I beg your pardon, but I find that the interest level of the libretto, the quality of the acting, and other purely dramatic elements have a great deal to do with the dullness or lack of same of my experience of an opera.
This is why I class opera as a different genre from concert music, even though it's often composed by the same people: in opera, it's not just about the music. It's music plus drama plus spectacle, and they all have to work, and work together. (The problem with Regietheater is that the third element has gotten out of hand from the first two.)
I do like Berlioz! (At least in aspects: his problem is structure, which can sink a bad performance, and the lack of the kind of structure that concert music has is my biggest aesthetic hurdle in appreciating opera.) Even parts of Troyens: I'll listen to the "Royal Hunt and Storm" any time. It's "whether you care to sit through the whole epic" that's the rub, and that's what's on offer at SFO.
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This is why I class opera as a different genre from concert music, even though it's often composed by the same people: in opera, it's not just about the music. It's music plus drama plus spectacle, and they all have to work, and work together. (The problem with Regietheater is that the third element has gotten out of hand from the first two.)
I do like Berlioz! (At least in aspects: his problem is structure, which can sink a bad performance, and the lack of the kind of structure that concert music has is my biggest aesthetic hurdle in appreciating opera.) Even parts of Troyens: I'll listen to the "Royal Hunt and Storm" any time. It's "whether you care to sit through the whole epic" that's the rub, and that's what's on offer at SFO.