in search of more Hölle Rache

[cimorene]

The other day I got sucked in by a clickbait title about "Mozart's most terrifying aria", which it turned out was referring to "Der Hölle Rache...", often referred to as the Queen of the Night aria (but she actually has several), from The Magic Flute. The mood of the song is wrathful shading to unhinged, but the reason, according to said clickbait, for their title is its infamous difficulty for coloratura sopranos thanks to hard-to-hit high notes and quick, acrobatic high runs.

Having never listened to opera on purpose, but familiar with a number of pieces through pop culture osmosis, I was curious to see what they meant, so I listened to a few recordings by different singers, including the most ready result (Diana Damrau, from a DVD of the opera at the Met) and one mislabelled as Maria Callas (actually it was Lucia Popp, I later learned; now deceased, but apparently considered the best performer of the aria by some; there are no known recordings of Callas performing it).

I quickly became fascinated by a couple of phenomena, namely

1. the leap up from the head voice to whatever higher range coloratura is called has a very pronounced and audible threshold which sounds quite awkward and apparent in many of the performers; and
   
   
2. most performers either lose their ability to emote in the highest parts of their range in spite of emoting through the singing in the lower bits, or try to cover it up by transitioning gradually into a cautious and rather bloodless delivery of the high notes, or else don't even try to emote at all so you would have no idea whatever that the song was meant to be angry if you didn't have a translation of the lyrics.

Between these two barriers, there's basically almost no performances that are faultless. So I guess the clickbait title has some justice to it. (Thanks to my fascination, and the fact that musically I like the song, I've listened to several compilation videos with 15, 10, 20, or even 40 singers performing this song and I only finally stopped clicking on random home-recorded youtube performances when they all kept missing the pitch.)

But the good renditions of this song appeal to me very strongly. (It's really funny and novel for me to be humming something catchy several octaves below where it's actually pitched.) So I thought I should look around for some more opera that might appeal to me, but I haven't had much luck. Youtube's algorithm still has not started suggesting opera after days of watching almost nothing but opera. I tried looking for an article or list like "If you liked 'Der Hölle Rache', then try...!" but found nothing. I tried search keywords like eg 'opera arias in minor key' and couldn't even find anything. I tried several lists or playlists that I did find of 'The Best Opera Arias' and went through, honestly, at this point, hours' and hours' worth, and in all that time I've only found three other arias that I even slightly liked, but... still not enough to happily listen from the beginning to the end of the song.

I strongly prefer minor keys and darker or dramatic music and fast tempos. It's the slow pace of... pretty much every other aria I've listened to from these lists that puts me off. Surely this can't be true of all opera, so I guess it's a bias on the part of the list and playlist creators to some extent. But without lists or playlists, opera is just a giant sea of unknown music, stretching back centuries and containing only a few familiar composers. I'm slightly adrift. (But haven't completely given up.)

Comments

[hebethen]

Several times I have hit upon some aria that I really enjoyed, only to look up its lyrics and/or the plot of the opera it's from and be quite appalled. (Carmen for instance.) RIP.

Do you suppose you might have any success if you specifically searched for difficult arias? I'm imagining that there might be a higher proportion of fast tempos in that subset -- although it's just conjecture.

[cimorene]

My favorite this time was the comments to one of the Hölle Rache videos where someone said they had never realized the song was meant to be angry before they saw this version, and had in fact thought it was happy. Which is actually pretty plausible.

And thanks for the idea!

[dragonlady7]

I have no useful advice, but I do have an anecdote. My young niece (6 now, probably 4 when this happened) watches various children's television programming, and one day I happened to be sitting with her when she was watching a show called Peg Plus Cat which features math a lot, and the protagonist is a young woman who plays the ukelele so there are often musical interludes. The episode I wound up watching was about fractions, and it featured an incredible performance of a parody of that exact aria sung flawlessly by whoever the Queen of the Night's voice actress was, all about fractions. It was utterly incredible. It was fractions and she was mad about it. I made other adults come look and none of them understood what was boggling me so.
I was like, do you understand how hard this aria is to sing and none of them were impressed. But I was!
It was completely bonkers! And it was just... for this kids' show! About math!
It was nuts.

