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Watching Netrebko in the letter scene, dvd of Eugene Onegin.
Cool for people who have never written a line of music to sneer at Tchaikovsky because he is so approachable. Melody, orchestration, soul: rien 'a dire. Yet he grabs the heart and sometimes tears it out.
try it, you'll like it.
same for Puccini
Follow Ups:
late Puccini shows he was definitely a 20th century composer
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Of course, "Queen of Spades" (aka "Pique Dame" or, in Russian, "Pikovaya dama") includes a rather large portion of faux-Mozart music to evoke the time of Catherine the Great, which I'm sure Tchaikovsky loved writing, as well as an actual quotation from Andre Gretry's 1784 opera, "Richard Coeur-de-lion". Tchaikovsky makes his Gretry quotation sound really creepy and full of menace! Then there's Lisa's final, desperate aria by the embankment before she meets with Herman for the last time and, after he abandons her, commits suicide by throwing herself into the river. In the final scene, having been betrayed concerning "the secret of the three cards" by the ghostly presence of the old Countess (whom he's already caused to die of fright!), Herman blows his brains out. In short, a cheerful time was had by all the characters! I think that the 1960 (Soviet era) film, based on a Bolshoi production (again with actors lip-syncing with the pre-existing Svetlanov recording, and with actual locations rather than stage sets), despite its huge cuts and subpar sound quality, captured the required melodrama of the work in a way that seems to have eluded the more modern productions, some of which are Eurotrash productions anyway.
Chris: I have that version in my pied 'a terre in Montreal; unfortunately I am trapped in the USA until the border is unsealed, so can't compare the 2
Tchaikovsky and Puccini wrote some of the most "confessional" and heartfelt music ever. Of course, there's more to their music than just that, but, for me, the unambiguous emotion in their music counts for a lot.
Amazing enough, I have NOT heard La Trebs in the Letter Scene. I have the old "movie version" of "Eugene Onegin" where they used the Solti recording as a soundtrack (Teresa Kubiak singing Tatiana) and used Czech actors to mouth the words - MilliVanilli fashion - with beautiful "on location" (as opposed to stage) filming. Unfortunately, it's in a 4:3 aspect ratio - but nevertheless, it still looks gorgeous.
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