Tag Archives: finale
Finale 40 – Götterdämmerung
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 9th January 2024The concluding scene of Wagner’s four-opera slog through Norse mythology ends with the Immolation Scene. Its action is described below taken from the Wikipedia article on the opera. Depending on your taste the cycle is one of art’s greatest achievements or it is a vast Sahara dotted with lush oases. I am of the latter…
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Finale 39 – Benvenuto Cellini
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 30th November 2023Hector Berlioz was among the most innovative and original of all the great composers. His first opera loosely based on an episode from the Renaissance artist’s memoirs was written in 1838. It sounds like nothing that preceded it. The music moves like the molten metal that is used to cast Cellini’s famous statue of Perseus…
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Finale 38 – Dialogues des Carmélites
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 21st November 2023Dialogues des Carmélites (Dialogues of the Carmelites) is an opera in three acts with music and libretto by Francis Poulenc. It is the story of the Martyrs of Compiègne, Carmelite nuns who, in 1794 during the closing days of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, were guillotined in Paris for refusing to renounce…
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Finale 36 – Act II La Rondine
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 21st December 2022La Rondine (The Swallow) is the 8th of Puccini’s 12 operas. It is the least performed of his mature works. It was commissioned in 1913 by Vienna’s Carltheater. They wanted a lighter and more entertaining opera in the style of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. The result was more in the style of Lehar with touches of…
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Finale 34 – Act III La Gioconda
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 16th June 2022During the nearly half century that followed the premiere of Verdi’s Nabucco only two Italian operas not by Verdi entered the standard operatic repertoire – so complete was his dominance. The two survivors are Boito’s Mefistofele and Ponchielli’s La Gioconda. Amilcare Ponchielli (1834-86) was born in a small town near Cremona. He studied at the…
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Finale 30 – Luisa Miller Act 1
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 8th August 2021Luisa Miller was first performed at the Teatro San Carlo, Naples in 1849. It was Verdi’s 15th opera (if you count Jérusalem the rewrite of I Lombardi for Paris as a separate work). It didn’t reach the Met until 1929 when it had six performances extending into 1930. The cast was a grand one. It…
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Finale 29 – La Traviata Act 2
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 8th May 2021La Traviata is an opera full of highlights. Much of its music its familiar to listeners who are not opera enthusiasts. But popular as it is, the finale to the second act is rarely heard apart from a complete performance. Nevertheless, this ensemble is one of Verdi’s grandest achievements. The world’s most popular opera, Traviata…
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Finale 27 – The Marriage of Figaro Act 2
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 6th January 2021The famous finale to Mozart’s comic opera begins when the door to the closet in a room Count Almaviva’s estate is opened. Both the Count and Countess think Cherubino, the Count’s page, is in the closet. The Count is about to break down the door and then decides to use his sword on the page…
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Finale 26 – Il Templario Act 1
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 30th September 2020I wrote about Otto Nicolai’s second opera a couple of years ago. There’s only one complete recording of the work. It’s from the Chemnitz Opera which performed it in 2008 . The opera, based on Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, was thought lost as its score was obliterated by bombings in World War II. It was successfully reconstructed…
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Finale 25: Shostakovich: Symphony No. 11 in G Minor, Op. 103 “The Year 1905”- 4. The Tocsin
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 9th September 2020Written and first performed in 1957, Shostakovich’s Symphony #11 was ostensibly about the abortive Russian Revolution of 1905. Everything the composer wrote or said after Stalin squashed him in 1935 because the dictator was offended by Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk has to be decoded. He composed the piece in the wake of the Soviet repression…
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