I love Baroque opera and I’ll say Handel’s Giulio Cesare although I"m tired of all the ‘modern’ interpretations of it.
I’m also a Wagner whore.
Mostly I like late romantic and post-romantic to 20th century stuff. I won’t admit this to my professors, but, while I enjoy moments of Mozart, I can rarely stand to listen to an entire recording. Live shows are a different animal, of course, but I’d still rather see something post 1850 if I have the choice.
Ditto that. I wouldn’t drop Mozart totally off the playlist but I don’t understand the stature he has today. Whether instrumental or operatic, there are so many others I’d rather listen to.
OMG! The one with the three (count 'em three) counter-tenors?! That’s three more than I can stand. If you want your males to have a high voice, that’s what trouser roles are for!
Hee! Count 'em Counter-Tenors.
Am I a bad person if I say my favorite is The Pirates Of Penzance? Not the most beautiful music, not the deepest, or the most artful, but I’d see that over any other opera or operetta I can think of.
The only opera I’ve seen live is The Mikado. 
Does Tommy count?
If not, I’ll have to go with Marriage of Figaro too. But I’ve only seen three operas in their entirety (and one of those was on DVD), so I might have another favorite if I’d seen more.
That’s actually why I complained about modern interpretations. XM radio used to have an excellent recording of the opera. But, yeah, give me the Baroque any day. LOL, I guess that is why I started a Brahms thread earlier today.
Just back from watching Turandot, done by Opera Carolina (Charlotte). Reaffirming for me that Puccini was the best at writing operas worth listening to.
Huhn! My friend Brian just got back from directing that production!
For modern operas, I like The Rake’s Progress, Peter Grimes, Suannah, and the weirdest of them all, Satyagraha by Philip Glass. My favorite, though, has to be Nixon in China. The more I listen to Doctor Atomic the more I like it, but for now gimme tricky Dick. Gambei!
For the older stuff, I love Dido and Aeneas which I thought might be the oldest official opera, but I guess it’s not. Love Die Frau Ohne Schatten, Abduction from the Seraglio, Tristan und Isolde, Gounoud’s Faust, and I’m a sucker for Hansel and Gretel and Due Zauberflote.
All-time fave, though, is still Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmelites. Great songs (and scenes) for women and lovely mix of modern and sacred music–that “Ave Maria” in the second act never fails to give me chills. And that final scene–as the nuns are arrested and marched off to their deaths for defying the Terror, singing a final “Salve Regina” that gets weaker and weaker as each sister is guillotined, with finally one lone voice left, the heroine who until now has been the wimpiest of all finding her courage and following her vow to sacrifice her life for her beliefs. 
And let me tell you his concept was quite interesting. Opera Carolina has tried with the last two productions (*Le nozze de Figaro *was the prior production) to save money by eliminating the use of large sets, replacing them with the use of props only. For Turandot, they had wheeled platforms connected by wheeled staircases that were moved around during the opera as needed. To add to the concept, Ping, Pang and Pong were wheeled around the stage when making their “official” appearances in platforms that were disguised as elaborate, oversized robes of state. For Act II, the Emperor was about 30 feet above the stage on this very tall platform, sitting there, not moving; if it had been me, I’d have never been up there in the first place! :eek:
The end result worked quite well. The production was well-received. The staging overcame the limitations of a Liu who didn’t have the range for her arias and a Calaf with a decidedly dark tone to his singing, and a real tendency to scoop.
Having twice sung the role of The Pirate King (including last summer), I’d certainly not have you placed before the bar for expressing such an opinion – particularly when it’s your duty so to do.
That’s next year. We’re doing *Iolanthe *this year.
I saw that performed this weekend. The music didn’t do much for me, but the staging of the finale was utterly chilling. Each time you hear the guillotine blade drop, one of the nuns falls to her knees, sinks slowly to the floor, and then, by some trick of the lighting, appears to melt into the stage. Only as Sister Blanche steps out from the crowd to accept her fate do you see the other bodies lying in position on the stage. When the blade dropped for the final time, you LITERALLY could have heard a pin drop. I have never in my life been in such a large space filled with so many people and not heard a sound. I may not be able to recall a single melody, but I’ll remember that last scene for as long as I live.
My own favorite opera is, by the way, Borodin’s Prince Igor.
Huhn! My friend Scott was the Chevalier de Force, Blanche’s older brother. Man, it’s a small world!
Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky. I own, at last count, 25 different recordings.
My favorite opera, by a very large margin, is Don Giovanni. I have a decent dvd of it and managed to see it live once (one of the few operas I’ve experienced live, with The Tales of Hoffmann being another). Ironically, although I have almost two dozen operas in cd, Don isn’t one of them.
Well, each version gets a little better, but it’s forever cursed by compatibility issues and the email client sucks. So, if forced, I’d have to say my current build - 9.63.
Gotterdammerung. But I’ve never actually attended live opera.
I can’t stand recorded Wagner, but love it live. It’s all about the Gesamtkunstwerk, baby! (That said, I’m singing chorus in it next month in Manchester, unstaged).
For more traditional opera, it’s *The Magic Flute *or L’Orfeo for me. For something more modern, Wozzeck or Einstein on the Beach. The 19th Century I can take or leave.
I’m a Wagnerian. The ending of Götterdämmerung is the high point of man’s existence as a sentient being.