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"Separate the music out and you have nothing." :(
- Maybe opera loses some attributes when translated to english.
Ma per chi capisce l'italiano le parole sono bellisime!
Opera is pure lyricism!
The same thing is the Portuguese Fado. Perfect, beautiful!!!
No, literature is written language. Oral work is not, and cannot be, literature. When poetry was first written down, it became literature. Today, the onlyoral art is extemporaneous work that was not written down at the time it was presented.Quote:
Originally Posted by Brasil
Literature is an art, but that does not mean that it encompasses all arts, nor do all other arts encompass literature.
I would say there is oral art with the moderm oral storytellers, although the majority uses some short of record before memorizing.
The thing about Opera is that no art lives in a bubble isolated from the other arts. Take William Blake who considered his illustrations part of the poems or Andre Breton claim that a text should have no narratives and because that he used pictures in Nadja. A Drama always combined his acting with the support of other forms of art, first the oral form, then the text, sometimes music ,dance, etc.
But thinking that makes all arts one art is just being near-sighted.
Let us say that I wish to go to a performance of Glass' Akhnaten, and I read the libretto before attending; how does this effect (or improve my understanding) of the opera itself?
Now, since I have the time and money, I go to Stravinski's Oedipus Rex. I do the same study of the libretto. How does this effect my understanding of the performance (and why does the narrator tell the story behind the music)?
I'm sorry Brasil. I disagree with you. All you're proving is how beautiful a language Italian is. (And I think it's the most beautiful language in the world ;) ) An opera singer can sing "Im taking out the garbage" in Italian and it would sound wonderful. That's why most operas are in Italian. It's easy to integrate the sounds of Italian to music. And it goes to show that it's how it sounds (and therefore integrated medium with music) that counts, not the literary ingrediants of the words.Quote:
Originally Posted by Brasil
:lol: He has to be one hell of a singer to say this and actually amuse people :pQuote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
But I agree. I for one think that Arabic is the most beautiful language in the world, but still, I can't see it going anywhere when it comes to Opera. If we say that Opera is a literary genre, then Arabic operas would be good (based on their literary value). It depends mostly on the music, since, as far as I know, some Operas were literary works that turned to Operas later. So basically the judge in the opera isn't based on literary grounds but rather musical ones.
If we consider Opera literature, then we might as well call Ballet literature, since it's, sometimes, based on literary works. Literature means books, or that's how I see it. Anything else adds a new element to that book to make it 'different' from literature, and that's how they get their names and techniques. I'm not sure if that made sense, but hope you get my point.
I haven't hread enough Arabic to compare it's inherent beauty with other languages. The little bit I have heard compares favorably. It seems to have a lot of vowels, and vowels are the key for language sounds. I always remember this. Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones (rock group) was asked what was the key to writing songs, and he said, "it's all in the vowels." What makes Italian have the edge over some of the other languages with lots of vowels is that there vowel sounds are disctinct from each other and don't blurr. Apparently that means something to song writers. Perhaps because each syllable is a distinct note. I don't know, I'm not a musician.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nossa
Maybe. I'm not an expert on Opera (and haven't heard much of it either) so you might be right. But I remember that there was an attempt (I think in the 40s or the 50s) to make an Arabic Opera, and it failed big time. The singer who was supposed to sing it, was at that time (and still is) the best most famous Arabic singer. Her vocal abilities were compared to an Opera singer called Maria Callas (Whom I'm told was a great Opera singer herself).Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
If you're interested in listening to Oum Kolthoum (the singer I was just talking about), here's the best YouTube video I could find:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ8Cu...eature=related
Maybe you can judge from this. But I'm still not sure about Arabic being an Opera language. Maybe if I hear it and judge myself. Who knows.
I would say Opera is a wonderful use of Italian language and there is little wonder that Dante managed to be Dante in italian.
Anyways, I think the big problem is the super-generalization, if we transform a song, a opera, a music in literature just because there is a part of the process is writen, we would end having almost no musician - they would all be writers and there would be no music, just literature.
This is a dangerous inversion of vallue, sounds like Music depends on Literature, and we all know that Music came before literature and existed without a single writen symbol for god knows how long.
Today we have a writen society, so almost all art forms have writen register, but that is now.
I can't open the youtube video while at work. They block them. So I'll try to remember when I get home. But if it wasn't successful it may have had to do with lots of other things than the language. They can make a good opera out of any language. Some have mentioned famous German operas in this thread. If you can have a successful opera in german than you can have one in any language. :lol: (Sorry to you German people, I love you guys, but your language isn't sweet to the ear. ;) :p ) For some reason they stopped calling any operas great after the early part of the 20th century. No matter how good it is, even in Italian, then the opera experts look down on it. It's almost a dead art form, except for the old classics. I never really understood why.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nossa
That has nothing to do with literature though. She was even famous for modifying the traditional way dialogue was "sung" during opera to give it a better flow, showing the true floppiness of the writing in opera.Quote:
Originally Posted by Antiquarian
On another note, I just went to see Pelleas and Melisande by Claude Debussy. That opera has no real singing, and is purely in dialogue, with a little bit of orchestra. That is perhaps the best example of opera as literature outside of the idiosyncratic Wagner tradition. The opera itself was based on a play not a libretto, and therefore acts as a play instead of an opera. Even so, if one was to read it as literature, they would most assuredly go for the original play, and not the modified text used by Debussy. Why? because the music changes the literary composition to yield to the sound, and not the meaning, or to the flow, and not the accuracy. The opera itself is about the musical element over the literary element.
That of course, is an exception. And either way, the writing wasn't that great to begin with (wow, Maurice Maeterlinck botched that one, if anyone knows more about him please say something, because based on that, a Nobel prize was not deserved).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brasil;569558
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I think my friends would smile at your reply, Brasil, and say you are preaching to the converted - they give me Theatre Tokens for birthdays and Christmas. I have seen nine plays this year and have three more booked (including Hamlet); last year I saw seven and the year before twelve. Before that I was not able to go to the theatre for many years, so you could say I am now making up for the years when my drama was all read at home. :)
In those three years I have also seen eight operas and hope to see a few more in Welsh National Opera's Autumn season.
:lol: How can it be called an opera without singing? Leave it to Debussy to do something silly like that. As a side note, Debussy's music has never inspired me. Frankly he's boring, and an opera without singing :lol: sounds incredibly boring. :DQuote:
Originally Posted by JBI