San Diego Opera Podcast

In looking forward to bass-baritone Greer Grimsley's performance in our upcoming production of Gounod's FAUST, I thought it would be fun to look more closely at the role of Mephistopheles and the historic basses who sang the role.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered, not terribly long ago, that there were recordings of members of the very first production of Der Rosenkavalier from Dresden, 1911!  Here's an introduction to the very first soprano to sing the marvelous role of the Marschallin, Margarethe Siems.  Enjoy!

Luckily for us, Puccini's opera Turandot premiered in 1926, well after the invention of sound recording.  So even though we don't have a recording of excerpts from the opera by the two principals (soprano Rosa Raisa and Miguel Fleta), we do have recordings of some of the sopranos who made history in the role.  Let's survey a handful of those sopranos and see if we can get a good sound picture of what Puccini might have expected for the role.

Announcing San Diego Opera's 2011 International Season!  Listen to Dr. Nicolas Reveles, the Geisel Director of Education and Outreach introduce Puccini's Turandot, Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, Gounod's Faust and Bizet's Carmen, operas that will be brilliantly produced and performed at the Civic Theatre.  Join Dr. Reveles for an operatic adventure in listening!

Tenors from Caruso to Domingo have sung and recorded music from Verdi's opera La traviata.  Here's a survey of some of those famous singers and their recordings for your enjoyment, a benefit of which will be to get more familiar with Alfredo's music before you come see our production!

Poor Alfredo's father: he often gets short shrift in discussions of Verdi's masterpiece La Traviata, and he deserves better!  Here's a survey of his role in the opera as well as some wonderful recorded excerpts to help you get to know him better.

Great art is about great choices, and Verdi made great choices in writing operas like Nabucco! I'd like to reflect for a few minutes on just what kinds of choices he made in this exciting opera as we come to the end of this brilliant production!

We all know by now that Verdi's Nabucco is loosely based on the Bible, and the deep background of the story is the Babylonian Captivity, the Exile.  Upon looking more closely at the libretto of the opera, one can find all of the different forms of prayer that one can actually find in the Bible, prayer-forms that are actually recognized by Biblical scholars.  Did Temistocle Solera, the librettist for Verdi's opera, know the Bible that well?  Perhaps, perhaps not.  But listen to the examples you'll find in today's podcast and make up your own mind. 

In the same spirit as a podcast we posted a few months back about great Rodolfos in the history of recorded sound, here is a brief survey of some of the great sopranos who've sung the role of Mimi, especially created for this week as we open Puccini's La Boheme! Enjoy the sounds of Farrar, Albanese, de los Angeles, Tebaldi and Freni as we look forward to Saturday night's opening.

Since we are going into production on our first opera of the season, let's take another look at a podcast that first ran on June 10, 2009, all about the first act of Puccini's La boheme and how the composer uses musical ideas to tell a great story.  This is a great brush-up in preparation for your trip to the theatre, beginning on January 30!

Let's kick off our 2010 San Diego Opera Podcast Season by meeting one of the stars of our first production, Puccini's La Boheme: the young Polish tenor Piotr Beczala!  This is first class singing from the lyric tenor that we've all been waiting for!

With the opening of James Cameron's film Avatar last week, I started thinking about moments in opera history that were game-changing, that began revolutions in the art form.  Let's take a quick look!

Nabucco might have been Verdi's first success, but it was his third opera.  What were the first two like?  And how about the two that followed that success in 1842?  Let's explore the operas of Verdi, the early years.

San Diego Opera is producing the evergreen standard "La boheme" by Puccini, an opera that all opera lovers know and love.  But what about one of his lesser known works?  Not terribly long ago, I discovered "La Rondine" and realize what a get this opera is.  Let me introduce it to you so that you can come to love it as much as I do!

Maybe you haven't noticed, but recitative is treated differently in different  eras of opera history.  Earlier operas utilized harpsichord and other keyboard instruments to accompany recitative, later operas used the full orchestra.  But are operatic characters treated differently, even within the same opera?  Let's explore!

Impress your opera-loving friends with your newly found knowledge of one of the most exciting musical events in most standard repertory Italian operas and that even occasionally shows up in the French and German repertoire!  The Concertato…here it is.  Everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask.  Free of charge.

You may well wonder: was there such a thing as a German opera composer before Wagner?  His works so outshone every other German composer within his lifetime that we tend to forget about people like Weber, Spohr, Nicolai, Lortzing and Marschner.  Who??

Now here's a sample of wonderful music from operas that I'm sure you've either never seen or never WILL see!  You'll hear music by such diverse composers as Cilea, Catalani, Auber, Thomas and...Rossini.  Enjoy this excursion into the unknown.

Let's take a few minutes to listen to excerpts from our 2010 Season which feature the secondary principal singers, roles like Marcello, Ismaele, Mercutio and Germont.  You can have the greatest Rodolfo and Mimi in the world, but you'd better have a Marcello who can match them!

We've thrown this term around a lot in our podcast series.  It's time to define it and listen to some worthy examples from the operas of Richard Wagner.  It is summer, after all, with Ring festivals going on throughout the world!