A Few of Smorg's Favorite Operatic Ensembles
Feb 27 '08 (Updated Aug 28 '08)
The Bottom Line 10 Operatic ensembles to take your breath away while giving you a good glimpse of how mindblowingly talented the opera composers are!
Smorg’s 10 Favorite Operatic Ensembles
Oftentimes, the whole is greater than the sum of its part when it comes to opera. As exciting and mesmerizing as operatic solo arias are, the masterly blend of many virtuoso voices can be downright intoxicating when they are done well. Really, if you think being serenaded by a wonderful singer is grand, listen to the sample tracks below and taste how pampering being serenaded by many of opera's greatest voices at once can be!
Followings are ten of my all-time favorite operatic numbers containing at least three singers:
1. Bellini: Beatrice di Tenda: Angiol di pace (trio)
Sample: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=8nDF9SZevIA
From Vincenzo Bellini's rarely performed opera, this is one of the most simultaneously simple and hauntingly gorgeous trio around. It exemplifies what bel canto singing is all about; the showcase of perfect control of gorgeous voices. Beatrice (soprano) was sentenced to death for infidelity to her husband based on Agnèse (the mezzo-soprano)'s testimony. The false confession of Orombello (the tenor), who was imprisoned and tortured for the same crime, seals her fate. In this trio; Orombello and Agnèse voice their guilty conscience and ask for Beatrice's forgiveness, which is promptly granted.... proving once and for all that the lady is simply too virtuous to live among us more sensible mortals! The absurdity of the lyric is easy to ignore when the music is this beautiful, though. The three voices are only very lightly accompanied by a harp... as if the angels are already awaiting her to join their ranks.
2. Mozart: Cosi fan tutte: Soave sia il vento (trio)
Sample: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=KlsOzgfrtjk
I would almost say that even the cavemen are familiar with this gorgeous trio that closes Act I of Mozart's romantic farce about love and infidelity. And if they aren't... well, they should be! The sisters; Fiordiligi (soprano) and Dorabella (soprano or mezzo-soprano) are sending farewell wishes to their boyfriends who are sailing off to war (or so they told the ladies), as the cunning Don Alfonso (bass) lurks and smirks when the girls aren't looking. The boys, it would turn out, had made a bet with Don Alfonso that their ladies would remain faithful to them even in their absence, and so Don Alfonso conjured up a test for the boys to pretend to leave and then come back under heavy disguise to try to woo each other's girlfriend. If you want to know how it all turns out, you'll have to buy a recording of the opera. In the meantime, have a listen to the sample clip and see if you can think of a more descriptive ways of painting a sonic picture of a farewell over the calm sea than what Mozart came up with. His orchestration is so soothing that even a cranky Neptune wouldn't dare ruining this serene musical portrait with even a puff of wind!
3. R Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier: Hab’mir’s gelobt (trio)
Sample: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-eZt_JlEyb8
Everybody loves the soprano voice... none more than Richard Strauss, the composer of this preposterous farce of an opera, who loves the high-voiced ladies so much he turns a male character into a female just so he could compose a trio of three soprano voices as the climatic moment of the three hours long masterpiece. The male character (also the title role) is Oktavian (soprano, though usually sung by a mezzo-soprano nowadays), who beds the Marschallin (soprano) while vowing to never leave her on this fateful morning, and then promptly falls in love with Sophie, the young soprano whose hand he's supposed to secure for someone else that very afternoon. A whole lot of cross-dressing and mistaken identity farces follow only to be smoothened out by the very dignified (though quite miffed) Marschallin who takes the high road and gives Oktavian her blessings to take up with the younger woman instead. A trio this is, though it is ruled by the Marschallin... who also has a big voice to match her big heart (either that or she'd get completely snuffed out by Strauss' very big orchestra in the final crescendo).
4. Rossini: Maometto II: In questi estremi istante (trio)
Sample: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=VlQSZTjLz-k
From a very rarely performed opera of Rossini (maybe because it isn't one of the funny ones), this beautifully unhappy trio between Anna (soprano), her stern dad Erisso (tenor), and her rather unwelcome suitor, Calbo (mezzo-soprano) is so splendidly sad and poignant all at once that I have a hard time going through the CD in one go without repeating the track. Calbo's love for Anna is unreturned, but Erisso wants her to marry out of duty nonetheless. It really takes three amazingly virtuosic and team-oriented singers to pull this exercise of restrained vocal acrobatic off while displaying their own character's distinct point of view. This is Rossini at his most inspired and un-frivolous. If you were only familiar with his comic opera (like The Barber of Seville or La Cenerentola) before, then you have to check this song out to see the other, more melancholy and introspective side of this amazing composer. If you don't want to buy a CD of the whole opera, a great rendition of this trio can be found on Ramon Vargas & Friends or Vesselina Kasarova: Duets CDs.