[conuly]

Do you happen to have a link to youtube maybe?

[dragonlady7]

I don't, and I can't really search for it (I'm in a workplace where I can't be randomly playing videos!) but I think this is at least the episode preview!
Peg+Cat Queen Of The Night

[dragonlady7]

I also don't know if it's as great as I remember but I remember just being boggled at the whole thing, at the time. I was a bit distracted but now I can't think of the Magic Flute without remembering that.

[cimorene]

I'm very sad to say that the only result visible in my country is a Russian dub of the number. The Russian singer is still great though!

[cimorene]

Oh, no, I found the ep! But the song isnn't really all about fractions. There's counting, but she's instructing Peg to laugh in the King of Day's ear.

[dragonlady7]

You're right, it's not about fractions after all. There was a bit somewhere about fractions but i've mashed it all up in my memory. Still, it was hella something.

[vass]

I WAS BORN READY FOR THIS.

Okay, so. Dark, dramatic, minor, fast tempos. Especially but not exclusively angry sopranos?

• 'Allein! Weh, ganz allein', from Strauss's Elektra, sung by Birgit Nilsson. Not that fast, but hella dramatic. Plot: Elektra's mother murdered her father. She wants revenge.


• 'Suicido!', from Ponchielli's La Gioconda, sung by Ghena Dimitrova. Again, not as fast as Der Hölle Rache, but very dramatic. Plot: Gioconda considers then rejects suicide.


• 'Di Quella Pira', from Verdi's Il Trovatore, sung by Jose Carreras. Tenor, major key, but it's fast and dramatic. Plot: Manrico learns that his adoptive mother has been captured and is going to be burned to death. He resolves to take his soldiers and fuck shit up.


• 'Stride La Vampa', also from Verdi's Il Trovatore, sung by Shirley Verrett. Mezzo soprano, minor key, fast, dramatic. Plot: Azucena (Manrico's foster mother who is later burned to death), a Romani woman, relates how her mother was burned to death.


• 'O Patria Mia', from Verdi's Aida, sung by Leontyne Price. Soprano, minor key, not fast, dramatic. Plot: Aida, Ethiopian princess turned Egyptian slave, is torn between betraying her Egyptian lover or her father and country.


• 'Weh, ach, wehe, dies so dulden', from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, sung by Kirsten Flagstad. Soprano and mezzo dialogue followed by soprano solo, fast, minor-ish (it fluctuates), dramatic. Plot: Tristan has kidnapped Isolde and is hauling her home to marry not him but his liege lord Mark. For Reasons, this is especially insulting and awful. On the boat, she's just asked Brangäne, her maid, to ask Tristan to come talk with her about it. Brangäne brings back the news that Tristan replied "lol but i need to steer the ship, soz" and then his manservant sang a mocking song, which Isolde heard all the way across the ship. So now she's going to curse Tristan and herself to death. This... does not go entirely to plan.


• 'Ma Quando Tornerai', from Handel's Alcina, sung by Renee Fleming. Soprano, major key, very fast sandwich with a slow filling, dramatic. Plot: Sorceress Alcina's latest lover (she turned all the previous ones into animals, rocks, or trees) has broken her power (or rather, his true love showed up dressed as a boy and broke Alcina's spell.) She is very upset about this. She'll be even more upset when he and his true love destroy her whole fucking island, killing her and her sister (who is also a sorceress.)


• 'Ah! Mio Cor', also from Handel's Alcina, sung by Sandrine Piau. Soprano, minor key, this one's a slow and measured sandwich with a hella fast filling, and dramatic all through. I hadn't seen this before now (although I'm familiar with the aria and actually sang the first half of it it a lifetime ago) but am including it because it's a livecast of a stage performance, and interesting for how she's filmed at a normal distance away while acting so people in the back row can read her body language and facial expressions. Earlier on in the opera, when Alcina first discovers that she's been betrayed.


