Last week I picked up a book from the Squirrel Hill branch of the Pittsburgh Public Library — Sir Denis Forman’s A Night at the Opera. I had been looking for exactly this type of book because I’ve long wanted to immerse myself in the study of opera — both Western and Chinese. Forman’s book is primarily composed of chapters devoted to individual operas. Chapters have plot summaries, musical highlights, and overall critical appreciations/evaluations of specific operas.

I’ve long wanted to broaden my knowledge of opera. It’s certainly not a bad thing for me to reacquaint myself with the operas I’ve already listened to dozens of times. (Some great opera are boundlessly rich.) Operas with which I already have some level of familiarity include:

• Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Marriage of Figaro, Magic Flute, and Così fan tutte
• Puccini’s La bohème
• bits and pieces from Wagner’s Ring Cycle (primarily Das Rheingold, the first of four operas in the cycle)
• Olivier Messiaen‘s Saint François d’Assise.

But I want to grow beyond listening over and over again to the same operas. There must be many new friends to be found — Forman’s book lists a good set to try out. But which ones to start with? It might be a caricature to say that the big three composers and Western opera are Mozart, Wagner, and Verdi. I’ve long wanted to learn more about Giuseppe Verdi. so I would pick one of his operas but which one?

When I saw that Verdi’s La Traviata is being performed in San Francisco next year, I decided to start with that opera. The opportunity to see a live performance of an opera under study is too much to pass p on.. So La Traviata it would be to start. (Moreover, Forman gives a rave review for La Traviata — ( grading it as an “alpha plus”) — so this opera seems to be as good a place to start as any other Verdi opera. It turns that La Traviata is been extremely popular opera in general (it’s #3 on a list of the 20 most performed operas in North America). Moreover, the Met is also performing it this season.

Rhapsody for online listening

As much as I would love to spend my time (and money) attending live opera, most of my exposure to opera will be through recordings. I was a big fan and subscriber of Yahoo! Music Unlimited when it was still in operation. I am even happier with Rhapsody (which took over my subscription), primarily because it gives me access to a substantial online classical music collection. (Classical music was not represented at all in Yahoo! Music.)

(By the way, there is also an API for Rhapsody. It be interesting to quickly brainstorm what I would use it for. (One idea comes to mind: writing a mashup that lets me quickly correlate albums that correspond to a given work — for example, something that shows me a list of all the recordings of La Bohème))

I’ve been listening to music primarily through Rhapsody’s desktop client (for Windows XP) although the web interface is intriguing for not only providing cross-platform access to my account but also the possibility of generating URLs to correspond to the given work or album or even track. (Unfortunately, the search results from the web interface cannot seem to be as good as those that come from the desktop interface. For instance, I had a hard time locating many recordings of Così fan tutte using the web interface. I wonder how well the API works for searching for albums.)

Wikipedia as a source of information about opera

The Wikipedia turns out to be an incredible source of basic taxonomic information about operas is in general. There is, of course, the article about the opera itself ( La traviata – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) as well as the composer (Giuseppe Verdi – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). There are all sorts of efforts to list and categorize operas and their composers:

• an attempt at a comprehensive list of operas: The opera corpus – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia — which has 2100+ operas written by over 600 composers
• List of operas by title – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia seems to be generated by hand so there is some relationship to “the opera corpus” but they’re not computationally connected, I think.

In addition, there’s an effort to identify important operas and major composers. There are categories lists which are computed:

• Category:Opera composer
• Category:Operas by composer, including links to Verdi’s Category:Operas by Giuseppe Verdi.

I’ve been a big fan of the Teaching Company ever since I purchased the course Bach and the High Baroque some years ago. Now Laura and I are awaiting the arrival of the 8 DVD course A History of European Art. I have not taken a formal history of art class since I studied European art by correspondents as a high school student.

My friend and former colleague Annie Yeh is a cellist with a new jazz album, “Something New,” featuring Tony Orbasido on guitar, Matthew Swindells on drums and Annie on cello. Congratulations, Annie!!

My friend Dan referred me to Ghostly Grand Piano: Technical Marvel Plays Like an Old Pro – washingtonpost.com, which in turn led me to Zenph Studios – Glenn Gould’s – Bach Goldberg Variations – Connections Column – New York Times:

Zenph also announced it had accomplished this feat
of technological legerdemain with one of the most remarkable recordings
of the last century: Glenn Gould’s 1955 mono rendition of Bach’s
“Goldberg” Variations. Gould, who retreated from performance into the
private realm of the recording studio where he could splice and fiddle
with sound and phrase, would be posthumously pulled back into the realm
of public performance.

I’m almost ready to plunk down the money to hear the recreation of Gould’s famous Bach recording. (See *BACH:
The Goldberg Variations – Glenn Gould’s 1955 performance re-created in
modern hi-res surround sound and hi-res binaural sound by Zenph – Sony
Classical for the album cover.) Where can I buy it?

Because I’ve been listening intently to Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (Books I and II) for a year now, I was thrilled to see a new book on the subject: Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier: The 48 Preludes and Fugues. I was disappointed that someone beat me to putting it hold at the music library — but I need to be patient! I’m hoping the book will explicate some of the wonders of the music and pinpoint the whys and hows of the power of the WTC.

(Hmmm…using the Amazon “see related items” feature, I found another book that is currently on the shelf and can therefore be in my impatient hands sooner: Bach: The Goldberg Variations.)