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Falstaff: When Verdi Found His Inner Comedian

"I don’t think Verdi had much of a sense of humor," F. Paul Driscoll, editor in chief of Opera News tells us. "His life was marked by tragedy early on." His two children died in infancy and his first...

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Falstaff: When Verdi Found His Inner Comedian

"I don’t think Verdi had much of a sense of humor," F. Paul Driscoll, editor in chief of Opera News tells us. "His life was marked by tragedy early on." His two children died in infancy and his first...

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Why Beethoven's Fidelio Speaks to Us Now

When Beethoven sat down to begin writing his only opera, Fidelio, he was a man who was swimming upstream. Severe hearing loss had set in ten years earlier, and this had a significant effect on his...

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Why Beethoven's Fidelio Speaks to Us Now

When Beethoven sat down to begin writing his only opera, Fidelio, he was a man who was swimming upstream. Severe hearing loss had set in ten years earlier, and this had a significant effect on his...

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Four Fabulously Fiery Carmens

It's hard to imagine, but George Bizet's Carmen was a spectacular failure when it was first presented in 1875. The composer died never knowing that his opera became a huge hit. "If he had lived another...

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Three Reasons Why Wagner’s Rienzi is Rarely Performed

Wagner’s Rienzi is an opera that hardly ever gets produced by major companies. F. Paul Driscoll, editor-in-chief of Opera News, gives three simple reasons why you never see it in production.  1: Wagner...

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Three Operas Brought to You by the Letter ‘Z’

Other than Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), how many operas can you name that begin with the letter Z? In this edition of Opera in Brief, F. Paul Driscoll editor-in-chief of Opera News...

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The Three Boldest - Yet Unknown - Tchaikovsky Heroines

Most opera lovers are familiar with Tatyana in Eugene Onegin and Lisa in The Queen of Spades, but Tchaikovsky also wrote some fabulous music for several other heroines in operas that aren’t heard very...

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Beyond 'Les Miz': Three Operas Based on Victor Hugo Novels

Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables is considered to be one of the greatest novels of the 19th century. The 1985 musical theater version of Les Misérables – aka "Les Miz" – was one of the longest running...

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Opera in Brief: Top Three Operatic Crowd Scenes

When a great operatic chorus is sung by a gifted group of singers, the choristers often play a starring role. Sometimes they even steal the show.Coming together "as a single character, the audience...

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Top Three Operas About Small Town Life

It takes a village. In most areas of the world today, small town life includes cable television, cell phones and modern forms of transportation. But if you were born in a village a hundred or more...

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Top Three Sexiest Librettos in Opera

Opera is at its most steamy when passion trumps reason.“Stagings that recognize that spontaneity are what make a scene seem really sexy,” said F. Paul Driscoll, editor in chief of Opera News magazine....

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