San Diego Opera Podcast

Bel canto is a much misunderstood operatic/vocal term. If you're not familiar with the term, you're in luck because today's podcast will help define its meaning. Donizetti, for instance, is considered a bel canto composer; but what does that really mean? Is it just a musical term or does it perhaps have something to do with the text of an opera, it's poetry? Let Dr. Nicolas Reveles, The Geisel Director of Education & Outreach for San Diego Opera, explain it all to you!

In a podcast focusing on the music of Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo, Nicolas Reveles, The Geisel Director of Education and Outreach for San Diego Opera, shows how opera communicates dramatic moments, atmosphere, the emotions of the characters, even the physical environment within which the characters find themselves. A 'must see' for audience members new to opera or those who want to deepen their experience!

How is it that some of the most beautiful and rhythmically infectious 'Spanish' music is by French composers? Think of Bizet's Carmen! Massenet pulls off a similar trick in his beautiful opera Don Quichotte, or Don Quixote. Watch and listen as Nicolas Reveles, Director of Education & Outreach for San Diego Opera, takes you through it. Enjoy!

Verdi is at his best when he's dealing with politics and passion. Throw in a very true historical story (the assassination of Gustav III of Sweden at a masked opera ball in 1792) and you have the makings of terrific opera. Watch and listen as Nicolas Reveles, the Geisel Director of Education & Outreach for San Diego Opera takes you through the historical background of this great work, A Masked Ball.

The Elixir of Love could well be considered Gaetano Donizetti's ultimate romantic comedy and Nicolas Reveles, the Geisel Director of Education and Outreach for San Diego Opera makes that point (and more!) in this delightful look at San Diego Opera's second offering for the 2014 Season. Enjoy!

Pagliacci is a terrific piece of musical theatre: exciting, dramatic, suspenseful and overpowering. One can make more than a few connections between the verismo style of this opera and the world of cinema, especially the films of Alfred Hitchcock and giallo specialists like Bava and Argento. Let's have a little fun with those connections as Dr. Nicolas Reveles, the Geisel Director of Education and Outreach for San Diego Opera discusses some of his favorite things!

"Homework??", you exclaim, "I didn't sign up for that!" No, you didn't. But Geisel Director of Education and Outreach Nicolas Reveles would like to talk about homework and its place in preparing to see an opera you might not know. Used to be we had to go through all sorts of contortions to go to the opera and understand what we were seeing & hearing because we didn't understand the languages being used. Now, of course, we have the amazing convenience of supertitles. But you can go 'deeper' than simply being able to know what the singers are singing about...

In a kind of expansion of our last episode of Opera 101, let's explore what all those operatic duets (or at least, most of them) are about: Love! Luckily, love is a major theme in all four of the operas that we're presenting in our 2014 Season: The Elixir of (naturally) Love, Pagliacci, A Masked Ball and Don Quixote. Dr. Nicolas Reveles, The Geisel Driector of Education and Outreach, discusses how our four different composers...Leoncavallo, Donizetti, Massenet and Verdi...approach love in four very different ways musically. Enjoy!

The duet may seem to be a pretty simple musical form featured in opera that really doesn't need any explanation, right? But there's a little more to it than just "this person sings, then that person sings, then they sing together!" Dr. Nic Reveles, the Geisel Director of Education & Outreach for San Diego Opera, lets you in on what kinds of duets exist in opera and how they communicate the feelings of the characters using the love duet from Verdi's Un ballo in maschera, A Masked Ball. Enjoy!

Whenever an opera company prepares to do an important work from the standard repertoire (like Pagliacci for instance) we hear the complaint, "Oh, I've heard (or seen) that opera before. I think I'll pass this time." But WAIT:approaches to the standard rep can be very different, depending entirely on the artistic team that's put together by the management. Let Dr. Nic, our Director of Education and Outreach, explore this issue with you and listen, through examples from Leoncavallo's great opera, how different the same music can sound coming from different singers. Sometimes, the difference is radical!