Opera!

[Rum]

Tried and tried to love it, or at least enjoy it, but apart from a few arias and the like I cant.

Any tips or is it just shit?

[JimC]

Never got into it.

But then, I am an uncultured antipodean...

[piscator]

The voice is an instrument that is played. For fun, think of the voice as another instrument, like a violin or cello, or piano or electric guitar with hella sustain and tremolo (and vice versa).
Learn a chromatic scale with your own voice. When you can do that, you won't need this thread.

[JimC]

Somewhere on this thread, the fat lady will sing...

[PsychoSerenity]

I think opera can be ok, but most of it needs more electric guitar. And Freddie Mercury.

[Rum]

Somewhere on this thread, the fat lady will sing...

The thread won't be over 'til she does!

[laklak]

If you see a good company perform live it's magic.

[pErvinalia]

Like all theatrey stuff, can't think of much worse to do of an evening.

[Hermit]

If you see a good company perform live it's magic.

Does not work for me. I have listened to Joan Sutherland and Kiri Te Kanawa at the Sydney Opera House. Though I cannot recall in whose company they performed, I trust that neither would appear with any other than top notch professionals at that stage (oops) of their respective careers. The works themselves left me somewhere between bored to irritated, and that is coming from someone whose listening habits range between Hildegard von Bingen and Shostakovich 90% of the time.

For sure, excerpts can be enjoyable, engaging and moving, among them Puccini's Flower Duet, but you won't find me listening to the entirety of Madama Butterfly again, not even live, and I will not ever voluntarily go to listen to an opera by Verdi or Rossini. There might be just enough money in the world to bribe me into listening to The Marriage of Figaro, though, especially if la Stupenda could be revived.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

I like Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach. It's "technically" an opera - but with weird random speaking instead of all that squawking.

I quite like some of Stravinsky's operatic moments too. Oedipus Rex is pretty good.

And Wagner wold be good if you cut out about 80% of each opera and just left the good bits. Actually, that's true of most opera IMO.

[Hermit]

Tried and tried to love it, or at least enjoy it, but apart from a few arias and the like I cant.

Any tips or is it just shit?

Sorry, Rum, in my previous posts I forgot that you were asking a question. No, I don't have any tips beyond appreciating the sheer virtuosity of technique and the beauty of voice. And opera is not "just shit". Some people just have a taste for it rather than, say, baroque cantatas or Schubert Lieder, just like others prefer Zappa to led Zeppelin. Also, I suspect a lot of people go to the opera because that is the right place to be seen if one wants to be accepted as the elite of the establishment. The number of people who can't suppress yawning or even nod off during the performance is a bit of a giveaway.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

The voice is an instrument that is played.

I think that is where opera (and most classical vocal music) leaves me cold. The voice is far more than merely another instrument. It is a communication device that conveys emotion and character, along with merely words and notes. In my onion (and feel free to disagree), classically trained singers have that emotion and character trained out of them. They are taught to reproduce the notes, vibrato, volume, etc. in the score to such a degree of perfection that there is no room for individuality.

I am sure that it is due to my lack of interest, but I find it pretty much impossible to recognise the voice of any individual soprano. While I could spot Sandy Denny, Kate Bush, Björk or Siouxsie's voice from a couple of notes, I would be hard pressed to tell Kiri Te Kanawa from Nellie Melba from Maria Callas.

Pretty much the only classical vocals I enjoy are choral.

[piscator]

The voice is an instrument that is played.

I think that is where opera (and most classical vocal music) leaves me cold. The voice is far more than merely another instrument. It is a communication device that conveys emotion and character, along with merely words and notes. In my onion (and feel free to disagree), classically trained singers have that emotion and character trained out of them. They are taught to reproduce the notes, vibrato, volume, etc. in the score to such a degree of perfection that there is no room for individuality.

I am sure that it is due to my lack of interest, but I find it pretty much impossible to recognise the voice of any individual soprano. While I could spot Sandy Denny, Kate Bush, Björk or Siouxsie's voice from a couple of notes, I would be hard pressed to tell Kiri Te Kanawa from Nellie Melba from Maria Callas.

Pretty much the only classical vocals I enjoy are choral.

You have to reach out to opera nowadays. You don't hear it much in the street or cafes anymore, but it's really something when a good soloist cuts loose.

Listen to something you like and know, say the 4th movement of Beethoven's 9th or the "L'amour" from Carmen, covered by different singers and conductors [and loud...Maria Callas could literally shatter glass]. There's a huge difference.

Also, a lot of historic opera was self-consciously written to be "Lofty" or address grand themes, or to put a sound to an emotion or other subjective like, "Tragedy". And there's the matter of being able to sing above a full orchestra, forte, which sort of constrained composers to what a superhuman can do in that situation without busting too many veins. Newer stuff doesn't have quite those restraints, and has benefit of a lot more musical history, like, say, Dave Brubeck...

[Damn the low res]

[Xamonas Chegwé]

You have to reach out to opera nowadays. You don't hear it much in the street or cafes anymore, but it's really something when a good soloist cuts loose.

Oddly, while I am a huge fan of female vocals in the rock genre, I find more character and feeling in male, operatic voices. It tends to be the women that put me off opera!

Listen to something you like and know, say the 4th movement of Beethoven's 9th or the Habanera from Carmen, covered by different singers and conductors. There's a huge difference.

There is a difference. However, I would dispute anyone that claimed it was anything like as different as between Joni and Janis, or Björk and PJ Harvey.

Also, a lot of classic opera was self-consciously written to be "Lofty" or address grand themes, or to put a sound to an emotion or other subjective like, "Tragedy".

But that sound is put there by the composer, not the individual soloist. Show me an opera where there is as much variation in performance as between the Billie Holliday and Tori Amos' versions of Strange Fruit?

And there's the matter of being able to sing above a full orchestra, forte, which sort of constrained composers to what a superhuman can do in that situation without busting too many veins. Newer stuff doesn't have quite those restraints...

This is a very valid point. Before the advent of microphones and amplification, it was necessary to sing in a certain way in order to maintain volume and not damage the chords. However, that does not completely explain the uniformity of operatic voices - tradition plays a huge part in that.

Oh, and referencing Lloyd-Webber is the music debate version of Godwin's Law!

[piscator]

Summer 1980 I played in a road production of JCSS several nights/week + matinees for 3 months. Mic'd drums, horns, black mass choir, light show... Spanish acoustic/Gibson Jesus was Michael B., who taught jazz at Jackson State, I was Fender Judas, and played a Hummingbird for the steel string parts, and my HS team keeper Chester O., who is still the most electrifying blues guitar player I've ever heard, played his J-bass and got ready to start studying guitar at Berklee, where he was accepted. I was 18, on the road with 2 black jazz cats who could play circles around me, and to top it off I still called myself Catholic. Life was fkn good, and AL-W had a big part in that...