What Are You Listening To This Weekend?

Time to ask, what are you listening to this weekend?

Since this is the last Friday of National Opera Week we're going to listen to an opera that means a lot to us: Faust. You see, Faust was the first opera I saw here at San Diego Opera, way back when I was in high-school. The cast consisted of Ferruccio Furlanetto and Richard Leech and I remember sitting in the balcony thinking "wow, this is amazing. I wish I could do that."

But I can't.

But that's OK because now I get to work with the same people who changed my life so many years ago. And besides, when it's late at night and I'm the only one in the theatre who's to say I don't bleat a horrible sound from the edge of the stage to an imaginary audience of my choosing. Hey, there's nothing wrong with playing pretend.

After Faust we're going to spend all weekend playing The Magnetic Fields because we just bought tickets to see their Los Angeles concert in March. I know, March is a long time away, but when you've waited for years it seems like tomorrow. PS: for those that care, the password for pre-sale in Los Angeles is "realism"

Share your listening plans in the comment section below.

And please, make it a good one!

E=MCwhat!?

Our friends over Vancouver Opera reported the Listverse, the #1 list maker of top 10 lists in the known universe, has deemed Opera the #1 Greatest Achievement of the Human Mind beating out such discoveries/achievements as the work of William Shakespeare, Infinitesimal Calculus, Quantum Mechanics, Relativity Theory and Lady Gaga (OK, we made that last one up but we here at Aria Serious just can't seem to understand her).

But not just any opera made the list, no, Wagner's gesamtkunstwerk, his Ring Cycle, took the crown. What do you think about that?

You can read the full list here.

#Operahistory - The Story So Far...

Just started to follow our #operahistory project on Twitter?

Below is a recap of where we are, from the first post earlier this month all the way up to this morning's post.

Since our Twitter feed @_SanDiegoOpera has received dozens of new followers overnight, we thought this little recap would be helpful to those just joining in.

Comments, suggestion, critcisims can be made in the comment section below.

Thanks for following!

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Early Italian Roots

#operahistory 1590s Florence: group of musicians-Camerata-try to recreate Greek drama, which they assume was sung.

#operahistory 1590s Florence: Camerata comes up with new ways of artistic/musical expression for sung drama. Story thru song.

#operahistory 1590s Florence: Camerata’s mission highlights poetic text/emotional content through music & dramatic gesture.

#operahistory 1590s Florence: music & poetry equal in importance, text & music serving drama on stage.

#operahistory 1597: Camerata’s efforts lead to creation of first opera, Jacopo Peri’s Dafne, Greek myth, score now lost.

#operahistory 1600: Peri & Giulio Caccini ‘collaborate’ (unhappily) on first “opera”, Euridice for wedding of Henry IV/Maria Medici.

#operahistory 1600: Caccini, highly competitive, forbids his singers to perform Peri’s contributions to Euridice. Peri pissed!

#operahistory 1600: Caccini publishes HIS Euridice version before Peri can. Peri still pissed.

#operahistory 1601: Peri moves from Florence>Ferrara, writes madrigals then disappears. Caccini loses influence, Peri gloats. OK, maybe not.

#operahistory 1607: the history of opera moves from Florence to Mantua with creation of Orfeo, a “fable in music” by Claudio Monteverdi.

#operahistory 1607: Duke of Mantua, Francesco Gonzaga, orders his court musician, Monteverdi, to write Orfeo for Carnival. Fun!

#operahistory 1607: Orfeo. Story about man whose wife dies, goes to hell. Then he goes after her. GREAT story for Carnival, eh?

#operahistory 1607: Orfeo is performed to delighted audience at the Duke’s palace on Feb 24. Duke pleased, but poor Orfeo still in hell.

#operahistory 1607: All of the roles in Orfeo are played by men, even the female roles, sung by castrati. Ouch. Don’t think about it.

#operahistory 1607: Orfeo mixes the new recitative style of Peri (Euridice) & instrumental/choral “interjections”. It works.

#operahistory 1613: Monteverdi in Venice, maestro di capella at San Marco. Writes great church music, and more operas.

#operahistory 1639: Fran. Cavalli produces his 1st opera in Venice, Le nozze di Teti e Peleo. More Greeks, Love conquers Hell (finally)

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You Mean It Will Take Hours To Go Somewhere?

The LA Times Culture Monster is reporting the Los Angeles Opera has commissioned a new opera called the "11o Project" - an opera inspired by the 110 Freeway in Los Angeles.

