But I consider Mozart's Don Giovanni to be the most /lit/ opera
Lyrics are the worst form of writing because they rely on a crutch (music). They don't hold up on their own.
>>25156026I don't really agree with that since the Greek tragedies were originally musically performed. When I was a Lad seems to hold up pretty well lyrically too, many works do. Just not pop songs
>>25156026Much of Don Giovanni is recitative, actually most of it is if one discounts repetition within arias. Same goes for any opera that isn't through-composed, unless it is an operetta or opera buffa wherein plain dialogue is used in place of recitative à la musicals
>>25156026>they rely on a crutch (music)>They don't hold up on their own.You do realize the Iliad and the Odyssey were originally accompanied by music, right?
>>25156061That's not a fair comparison to opera because the musical accompaniment to the Iliad was likely very simple and served more a mnemonic than entertainment in itself. Besides by the time that Romans were reading it they were doing it from a papyrus and not at the feet of a rhapsode. Reading Homer has been a literary experience for much longer than it was a lyric one.
>>25156075Even the Bible which is prose was read for most of its history with cantillation. Homer was not a "literary experience" as in reading to oneself quietly, reading Homer was always done aloud and with probably highly stylized intonation similar to the Qur'an.
>>25156017Where's the anon whos writing Wagner in prose
>>25156026Being set to Mozart's music it's impossible not to see the music at the backbone, but the lyrics are great. In fact unless I am seeing a performance in person I always prefer to read the libretto to an opera while listening to rather than watching a video of it. Both because the audio is generally better quality and because I can focus on the bilingual text and appreciate it more. I even do this with English opera
>>25156017Is Don Giovanni really that good? Everybody is obsessed with it, historically and even today. I think Kierkegaard even called it not only the greatest piece of music ever, but the most sublime work of art of all time.
>>25157024The music is by Mozart and the story manages to be simultaneously one of the most cynical ever written about women, and one of the most benign and forgiving. It is also very strangely comic and tragic simultaneously, depending on how you look at it. A lascivious, libertine tribute to chastity.
>>25157044You've described the story/libretto, but what about the music itself?
>>25157086The music is by Mozart. Like most of his compositions, it is playful throughout. Even the highly dramatic elements soon melt into mock-dramatic melodies. Mozart simply can't mask that music to him is innately fun and only ever managed to maintain prolonged gravity when writing music for church. The overture and the conclusion, the damnation of Don Giovanni, use the same music, which brings it nicely together. At the ball toward the end, Mozart introduced popular songs from various operas people would be listening to at the time, including Non più andrai from his own opera, the Marriage of Figaro, which Don Giovanni and his servant humorously argue to in what would have doubtless been funny to the audience and will be today for anyone who loves Mozart.
>>25157086It's Mozart, niggerhttps://youtube.com/watch?v=5K-p_Lr9mUQ
>>25157024it is good, yes. I saw it in Chicago a couple years ago. One of my favorites on par with Turandot.
>>25156017>This board likes to talk about WagnerMaybe four years ago. Wagnerposting is dead.
>>25158615I feel like we had one really dedicated Wagner autist but he seems to have moved on.
>>25158627He's still around, he was just most active from 23-24, he doesn't post as much anymore but you can find him from time to time in a thread.
>>25158653I miss him. He always had a Wagner quote to pull out of his ass, it's clear he knew his stuff when it came to Wagner. Plus it's hard to talk about Nietzsche in his totality without taking his relationship with Wagner into account.
>>25158667Seconded.
>>25157024It's like Dostoevsky but more human instead of crazy people
>>25161131I doubt Mozart's music is even remotely that structurally loose as the average Dostoevsky novel.
>>25161512Don Giovanni is an opera, not a symphony, and obviously written prior to Wagner popularizing through-composed opera. So yes the music, taken as one piece, as operas are, is absolutely as structurally loose as a serialized Dostoevsky novel
>>25161540It's segmented, not loose. Mozart's control of large-scale ensembles and tonal drama is far tighter than anything in Dostoevsky structurally.
