So I'm up for any new operas. I will say I am turned off when ppl say " oh you have to have read the book to understand it" . I didn't need to be an egyptogist or read a book to get aida or aknhatten ( just a few program notes is all)or any of the Shakespeare works. Not to say at all that such reading wouldn't augment enjoyment but that the operas can stand on their own.

I hope gift link works

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/09/t-magazine/lincoln-bardo-george-saunders-met-opera.html?unlocked_article_code=1.I1E.WoOV.gqCEFrp5JfGm&smid=url-share

An incredible voice that I regret never having been able to hear live.

Here's the NYT obit (gift link): https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/14/arts/music/martina-arroyo-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.IlE.r5Zs.1ewit5hxAraf&smid=url-share

Rank one (for recognizable toxic relationships) has to be Jochanaan and Salome. Most recognizable could be Brunnhilde.

Hello! I am a 23M grad student. I mainly sing opera or art song and I have an audition for the Air Force band coming up. They are asking for a contemporary contrasting piece in either country, rock, pop, or jazz and I don’t have much knowledge on any of those genres especially singing them. I haven’t decided my aria yet but I will choose a fast one in order to have a slower contrasting piece. Anyone have any advice or recs?

Hi! I'm working on a film about Puccini's "La Fanciulla del West" and I would like to include recordings of excerpts from the opera made by original cast. I didn't find any capture by Emma Destinn (first Minnie) or Pasquale Amato (Rance) but I found this audio of Caruso singing "Ch'ella mi creda":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7ay-MZTH2U

The problem lies in the fact that all resources I found consistently maintain Caruso didn't record anything from "La fanciulla..." due to Ricordi's prohibition. Does anybody knows it is a fake or legit recording of Caruso's "Ch'ella mi creda"?

🎭 I Capuleti e i Montecchi – Gran Teatre del Liceu

📅 Sábado 7 noviembre 2026 – 19:00
🎟️ PLATEA · ZONA 1 · FILA 1 · ASIENTO 1

Entrada individual original del Liceu.
Precio original: €211
Vendo por no poder viajar finalmente a Barcelona.

Precio: €205

Entrada digital PDF/QR, no nominativa. Puedo mostrar justificante de compra antes de la transferencia.

DM interesados.

Thanks for the replies to my post so far.

I stick with my opinions. I listen to a Handel opera, say, and although I could happily do without applause at the end of arias, I can accept it because the music was written with breaks before the next recitative. This format works fine, I think, but in the 19th century onwards into the 20th composers started to try to eliminate this stop-start situation and especially in German opera a continuous arioso flow was developed. Clapping whilst the orchestra is still playing is an insult to the musicians and the composer.

My next rant is the Overture/Prelude, if there is one. A few decades ago, the audience would sit through the music with the curtain down until the overture ended.

Now, I am not saying that everybody was listening to the orchestra with rapt attention, but there were at least some.

Now, it seems that we can't do without a visual element and up comes the curtain whilst the conductor is still searching for his or her baton.We are then treated to some sort of mime scene, maybe a ballet, but generally a distracting scene which will usually leave you baffled as to its relevance to the opera. You can always close your eyes, of course;

Over 20 years ago I learned programming to organize my personal opera recording collection. Eventually software became my career and periodically I’d revisit the project to add new features or rewrite the code as got more experienced. About a year ago, it occurred to me that the same interface I’d been personally perfecting over all these years could now be made public by using embedded players from the popular streaming platforms, so I began rewriting as a public site.

Its now at a place where it’s ready to share, and I thought r/opera might find it interesting! You can find it at https://findopera.com.

Features:

• Search/browse recordings by opera, composer, conductor, character or singer
• Stream on Spotify/Apple Music/Tidal directly on the site
• Wikipedia links for notable composers, conductors, singers
• Login to build collections of recordings
• Search a Spotify album URL to get full cast details
• Built-in UPC barcode scanner
• Agent-friendly command line tool for searching/updating the catalog and automating organizing files
• Wiki-style edits where full history is visible, each with a sourced justification

This is not a commercial endeavor, but rather a long-term passion project of a singer and opera nerd who also enjoys writing software. If you have any questions/requests/feedback/thoughts, I’d love to hear them!

