in search of more Hölle Rache
30 Jan 2020 04:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimoreneThe 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
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.)
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
- 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
- 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.)