5. Mozart: Idomeneo: Andro ramingo e solo (Death Quartet)
Sample: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=lEyKPKF1WSM
Idomeneo was Mozart's first smashingly successful opera. A listen of this quartet (foursome) gives you a good idea why. Greek King Idomeneo (tenor) loves his son Idamante (mezzo-soprano), but had unfortunately promised a god to sacrifice him. Princess Elettra (soprano) and Princess Ilia (soprano) both love Idamante, but the charming man only loves Ilia back, even though she is a Trojan. There seems no happy ending for all four of them as they each voice their own plight in this ensemble. A tension-filled aria of four stricken voices united on the same grim idea that death would be more merciful than the emotional turmoil they are enduring.... Hey, it's opera after all. It's supposed to be melodramatic!
6. Bellini: I Capuleti e i Montecchi: Soccorso, sostegno accordale, o cielo (Act I Quintet finale)
Sample: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0anA1ObN2JA
This is the grand scene that ends Act I of Vincenzo Bellini's operatic version of the story of Romeo and Juliet. Romeo (a mezzo-soprano because in Bellini's time, people were still used to hearing soprano castrato voice in the male lead role), has been discovered meeting up with Giulietta (soprano)... to the distress of her physician, Dr. Lorenzo (bass), her dad (Capellio, another bass), and her fiancé Tebaldo (tenor). After each lamenting of how idiotic the others are, Romeo and the other hot-blooded Italians are on a war path as Giulietta and Dr Lorenzo look on hopelessly (though evidently not silently) on the side. When done well, this is a gorgeous blend of 5 voices that takes you from the introspective melancholy all the way to all out brawl in the space of 7 minutes or so.
7. Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg: Selig wie der Sonne (quintet)
Sample: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=OuKy1DIktYw (quintet - starting at around 3:55 min)
The opera is cumbersome for me, but this exquisite Act III quintet is a major motivation to sit through Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg, a period work about a guild of mastersingers in Nuremberg, Germany. In order to win the hand of Eva, the daughter of one of their members, the mastersingers must win a song competition. Her beloved Walter isn't really a mastersinger, but was tutored enough by the generous Hans Sachs to come up with a beautiful 'Prize Song', on which the lovers pin their hope on as a few bystanders get nostalgic on their own dream, too. Really... had Wagner composed more music like this in his 5 hrs operas, I would listen to him more!
8. Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor: Chi mi frena (sextet)
Sample: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=YTuEBwX8dQk
This famous sextet is familiar even to many non-opera fans since it keeps showing up in mob films. It is opera as theater can't imitate, where six different voices can vent their own frustrations in words you can't catch but understand perfectly from the harmonic you hear. Lucia is entrapped into marrying a man she doesn't love (Arturo) by her brother, Enrico, and is very publicly denounced by her true love, Edgardo, to end Act II of the opera on a very unhappy note. It is one of the most deliciously demented musical moment that is actually topped later in the opera when Lucia skewers her betrothed on their wedding night and comes out to sing her celebrated 'Mad Scene'. You may fault the Italian composers for having a strange fixation about making their operatic character quarrel with each other on stage, but after hearing this sextet, you would likely find yourself lamenting that they don't just keep bickering on forever!
9. Rossini: Ermione: Sperar! Tremar! Poss’io (nonet)
Sample: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5L6EkE8-Wo
There aren't many ensembles in opera or other genre that turn the human voices into literal musical instruments as effectively as this ninesome that ends the first act of Rossini's Ermione. Though Rossini was known more for his comic operas, I actually love his serious ones more, and this number gives a good idea why. This story takes place after the fall of Troy, when Pyrrhus the Greek brings Andromache (the widow of Hector) home to be his mistress to the distress of his wife, Ermione. When her cousin Oreste (the son of Agamemnon and the sister of Elektra) drops in to woo her, Ermione uses him to take revenge on her husband only to regret it later. In an opera-ful of virtuoso singers, making 9 of them work together to form a single diversely beautiful ensemble is a tall order both for the composer and the performers. But when they succeed.... well... nothing succeeds like success!
10. Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro: Act IV finale
Sample: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=hWxclaU-Db0
(Eleven-some... if there's such a word!)
In a monumental coup against the aristocrats, the servants outwit the master (though with a lot of help from the master's wife) who actually has to kneel and beg for forgiveness in this grand scene of Mozart's as-perfect-as-it-gets opera. In Continental Europe's pre-French revolution era, this plot (based on the second of Beaumarchais' trilogy plays) was nothing short of galvanizing. But as 'enlightened' as it may be, the music is even more divine. The finale starts out as a duet between Figaro (baritone) and his newly wedded wife Susanna (soprano) that escalates into a final tally of elevensome in a masterful compositional work that makes 9 minutes feel half its length.
There are many more gorgeously beautiful and dynamically thrilling ensembles waiting for you to discover in the many operas being performed today. I hope at least a few of those listed here would spark your musical appetite enough to check this time-tested music genre out. Opera is not as dated as the stereotype would have you believe!
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