🎶 Celebrating a year of Opera Daily 🎶
Most popular selections and a reflection on the year
Hi friends! Yes, it’s been a year of opera!
I want to start by saying thanks to all of you who made this year one full of fascinating conversations and beautiful music. I started this newsletter last July as a simple way for anyone to explore the world of opera. I didn’t do it on my own, though. I convinced my friends to help along the way (some took over the reins and wrote some posts 🙏, others allowed me to interview them) and I had all of you contributing via the community posts and the comment sections each week.
“Looking at life from a different perspective makes you realize that it’s not the deer that is crossing the road, rather it’s the road that is crossing the forest.”
― Muhammad Ali
Life can get lonely — especially after the year we’ve had. There’s an interesting antidote to loneliness, though: One of the most effective ways to break the cycle of loneliness is to pursue a goal or a sense of purpose larger than yourself. For me, that has been Opera Daily. I am not sure what the future holds for this newsletter after our one year experiment, but the one thing I do know for sure is that knowing you all were on the other end of these emails has helped me tremendously this year. I hope in a small way we’ve been able to help each other.
To celebrate a year of Opera Daily, we are listening to the most loved pieces we’ve covered since we started. I’ve also consolidated all 170+ selections that we’ve shared since last July in one easy-to-access playlist on YouTube.
Thank you so much for sticking around and for being a thoughtful, supportive audience I’m genuinely proud of.
Cheers to one year! 🥂
Franco Corelli, Virginia Gordoni, “Vittoria! Vittoria!”, Tosca by Giacomo Puccini , Teatro Regio di Parma, 1967
Cecilia Bartoli singing the aria “Non più mesta,”from the Italian opera La Cenerentola by Gioachino Rossini
Mirella Freni and Luciano Pavarotti singing “Suzel, buon dì…Tutto tace,” from Act II of the Italian opera L’amico Fritz by Pietro Mascagni
Shirley Verrett and Nicolai Gedda singing the love duet, “Nuit d'ivresse et d'extase infinie”, from Act IV of Hector Berlioz’s Les Troyens
“Bella figlia dell'amore” the quartet from Act III of the Italian opera Rigoletto by Giuseppe Verdi with Luciano Pavarotti, Joan Sutherland, Isola Jones, and Leo Nucci
Claudio Monteverdi, L'incoronazione di Poppea, “Pur ti miro, pur ti godo” with Sonya Yoncheva and Kate Lindsey
Tenor Lawrence Brownlee singing “Je crois entendre encore” from Georges Bizet's Les pêcheurs de perles
Cecilia Bartoli singing “Agitata da due venti” from Vivaldi’s Griselda
“Bel raggio lusinghier” from Semiramide sung by dramatic coloratura soprano, Joan Sutherland
Act 2 duet, “Dio, che mi vedi … Sul suo capo” between Anna and Giovanna from Anna Bolena sung here by soprano Leyla Gencer and mezzo soprano Giulietta Simionato
Anna Moffo singing “Chi il bel sogno di Doretta” a soprano aria from Act I of the Italian opera La Rondine by Giacomo Puccini
Maria Callas singing “Ernani! Ernani, involami” Elvira’s aria from Act I of the Italian opera Ernani by Giuseppe Verdi
Placido Domingo and Sherrill Milnes singing “Dio, che nell’alma infondere,” the duet from Act I of the 19th-century opera Don Carlo, composed by Giuseppe Verdi
The Letter Duet from Act III of Mozart’s opera Le Nozze di Figaro. Véronique Gens is singing the role of Countess Almaviva and Patrizia Ciofi is singing Susanna’s role
Victoria de los Ángeles, Habanera, Carmen
Renée Fleming singing “Puskai pogibnu ya” also known as Tatyana’s Letter Scene from Act I of the Russian opera Eugene Onegin by Peter Illyich Tchaikovsky
Soprano Mirella Freni, mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig singing “The Flower Duet” in the 1975 movie of Madame Butterfly
The Easter Hymn from Pietro Mascagni's opera Cavalleria Rusticana, Maria Callas
Trio from Act III of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, Renée Fleming (Marschallin), Christine Schäfer (Sophie), Susan Graham (Octavian). The Metropolitan Opera, 2010
“Ma, Signor”, the finale from Act I of Gioachino Rossini's opera Il Barbiere di Siviglia(The Barber of Seville)
🗣 Do you have a favorite piece that we haven’t included here? I love hearing from readers, so don’t hesitate to share your thoughts and feedback with me by simply hitting ‘reply’ on any issue of Opera Daily or let us know in the comments below.
