Five Perfect Operas (Mozart excluded)

[(poco) Sforzando]

Falstaff
Die Meistersinger
Wozzeck
L'Enfant et les Sortilèges
Gianni Schicchi

[Mandryka]

I always think I'd cut most of Siegfried.

Sacrilege!

And which version of Boris are you thinking of?

The one that Covent Garden did with the Tarkovsky production.

[Christo]

Berg: Wozzeck

I would probably never have known it, if I hadn't see it performed in Milan, La Scala, during a Journalism conference there in 2015. Flabbergasted.
See this review: https://bachtrack.com/review-wozzeck-metzmacher-volle-la-scala-november-2015

[Karl Henning]

I would probably never have known it, if I hadn't see it performed in Milan, La Scala, during a Journalism conference there in 2015. Flabbergasted.
See this review: https://bachtrack.com/review-wozzeck-metzmacher-volle-la-scala-november-2015

Superb!

[Kalevala]

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

Can someone please bring the smelling salts to me?

K

[Iota]

Britten     The Turn of the Screw
                  Peter Grimes
Bartok       Duke Bluebeard's Castle
Debussy     Pelleas et Melisande
Ravel         L'enfant et les sortilèges 

Of those perhaps The Turn of the Screw and L'enfant et les sortilèges would qualify as the most 'perfect', or perfectly sculpted perhaps. Every single bar seems  integral to the overall expressive effect. Coincidentally they both share a strong phantasmagoric element, though of very different natures.

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

I know we are all different, but to wish to cut one of the most beautiful passages in all 20th century opera, especially from someone who is sympathetic to the opera, does flabbergast me somewhat.

[Mandryka]

Britten     The Turn of the Screw
                  Peter Grimes
Bartok       Duke Bluebeard's Castle
Debussy     Pelleas et Melisande
Ravel         L'enfant et les sortilèges 

Of those perhaps The Turn of the Screw and L'enfant et les sortilèges would qualify as the most 'perfect', or perfectly sculpted perhaps. Every single bar seems  integral to the overall expressive effect. Coincidentally they both share a strong phantasmagoric element, though of very different natures.

I know we are all different, but to wish to cut one of the most beautiful passages in all 20th century opera, especially from someone who is sympathetic to the opera, does flabbergast me somewhat.

Very pleased to flabber your gast.

[Iota]

Very pleased to flabber your gast.

And I certainly don't mind having it flabbered.

[Mandryka]

And I certainly don't mind having it flabbered.

All the Danes and Dutch and Ukrainians and Romanians and Greeks and Germans will be wondering what on earth we're talking about. Lexicons will be being searched.

By the way, I was amused to find that the word "flabbergastation" exists


https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/flabbergastation#:~:text=(colloquial)%20Bewildered%20shock%20or%20surprise,act%20of%20confounding%20or%20bewildering.

[Karl Henning]

All the Danes and Dutch and Ukrainians and Romanians and Greeks and Germans will be wondering what on earth we're talking about. Lexicons will be being searched.

By the way, I was amused to find that the word "flabbergastation" exists


https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/flabbergastation#:~:text=(colloquial)%20Bewildered%20shock%20or%20surprise,act%20of%20confounding%20or%20bewildering.

Not Flabbergastenance?!

[Louis]

-Tristan und Isolde
-Parsifal
-Götterdämmerung
-Poppea (Monteverdi)
-Genoveva (Schumann)

[steve ridgway]

Götterdämmerung

Sounds promising; I'm only part way through my first listen of Das Rheingold at present .

[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?)

I do not believe I would change anything, although...Wagner's Tristan und Isolde + Taneyev's Oresteia should also be given honorable mentions!