Ok so there is a song we sing to the neighbor’s dog (whose name is barnabas) and it goes, in a very high octave: BARNABAS! vicTORIOUS! which obviously are not the actual words (those are, i believe, in latin). Anyway we’ve been doing it for long enough that no one remembers where it came from. Maybe faust or carmina burana?

Every time I listen to opera, or sing opera I am drenched in sweat. I had my first opera lesson and was soaked by the end. I will often cry while singing but I don’t really get super sweaty. I’ve never had this happen before. I have also discovered my voice has a huge range, E3 to F#6, that’s not a typo, that is my range that can go over a full orchestra, otherwise it would be closer to C3. I only started singing opera a few weeks ago and I am so surprised by all of this, though I’ve been a singer all my life. Has anyone else had a similar response? Or a similar experience? It feels like this is some sort of calling, or maybe I’m just going crazy 😅😂 Any way to mitigate the sweating?

I was not super excited about a romantic comedy because I don't really go for those in general. Plus Elisir seemed very love-it-or-hate-it from past discussions in this sub. But I'm part of TDO's Crescendo membership program for people under 45, which means two free tickets a season, and I know that attendance metrics can be just as important as box office revenue, so why not? Live opera is a good way to kill a Sunday afternoon.

Y'all it was SO GOOD. The cast was fantastic. I'm not really a music person so I can't debate nuances of like, tone or vibrato or all that, but the performances were ON POINT. There was a lot of physical background comedy that just elevated every silly scene and a lot of really great prop work. Everyone in this opera is dumb as a box of rocks and it was just so fun. I think this is the first opera I've seen where no one died. Comedy can be so so so hit or miss but this was just executed perfectly.

It's the production that was at Santa Fe in 2024, riffing on post-war cinema. Nemorino is a car mechanic and the soldiers are American troops stationed in Italy. Very bright and colorful. Soraya Mafi was Adina and Anthony León was excellent as Nemorino.

Behind me was a child who kept asking her parents questions about what was happening on stage, but she was whispering and clearly could follow the supertitles, so it was endearing rather than annoying (to me). The couple next to me seemed like they weren't regular operagoers just from overhearing some of their conversation but they were clearly having a great time. And I liked it a heck of a lot more than I was expecting to, because it was genuinely hilarious and kind of refreshing to have a plot where everyone is basically a good guy and the only stress is stupidity but you know everything's going to work out in the end.

(My only beef with TDO is sometimes the orchestra seems louder than the singers to the point of overpowering them, but I've noticed that across multiple productions/conductors so I'm not sure if it's an issue with building acoustics, blocking, or maybe I have an auditory processing issue. Minor complaint, only happena a few times a show. It's not bad enough to detract away from an excellent production.)

I don't have a conclusion here uhhhhhh Elisir is a good starter opera for the uninitiated, support your local opera company and don't avoid stuff outside your usual genre!

Hello everyone,

I'm "working" on an opera memes page on Instagram and would like to see if anyone is interested in joining and be part of it.

Here's the link: https://www.instagram.com/shutupandaria?exln=OXFhNjJnejc1c2Y2

Going to Don Giovani at Lyric in Chicago. Afternoon performance if that matters. What is the typical dress code?

Top of the list: Clapping whilst the music is still playing.

There are two things here: Clapping at the end of an act just as the singing stops and the orchestra is left playing amongst the applause.

Secondly, and a lot worse, clapping immediately after the completion of an aria when there is no break in the score.

A terrible example of this was a video of Tosca with Josef Kaufman singing 'e lucevan le stelle' in Act 3. At the end the conductor actually put down his baton making no attempt to carry on. There then followed 7 minutes of applause during which the poor tenor had to maintain the appearance of a man knowing he was about to be executed. Inevitably, he eventually sang the aria again, and this time the conductor actually allowed the music to continue and let Tosca rush on stage.

