Operas Set in Seville

[Howard Slenk]

A friend of mine recently toured Spain and was told, while in Seville,
that more than a dozen operas are set in Seville. He asked me to name
them, and I didn't do very well. I came up with:

Barber of S
Carmen
The Marriage of Figaro
Don Giovanni

I promised him I would ask y'all. Can you help me impress my friend?

Howard Slenk

[VALFER]

Howard Slenk wrote in message <3924...@news.gvsu.edu>...

Add :
La Forza del Destino
Fidelio

And several Zarzuelas

Valfer

[Tom Kaufman]

Don Giovanni tenorio (Pacini)
I Due Figaro (Speranza)
Le Nozze di Figaro (Ricci)
Cherubin (Massenet--probably)

will try to think of a few more

Tom
Tom Kaufman
URL of web site:
www.geocities.com/Vienna/8917/index.html

[James Kahn]

In <3924...@news.gvsu.edu> sl...@ursa.calvin.edu (Howard Slenk) writes:

>A friend of mine recently toured Spain and was told, while in Seville,
>that more than a dozen operas are set in Seville. He asked me to name
>them, and I didn't do very well. I came up with:

>Barber of S
>Carmen
>The Marriage of Figaro
>Don Giovanni

>I promised him I would ask y'all. Can you help me impress my friend?

There are at least two Barber of Sevilles.
--
Jim
New York, NY
(Please remove "nospam." to get my e-mail address)
http://www.panix.com/~kahn

[Matthew B. Tepper]

In article <20000518141113...@ng-ck1.aol.com>,
tomk...@aol.com is reputed to have iterated as follows...

>
>Don Giovanni tenorio (Pacini)
>I Due Figaro (Speranza)
>Le Nozze di Figaro (Ricci)
>Cherubin (Massenet--probably)
>
>will try to think of a few more

Plus Corigliano's _The Ghosts of Versailles_ (the parts of the action
that don't take place in the afterlife or in revolution France),
Milhaud's _La mere coupable_, and maybe a scene from Prokofiev's _L'ange
de feu_ (or am I misremembering?). And don't forget P.D.Q. Bach's _The
Abduction of Figaro_!

--
Matthew B. Tepper: WWW, science fiction, classical music, ducks!
My personal home page -- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/index.html
My main music page --- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/berlioz.html
"Compassionate Conservatism?" * "Tight Slacks?" * "Jumbo Shrimp?"

[Matthew B. Tepper]

In article <8g1d4s$12s$1...@panix2.panix.com>, ka...@nospam.panix.com is

reputed to have iterated as follows...
>

Oh, and just because any Figaro-related opera is probably a shoo-in,
wasn't there an opera about Cherubino written by one of the Minnesota
composers? Not Argento, but another one?

[Karen Mercedes]

On 18 May 2000, Howard Slenk wrote:

> A friend of mine recently toured Spain and was told, while in Seville,
> that more than a dozen operas are set in Seville. He asked me to name
> them, and I didn't do very well. I came up with:
>
> Barber of S
> Carmen
> The Marriage of Figaro
> Don Giovanni

LA FORZA DEL DESTINO
EL GATO MONTES

KM
-----
Ich singe, wie der Vogel singt,
Der in den Zweigen wohnet;
Das Lied, das aus der Kehle dringt,
Ist Lohn, der reichlich lohnet.
-- J.W. von Goethe, WILHELM MEISTER

My NEIL SHICOFF Website:
http://www.radix.net/~dalila/shicoff/shicoff.html

My Website:
http://www.radix.net/~dalila/index.html

[VALFER]

I almost forgot.

Don Giovanni Tenorio (Carnicer)
The "other" Barbiere (Paisiello)
Chateau Margaux (Chapi)

Nice challenge!

Valfer
>

[Howard Slenk]

I just thought of another one to add to my original four--maybe:

The Stone Guest - Dargomishky

Not sure of the spelling of that Russian composer's name.

Howard Slenk

[jonatha...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, May 18, 2000 3:00:00 AM UTC-4, Howard Slenk wrote:
> A friend of mine recently toured Spain and was told, while in Seville,
> that more than a dozen operas are set in Seville. He asked me to name
> them, and I didn't do very well. I came up with:
>
> Barber of S
> Carmen
> The Marriage of Figaro
> Don Giovanni
>

> I promised him I would ask y'all. Can you help me impress my friend?
>

> Howard Slenk

Technically DON GIOVANNI is set only in "a Spanish city".

[Jonathan Ellis]

<jonatha...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:7d42dd8f-272c-4143...@googlegroups.com...

The opera at least, although I believe at least some versions of the
story it's based on are set in Seville.

-- JLE

[Juan I. Cahis]

Fidelio

--
Enviado desde mi iPad usando NewsTap, Juan I. Cahis, Santiago de Chile.

[Juan I. Cahis]

Dear Jonathan & friends:

It is based on an Spanish theater play called "El burlador de Sevilla".

[CHSIII]

La Forza del Destino, La Favorita, Fidelio (technically not IN Seville, but
set in a prison a "few miles from Seville). You can add Beethoven's earlier
version Leonore, Paer's Leonora, Pierre Gaveaux's Leonore, Paisiello's
Barber, and versions of the Barber by Isouard, Morlacchi and Dall'Argine.
Gretry's La Mere Coupable, along with several other settings of the 3rd play
of Beaumarchais' trilogy. That brings the list up to more than a dozen,
albeit with a bit of doubling. If you add in the Zarzuelas...

"Jonathan Ellis" wrote in message news:lhofid$t1a$1...@speranza.aioe.org...

[Juan I. Cahis]

I read many years ago an interesting posting saying more or less this
below. Remember that the stories in all the Operas are more or less related
to the same time frame.

