Virtuosity

If you don’t have the habit of going to operas every once in a while, that is something really worth doing – at least once so you see for yourself this magnificent form of art in all its splendor and virtuosity.

Elite singers and musicians perform at the top of their talents an amazing combination of music and drama which was created half millennium ago and evolved to the nearest to perfection as an art form can be. 

As it is widely known, Italy is the heart of the world in opera matters and it’s also believed that this music tradition had its origins there, but that does not get the importance of other countries in essentially contributing to create unforgettable works, as Germany, France, Russia and England.

Here I will leave you with some of my favorite operas – at least, some arias – in case you’re curious to see something new or maybe just miss watching them; anyway, I hope you have a good time!

Turandot

Turandot is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, and perhaps it has one of the most famous aria in the world.  The first performance was held at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan on April 25, 1926 and conducted by Arturo Toscanini.  Puccini's last opera was left unfinished at his death, and what he had intended to be a final, transcendent love duet was completed by a younger colleague, Franco Alfano.

In Peking's Imperial Palace, the fatally beautiful Princess Turandot receives unlucky suitors from far and wide, who must answer three riddles to win her hand—or die.  Calaf, son of the exiled King Timur of Tartary, is struck with Turandot's beauty, and ignoring protests from his father and Liù, the servant girl who loves him, he matches wits with the princess.  Although he guesses the three riddles, Calaf offers his life to Turandot if she can discover his secret name.  Searching the city in vain, the princess finally tortures faithful Liù, driving her to suicide.  Faced with Liù's sacrifice and Calaf's stern devotion, Turandot crumbles, and weeping in Calaf's arms, she declares that his secret name is Love. 

Tosca

Tosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa and it premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900.  It is personally one of my favorites of all, and the 2001 movie with Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu was a very good and accessible reproduction of it.

Tosca opens in a roman church, where the artist Cavaradossi paints a Mary Magdalen portrait while dreaming of his lover, Tosca, a famously passionate singer.  Suddenly the escaped political prisoner Angelotti staggers in, on the run from the savage police chief Scarpia.  When Tosca arrives and overhears the two men talking, she is devoured with suspicion that Cavaradossi has another lover, but the painter soothes her and hides Angelotti.  The angry Scarpia bursts in, hot on the escapee's heels and burning with lust for Tosca. Sizing up the situation, he schemes to make the jealous singer betray her lover's secret.  Cavaradossi is arrested and brutally tortured, blackmailing Tosca into revealing Angelotti's whereabouts.  Scarpia demands Tosca's favors as payment for her lover's life, but the agonized Tosca meets his embrace with a fatal knife thrust. Joyfully, she goes to free Cavaradossi, but Scarpia's final cruel artifice leads her instead to witness her lover's execution.  As the police pursue her, Tosca throws herself from a parapet to her death.

Carmen

Carmen is an opera in four acts by the French composer Georges Bizet.  It is, perhaps, the opera with the most famous arias of all.  The opera was first performed at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, on 3 March 1875, and was not at first particularly successful; its initial run extended to 36 performances.  Before this run was concluded, Bizet died suddenly, and thus knew nothing of the opera's later celebrity.

In the kind of Spain that 19th-century French composers dreamt of, gypsy cigarette girl Carmen taunts corporal Don José with her flamboyant charms, and even the gentle peasant girl Micaela, who loves Don José, cannot break Carmen's spell, and the corporal gives up everything to follow the gypsy into the mountains.  She quickly tires of Don José and runs off with the handsome matador Escamillo, fatalistically embracing the warning of death she has seen in the cards.  As Escamillo triumphs in the bullring, Carmen is confronted by Don José in a nearby alley, and this time, her defiance cannot save her.

Rigoletto

Rigoletto is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi.  It was first performed at La Fenice in Venice on March 11, 1851. It is considered by many to be the first of the operatic masterpieces of Verdi's middle-to-late career.

Rigoletto is the bitter, hunchbacked court jester whose treasured daughter, Gilda, has caught the eye of the womanizing Duke of Mantua.  Approaching Gilda, the duke declares his love, and the girl discovers a passion for him.  Court nobles, seeking revenge for the jester's many insults, dupe Rigoletto into helping them kidnap Gilda, who is delivered to the Duke and seduced by him.  Determined to show his daughter the Duke's true nature, Rigoletto takes her to the house of the assassin Sparafucile, whose sister Maddalena offers the duke her gypsy favors.  Rigoletto has hired Sparafucile to kill the duke, but Maddalena convinces her assassin brother to murder arandom victim instead.  Knowing she will be murdered, Gilda appears in disguise, is stabbed, stuffed in a sack and delivered to Rigoletto in place of the duke's body.  At the last minute, the horrified hunchback opens the sack and discovers his daughter, who whispers her last words of love for the duke and dies.