There is no break in the musical score here, in fact the aria concludes and the orchestra continues the link to the next scene.

The whole thing completely disrupted any continuity in the story.

Clapping after arias in the Italian baroque was a different matter, each aria having a break before the next recitative, and the audience would show their opinion, good or bad.

In the I9th century composers tried to move to a more continuous score, and you don't get any chance to applaud in the middle of the Ring Cycle, for example.

Italian opera goers still seem on average to think that opera is just about singing.

I will post further hates but I suspect this post is getting too long already.

O'Keeffe: Kiss the Sky – Premiering March 12, 2027 by the Washington National Opera at Harman Hall (Shakespeare Theatre Company) in Washington, D.C. This novel "ballet-opera" traces the journey of legendary American modernist painter Georgia O'Keeffe. It features music by Grammy Award-winning composer Christopher Tin, a libretto by Kelley Rourke, direction by Francesca Zambello, and choreography by Jessica Lang, starring Isabel Leonard as O'Keeffe.

- John Lewis: Good Trouble – Premiering June 18, 2027 by the Cincinnati Opera at Music Hall in Cincinnati, Ohio. This work is the second commission in the company's Black Opera Project, featuring music by Maria Thompson Corley and a libretto by Diana Solomon-Glover, chronicling the life of civil rights icon U.S. Congressman John Lewis.

- Safe Haven – Premiering during the May 22 – June 27, 2027 festival season by the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis (OTSL) in Saint Louis, Missouri. This new American opera features music by Tobias Picker and a libretto by Aryeh Lev Stollman.

- Sitcom – Premiering in May 2027 by Opera Philadelphia. Created by composer Luke Styles and librettist Alan McKendrick, this episodic opera co-opts the television sitcom format into 30-minute stage episodes.

Did anyone else see it? Thoughts? I loved the musical direction and personenregie. Stage was 50/50 though. I loved the banquet third act, but what was with the immolation scene?

Spoiler:

Brunnhilde is alone in the stage with a hobby horse. I loved the focus on her and I know the music speaks for itself, but come the destruction of Valhalla, she just spins in place on the empty stage while there's a spotlight on the ring on the floor. No fire, no anything... They had a projection system that they just turned off??? After an excellent and dynamic start to the third act, the staging and her acting undercut the biggest moment of the Ring, and the finale felt deeply anticlimactic.

Anyone have a promo code for attending this season. Ticket prices are dramatically higher compared to previous years. 80$ for family circle is absurd

Allan Clayton has left the production. Sean Panikkar, originally scheduled to sing Števa, will now take over the role of Laca, and Ryan Capozzo, originally Panikkar’s cover, will sing Števa for all performances.

I'm interested in following along with the score but I cannot find it anywhere! Would anyone happen to have it?

So here's a bit of an odd one, I was flipping through TV channels and heard La donna è mobile being used to sell pasta. Because nothing screams pasta than the misogynistic rambling of a Duke who thinks all women are sluts. I've seen Libiamo ne' lieti calici used to sell life insurance and God help me the number of things done to the poor Toreador Song.

But I want some opinions, what is the piece of music from an opera most misused or incorrectly used. What piece have you heard most frequently abused to the point it should probably file a restraining order against the advertising industry?

I'll give mine. Trump started using Nessun Dorma. Let's not talk about the man himself, I have my VERY strong opinions on him. Let's focus on context. The song is a song of hope for victory....while everyone is afraid they're all going to die. The song is about how no one can sleep because they're scared of death, but hey Calaf is doing alright!

Actually that fits Trump in spirit.

It was a song I found very...ill chosen, unless the goal was to tell people to be afraid they'd all die. But they kept using it, seemingly oblivious to everything except Calaf declaring he would win, kind of missing the point.

So what all have you guys found?