• 'Se Vuol Ballare', from Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, sung by Bryn Terfel. Baritone, major, lively but not super fast, dramatic but not on the scale of the previous. Plot: valet Figaro, getting married very soon, just learned from his fiance (the countess's maid) that his employer the count is planning to reinstate the droit de seigneur specifically in Figaro's fiance's case. She also informed him that there's a reason their new rooms are adjoining the count and countess's rooms, and it's not so Susanna can attend the countess or Figaro can attend the count. She is not pleased. Neither is Figaro. But he's not planning violence. He's planning plotting. Sarcastic guitar playing ensues. I included this one for just how much anger a person can fit in a major key and a dancey tune.


• 'Cortigiani vil razza dannata', from Verdi's Rigoletto, sung by Ingvar Wixell. Baritone, not very quick, minor key, extremely angry and heartbroken but not allowed to show it. Plot: hunchbacked jester Rigoletto has a much worse boss than Figaro's, and he is planning to murder him. For raping and kidnapping his daughter. Wait, no, for tricking Rigoletto into kidnapping his own daughter for his master the duke to rape, under the misapprehension that he was just kidnapping some other girl for the Duke to rape, not anyone he cared about. He has just found out, and he still has to do the court jester act while the duke and his other courtiers all laugh at him.


• 'Ah, Chi Dice Mai', from Mozart's Don Giovanni, sung by Kiri Te Kanawa. Medium tempo, major key, dramatic (although not "dramatic soprano" as the notes say. She's a heavy lyric soprano, not a dramatic soprano.) Plot: Donna Elvira is looking for the man who seduced and betrayed her. She wants to kill him. She'll shortly find out that she's not the only one. Understatement. He is also a serial rapist on a massive scale, and a murderer. That bit before she shows up, where he's sniffing like that? Yeah, he totally did just sing "I smell a woman." He's fucking gross. Including this one because I had the biggest singer-crush on Kiri Te Kanawa as a teenager, and I loved this film so much and rented it from the video rental store over and over and never noticed how funny that scene is. The veil blowing in her face while she sings. Leporello's little facepalm.


• 'Au Fond Du Temple Saint', from Bizet's Les pêcheurs de perles, sung by Jussi Bjorling and Robert Merrill. Tenor and baritone, neither fast nor minor key nor soprano nor unhappy. Dramatic only in that it's soaring and tender. Including because it is incredibly gay and you need to be made aware of its existence if you are listening to opera. It was first performed in 1863, and it is a love duet between two men, which is why its most common name in English is "the friendship duet". Plot: pearl-diver Nadir and village headman Zurga are reunited after a long estrangement after they quarrelled over loving the same woman. They swear a solemn vow to each other to never let that happen again. This being an opera, it ends badly for them. Also notable for this one production of it I got to see two performances of in the late 90s, in which they made the subtext into maintext by changing one word of the libretto. One change was all it needed. (Zurga, sacrificing his own life to allow Nadir and Leila to escape, brokenly sings "Leila Nadir, je t'aimé.")


• Riddle scene, Puccini's Turandot, sung by Éva Marton and Kristján Jóhannsson. Soprano and tenor, minor key, medium-fast, very dramatic and horribly, excruciatingly orientalist, especially every staging ever. Plot: Turandot (based on, but nothing like, real person and coolest horse girl EVER Khutulun), daughter of the Emperor of China, has been beheading her suitors when they fail to answer her three riddles. Disguised Tartar prince Calaf is the latest suitor to accept her challenge. He wins. She begs her father not to make her go through with it and marry Calaf, and breaks my fucking heart. (I saw a recorded performance of this opera on TV, by the same soprano, when I was thirteen, and that's what get me into opera.)

PLEASE let me know if you want more.

[cimorene]

I started to like O Patria Mia, but I got bored with the speed. These are better than the recs I was getting from YouTube, but the only thing I've listened to so far that I've really liked wasn't any of these, it was the Bell Song from Lakmé which stranger recommended below.

I think my post did a bad job of expressing what it is that I liked about Hölle Rache, as they suggested. I'm still having trouble articulating it precisely, so it might not be very useful, but if you mean that, I could try to go through song by song and respond to what I liked and didn't about them.

