amazon – Don Carlo and the Seamstress

Friends of opera! We have three exciting arrivals next week…

October 7th will be a day for Kaufmanniacs.

No "ungrateful hearts" about this one! — No “ungrateful hearts” about this one!

First of all, we have Jonas’ new CD coming out! Dolce Vita (available for pre-order now) is a 67-minute tribute to Italian music, including the 1911 Neapolitan beauty, “Core ‘ngrato” (“Ungrateful heart”) by Salvatore Cardillo. (Of course, most Kaufmanniacs have watched—and rewatched—him sing this piece on YouTube. A friend of mine expressed her ultimate dream: of Jonas singing this to her in person! Right there with you…

Sigh.

Jonas + the French Revolution = perfection!

As if that weren’t enough, we also have the DVD (or BluRay) of the 2015 Royal Opera House production of Giordano’s Andrea Chénier starring our tenor in the title role coming out the same day. Featuring Eva-Maria Westbroek and the wonderful Serbian baritone Željko Lučić and conducted by Antonio Pappano, Chénier is one not to be missed, and one of the first recorded operas I saw with our tenor after first encountering him. (And no, surely that’s not a poster of Jonas as Chénier hanging on my bedroom wall…? Oops, guilty.) The opera was free on YouTube, sans subtitles, when I saw it, but it required having a libretto handy, and hence missing too many Jonas moments! I think I need to remedy this. And yes, the DVD or BluRay is also available for pre-order on Amazon.

Of course, Giordano, and Jonas, had me blubbering like a baby by the end, in true Romantic Revolutionary style. (Now, imagine if it had been an opera of A Tale of Two Cities with our tenor as a certain tragic hero who shall not be named…I might not be alive today to tell the tale. It would simply be too much.)

Then, Saturday October 8th is the start of our new season of the Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD cinema showings, beginning with Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, conducted by Simon Rattle and starring Nina Stemme as Isolde, Stuart Skelton as Tristan, and the always glorious René Pape as King Marke. I am still new to Wagner, so this should be an interesting experience. A long Wagner on a Saturday morning sounds a bit intense, I admit…

Enjoy!

20160323_212341 — Works as a door-stopper too!

Look what just arrived from ThriftBooks on Amazon: a door-stopper! A 1996 edition of The Book of 101 Opera Librettos: Complete Original Texts with English Translations.

I certainly could have made good use of this tome over the past month and a half! One thing which has to be tackled when one is trying to see opera on the cheap—or simply just to see many operas which aren’t available on conventional DVD/Bluray with the option of subtitles (and more re: Premiere Opera later)—is how to get ahold of librettos (or “libretti”).

There are many options. The one I used for seeing the whole 2015 ROH [Royal Opera House, Covent Garden] Andrea Chénier (link to Act I of IV here) was via an online public domain source, and I had the local print shop print out a paper copy for me. That would be a bit cumbersome for each opera…hence this tome, which can be found used on Amazon.

The Book of 101 Opera Librettos isn’t exactly a book to sneak into one’s purse if you’re lucky enough to go to live opera…might as well haul around a few bowling balls. Better to read the libretto beforehand, if needed. But it certainly works in the comfort of your living room–

ee74b4d1-b9be-4ebc-add6-e94f093fe081 — Um…read the libretto, or watch Jonas?

Mostly. Problems arise when one has to keep deciding whether to look down at the libretto to comprehend what is being said, versus staring at a certain tenor who shall remain nameless. Or when tears are streaming down one’s face, obscuring the too-small type.

I’ve read mixed things about this book. Apparently some of the choices in translation are a little eccentric, as are some of the choices of which operas to include, and which to exclude…

20160323_212642 — Something is missing here…

(Where is Don Carlo??)

As to the last question, perhaps it has to do with the several versions there are (in French and Italian) of this opera…but I still find it a puzzling omission. More on Don Carlo and its multiple versions later.

Nonetheless, I’m grateful to have this book…if nothing else, I can use it as a booster seat.