Opera lyrics redux

[chickenfeet]

Last year I offered you an opera lyrics quiz so I thought I'd do another one. None of the operas are duplicated from last year.

So, here are ten libretto excerpts, translated into English where that is not the original language. Your task is to identify the operas in question.

1. Ascend, O my beloved. Ascend the highest place of imperial sovereignty

2. Your daughter is monstrous

3. Torture of every kind may await me

4. I shall lament my fate so cruel and so pitiless

5. The wind is from the west, a lazy sea, the sky overcast, a stagnant smell from the lagoon

6. Bravely blended, brotherly love born in the drink from our blood

7. I shall dry these weeping flagstones. With my own lips they shall be dried

8. We return to our lasses like fortunate traders, triumphant with the spoils of the vanquish'd invaders

9. Shepherd cease your singing, for all our gaiety has turned to pain

10. If the water is deep we will swim. If it is too fast we will build boats

Comments

[shezan.livejournal.com]

3. Die Entführung aus dem Serail

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

It is

[shezan.livejournal.com]

8. Aida?

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Not even close!

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Sounds like genuine English, and probably comic, though I don't recognise the lines.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

It is English though not intentionally comic.

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Gilbert & Sullivan?

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

ouch!

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Well, if not (and really, it could apply to any G&S opera), working from the subject matter of English operas, it's either Purcell or Britten.

(Say, you know the Gilbert-Wagner Secret Letters (http://www.jlittlewood.com/discuss/humour/gilbert_sullivan.htm), right?)

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I thought about Purcell, but Aeneas's Trojans don't vanquish any invaders (they've been vanquished by invaders and go on to invade somewhere else), and they don't return to any lasses they haven't brought along on their ships. Aha. King Arthur?

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Aha. King Arthur?

Well done!

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I confess, having had the idea, I went and looked it up. I've no idea what happens in King Arthur, except that a recent production here junked the plot as irrelevant.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

It's probably the only Arthur play/opera/whatever that tries to be vaguely historical though current scholarship tends rather to debunk the Saxon invasion altogether.

[shezan.livejournal.com]

9. Orfeo

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Yep! The Monteverdi version.

[damiel.livejournal.com]

Isn't 4, like, EVERY opera?

I will take a guess at number 1 with Das Rheingold and at number 6 with Götterdämmerung.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

6. is Götterdämmerung

1. is most definitely not Rheingold

And isn't it odd how much BDSM crops up in opera

am totally out of my league here

[fortunatecave.livejournal.com]

but are la boheme, les miserable, madame bouvary part of the line-up?

Re: am totally out of my league here

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

They are not

Re: am totally out of my league here

[fortunatecave.livejournal.com]

:o(
i am desolate.
note to self- research on operas. they arent just people who're singing at high pitched voices in funny costumes. some are actually good.
i've always wanted to go see an opera in the MET. But the opportunity never came up. But i managed to catch a production of 'The Nutcracker' by the New York Ballet at Lincoln Center...

Re: am totally out of my league here

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

DVD is a fairly painless way to get an intro if there isn't much going locally

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

I am not taking this quiz, because I am too ignorant.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

'Ignorant' isn't a word I associate with you.

[glitterboy1.livejournal.com]

Bother! I'm sorry I didn't get to see this earlier. I'm glad they haven't all gone; a couple of extra ones:

1. L'incoronazione di Poppea
2. Salome
4. Giulio Cesare

Hmm. I feel as though I should know 7.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Correct on all three

[damiel.livejournal.com]

I think 7 is actually from one of my favorite operas: Bluebeard's Castle.

This is fun.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Very good! I thought that was the second hardest one.