La Traviata

La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, based on La dame aux Camélias (1852), a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas.  The first performance of the opera was on 6 March 1853 at the La Fenice opera house in Venice.  It was jeered at times by the audience, who directed some of their scorn at the casting of soprano Fanny Salvini-Donatelli in the lead role of Violetta.  Though she was an acclaimed singer, they considered her to be too old (at 38) and too overweight to credibly play a young woman dying of consumption.

The opera tells the story of a Paris rich boy named Alfredo, who falls for the consumptive prostitute Violetta.  His father isn't happy with the relationship and persuades her to abandon him because her scandalous past threatens his son's future.  She goes back to her old life, but falls mortally ill, so Alfredo’s father relents and allows a touching deathbed reunion.

Aida

Aida, sometimes spelled Aïda, is also an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi, based on a scenario written by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette. Aida was first performed at the Khedivial Opera House in Cairo on 24 December 1871, conducted by Giovanni Bottesini.

On Egypt, Rhadames, a warrior, is delighted to learn that he has been chosen to lead the army against the Ethiopian enemy, because he hopes that he will thus be able to win Aida, a slave girl, as his prize for victory in battle.  Aida is the captured daughter of the Ethiopian king, Amonasro, and she fears that either her lover or her father will be killed in battle.  However, the king's daughter, Amneris, has set her mark on Rhadames, and his coldness towards her confirms her suspicions that he loves someone else.  Pharaoh and his court receive triumphant Rhadames, who is asked to name his reward.  The crowd call for the prisoners to be killed, but Rhadames asks that, as his reward, their lives be spared. Pharaoh agrees, and gives him the hand of Amneris for good measure, plus naming Rhadames as his own successor as Pharaoh.  Amneris tells Rhadames that King Amonasro has been killed, but that Aida is alive. The deal is that if Rhadames agrees to forget about Aida, she, Amneris that is, will obtain a pardon from the Pharaoh, but he can’t. If Amneris can't have her man, nobody else can, and Rhadames is thus condemned to death. By being bricked up alive, but before the vault is closed, Aida joins him to share his fate. Amneris repents of her actions.

Pagliacci

Pagliacci, sometimes incorrectly rendered with a definite article as I Pagliacci, is an opera consisting of a prologue and two acts written and composed by Ruggero Leoncavallo, and it is his only opera that is still widely staged.  Leoncavallo was slapped with a lawsuit for plagiarizing the plot for the opera Pagliacci.  In his defense, Leoncavallo claimed that the opera plot was based on a childhood experience.  Pagliacci premiered at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan on May 21, 1892, conducted by Arturo Toscanini.

Tonio, a member of an itinerant touring troupe, tells the audience of a village in Calabria that though they are seeing a play, they should remember that actors, even clowns, are real people who suffer and live lives of agony as well as joy.  Canio invites everyone to their performance that night, and the villagers invite him to have a drink with them.  One man makes a crack about Tonio having a chance to seduce Nedda, Canio’s wife.  Canio, instantly serious, tells him that nothing relating to his wife is a joking matter.  When he leaves, Nedda is at first frightened that Canio might know something of her activities, but then she finally agrees to leave Canio for her lover, a townsperson named Silvio.  Tonio, who desired Nedda, smarting from her rejection, returns and sees the lovers.  He rushes off to the village to get Canio.  The two lovers plan to elope that night, and Canio comes in just as he hears Nedda sing that on that night she will be Silvio’s forever; she does not use his name, and Canio screams and chases the younger man who escapes.  When Canio returns, she refuses to give him her lover’s name. She goes off to prepare for the show; Beppe tells Canio that he must prepare as well and play the clown although his heart is breaking.  The play opens with scenes of Nedda with Tonio and their happy romance.  Canio, as the clown, enters just as Nedda sings the exact words he heard her say to her lover an hour or so earlier, and he burst into fury.  Nedda tries for a few moments to bring Canio back to the play, but all he can do is to demand the name of her lover.  She finally explodes, crying that she will never tell him. Blind with rage, he stabs her.  Silvio breaks from the crowd; Canio sees him and stabs him. The opera ends with the immortal line, “The comedy is over.”