"An evening in Sevilla, was Florestan cutting his beard, after being free
from the prision, in the Barber's barbershop, in order to attend
Escamillo's bullfighting with Leonore, when he saw Carmen with Don José on
the street. Don Juan, who was in the same barbershop, was astonished of
Carmen's beauty, and went out to flirt with her, making Don José very
jealous, to the rejoice of Count Almaviva, etc., etc.,"

The story was very long, but I can remember the beginning only. Could
someone of you write the continuation?

[Jonathan Ellis]

"Juan I. Cahis" <jiclbchS...@attglobal.net> wrote in message
news:913050938418409536.464597ji...@news-central.giganews.com...

I believe that in reality, Don Giovanni is set some time before Figaro
(which, indeed, Beaumarchais set very close to the present day that he
lived through.)

The social climate at least is different: in Don G, the privileges of
lords are the normal situation - Don G's attitude, although not his
womanising, is probably much closer to the norm of his day than the
attitude of the surprisingly modern Don Ottavio, the nobleman who would
champion the grievances of women and peasants *against* a fellow
nobleman - and, more outrageously still, do so in court, rather than
settling his differences the "honourable" way in a formal challenge to a
duel: the latter being what Anna expects of him, and may be
disappointed, or even believe he is a coward, that he does not do. After
all, Anna herself may also be a bit of a snob with preconceptions of How
A Nobleman Should Handle Things - coming as she does from a father who
was a nobleman not by birth but by knighthood, newcomers to the nobility
are sometimes more snobby than more forward-thinking members of the
established patriciate. Of course, when it comes to "forward-thinking",
this is a thing that Don Giovanni is most certainly not: and while he
can keep his vices secret, his aloof above-it-all manner and the way he
can put on a show that both impresses and demeans its audience, is the
attitude that *creates* the preconceptions of snobbishness that, say,
the newly ennobled Commendatore and his family might aspire to.
Meanwhile, had Giovanni lived to see another day, the court-case brought
against him by Ottavio would have had echoes, perhaps, of that brought
against Verres by Cicero in Ancient Rome.

In Figaro, times have moved on, and the Count must keep his
philanderings secret rather than brazening it out. Even his "official"
abolition of the droit de seigneur was probably more of a recognition
that it had been unacceptable, and probably not practiced all that much
if at all, for some considerable time: and the people of peasant origin
are more than capable of holding their own in conversation with the
nobility - can you imagine Giovanni having an affable conversation with
his gardener, or even being in a situation of feeling inferior to his
valet, or actually believing that he must *work* to win Susanna's
affections if she refuses him? The thought of taking her by force, it
seems, never even crosses his mind) - and indeed causing embarassment to
their lord, in ways that would have been quite impossible in Giovanni's
time.

"Fidelio" might fit in with the middle sort of period here, dealing as
it does with the fall of at least one of the old nobility who was
hanging on to what had been an old "privilege", now regarded as corrupt,
of imprisoning those who dared challenge him. Florestan, as the civil
rights campaigner and friend to the new Minister of Justice, is from the
movement that brought in the new era, where even lords can be brought to
justice by the people, and without even necessarily needing the
patronage of a rival lord (as in the days of Giovanni and Ottavio) to
bring the guilty lord to justice. He is the one who has the evidence of
Pizzarro's crimes, presumably in the form of securely hidden documents,
which his imprisonment prevents him bringing to court: but Pizzarro has
not dared kill him yet, in case word of his death gets out, which would
allow Florestan's possessions, home and any secure holdings (documents
lodged with lawyers, for example) to fall to a new owner who might
discover what is hidden there. But the visit of the Minister means he
risks Florestan being discovered alive: hence the decision, at the last,
to kill him, conceal the body and hope it is not found by the Minister
(as well as hoping that Florestan also didn't leave enough evidence to
convict Pizzaro in a place where it could be found.) Of course he is
foiled by the unexpected heroism of "Fidelio"/Leonora - and the even
more unexpected development of a conscience by his own jailer Rocco,
playing a small but crucial part. And his cause is not helped by the
fact that, among his other prisoners, although the majority are common
criminals, some even of them are there for political rather than
criminal reasons, and would land him in hot water with the Minister
already.

"Carmen", of course, is very modern for its time as well, having gone
all the way to the establishment of a very new industry in the town, the
tobacco factory - factories and mass-employment in urban centres, in
general, being yet more modern than anything even in "Barber" and
"Marriage of Figaro". If there were lords, they moved out of town long
ago, and the only authority in town is the standing army, who also act
effectively (or not so effectively, as the case may be) as police,
enforcing a law which does not appear to have any relevance to local
lords even making it, let alone being above it: even Don Jose's
off-stage family, although at least well-off (are they true upper class,
or merely upper-middle?) is not from round here, they are themselves of
Basque origin, and "gentlemen" by virtue only of being landowners. An
immigrant also is Carmen, who recognises Jose as a fellow Basque, even
though Basque-Gypsy and Basque-Gentleman would be still a considerable
social distance apart - and Jose is grateful for this social
distinction, since even before the opera began, he killed a man in a
brawl and is lucky to have escaped being hanged for murder, being merely
kicked out of his village and ordered to join the army in the hope of
learning some self-discipline (having earned a promotion to Corporal, it
seems at first like it's working... but then he meets Carmen.) And yet
much of Spain outside the urban centres is still wild, there being
plenty of room for bandit camps in the mountains.

So trying to fit all the operas in the same time period is basically an
interesting gimmick, but doesn't stand up to anything even half
resembling a proper analysis of social conditions of the times.

-- JLE

[chsiii]

Excellent, enjoyable post.

"Jonathan Ellis" wrote in message news:lhsq66$ugf$1...@speranza.aioe.org...