[vass]

Interesting. You're right, I didn't understand what you're getting at, and I'm still not sure I do, it sounds like it's hitting a really specific spot for you.

Okay, I'm game if you are.

Here's two more that I thought of after reading this comment and your reply to stranger below, things that are more up there in the stratosphere of coloratura:

'Großmächtige Prinzessin', Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos. I didn't rec it before because it's not dark/sad/angry, but it demands more agility and high pitch than just about any other aria ever. Not very fast or firmly minor. Plot: I have no fucking idea. There's a composer trying to put on a serious opera with interruptions by a burlesque group? and wacky hijinks are ensuring.

The Mad Scene, Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, sung by June Anderson. Major and very slow, the better to fit all those notes in. Plot: she's been attacked by a terrible director and costume designer who are forcing her to wear a bloodstained dress and play with balloons and build a miniature stonehenge she's gone mad and murdered her husband, of course. In the words of W.H. Auden, "people do not sing when they are feeling sensible."

[cimorene]

Ok I started with these before going back through the long list! Großmächtige Prinzessin - It's not as catchy, but I was too fascinated to get bored so I actually liked this quite a lot, even though it was not what I was looking for. I like Gruberova's singing, even at the low bits of the song.

The Mad Scene from Lucia di Lammermoor... is musically okay - in the style, I mean, just... too protracted and unfocused for my taste and too lacking in beat or rhythm. So I did eventually get bored. Which is hilariously implausible, given that they chose to portray madness through patting balloons and building stonehenge out of coal and candles, so a short digression of that would have been at least amusing. (if potentially a bit eyerolly, because are we really meant to believe that when a young woman learns she's been tricked and coerced into causing her lover to repudiate her by making her think he abandoned her, then one day later flips out and murders her new husband aka legal owner and thus the literal personification of the events which have caused her lover to repudiate her... in a patriarchal society wherein women have no rights and independence... that she does so not in uncontrolled rage or vengeance but in a state of hallucinogenic disconnect from reality more characteristic of a psychotic episode or senility?) It's hard to keep the same schtick amusing for fifteen minutes though, and this was too ridiculous to read as properly sympathetic, while the novelty of 'what random thing are they gonna have her do to simulate wackiness now?' wore off after a few minutes so it just felt really repetitive.

[vass]

Gruberova: isn't she good? I have one of her CDs. I love how much fun she's having.

Lucia: Not that I actually disagree, but... she's singing this after, not during the murder (which happens offstage.) If a very innocent and passive person, under great and horrible stress, works herself up into a state of rage in which she commits one extremely violent act which goes against everything she believes herself to be and everything her society and family expect her to be, and there's no way she can deal with the fact of what she's done or with the consequences, I can imagine her then dissociating as a way of protecting herself from the reality of what she's done and why and what's happening now as a result.

My favourite part of the Mad Scene is when she and the flute are imitating each other, and depending on the timbre of the particular singer's voice, sometimes they really actually do sound almost indistinguishable.

1-5

[cimorene]

Allein! Weh, ganz allein (Strauss -Elektra) - Sounds really cool at first, love the musical color, but it's so slow that the music never seems to coalesce into a melody, much less one with a beat. The timing feels arbitrary, or like she's simply delivering a speech and singing selected syllables intermittently. I like her singing style well enough, even if she does do the horsey thing some. But I couldn't hum any of this back at you even after listening for several minutes.

Suicidio! (Ponchielli - La Gioconda) This is extremely horsey singing. The very slow vibrato on sustained loud notes is so strange to my ear and hard to adjust to. It almost sounds like she's singing with a middle class English accent, like Hyacinth Bucket - that weird elongated mouthful of marbles mouth position. This seems to be the case with multiple sopranos, so I guess it's a trend or style? Also, this song doesn't seem to come together into a melody that... feels like a song to me. I tried three different recordings of it, but they all sort of sound like background music with no memorable patterns apart from a "DUUUUNNN... dun dun dun" motif (although as an element in a soundtrack I do like that motif) that repeats in the orchestra a couple of times. The opposite of catchy or hummable, no beat, etc.

