20th Century Opera? Where should I go next?

[Mirror Image]

I second (and third) many of these good suggestions.  The Jansons DVD of the Shostakovich Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk is one of my favorite opera DVDs of any kind, for the outstanding playing of the Concertgebouw Orchestra in the score, and the intriguingly minimal production. 

I've heard (and seen) Prokofiev's The Gambler and War and Peace, both with Gergiev and some of the same cast as on his recordings; that Prokofiev box would definitely be a recommendation.  No one else has championed those operas in the way Gergiev has, and they're all worthy of more exposure.

And yes, Peter Grimes and Billy Budd are among Britten's best works.  I've not seen the Vickers DVD, but I've heard the audio and it's great.  The Met's recent DVD with Anthony Dean Griffey has some stunning singing and orchestral work, too (under Donald Runnicles). 

And a huge "yes" to all the Janáček operas.  I don't even know how to pick one; the ones I've heard have all been magnificent.

--Bruce

I might pass on the Prokofiev box set. I heard Decca didn't do a good job with the set. I read an Amazon UK reviewer's description of the set and it sounded like this was a rush job on Decca's part to get this box out. No thanks.

I did, however, buy Mackerras set of Janacek operas on Decca (the blue box). I already own the yellow box, so I'm looking foward to diving into these operas soon.

As for the Shostakovich and Britten, I'll have to check these out. Kudos Bruce!

[listener]

a few more suggestions, though some won't seem 20th century
PUCCINI   Turandot   (1925)
RIMSKY-KORSAKOFF    Le Coq d'Or  (1902)
HABA    The Mother    - in quarter-tones!
HINDEMITH   Sancta Susanna    and  The Long Christmas Dinner
KURKA    The Good Soldier Schweik
ADAMS    Nixon in China

[Benji]

HABA    The Mother    - in quarter-tones!

Oooooh. I'm interested!

[Superhorn]

  20th century opera is such a vast subject it's hard to know where to begin,and now we even have 21st century operas. Quite a few of them have been premiered in the last decade by a wide variety of composers all over Europe,America and elsewhere.
  Who knows how this fascinating and infinitely varied art form will develope in the future,providingcatastrophic events don't destroy the world.
   Of course,there are such  operas as
   Wozzeck,Lulu, Moses&Aron, Hindemith's Mathis der Maler (the complete opera,not the symphony drawn from it), Britten's Peter Grimes,Billy Budd, and the others, Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites, Zimmermann's Die Soldaten, Stravinsky's Rake's Progress, War and Peace, The Fiery Angel,Love for 3 Oranges,The Gambler, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District and The Nose by Shostakovich, Szymanowski's King Roger, Janacek's Cunning Little Vixen., Jenufa,The Makropoulos Case, Katya Kabanova,The Excursions Of Mr.Broucek and From The House Of the Dead,
Susannah by Carlisle Floyd, Moore's The Ballad of Baby Doe, Vanessa and Antony and Cleopatra by Samuel Barber, The Midsummer Marriage and King Priam by Tippett, Thomson's Four Saints in 3 Acts,
Korngold's Die Tote Stadt, Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle, Walton's Troilus and Cressida, Henze's Der Junge Lord,The Bassarids, Elegy for Young Lovers, Pfitzner's Palestrina, Roussel's Padmavati,
Enescu's Oedipe,Ravel's Enfant&Les Sortileges and Heure Espagnole,
Zandonai's Francesca Da Rimini,Respighi's La Fiamma,
Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, Notred Dame by Franz Schmidt,
Die Gezeichneten and Der Ferne Klang by Franz Schreker,
A Florentine Tragedy by Zemlinsky, Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer by Adams, and so forth.
There's lot more,but this is plenty to keep any one curious occupied for a long time.

[Benji]

Porgy and Bess, how could i forget that.  There's also The Tender Land by Copland.

[Mirror Image]

There's lot more,but this is plenty to keep any one curious occupied for a long time.

I'm sure there's a lot more. But thanks for mentioning the ones you did.