According to the Monster:

"The 110 Project" tells the story of four central characters as it travels through 70 years of L.A. history starting with the birth of the space program in Pasadena's Arroyo Seco in 1939 to downtown Los Angeles at midcentury. It concludes at the port of San Pedro in the present day."

You can read the full article here.

We're excited to see where this goes as we here at Aria Serious are big fans of modern opera.

But one thing you can count on, the singers will most probably complain of congestion.

Happy National Opera Week

;-)

Something To Be Thankful For

The NEA Opera Honors happened on Saturday. You can read about them here.

Also worth noting is a special tribute video to Lotfi Mansouri which can be viewed here.

There's also an hour+ video interview with Lotfi but we don't have time to watch it right now. Perhaps you do.

There are also videos for all the other recipients here. These include John Adams, Frank Corsaro, Marilyn Horne and Julius Rudel.

What are you doing for National Opera Week? Share your plans in the comment section below.

Podcast Monday

No, we haven't forgotten. We just wanted to stall a week so Dr. Nic could take some time off. He does deserve some time off every once in a while, even if he just spent it making more Podcasts.

This week, we revisit recitatives and look at how they define character in opera.

You can listen to the Podcast here.

While You Were Out

Over the weekend:

- We announced a very special $1M gift from the Viterbi Family.

- We also announced a lecture series called Community Conversations on Faith and Freedom (abbreviated here as C2F2 - no relation to R2D2) surrounding Nabucco.

- Can opera shoot for the mainstream without losing its artistic integrity? We're betting "yes".

- It's National Opera Week. We're having a Twitter contest. You should enter.

What Are You Listening To This Weekend?

A special National Opera Week Friday is upon us, which means it is time to ask: what are you listening to this weekend?

Here at the Aria Serious Tower we're going to take it all the way back to the first opera recording we ever owned, Puccini's Turandot.

Sure, there were records and other recordings before this one, but this is the first opera cd we ever purchased - a rainy Saturday back in 1990 at Tower Records on El Cajon Blvd. It even beat out such 90's staples as Nine Inch Nails, My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult and Depeche Mode (which haven't aged as well as Puccini's masterpiece I might add - well OK, "Pretty Hate Machine" pretty much still rules).

So what are your listening plans this weekend? Share them in the comment section below.

And oh, for those of you in Southern California, our friends at Amoeba Records in Hollywood are having a big classical/music opera sale this weekend. In honor of National Opera Week? Probably not, but everything is 20% off so that's reason to celebrate enough.

Make it a great one!

We're also going to edit to add this awesome and hilarious blog entry on how to shop for classical music.

National Opera Week and the Twitter Contest Details

National Opera Week is here!

Here at the Aria Serious Tower, with nothing on the San Diego Opera stage until late January, we thought long and hard about what we could do to celebrate this momentous event.

See, our very dear friend Lotfi Mansouri is receiving an honor this week and we wanted to do something special for him. But being out of season, we're kind of limited in what we have to offer.

First, we tried moving National Opera week to February because that's when Lotfi is in town next to direct Nabucco, but our friends at Opera America said "no way."

But then it dawned on us, we could use Twitter to hold a synopsis contest about Nabucco and have Lotfi be the judge. We were very proud of ourselves for coming up with this idea until we learned someone else had already done an opera synopsis contest on Twitter. Sheesh.

Still, it's National Opera Week and it's about Lotfi so we still think it's a good idea regardless.

We hope you do to. Here are the details:

- Submit your best synopsis about Verdi's opera Nabucco via Twitter to us @_SanDiegoOpera (please note the underscore before our name).

- You can submit as many entries you like between now and November 22, 2009.

- Winners will be chosen by the artistic team of San Diego Opera's Nabucco including Lotfi Mansouri.

- The winner will receive an invitation to attend a special working rehearsal of Nabucco as well as tickets to opening night. Heck, we'll probably throw lunch or dinner into the mix for you and Lotfi as well. For those of you who don't live in San Diego, remember: it'll be in February. San Diego is where you'll want to be. Trust us on this one. Still, if you can't make it we'll come up with something else for you that'll be nice and autographed.

- San Diego Opera reserves the right to retweet your submissions and include them in future communications with our patrons.


For those of you unfamiliar with the Nabucco story, visit here.

For those of you looking to celebrate National Opera Week with something in your community click here for a listing of events nationwide.

And be sure to share National Opera Week with someone new. They'll thank you for introducing them to opera, and besides, the best things in life are shared with others. Except maybe cupcakes.