'Di Quella Pira', from Verdi's Il Trovatore... seems like it's almost a catchy melody, and the pace is lively enough. There are motifs surfacing here and there that could come together into a coherent unit, although they don't. I bet there's another, more sing-alongable bit somewhere else in this opera where they appear.


'Stride La Vampa' - this is maybe my favorite of these melodically, because of the folk music quality - it's catchy and would be fun to play in an ensemble. The horsey quality in every single recording on the first page at opera-arias.com was overwhelming enough to prevent me getting through the whole song though. Anita Rachvelishvili's was my favorite.


'O Patria Mia', from Verdi's Aida - the beginning blew me away, but I was expecting it to gather steam and get faster and instead it stayed really really slow and I eventually got bored and started skipping ahead twenty or thirty second bits to see if it got any more melody. I do love her voice.

[cimorene]

'Weh, ach, wehe, dies so dulden', from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. I found it impossible to keep listening to this, but to be fair to Wagner and everyone, it's not false advertising. It says 'narrative' right in the title. I tried a second recording of it by Astrid Varnay but it is nearly identical, so I take it that it simply is not a unit that I can recognize as a song - more like ponderous, incomprehensibly high-pitched talking over melodramatic orchestral music.

'Ma Quando Tornerai', from Handel's Alcina. The intro is promisingly Handelish and lively but I couldn't handle the slow part without skipping forward. I don't really enjoy the melody of the vocal line and the flourishes, for some reason. I know I did like the showy trills and flourishes in some other songs, but this one sounds kind of... frenetic and hysterical, grating... which from the summary is probably what Handel was going for, but it's uncomfortable to my ear.

'Ah! Mio Cor', I like this singer a lot and watched a lot of the video, but with a lot of little skips forward because it was still too slow for me. I did like (most of) the fast section in the middle though!

'Se Vuol Ballare', from Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro. Lively enough, but the tone is just too bright, I guess, and it's not hook-y enough to make up for it?

'Cortigiani vil razza dannata', from Verdi's Rigoletto. I love his (Wixell's) singing, and I love the drama of the fast part in the middle. It didn't stick in my head the same way DHR did, though. In fact I've just listened to it for the third time ten seconds ago and I already can't manage to hum any of it. The music is slowly building through this section to a larger dramatic crescendo, and the very slow beats of the orchestration are appropriately ominous, but it means the fast section doesn't have its own driving beat.

'Ah, Chi Dice Mai', from Mozart's Don Giovanni. That particular video suffered in quality from being filmed from a tv, but I actually liked the one verse of this before the dudes show up. It is a melody that makes a cohesive unit that I could think of as 'A Song'! And it has a nice build of musical drama, although it's a brighter mode than I prefer.

Riddle scene, Puccini's Turandot. This feels sort of like a piece cut out of a symphony more than a song - when I click play, I don't feel like I'm listening to the beginning of a self-sufficient unit and it doesn't then turn into the middle and the end.

...But then I really liked Volta la terrea by Verdi. The main body of the aria feels very much like a self-sufficient unit of song, even like a folk melody perhaps. Not as much as DHR, but it's very lively and catchy.

[vass]

Okay, so it sounds like you're looking for things that work as standalone songs and are not, like, theatre.

This feels sort of like a piece cut out of a symphony more than a song

I mean, it is. That's what opera is - a symphonic-length or longer work combining the qualities of theatre, ballet, oratorio, symphony, and whatever else the composer and librettist wanted to throw into the mix. That's part of what I love about it: the huge scale and how many different artistic media it is rolled into one.

But if you're looking in particular for things that are more 'song' like, then I'm gonna broaden my search to things that aren't strictly opera but are written for and/or sung by operatic voices.

I've gotta say, though, this is a lot harder than I thought it would be. I did ask for it, but it's kind of like showing someone your favourite cat pictures and then listening to them say "Well, I liked this one's fur, it looked almost like a dog, but I didn't like the whiskers or the way the tail curved or how bendy the body was, and its nose was too short, and it had a really short body too..."