[The new erato]

, Stravinsky's Rake's Progress, War and Peace, The Fiery Angel,Love for 3 Oranges,The Gambler,

Good list (of which I know 2/3), but I wasn't aware Stravinky har written those....

[Wendell_E]

War and Peace, The Fiery Angel,Love for 3 Oranges,The Gambler, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District and The Nose by Shostakovich,

Everyone knows they were really written by Shostakovich!   

[jochanaan]

Have you heard Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites? I might pick-up the Nagano recording since I can get pretty cheap. The audio samples sounded quite nice.

Do it.  But be sure to have a box of tissues handy for the last scene.  Seriously.  That's one that makes me cry every time.  And yes, the Nagano version is the one I have and it's just fine.

[mjwal]

some lighter and shorter ones:
RAVEL   L'enfant et les sortilèges    I find the Previn/LSO quite satisfactory
       L'heure espagnol
POULENC  Les mammelles de Tirésias        -  get a version with libretto!   Ozawa on  Philips was good, the Cluytens EMI came text-free 
(and worth seeing staged,  often with L'enfant..,  I saw this combo in Mexico City, the Met does it in New York.   Both are great fun and I much prefer them above Knussen's Where the Wild Things Are)
and I'd like to encounter  Hilda Tablet again (radio play? I believe I heard it as a "cyrtain-raiser" for The Rake's Progress years ago.
more serious
BRITTEN  Peter Grimes

Agreed about all these - Mamelles is really hilarious, even on record, though its zany surrealism (libretto by Apollinaire) really needs a good production to be appreciated. I was amused by the Hilda Tablet reference - this was a brilliantly satirical series of radio plays by the poet Henry Reed (who was the best T.S.Eliot parodist) on BBC radio during my long-past youth (think late 50s, early 60s), in which the naive literary biographer searching for material on a once-famous dead writer comes across the crazy musical household of HT with her attendant "singer" Elsa Strauss; certain English figures and musical styles are parodied, but one could not consider these plays as operas in any sense of the word, though Emily Butter is the indirect presentation with excerpts of the outrageous eponymous opera by HT, originally called Milly Mudd till the BBC insisted on a title change...

[kaergaard]

Peter Eötvös Three Sisters and Le Balcon. Or is he already in the 21st century? Watch them anyhow! 

[kaergaard]

When chosing the Saint Francois d'Assise, the temptation would lead one to chosing the one with José Van Dam, but after watching the newer production directed by Pierre Audi and conducted by Ingo Metzmacher, I would hightly recommend the latter. Rod Gilfry in the title role, is an outstanding baritone also, and Audi's directing is much better than the one originating in Salzburg.

[Mirror Image]

Late to the thread but ..

The Bartók piece is my all-time favorite; and the Berg & Debussy you mention have lots within that are worth recommending ... but there are a few other 20th (&21st) century works that instantly come to mind which have music within them that I enjoy thoroughly and would recommend also ..

Small personal list  .. (links to choice recordings incl.)

Fauré, Penelope (1913)
Stravinsky, The Nightingale (1914)
Tippett, King Priam (1958-61)
Ligeti, Le Grand Macabre (1975-77)
Messiaen, Saint François d'Assise (1975-1983)
Stockhausen, Licht (1977-2003)

Thanks for the recommendations, James. Luckily, I already own the Ligeti, Faure, and Stravinsky. Haven't heard Ligeti's yet, but that will soon change.

[MDL]

I have also heard Berg's Wozzeck and Lulu. These scared the hell out of me.

Wozzeck, in particular, is meant to scare the hell out of you.

Have you heard Strauss's Salome and Elektra? Avoid Rosenkavalier which is vastly overrated IMHO, final trio excepted, natch.

Similarly, I think the overwhelming final scene of Poulenc's Dialogue of the Carmelites plays a funny trick on the listener, convincing him/her that the previous hour and a bit's music is more interesting and powerful than it actually is. Don't get me wrong; I like Carmelites and have seen it staged a few times. But I don't believe it to be one of the greats.

