any opera fans here???, if you aren't don't open this thread and start shit
 

I'm looking at travelling to Germany next year for the Bregenzer Festspiele, just wondering if anyone has been and what their experiences have been like if they went to opera on the lake.

edit: got my location wrong - Bregenz is in Austria near the german border

{insert shit here}

that would be fanatstic! I ahve never taken such a trip. I love Opera. I got to see Carmen here in Houston recently. it was great. I want to see the Gotterdamerung (sp?) live.

i'm studying to become an opera singer in manchester. i'm a bass-baritone. yeah sounds like it's well worth checking out-go 4 it!

I was in a band called Götterdammerung for a while. One of the longest-running weirdo bands in my town (started in 1982); I think I was probably their 18th guitarist, and I won't be the last. The leader is a huge Wagner freak, naturally. The pics I have posted of the band with the candelabra on top of the pile of Moogs and Mellotron was that band. I have a friend who is going to Germany to see The Ring, and had to book it several years out. Apparently there is quite the inferno of real fire that goes on during the performance!
I'm not an opera fan at all (that style of singing is very abrasive to me), but I can see the appeal. So epic!

seeing the complete ring cycle was THE best live experience of music I have ever had. Nothing compares to the power of a symphony orchestra.

and rob - i'm mixing carmen in september for my state theatre co and the national opera company's co pro of it, will be my first real one. i have done einstein on the beach 3 and 4 recently but glass' repetition for me doesn't work to the same extent as steve reich's.

im saving my pennies for bregenzer, not sure what will be playing next year though. the festival is currently on and the opera on the lake is Il Trovatore.

I like some opera. Italian opera is much better than German opera, though. More passionate and creative in my opinion. I never really got into German opera.

I love German OPera. I like the density of it.

hey pharmacy, I saw the Ring cycle when they aired it on PBS here in Houston (public telvision) over th course of four days. I was 15. my folks thought I was nuts. 4plus hours a day, of opera.

I have a friend who is heavy into Reich and Glass. they are very repetetive and mechanical and not very appealing to me, glass less than reich.
I got to see the opera based on Gertrude Steins poem, I cannot remember which, but it premiered in Hosuton at the Hosuton Grand Opera, and it was a borefest.

BOREFEST!

yeah i have a thing for german opera, seven deadly sins by weill is awesome, and although not so much an opera but an operatic concert piece orff's carmina burana.

See what i mean, Absoloute prick. U are a real kunt hayden.

Hi there, knowing irony!

Isn't it obvious? Is it still worth calling him a cunt for something so very, very obvious? He is a cunt, granted, but he's a very amusing one.

Thanks. I'd like him to at least give me the courtesy of spelling 'kunt' correctly.

you don't even merit that much courtesy.

Anyway, I quite like opera, although I'm more a fan of the ridiculous Germanic epic type than the Italian romantic. Don Giovanni is King in my books regardless.

Fucking Irish.

xenophobe

Cunt

Orff's Carmina Burana was pretty good. It's one of the few German opera peices that I like. I also like "The Planets" (I know it's not opera, but I'll post my thoughts on it here anyway). I'm more of a Carmen fan myself. Georges Bizet interpreted that story wonderfully.

Verdi's Rigoletto is also another one of my all-time favorites. I don't know how anyone can like German opera more than Italian opera. The Italians have it down. Much more passionate and artistic. Not as cold and rigidly structured as the Germans.

I have an LP from the late 60s featuring Sandy Bull playing the Carmina Burana on solo banjo.

That sounds awesome. I love banjo. It's the funniest of all stringed instruments.