13, 2016 15:42:54 GMT
Sad Madame Butterfly believing that her American boyfriend will return and meet his baby boy ....
I found this just impossible to finish when playing it.
|
|
Rabbit
Administrator
Posts: 7,087
|
Post by Rabbit on Jan 13, 2016 15:45:08 GMT
Mimi meets her boyfriend only to die later from consumption.
|
|
Rabbit
Administrator
Posts: 7,087
|
Post by Rabbit on Jan 13, 2016 15:48:55 GMT
Rodolpho draws the curtains for MImi to sleep and when he turns round, she's died and he screams out her name.
While I was at the college, I could regularly go to the Royal Opera House cheap as a student and also see dress rehearsals, so I got to see Joan Sutherland, Placido Domingo and at one point, Pavarotti.
|
|
|
Post by deireleire on Jan 13, 2016 22:02:35 GMT
I love opera but i can't help to prefer french opera's, i think it's because i can understand what there singing. Although Mozart's Zauberflöte is one of my favorites.
|
|
Rabbit
Administrator
Posts: 7,087
|
Post by Rabbit on Jan 13, 2016 22:09:01 GMT
Opera is challenging and it's important to know the story and what is happening before attempting to listen. Not quite as important with Puccini though. His music is lyrical to the extreme.
I know Bizet, but what other French composers do you listen to?
I love Ravel.
Oh ...
And the great Poulenc.
|
|
|
Post by musicman on Jan 14, 2016 3:41:05 GMT
Wow, the Oboe has always been one of my favorite instruments, has such emotion, kind of stirs the soul. When I was a youngster, hated opera, until I found out that some of my favorite pieces were from them, like Clare De Lune, and all time favorite Nessum Dorma. Tags kids put on things to be cool. Yikes, I can remember my dad singing some of Mario Lanza's songs when I was younger. Time sure flies.
|
|
Rabbit
Administrator
Posts: 7,087
|
Post by Rabbit on Jan 14, 2016 6:21:26 GMT
Hi Musicman. Was 'Clare de Lune' used in an opera? Originally it was a piano piece by Debussy. I learned part of it on the piano. The oboe is a difficult instrument to play. When you start plaing, it sounds like a bagpipe and you have a lifelong battle with reeds. In favt, you become obsessed with them. I learned how to make them myself, but they were never as good as ones that I could buy. Also, it has a natural tendency to be loud at the bortom end and quiet at the top. That means that it is difficult to play quietly in the lower register. There aee some composers though, that write passages, particularly for second onoe players in that low register and mark it up as quiet because it's underneath the first obo melody very often. Sibelius is one and on occasions, Dvorak is another. As a kid, I'd make special reefs that were easy to blow for those passages and I'd change the reed in the middle of a piece to do it, because if they're too soft, they won't play up high very well. Such a crude instrument really. Related to the chnter in bagpipes! You're right about time flying. Lanza always makes me think of my Dad. He was a populatist and basically tried to bring opera to the 'masses'. It has always been expensive to see. That example I put up of Pagliacci isn't like the original. It's been tarted up and modernised for modern film hoers, but it did actually probide poorer people at the time with an 'opera' experience. I just thought people on DIYAH might relate to it better. The lovely thing about opera is that it tells intricate stories with intense emotion. It's been around for a long time nd did evolve over Western history starting with people like Monteverdi. At the same time, what music is was also developing so opera kimd of grew alongside the development of music, whereas things like symphonies amd concertos were really part of what we refer to as the Classical era. (Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven) later people did write them, but the composers that followed, in the Romantic period almost rebelled against the format of the symphony so it became less popular. Opera goes through the entire history if Western music from around the 1600s. I've often been asked why opera singers sing with that kind of voice and why are they mostly fat!!! That voice sound carries and so is powerful enough to be heard over an orchestra and by an audience without a microphone. They are fat because most opera singers don't hit their prime until they're older. (And fatter) If they start too early, they can actually damage their voice. Before I get more complaints ...... I'll move this stuff into its own thread since this is 'Currently Listening to
|
|
|
Post by deireleire on Jan 14, 2016 7:29:04 GMT
I listen to "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" (even went to see it in a movie theater, but do not recommend it), lakme, romeo et julliet. I started off from a compilation called "The Best Opera Album in the World... Ever!" , don't know anyone who likes opera, my wife doesn't appreciate it
|
|
Rabbit
Administrator
Posts: 7,087
|
Post by Rabbit on Jan 14, 2016 8:05:30 GMT
Imo, the best way into opera is Puccini. La Boheme would have your wife in floods of tears if she knows one thing ....
Consumption in the days when Puccini wrote it was real. Like some cancers nowadays, they couldn't cure it. So the effect of Mimi passing away slowly at the end iwould have been a shock to the audience. That shock still remains in how Rodolpho discovers it.
Rodolpho and Mimi have met and split up after a row. As soon as he discovers she's ill, he rushes to her and tries to look after her. He goes to the curtains to draw them for her to sleep and when he turns around, he sees her, dead. It's truly disturbing.
It also helps enormously to have the libretto or words so you can see what they're saying it makes so much more sense that way.
If she'd like a story about a shit head in the Navy and his dealings with a Japanese hirl, the Madame Butterfly is devastating. It's a real girlie story. I really can't play at the ending section. In covent garden years back, it affected me enormously when Mimi decided to kill herself because of Japanese culture and the shame of having an illegitimate child. She went behind a Japanese screen and they lit it from the back so she was in sihouette. When she stabbed herself, you saw it as a shadow play and then she fell into the screen which came crashing down with her, while the orchestra blurted out a Japanese thpe of theme as loud as they could. It was really shocking. Even thinking about it makes me wobbly.
Tosca is another love story and is political as well. You would never forget the guns that shoot him at the end. The rifle cracks just go through you if you follow the story.
Then there's his wonderful Japanese folk story - Turandot. Fantasy and eastern culture. Massive orchestra. Nessun Dorma. That means 'no one sleeps'. The hero has taken a challenge which if he loses, his head will be chopped off. The task is to guess Turandot's name and then the winner can marry her. Losers are executed. No one sleeps because he's searching for a name.
(Avtually, with recent happenings on here, that sounds familiar to me!!)
Comedy in Gianni Schicchi. Funny story with again romance.
Puccini is glorious. I love his music big time. Listening is brilliant. Playing can be difficult due to the intensity of emotion. You must have the libretto though and the twists in the stories with the drama will have you on the edge of your seat.
Extremely powerful music. The style is called 'verismo' which is about being true to life. Depicting realism and realy types of people so that the audience closely identifies with the heros unlike earlier opera which tended to be about rich people or unrelated people that the audience didn't really identify with. The key is in the closeness of the characters to real life. Once you identify with them, then their end is a complete tragedy for real.
|
|