Saturday at the Opera

     I decided to start a regular series, "Saturday at the Opera." I figure it's one way to ensure that I have something to post at least once a week! Days can go by without a blogpost subject coming to mind, so I will rely on my old friend Opera to bail me out every Saturday. I'll also be resurrecting the "Music Monday" series I did on my old "di-Verse-ifying" blog, featuring mostly (but not exclusively) piano works, as well as posting at least one essay and one poem a week. So that's the new plan, Stan.

     To inaugurate "Saturday at the Opera," I give you something from the first opera I ever saw: Mozart's Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute). I saw it the summer of 1974, at the Salzburg Marionette Theater. Even though it was done with puppets, I still count it as my first opera experience. Die Zauberflöte was also the first opera score I ever bought (in London, that same summer), so it was the first opera I learned to play, as well.

     For a synopsis, click here.

     This excerpt, which is the second half of Act I, is from the Opéra National de Paris, 2001. The spoken dialogue in this particular production is in the original German, with a bit of French thrown in. Often, the music of this opera is sung in German and the dialogue is spoken in the language of whatever country in which the production is seen, for ease of comprehension and to reduce the use of supertitles. Sometimes the entire opera is done in the local language, both music and dialogue.

     The cast in this video:

          Tamino - Piotr Beczala

          Pamina - Dorothea Roschmann

          Papageno - Detlef Roth

          1st Lady - Cecile Perrin

          2nd Lady - Helene Schneiderman

          3rd Lady - Helene Perraguin

          Monostatos - Uwe Peper

          Sarastro - Matt Salminen