As always, thank you for reading, listening, and sharing,
Michele
❤️ If you enjoyed this selection, hit the heart to like it. It helps others find Opera Daily. And don’t forget: all issues of Opera Daily are also available in our growing online archive.
My Opera Consciousness Nearly One Year Later
How did I miss out on opera for so long? After all, as a child, I grew up surrounded by music. My mother had played the piano from an early age and throughout her entire life. My father grew up in the church and learned to sing there. As an adult he performed in our church choir, and was in demand as a singer at weddings and funerals. We had such an incredible array of music influences. It was as though Mama and Daddy threw everything at us musically, knowing that something was bound to stick.
They were right. My siblings and I all loved singing, listening, dancing and performing music. My older brother and I gravitated toward percussion instruments. He played the conga drum and bongos. I was not disciplined enough to stick with piano lessons, but found my groove with Latin percussion. I was happy to keep the beat to the salsa music I’d come to love with my maracas, claves, guiro and cowbell My younger siblings built their careers as performers upon a solid foundation of violin, cello and piano lessons. Strongly influenced by rock and roll and jazz, my younger brother became a guitarist who performed both as a band founder and a band member. One of my sisters followed in his footsteps, not only playing guitar and singing in coffee houses, but also composing and arranging music.
My other sister, however, took our youthful exposure to opera to a higher level. She was blessed with a beautiful soprano voice, which she and our mother cultivated early on with voice lessons. The two of them formed a special bond around classical music in general and opera in particular. She is the sister with whom I once dashed into the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco for Standing Room Only tickets. She somehow managed to meet and be photographed with many of the world’s most famous opera stars, backstage or in person in venues at home and abroad – Luciano Pavarotti, Shirley Verrett, Jessye Norman, among others
This sister introduced me to Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez, singing the aria "Ebben? Ne andrò lontana" from Alfredo Catalani's opera "La Wally" in the film “Diva” (1981, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0273061/). She continues to guide me along the paths of opera appreciation she has been on for a very long time.
A week ago she introduced me to Derek Lee Ragin, the Black countertenor (“Rompo i lacci” from “Flavio”, HWV 16 G.F.Händel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHABC58sGjo) and to Polish soprano Ewa Malas-Godlewska (“Ah! Mio Cor!” from “Alcina” G.F.Händel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfCNTR-13Ok). I had no knowledge of them, nor that they created the soprano arias, for another of her favorite opera films “Farinelli”** (1995, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109771/)
Exposure to good music at an early age, attending a few full operas and awareness of some of opera’s most famous arias primed the pump for this pandemic period, when opera became a choice and a constant in my life. Opera Daily has ignited my passion for opera in a way I never anticipated. Listening, reading and research these past few months have changed my relationship to this art form, and changed me for the better. I am still only skimming the surface, but I know that opera, like all great art, has given me deeper insights on my own lived experiences and a renewed appreciation for the universality of human feelings and experiences.
_______________________________________________
*Händel-Werke-Verzeichnis: The HWV thematic catalogue serves as the modern numbering system for Handel's compositions. For example, Handel's Messiah is numbered as HWV 56. The HWV numbers range from 1 to 612, however they do not represent a global date-ordering of composition; i.e. HWV 1 is not Handel's first work, nor is HWV 612 his last.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3fzhMnGs5E
**Farinelli (Italian pronunciation: [fariˈnɛlli]; 24 January 1705 – 16 September 1782)[a] was the stage name of Carlo Maria Michelangelo Nicola Broschi (pronounced [ˈkarlo ˈbrɔski]), a celebrated Italian castrato singer of the 18th century and one of the greatest singers in the history of opera.[1] Farinelli has been described as having soprano vocal range and sang the highest note customary at the time, C6. – Wikipedia
Cant believe its a year - amazing. I have over the year enjoyed your recommendations, especially as I know very little about Opera - but I do know what I like listening to, Maria Callas - Habenera but a recent and new discovery also was Dmitri Hvorostovsky - the Toreador Song - wow, such presence, lit up the stage with the powerful boom of his voice, was so sad to hear that he is no longer with us but thankful that he was introduced. Wonderful effort Michele, looking forward to the next year!