Went to watch Tosca at the Royal Opera House over the weekend.
First time at the Opera. Shit is mad. Quite fascinating when you think about it.

The personnel (the actors, all top, top, specialised singers, the best orchestra available, a script writer, and the best composer available), and the age of the work? Would have probably cost the equivalent, if not more, relatively speaking, of a feature film.

Provided a lot of food for thought... Considering how used to feature films we all are, I can draw a parallel to the three act structure of Tosca, to that of a feature film. Further to that, the score, even without the words, is far more nuanced than what you'd find in any feature film. The composers are scoring not scenes, but sentences, and it's mad. 

The music still follows the arc of the story, so you can read it like a film (i.e. Imperial March, Indiana Jones theme, etc), but it will even follow incidental jokes, or concealed threats. Which seems like a lost art, and is something that could draw me back to another performance.

But the shit is extremely long, and I think that's directly because of the concept of tying the music to each significant line of dialogue. A story beat that would take all of 30 seconds to commit to film, can appear to take 5+ minutes in an Opera, but that's ok...

The Royal Opera House performance was helped along by large screen subtitles / captions, which I didn't know was a thing, but very much appreciated.
The story itself was a little twee, but had some interesting turns, and quite a dark ending, so I'd wonder if that's common for the genre?

Anyone been to any other performances?

*Not a bad page turn

Love me some classical music, and visual performace is nice too, but the screaming stuff can fuck off.

Never been into ballet - at all.

But this has something. The music is spectacular of course.

davyK wrote:

Have always fancied giving opera a go but the language was always a barrier for me. This presentation sounds like something I'd be up for.

Go for it - the subtitles above and below the stage make it very accessible. 

I saw Turandot before lockdown, and it was great. They were all singing about how beautiful Turandot was, and then they wheeled out a big lady in the most rediculous make-up. The plot is.... insane/complete farce but in spite of that I still got chills during Nessun dorma.

Both opera and ballet performances astound me when I try and consider all of the elements that have to go together. Even the set design is an undertaking in itself.

davyK wrote:

Never been into ballet - at all. But this has something. The music is spectacular of course.

Though it was written as a ballet, it's most often performed these days as an orchestral work. It's a seminal work, which caused riots at its premiere in Paris in 1913. Stravinsky's contribution to the world of classical music is immense however and, despite arguably being not much of a looker, he also managed to have a torrid affair with Coco Chanel.

Here's a full ballet performance, conducted by shameless Putin-sympathiser Valery Gergiev.

Hey Unlikely. It's been a while.

Yup. Lovely to see you Igor.

Now there's a blast from the past. Hope you're well Igor.