[cimorene]

Hahhahaha, I had almost this exact thought when I was trying to write them. I feel like there really is a core element that should have a name but I just don't know enough about ... whatever... to even grab onto what it is, so articulating it is just like stabbing around in the dark for statements that are true!

But, yes, I think I am looking for things that are songlike. That is probably a big part of the appeal of Der Hölle Rache.

[lazaefair]

Another rec for Don Giovanni: the final scene where the titular character gets dragged to hell. It's three basses, which you rarely get to hear, and just deliciously dark. "Don Giovanni! A cenar teco m'invitasti!"

The villain's aria in Tosca: corrupt Chief of Police Scarpia reveals to the audience his intention to kill Tosca's lover and possess Tosca herself. Blends in with the Te Deum going on in the church behind him. It's delightfully Gothic/Romantic. "Tosca, mi fai dimenticare Iddio!"

Cunegonde's aria in Candide: making the best of the horrible situation of being the sugar baby of two rich Parisian guys. It isn't in minor key, but it is quick tempo'd, viciously satirical, and super entertaining for listening to different sopranos' performances of it. Chenoweth does a fun, campy version playing up the comedy, but I'm also linking you to Natalie Dessay - she's gone with the more unhinged interpretation. Cunegonde coming apart a little under the real weight of what her jewels have cost her, maybe subconsciously rebelling against the Madonna/whore roles that men keep sticking her into. "Glitter and be gay!"

[cimorene]

Ok that first one had some fun moments.

[lazaefair]

Reading over your other comments - if you didn't make it past the slow intro to "Glitter and be gay", see if you can hang on through it. The fast difficult high notes start a little ways in.

[cimorene]

Hm, I can see the appeal of the fast bit of that song - it's catchy, though the orchestration and dramatic/conduction choices got in the way a little. There could be another recording of it somewhere that would be more to my taste (or rather a sample of another recording of it, because it'd have to not include the slow parts).

[lazaefair]

Oh yeah, loads of sopranos have done this song, and every single YouTube video has people fighting in the comments over who sang it better. >_>

I've linked you to Chenoweth and Dessay already - here's a few more (that I've actually listened to...it's kind of a rabbit hole for me, this song)

June Anderson - directed and conducted by the composer himself, also apparently she had laryngitis during this performance

Diana Damrau - not as campy as Chenoweth, but still playing up the comedy

Scarlett Strallen - strikes a good balance between June Anderson and Chenoweth, also I don't know how she's breathing, let alone singing, in that armored corset of a bodice

Barbara Cook - the original Cunegonde. CD recording so the acting part of it is removed.

Renee Fleming - opera superstar. Another CD recording.

[stranger]

One question is whether you're looking for emotive arias in the doom-and-destruction range of emotions, and vass above gives good examples; or if you are looking for similar musical elements like high register, coloratura style, minor key, emphatic emotions, performances that convey rage, and so on.
One similar high-coloratura number is from Lakme by Leo Delibes, the Bell Song, with an even higher top note and a lot of jumpy intervals to mimic bells. It's in the middle of the 2nd act, the soprano character is in tight spot with conflicting emotions, and the bells are ominous. It starts slow, with the flashy coloratura in the finale section.
Another high-drama coloratura aria is from La Traviata, by Verdi, end of 1st act, "Sempre Libera." Again, it's a soprano expressing conflicting, life-destroying emotions using the extreme high notes of the range. Each of these arias, not incidentally, conveys or symbolizes the emotional situation that leads to the soprano's death later in the opera.

For what it's worth, I've been taught (in university-level music classes) that the high F's in "Der Hölle Rache" were written when orchestral tuning wasn't as consistent, and often not as sharp and bright as it became by the 20th century. The singer then was likely to have hit what we'd today call an E-flat. The stretch to sing it and sound good wasn't quite as difficult, although that E-flat is very much a high-level professional accomplishment, then or now.

[cimorene]

Oh, weirdlly the Bell Song was the only one I've really liked so far. I listened to... a quarter to a third of all Vass's recs except a few, then skipped down to here and tried these two.

