I don't profess to know too much about opera although I have seen a fair few of them over the years. It tended to be the biggies - La Traviata, La Boheme, Madame Butterfly, Rigoletto, The Marriage of Figaro - the kind of operas that I'm on safe territory with. Many of them washed over me and a few caused physical pain. I was broke so I used to get the really cheap seats up in the Gods at the Coliseum in London - those seats are painful and I've got a dodgy knee that really aches unless I can stretch it periodically. There have been, though, a couple of pieces of music I heard/saw there that were so wonderful that the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
'Ombra Mai Fu' is the opening aria to Handel's lesser known opera Xerxes. Originally sung by a castrato, it now tends to be a role taken up by female opera singers. Here's one of the best, Cecilia Bartoli. This piece is too, too short - or perhaps because it is so short that it is a case study in restrained beauty.
Another aria that has the power to move mountains is the final scene from Richard Strauss's operatic interpretation of Oscar Wilde's Salomé. This is far more tragic than the previous piece and for the performers, as well as the audience is an emotional rollercoaster. I'm afraid I can't tell you an awful lot about this particular production except that it appears to be a stage production where the artists recorded the singing previously and are miming in the video and the female singer is Teresa Stratas. I did search high and low for a decent version and this is the very best I found. I remember seeing this all of nearly 20 years ago and I still remember the way we all leaned forward, completely entranced with the show. It was as if no-one dared breathe as this was sung. It has the 'wow' factor by the bucket load. This is the middle bit of the aria. I urge you to see it live.
No comments:
Post a Comment