>>25161554Symphonies are segmented. Operas are loose unless they are through-composed
>>25161540It's not much, but Don Giovanni is technically through-composed in that it has that Commendatore motif link the entire work by appearing at the very beginning and the very end.
>>25161567That distinction doesn't even work. "Segmented" and "loose" aren't opposites. Symphonies are segmented but extremely tightly structured, and Mozart's operas are segmented too, just across different levels (arias, ensembles, acts). Through-composed doesn't automatically mean more structure, just more continuity. Mozart is formally controlled and highly constructed; Dostoevsky is comparatively loose and digressive. Those aren't even comparable kinds of structure.
>>25158667Same. I owe a lot of my interest in Wagner to him. And on the subject of Nietzsche, it is really interesting how empty popular discourse about him is in relation to Wagner. Schopenhauer, Overbeck, etc. but I've only ever seen discussion of Wagner in relation to Nietzsche here (granted I hardly go to reddit and refuse to step foot in twitter).
>>25161572That's not through-composed or else many musicals would be through-composed. Although Mozart's tying things together musically like that is unusual for opera and Mozart employs it to great effect to emphasize the moral and theological theme of the work>>25161611I never said segmented and loose are opposites. Opera is both segmented and loose. Symphonies ans concertos are segmented but not loose Mozart is a highly-controlled composer, and certainly the sheet music to Don Giovanni illustrates his mathematical intuition and clarity of vision, but opera as a form of a song is very loose, not a unified song in the way other musical works are. Mozart, as he is known for, did not create friction with forms of music, rather he leaned into them to maximize their unique aspects. Mozart did not push against the innately loose character of opera, he used it to express what other forms could not, see tools or even toys whether others might see limitations. Pushing against the boundaries of forms was something guys like Beethoven and Wagner would interested in.
>>25156017It's impossible to overestimate just how superior the quality of Wagner's libretti are to everything that came before. Even a fine librettist like Da Ponte appears limited by contrast.
>>25156163>Where's the anon whos writing Wagner in proseqrd?
>>25161892May be but I consider Alice Goodman to be the best of all time. Her Nixon is a masterful combination of classical tragedy chorus, stream-of-consciousness, and dialogue taken directly from history, she also does a fantastic job of trying to distinguish Chinese and American rhythms. And one her scenes from The Death of Klinghoffer was deleted after the premier because of a flood of accusations of antisemitism, quite unusual distinction.
>>25161969>> she also does a fantastic job of trying to distinguish Chinese and American rhythmsYeah I like that too. Nixon’s theme is centered around jazz styles he listened to as a young man mixed with Wagnerian themes (iirc the section ‘tropical storm’ quotes theme of Rienzi). I love Adams as well but generally music fans on mu and lit when I mention him discard him as bland po mo trash also Philip glass.
>>25161969Also thematically she balances comedy with drama very nicely as well, ie Mrs Nixon rushing onto stage because she thinks an actor is being beaten to death in front of her, the dancing girl in Klinghoffer asked to recount her story and she tells more about the sandwiches she ate and the bread they used than about what the terrorists actually did to Klinghoffer
>>25161976Akhnaten is a creative masterpiece. /mu/'s /classical/ is beset by listeners looking for a sense of self and identity evidenced by non-compliance with the herd so being idiosyncratic and opinionated is more valued than being informed. But you would think /lit/ of all places could distinguish modernism from postmodernism
>>25161992It's psychologically realistic. The dramatic or the tragic form of humanity is an idealization: humans even in the gravest moments are full of ridiculous and muddled actions and words, or, at the very least, thoughts. Shakespeare understood very well that balancing human comedy with more intense elements prevents the audience from becoming dead to those elements by reengaging them with the humanity of the characters
>>25161914Some anon posted his writing trying to turn the Ring into prose. He had the first act done and a bit of the 2nd where Woton meets the giants. But that's a long time ago
>>25162180Isn't the opera cycle already based on the Volsunga saga and the Nibelungen epic?
This confused me considered that pagliacci means "clowns"
>>25162369Loosely. So much so i wouldn't even consider it the same
>>25162662You could say the same of Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow but the book adaptation of the film still seems superfluous.
