Re: Classical music, anyone?

In article <847af49f-5fce-496d-8ac8-b5eeb9fbe8c8@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Bill Patterson <WHPatterson@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Nov 29, 12:34=EF=BF=BDpm, djhe...@xxxxxxxxxxx (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:

OK, except I wouldn't include Verdi. =EF=BF=BDYes, he's a
nineteenth-century composer. =EF=BF=BDBut he's bombastic and I don't like
what he does with voices.

Hm ... where did all those strings of equal signs and capital
letters come from? I didn't put 'em there.

If you don't like Verdi, you might try Puccini. La Boheme and Madama
Butterfly are the most frequently-produced of his operas, but I like
Turandot best of all. "Nessun dorma" is a guilty pleasure, and I own
about 12 different versions.

I can tolerate Puccini, I've seen several of his operas, but I
wouldn't exactly seek him out. "Nessun dorma" is pretty, yes,
though it's another one of those things like "Rosamunde" that you
get tired of, or that I get tired of anyway; for another person
it's Beethoven's 5th or Pachelbel's Canon.

But if you like opera, You need to go straight to Mozart for Don
Giovanni, Le Nozze de Figaro and The Magic Flute.

I like Mozart. I like Handel's operas even better, though the
plots are SO silly (even compared to the mass of opera plots)
that it is better to hear them in Italian where the silliness
somehow doesn't sink in, even though I know what they're saying.

Oh, I notice we've conspicuously left out the first third of the 19th
century -- Chopin, Liszt, Mendlessohn-Bartholdy, and I'd say Rossini's
String serenades as well.

And in the 20th century let me add Ottorinio Respighi, a very facile
adaptor of other peoples' works ("Ancient Airs and Dances" and "The
Good Humored Ladies") but also a pleasant composer in his own right,
best known for the tone poems "The Fountains of Rome" and "The Pines
of Rome" and thinks like "Church Windows." Again, a good compilation
CD would give you a good selection. Respighi came to mind because he
did a suite of the occasional pieces Rossini did in his 30 years of
retirement and gastronomy, "Since of my Old Age." I can't remember
the Respighi title offhand -- something like "Enchanted Toybox"? Old
age and forgetfulness are terrible things.

_La Botique Fantasque_. I have it on an LP in my back bedroom, but
nothing to play it on. I have a lot of good LPs in that
condition, and if we ever get money again we need to get 'em
transferred. I like Respighi a lot. One of my favorite
fantasies is to time-travel back to Italy in the early thirties
and persuade him to set _La Morte in vacanze_, a play of that
period that was translated as _Death Takes a Holiday._ It would
make a better opera than a play (see silliness, above) and
Respighi would be the ideal man to set it.




Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djheydt@xxxxxxxxxxx
.

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