The subject of "Shakespeare in Opera" was thoroughly explored on Saturday May 12th when Paul, in his inimitably relaxed and disarming manner, led his audience through some key scenes in Nicolai's sparkling comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor, Duchy Opera's current production, amply illustrated by music recordings. filmed opera scenes and expertly performed 'snippets' on the piano.
He compared Nicolai's German treatment of this play with an Italian approach to the same story by Verdi in his final masterpiece Falstaff and we encountered doomed love in Gounod's Romeo et Juliette plus magical fantasy in Britten's 1960 opera A Midsummer Night's Dream with references to Mendelssohn's incidental music for the same play. We saw how librettists and composers of the 19th / 20th centuries gave Jacobean drama a fresh lease of life on the operatic stage and how opera composers skilfully sculpted the original text to allow for the extravagant elaborations required in the recitatives and arias we love to indulge in.
A thoroughly enjoyable and enriching afternoon!
You can see the opera in a theatre near you as part of the Cornwall tour which is about to start Future
He compared Nicolai's German treatment of this play with an Italian approach to the same story by Verdi in his final masterpiece Falstaff and we encountered doomed love in Gounod's Romeo et Juliette plus magical fantasy in Britten's 1960 opera A Midsummer Night's Dream with references to Mendelssohn's incidental music for the same play. We saw how librettists and composers of the 19th / 20th centuries gave Jacobean drama a fresh lease of life on the operatic stage and how opera composers skilfully sculpted the original text to allow for the extravagant elaborations required in the recitatives and arias we love to indulge in.
A thoroughly enjoyable and enriching afternoon!
You can see the opera in a theatre near you as part of the Cornwall tour which is about to start Future
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