Blogging

For me blogging is something I do for my own self-education. There have to be activities before I actually learn anything. I am surprised to see that in the just less than 4 years I have been blogging, I have seen 53 operas, either live or on DVD, I had never seen before.

Some are relatively new operas not frequently performed or premiers.

L'Amour de Loin, Saariaho* (DVD)
A Night at the Chinese Opera, Weir
Appomattox, Glass
The Bonesetter's Daughter, Wallace*
The Ghosts of Versailles, Corigliano* (DVD)
The Dangerous Liaisons, Susa (VHS)
The Devils of Loudun, Penderecki (DVD)
Doctor Atomic, Adams
The First Emperor, Dun
Moses und Aron, Schoenberg (DVD)
El Nino, Adams (not sure I should count this) (DVD)
Orphée, Glass*
Rent, Larson (DVD)
Sophie's Choice, Maw
Tea: A Mirror of Soul, Dun*

I deliberately sought out operas by Rossini and Handel, including:

Ariodante, Handel
L'Assedio di Corinto, Rossini
Bianca e Falliero, Rossini
Ermione, Rossini (DVD)
Rinaldo, Handel
Semele, Handel
Tancredi, Rossini (DVD)
Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, Handel
Il Viaggio a Reims, Rossini (DVD)

That still leaves a lot. You could go to the opera a long time and never see:

Betrothal in a Monastery, Prokofiev* (DVD)
La Calisto, Cavalli (DVD)
Cyrano de Bergerac, Alfano
L'enfant et les sortilèges, Ravel
Fierrabras, Schubert (DVD)
Francesca da Rimini, Zandonai* (DVD)
The Gambler, Prokofiev
La Juive, Halevy (DVD)
La Leggenda di Sakùntala, Alfano
I Lombardi, Verdi (DVD)
Médée, Charpentier* (DVD)
Mitridate, Re di Ponto, Mozart (DVD)
Platée, Rameau
The Rape of Lucretia, Britten
Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria, Monteverdi* (DVD)
Roberto Devereaux, Donizetti (DVD)
Sir John in Love, Williams
Stiffelio, Verdi (DVD)
Vanessa, Barber* (DVD)

Or at least that's the excuse I'm using. What is my excuse for:

La Belle Hélène, Offenbach
Fedora, Giordano (DVD)
L’Incoronazione di Poppea, Monteverdi (DVD)
Iphigénie en Tauride, Gluck
The Maid of Orleans, Tchaikovsky
Orphée et Eurydice, Gluck (shocking)
Orpheus in the Underworld, Offenbach
La Rondine, Puccini
Street Scene, Weill (DVD)
Die tote Stadt, Korngold
Il Trittico, Puccini (already seen Gianni Schicchi)

Some of the entries in this list may be bogus--I may simply have forgotten. I hear things differently than I did when I started. You can never go back. In the future I will not be able to keep up this tempo of newness.

However, there are still a couple of Janaceks I'd like to see, and many many more I'd like to see again.

Footnote. Marilyn Horne sang Marie in Wozzeck in 1962, so it was her I saw. It was amazing. I may have seen her in Tancredi in 1979 but also maybe not. I absolutely saw her in Semiramide in 1981 and as Adalgisa in Norma in 1982. I probably saw Orlando in 1985 and I certainly saw Orlando Furioso in 1989. So I still don't know if I already had seen Tancredi.

I must have told this before. As a student at San Francisco State in 1962, I was allowed to sign up to usher in 2 operas. I chose Der Rosenkavalier with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Wozzeck with Marilyn Horne.