Five Perfect Operas (Mozart excluded)

[Florestan]

My list:

Il matrimonio segreto

Il barbiere di Siviglia

Lucia di Lammermoor

La sonnambula

Carmen

Your turn.

[hopefullytrusting]

Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle (easily, in my opinion, far and away, the goat opera)
Berlioz's Les Troyens
Massenet's Esclarmonde
Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov (original)
Rameau's Les Indes Galantes

[Cato]

In alphabetical order by composer:

Busoni: Doctor Faustus

Hindemith: Cardillac

Rimsky-Korsakov: The Invisible City of Kitezh

Schoenberg: Moses und Aron

Richard Strauss: Elektra

* Honorable mention: Schoenberg: Erwartung (which he called a Monodrama, so maybe...not an opera?)

[hopefullytrusting]

Schoenberg: Moses und Aron

Oh, this one completely slipped my mind. So good.

[San Antone]

Verdi Rigoletto
Puccini La bohémé
Debussy Pelléas et Mélisande
Monteverdi L'Orfeo / Purcell Dido and Aeneas (tie)
Verdi La traviata

[Kalevala]

Verdi Don Carlo
Puccini La Bohème
Donizetti Lucia di Lammermoor
Verdi Aida
R. Strauss Der Rosenkavalier

K.

[Lisztianwagner]

Wagner Tristan und Isolde
Beethoven Fidelio
Berg Wozzeck
Zemlinsky Der Zwerg
Janáček Jenufa

[Christo]

Janáček, Jenufa
Respighi, La Fiamma
Berg, Wozzeck
Barber, Vanessa
Vaughan Williams, The Pilgrim's Progress

[JBS]

Bellini Norma
Britten Peter Grimes
Handel Ariodante
Puccini La Fanciulla del West
Verdi Falstaff

[Kalevala]

Verdi Rigoletto
Puccini La bohémé
Debussy Pelléas et Mélisande
Monteverdi L'Orfeo / Purcell Dido and Aeneas (tie)
Verdi La traviata

I like how you skirted the "five".   

K

[San Antone]

I like how you skirted the "five".   

K

Yeah, I couldn't decide which one I wanted to include - so I just put them both in, but as one line.   

[Kalevala]

Yeah, I couldn't decide which one I wanted to include - so I just put them both in, but as one line.   

K

[Tsaraslondon]

Five perfect operas are not necessarily the same thing as my five favourites. To say they are perfect is to say that you couldn't cut a note, so, though Les Troyens and Norma, for instance, are amongst my favourites, they don't fulfil the criteria of "perfect", as they don't suffer if there are a few judicious cuts.

So five perfect operas, that I think couldn't survive any cuts are.

Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin
Verdi: Otello
Verdi: Falstaff
Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande
Bartók: Duke Bluebeard's Castle

[LKB]

Five perfect operas are not necessarily the same thing as my five favourites. To say they are perfect is to say that you couldn't cut a note, so, though Les Troyens and Norma, for instance, are amongst my favourites, they don't fulfil the criteria of "perfect", as they don't suffer if there are a few judicious cuts.

So five perfect operas, that I think couldn't survive any cuts are.

Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin
Verdi: Otello
Verdi: Falstaff
Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande/b]
Bartók: Duke Bluebeard's Castle

Hmm...

( Eye's Otello narrowly and reaches for his cleaver. )

[nico1616]

Puccini: Il Trittico
Verdi: Aida
Offenbach: Les Contes d'Hoffmann
Purcell: Dido and Aeneas
Händel: Giulio Cesare

[Mandryka]

Five perfect operas are not necessarily the same thing as my five favourites. To say they are perfect is to say that you couldn't cut a note, so, though Les Troyens and Norma, for instance, are amongst my favourites, they don't fulfil the criteria of "perfect", as they don't suffer if there are a few judicious cuts.

So five perfect operas, that I think couldn't survive any cuts are.

Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin
Verdi: Otello
Verdi: Falstaff
Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande
Bartók: Duke Bluebeard's Castle

It's quite a high standard. I would cut either the willow song or the ave maria from Otello, and possibly Iago's creed. And I'd cut the scene with the doctor from Pelleas.

Siegfried is pretty perfect I think. And Elektra. And Boris. And Wozzek. And maybe Peter Grimes (though maybe not - I think I'd cut "From the gutter" just before the hut scene. )

[Karl Henning]

Bartók: Duke Bluebeard's Castle
Berg: Wozzeck
Shostakovich: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
Shostakovich: The Nose
Stravinsky: Mavra

[Karl Henning]

Bartók: Duke Bluebeard's Castle
Berg: Wozzeck
Shostakovich: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
Shostakovich: The Nose
Stravinsky: Mavra

Not really happy at having omitted Ravel, but there you are.

[Tsaraslondon]

It's quite a high standard. I would cut either the willow song or the ave maria from Otello, and possibly Iago's creed. And I'd cut the scene with the doctor from Pelleas.

Sacrilege!

Siegfried is pretty perfect I think. And Elektra. And Boris. And Wozzek. And maybe Peter Grimes (though maybe not - I think I'd cut "From the gutter" just before the hut scene. )

I always think I'd cut most of Siegfried. And which version of Boris are you thinking of?

[JBS]

Hmm...

( Eye's Otello narrowly and reaches for his cleaver. )

Don't forget that Otello itself is in a sense already "cut"; Shakespeare's Act I is represented by some flashbacks (most importantly, the love duet that closes Verdi's Act I) but the opera actually starts at the point where Shakespeare's Act II begins.