Zemlinsky's Zwerg is a knockout.

Anything by Janacek worth a go. Jenufa is a good place to start.


Crap, look at the time! I should be getting ready for work. I'll come back to this in my tea break.

[Mirror Image]

Wozzeck, in particular, is meant to scare the hell out of you.

Have you heard Strauss's Salome and Elektra? Avoid Rosenkavalier which is vastly overrated IMHO, final trio excepted, natch.

Similarly, I think the overwhelming final scene of Poulenc's Dialogue of the Carmelites plays a funny trick on the listener, convincing him/her that the previous hour and a bit's music is more interesting and powerful than it actually is. Don't get me wrong; I like Carmelites and have seen it staged a few times. But I don't believe it to be one of the greats.

Zemlinsky's Zwerg is a knockout.

Anything by Janacek worth a go. Jenufa is a good place to start.


Crap, look at the time! I should be getting ready for work. I'll come back to this in my tea break.

I haven't heard any of Richard Strauss' operas, but then again, I'm not the biggest fan of his music in general. The Zemlinsky sounds interesting as does Schreker's operas. Kudos for the ones you mentioned.

[springrite]

Peter Eötvös Three Sisters and Le Balcon. Or is he already in the 21st century? Watch them anyhow! 

I regret not getting Three Sisters many years ago when I was in the States and saw it at BRO. I heard it at  a friend's place here in Beijing and it is so beautiful!

[MDL]

I haven't heard any of Richard Strauss' operas, but then again, I'm not the biggest fan of his music in general. The Zemlinsky sounds interesting as does Schreker's operas. Kudos for the ones you mentioned.

My post was a quickie dashed off without much thought while I was ramming corn flakes into my face. I'll try to come up with a more considered contribution sometime, when I'm not at work. 

You don't like Strauss? Hmm, interesting.

[listener]

Naxos releasing on DVD from the "Recovered Voices" series
ULLMANN  The Broken Jug and ZEMLINSKY Der Zwerg (The Dwarf)
and BRAUNFELS  The Birds
story at http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/11/la-operas-recovered-voices-productions-released-on-dvd.html

[Sid]

MI, since you seem to like Australian composers, you might like to try the late Richard Meale's Voss. It was the first all-Australian opera production (to my knowledge), done in the 1980's, and conducted by Stuart Challender. I have heard it in it's entirety (a friend has it on cd). It's not a bad opera, quite approachable, from what I could gather (although the way the main character is decapitated in the middle of the desert by Aborigines towards the end is not really uplifting). Meale perfectly captured novelist Patrick White's imaging of the vastness and desolation of the Australian continent. The duets between the main character Voss and his love interest Laura are quite effective. Meale also composed a second opera, Mer de glace, from which I have heard the suite (sounded a bit Debussy-ish).

Brett Dean, of the current generation of Australian composers, has also tried his hand at opera. The local productions of Bliss where well received here, and it has more recently been produced in Germany. An acquaintance of mine saw it & said it was pretty good, and judging from Dean's other works, it must be...

[Mirror Image]

MI, since you seem to like Australian composers, you might like to try the late Richard Meale's Voss. It was the first all-Australian opera production (to my knowledge), done in the 1980's, and conducted by Stuart Challender. I have heard it in it's entirety (a friend has it on cd). It's not a bad opera, quite approachable, from what I could gather (although the way the main character is decapitated in the middle of the desert by Aborigines towards the end is not really uplifting). Meale perfectly captured novelist Patrick White's imaging of the vastness and desolation of the Australian continent. The duets between the main character Voss and his love interest Laura are quite effective. Meale also composed a second opera, Mer de glace, from which I have heard the suite (sounded a bit Debussy-ish).

Brett Dean, of the current generation of Australian composers, has also tried his hand at opera. The local productions of Bliss where well received here, and it has more recently been produced in Germany. An acquaintance of mine saw it & said it was pretty good, and judging from Dean's other works, it must be...

I don't seem to like Australian composers, I genuinely enjoy them. Kudos for mentioning the Meale.