San Diego Opera Podcast

Carmen premiered at the Opera Comique in Paris in March, 1875.  The Comique had certain performing traditions that Bizet and his team had to follow, one of them being that dialogue between characters was normally spoken, not sung.  In fact it wasn't until after Bizet's death in June of that same year that the fully-sung version of the opera was first presented to the public.  Let's briefly explore the difference in these two versions.

If you don't know who Baron Ochs is, take a listen.  He's the biggest boor in opera and he's the comic foil to the romance and the waltz atmosphere of Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier.  Here's a short introduction.

You mean, there were original cast recordings of Puccini's last opera?  Yes, there were.  There are also recordings of some of the singers that Puccini wanted to cast in the roles of Turandot and Calaf back in 1926 but who ended up being unavailable.  Let's take a listen to some real audio history!

Just as we did last week with Faust, here are some stellar examples of great tenors who made Don Jose in Carmen a signature role.  What could be more challenging for a singing actor than to trace the deterioration of a character both musically and dramatically in an exciting evening of opera?  Listen in!

There is no dearth of great tenors who have recorded portions or all of the role of Faust in Gounod's opera.  Let's listen to a few of them: Caruso, Gigli, Bjoerling, Corelli and Gedda.  What fun!

Something common to many operas composed after the death of Richard Wagner is the use of the leitmotif, a musical idea, tune or melodic "germ" used by a composer to unify a complicated score.   Richard Strauss was one of the earliest inheritors of the leitmotif system and he uses it with abandon in Der Rosenkavalier.  Let's explore some of the leitmotifs used in that opera.

Thanks to an Italian diplomat who'd spent some time in China and gave a Chinese music box to the composer, Puccini was able to discover and then use actual folk tunes within the fabric of his score for the opera Turandot.  This podcast will introduce you to those tunes as they are utilized by Puccini in order to help you get to know more about the opera.  Have fun!

Some of you might be familiar with the name, some of you may not.  But there was a time when, especially in Europe, mezzo-soprano Conchita Supervia was considered the greatest Carmen of all time.  Luckily for us, she left some brilliant recordings behind, dating from the 1930s.  Take a listen and see if you agree that this singer might just have left a standard of performance that has yet to be surpassed!

We're lucky in that many of the great sopranos of the past who've sung the role of Marguerite in Gounod's Faust recorded excerpts or were involved in complete commercial recordings of the work.  Let's survey them and bask for awhile in the beauty of these voices!

In Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier we have a wonderful example of a hosenrolle or 'trouser role', a female singer portraying a male character in an opera.  Strauss and other composers in opera history had a lot of fun with these roles, and it's time to explore how Octavian fits into the tradition.