The 99 Most Essential Opera Classics

[Mahmod Ohner]

RTLast time we met you were at the Nottingham Playhouse, working with Streetwise Opera. You were revisiting opera classics in a way that called out sexism in opera. How was that experience?

RT: Before that you were involved in Unseen, a project that celebrated classical music and opera by black or African musicians. We were studying artists like Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Ignatius Sancho, George Bridgetower, and listening to exciting folk music from the Caribbean and Africa. What did this experience mean to you?

The reasons are varied. Money remains No. 1. We lack the government support for the arts taken for granted in so many places, from St. Petersburg to Abu Dhabi. That is lessening in certain countries, with the British notably singing the blues. But they find ways to proceed anyway, especially when what they are peddling is imagination.

The shining proof that vision sells is the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which has become the best-funded and most financially stable orchestra in America, and maybe the world, by being the least risk adverse.

Nagano has next to no presence in the U.S. these days, although he still maintains a residence in San Francisco and is the highly successful music director of the Montreal Symphony. In Europe, he is one of the most important figures in opera.

The Metropolitan Opera is a vibrant home for the most creative and talented singers, conductors, composers, musicians, stage directors, designers, visual artists, choreographers, and dancers from around the world.

Almost from the beginning, it was clear that the opera house on 39th Street did not have adequate stage facilities. But it was not until the Met joined with other New York institutions in forming Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts that a new home became possible. The new Metropolitan Opera House, which opened at Lincoln Center in September 1966, was equipped with the finest technical facilities.

Hnsel und Gretel was the first complete opera broadcast from the Met on Christmas Day 1931. Regular Saturday afternoon live broadcasts quickly made the Met a permanent presence in communities throughout the United States and Canada.

In 1977, the Met began a regular series of televised productions with a performance of La Bohme, viewed by more than four million people on public television. Over the following decades, more than 70 complete Met performances have been made available to a huge audience around the world. Many of these performances have been issued on video, laserdisc, and DVD.

In 1995, the Met introduced Met Titles, a unique system of real-time translation. Met Titles appear on individual screens mounted on the back of each row of seats, for those members of the audience who wish to utilize them, but with minimum distraction for those who do not. Titles are provided for all Met performances in English, Spanish, and German. Titles are also provided in Italian for Italian-language operas.

Each season, the Met stages more than 200 opera performances in New York. More than 800,000 people attend the performances in the opera house during the season, and millions more experience the Met through new media distribution initiatives and state-of-the-art technology.

Other media offerings include Metropolitan Opera Radio on SiriusXM Satellite Radio, a subscription-based audio service broadcasting both live and historical performances, commercial-free and round the clock. Met Opera on Demand (formerly called Met Player), a subscription-based online streaming service available at metoperaondemand.org, was launched in November 2008. It offers more than 550 Met performances, including Live in HD productions, classic telecasts, and archival broadcast recordings, for high-quality viewing and listening on any computer or iPad. The Met also provides free live audio streaming of performances on its website once every week during the opera season.

Other initiatives include annual holiday entertainment offerings; a Rush Ticket Program offering discounted orchestra seats for $25; expanded editorial offerings in Met publications, on the web, and through broadcasts; and new public programs that provide greater access to the Met.

Our website has been optimized for viewing in the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. If you are using Internet Explorer or other browsers you may encounter problems with certain sections of our website.

Aria

A song for solo voice accompanied by orchestra. In opera, arias mostly appear during a pause in dramatic action when a character is reflecting on his or her emotions. Most arias are lyrical, with a tune that can be hummed, and many arias include musical repetition. For example, the earliest arias in opera consist of music sung with different stanzas of text (strophic arias). Another type of aria, the da capo aria, became common by the 18th century and features the return of the opening music and text after a contrasting middle section. 19th-century Italian arias often feature a two-part form that showcases an intensification of emotion from the lyrical first section (the cavatina) to the showier second section (the cabaletta).

Text Painting

A compositional technique in which music imitates the literal meaning of a text. For instance, if a text references going up, the melody might rise; if a text references a loud noise, the music might suddenly get very loud. A good example is Jack and Jill, who went up a hill (on a rising melody) to fetch a pail of water. But when they come tumbling back down the hill, the melody descends with them. Text painting can affect both the vocal line and the instrumental accompaniment.

Since the origins of opera in late 16th century Italy, a central repertoire has developed, shepherded by major opera composers. The earliest major opera composer is generally considered to be Claudio Monteverdi,[1] who wrote the first prominent opera, L'Orfeo, followed by two others. Throughout the later 17th century, his successor Francesco Cavalli and the Englishman Henry Purcell wrote numerous prominent operas. The early 18th century was dominated by the operas of George Frideric Handel, while other important works include Pepusch's The Beggar's Opera, Pergolesi's' La serva padrona, and various works by Jean-Philippe Rameau.

This list provides a guide to the most prominent operas, as determined by their presence on a majority of selected compiled lists, which date from between 1984 and 2000. The operas included cover all important genres, and include all operas regularly performed today, from seventeenth-century works to late twentieth-century operas. The brief accompanying notes offer an explanation as to why each opera has been considered important. The organisation of the list is by year of first performance, or, if this was long after the composer's death, approximate date of composition.

This list was compiled by consulting nine lists of great operas, created by recognized authorities in the field of opera, and selecting all of the operas which appeared on at least five of these (i.e. all operas on a majority of the lists). The lists used were:

Please email your submission to essenti...@gmail.com If you have submitted audition materials to us in the past, you can send us an email stating your interest in this specific project and point us back to those materials.

Founded by sopranos Erin Bardua and Maureen Batt in 2010, Essential Opera is committed to increasing equity, diversity, and inclusion in all forms for all humans. Recently, we have focused on doing this in the spheres with which we are most familiar: gender inclusiveness, disability, and advocacy for neurodiversity and mental health.

This translates to a mission to create and produce works that will allow us to employ a diverse group of artists, particularly women (including, of course, trans women), non-binary people, and non-cisgender men, as well as Black, Indigenous, 2SLGBTQIA+, disabled, neurodivergent/neuroqueer, and other frequently excluded and underrepresented people. We are striving to continue to improve our own contributions to this goal with each successive project.

Artists who are cast in this project will be asked to adhere to a community agreement that includes safety practices for avoiding covid and other illnesses just before and during the rehearsal period to protect all involved and reduce likelihood of cancelled contracts.

Emily sits down to tea in the elegant home of trailblazing politician Nancy Astor. Mrs. Astor challenges Emily to defend her idealistic views on the human condition. Despite the tension between them, the two women realize they share a history of disappointments and betrayals.

Essential Opera, an indie producer of live and filmed opera based in the Maritimes, will be facilitating a series of conversation sessions on the topics of equity and belonging in the fields of Western opera/classical voice. These community chats will take place in the coming fall, culminating with in-person/hybrid sessions in Halifax. Essential Opera will provide a travel and accommodation allowance to facilitate in-person participation in Halifax.

This program is funded in part by a Canada Council for the Arts Strategic Initiative Seed Grant, and as such, is designed to be the very first stage of an action plan. Later stages will be defined by these community conversations.

Rewrite roles for women. Re-cast a lead as a woman. Fill the chorus of politicians/townspeople/elders/courtiers with women. Men being more visible and more audible than women is everyday reality; simply replicating that onstage is uninteresting, not an incisive social commentary.

Psst. If you wanted to send something and missed the Feb. 28 cut-off for our commissioning matching deadline- you still can (and, really, at any time) using the same methods listed below. Anything we raise at this point is going towards our production costs!

3a8082e126