So perhaps you're correct that it's the coloratura style that is important. It was certainly the bell passages that grabbed my attention there and I skipped most of the beginning of the song after listening to the lead-in a little bit. I actually was intrigued by the beginning of O Patria Mia from Aida, but after about a minute when the long single notes just kept getting longer and the introductory oboe melody never made an appearance in the vocal line and a beat never appeared I got bored.

I don't think the high register is required because, after all, I like normal music that isn't like that. I think what I enjoy about the rage is that it's more energetic. For example, "Stride la Vampa," which Vass recommended above, is musically minor and I could probably have enjoyed it played on an oboe or recorder instead of sung by a vocalist, but I listened to every recording that appeared on its page on opera-arias.com and they were all singing with - a weird, mouth-pursed throaty gargling noise and I just found it way too offputting, plus the underlying pace of the song is... kind of a slow waltz beat, even though there are little ornaments at the end of each line.

So passionate emoting isn't interesting by itself to me, obviously, and a darker mood isn't enough either. Maybe it's the emphaticness and the coloratura style that make Hölle Rache stand out to me although evidently the presence of a non-slow and clearly distinguishable time signature with an audible beat of some kind to the melody are also required.

[stranger]

Okay, hmm, just for comparison, have you listened to the Queen of the Night's *other* aria, "O zittre nicht", in Act I of Magic Flute? This is major key, smoother lines, not as high a top note, so it's not exactly what you describe as grabbing you, but if you hear it sung by Damrau here it might give you an idea of which elements are important to you, since singer and composer and the opera's production values are the same. The part to compare, the final section, starts at about 3:30.

A thing you're running into is that many arias are structured with a slow section before a fast section, and it's the fast part that has the emphatic coloratura and highest emotion. You can skip to the second half to check stuff out. This is common in 1700s music up through the first half of the 1800s, and somewhat common later. "Der Hölle Rache" is an exception, in jumping straight to the fast, angry singing. Later music (1870s forward, Wagner, Puccini, Strauss) is less likely to use the major key just as a default.

A non-opera example is "But Who May Abide The Day Of His Coming / For He Is Like A Refiner's Fire" from Messiah by Handel. Emma Kirkby (soprano) sings it here, where the fast section starts at 3:00. Hillary Summers (alto) sings it here, with the "Refiner's Fire" section at 2:50 to 5:20. I don't know if the operatic stage presence or the overall dramatic situation matters to you, but again, these are examples that might show what you do or don't like.

[cimorene]

Thanks! And also thank you for the tip: I will be sure to check the second half of everything now.

I have listened to O Zittre Nicht quite a few times during all the DHR listens, and I do like it! It still feels like a song, as opposed to a long speech that has some sung lines in it and a lot of gaps for just holding single notes; and the high bits in it are still cool. There's a short little bit of it that is catchy, but it's a lot less of it (and a lot less catchy) than in DHN.

I listened to the Handel recording, and the faster part was pretty neat, while the slow part bored me, but overall I was just weirded out by the goofiness of the English lyrics. I like Handel's music when it's instrumental quite a bit, and I think without vocalists I could happily listen to this... probably more as background music though. I don't think I'd ever say "For He is Like a Refiner's Fire bangs!"

[vass]

overall I was just weirded out by the goofiness of the English lyrics.

The English lyrics are the original, that's not in translation. That is, technically it is a translation, but that's the text, in that language, to which Handel set the music. You can blame the King James Bible, it's all in there.

(When we were singing excerpts from Handel's Messiah in school, I asked my brother, then working for a jeweler, what exactly a refiner's fire is like. His response was "Really fucking hot.")

[cimorene]

LOL. Yes, Wax googled it last night and we found this out. So I can't blame the chorus or the conductor for these, they can't help them. Choral singers don't tend to slur the words together the way rock or pop stars do sometimes, which can help with the issue. I just can't get past the distraction though. There probably are instrumental-only recordings of this, somewhere, though...

[cimorene]

I should say, I didn't like "Sempre Libera", but I am having difficulty saying why not again.

Okay, I disliked the Maria Callas version because it was sung almost without audible accompaniment to let her vocal quality and improvisation shine. I listened to another singer on a stage with the orchestra playing at normal volume and I liked that better, but I think in this case I just musically don't like the melody as much. Instrumentally, this song is a bit finicky and ornamented feeling as well as being mostly major, even if it has sort of hysterical and ominous overtones. It's like Hölle Rache is sort of an orchestral metal song and this one is more pop-rock perhaps... and also I don't really like that horsey quality to the voice that a lot of sopranos do (do they have to do that?) in the lower parts of their ranges.

[vass]

Re the horsey quality: having a perfectly even sound all the way up and down your vocal range is an important and highly desirable vocal training goal in this style of singing (broadly speaking, I mean) but one not everyone achieves.

[cahn]

Hi! A mutual DW friend pointed out this post to me (I went through a huge opera phase last year) :D

On the off chance that it's those bright staccato runs that you like about this aria, here are a couple that remind me of the bright staccato, although they're not as high coloratura. Unfortunately neither of these is in a minor key, but they are at least faster than the general aria :)

Doll Song from Contes d'Hoffman. The character is actually supposed to be a giant wind-up robot doll (and part of the song involves the doll winding down and having to be rewound, which in this one the pianist does, which I find hilarious). It's a really weird opera!

Volta la terrea from Un Ballo in Maschera. The singer in this one is a hilariously adorkable page who is singing about how the local witch is neat-o. (OPERAS ARE WEIRD, OKAY.)

(The singer in both of these is Sumi Jo, who is also my favorite Queen of the Night :D )

[cimorene]

The Doll Song lets the singer show off the interesting part of their range and skills and the trills are fascinating, although the stops and starts harsh my buzz kinda (funny as the concept is: it's more dramatically than musically effective).

I really like Volta la terrea, though! The catchy bits are catchy enough to make up for the male singers' bits, which feel like interruptions. First definite success there. Completely hummable.

[cahn]

Ooooh! So, on the good side, I think you and I share a sense of things we like. (Like you, I think a lot of opera arias are a bit boring, although I have a wider tolerance than you, especially for slow arias -- but I get what you mean! -- and there's something about vibrato-y operatic voices that I can deal with now but took me a long time to get used to.) But on the bad side, it's hard for me to think of other arias in that particular vein, because I have a similar issue :) (I... am in opera mostly for the ensemble scenes and not for the arias, to be honest. :) )

But let me try from a different angle. You said you liked dramatic; here are a couple from Marriage of Figaro that I really like, and that for me have that compulsive "oh help now I've got it in my head" quality that "Der Holle Rache" and "Volte la terrea" also both have for me.

Hai gia vinta la causa, baritone aria. The Count is singing about how he doesn't want his valet to be happy. I should warn you that it is recitative until 1:03. And this particular clip cuts off the beginning line, buuuuuut I love Simon Keenlyside so much that I had to give you this one even with the cut line.

Non so piu is fast and catchy. (The mezzo (trousers role) page is telling the soprano about adoring all the women in sight.)

I also listened to a bunch of Sumi Jo yesterday on Spotify in hopes of trying to identify something that you and I might like. I found a couple that were nice and that you might like, though I must admit none of these are compulsively singable, and I didn't like any of these as well as "Der Holle Rache" or "Volte la terrea" (or the ones above), so, you know.

L'Amant jaloux: Je romps la chaineis my favorite of the ones I've heard: it reminds me of "Der Holle Rache," and it passed my test of "I didn't get bored halfway through" (a lot of the arias I listened to failed that test) so I think it's got the best chance you might like it. To be 100% honest there's something about it that strikes me as "Der Holle Rache Lite." I mean, we can't all be Mozart, so perhaps this is too high a standard :)

Valse Tyrolienne: Un mari a la porte -- I liked this one too, and it passed the "am I bored?" test as well :) It has got kind of a waltzy beat to it, which I think you didn't like in one of the above examples, and I felt it was a bit on the repetitive side.

[cimorene]

I love Je rompse la chaine! It reminded me of Der Hölle Rache too. And Non so piu was a nice listenable type of aria that I didn't find objectionable, although I didn't think it was as catchy.