Let's talk music, no genre boundaries

The time we use is precious.

You can work for more money or you can read a book any oligarchs will miss because they dont have time nor the passion to read it...

I listen music 4 hours a day, i read 4 hours a day, i walk 3 hours a day...

The most important thing is the book which could have change my perspective and which i can miss ...One book if it is an important one will explode your mind...

I love discovering new music times to times , but what i love the most is listening  the same geniuses again and again for all my life...

I am retired...

But my job was, lucky me, advising people a book useful for their  field of interest...

I miss students...

I meditate more now and if i discover a tremendous important book  i had no student to advise about it ...

It is my only problem and it bother me...

 

 

 

@audio-b-dog 

I liked Peter Grimes when I saw the opera, but it isn't an opera I'd play at home

Playing an opera without video seems to me like going to an IMAX picture theatre and wearing a blindfold!

Bit like buying SACD and throwing away more than half the channels ...

I have lots of opera videos I have not got round to actually watching yet!  And quite a few sound only opera disks, include Solti conducting Wagner's Ring Cycle.

IMAX = another great Aussie invention, overthrowing the conventional wisdom about filming on its head (or at least, its side!)

@simonmoon 

And if by coming to these posts, with the possibility of discovering a some great new music, band, composer, musician, etc, is well worth the time. 

Amen to that, brother!  

 

@richardbrand 

I had season tickets to the L.A. opera for twelve years. When I listen to operas, I've seen them produced once or twice. I must say, though, that seeing these operas was invaluable. I couldn't listen to Puccini operas until I saw them on stage. And Puccini has to be one of the easiest opera composers to listen to. The same with Mozart. Now I can see the production in my mind and happily listen to a recording. BTW, Igmar Bergman made a wonderful documentary film about Mozart's Magic Flute. If you haven't seen it, it is well worth watching.

The last time i was stunned by an opera was Akhnaten of Philip Glass.

The way he portrayed musically the Ancient Egypt feeling about  spiritual meaning was stunning.

I was so stunned i wanted to read his biography...

My next  will probably be Kepler ...

 

For me i dont want to "see" the theater of the opera only the sound and music...

I see music when listening and seeing  anything else will intrude and impede my experience...

But going live to an opera is a thing in itself and i understand people who want to "see" it...

 

I discovered the miraculous beauty of Opera listening  from TV  an opera of Mozart "Cosi Fan Tutte"... For me a totally uninteresting libretto and visuals...

but i entered in an ecstasy understanding with my ears how Mozart genius makes of each voice a perfect musical instrument  speaking to one another in a perfect musical way...No other composer ever do it in this "perfect" way...Not even Puccini which is my favorite opera composer...Mozart reach Bach transcendent level with a ridiculous story, incredible, using only voices as we can use a piano...

It was useless almost a desecration to understand the words and the action play... I do not want at all ... I succeed because i dont understand italian and it was easy to see without seeing on the TV set  only listening...

i discovered Mozart absolute genius this day 40 years ago...

 

But paradoxically,  there was an opera i wanted to see not only listening to... The Faust of Busoni...But by Fisher Dieskau...but he is dead and i doubt i will ever see it...

Faust is not like "cosi fan tutte" a ridiculous story. 

 

Another example : I like Kurt Weil very much...

All of his music...

But i dont feel at all the urge to see the three penny opera... Only listening it with Lotte Lenya is well enough...I could see from my recording version with her, a prodigiously well recorded opera, i could see in my first acoustic room all the play all around me even when the singers walked singing and turning their head my eyes closed or open so good was my acoustic... Alas! i sold my house, it is another story...

 

By the way, i had seen the Magic flute by Bergman and i did not enter in ecstasy  like listening to Cosi Fan tutte, why ?

Simple the story of the magic flute is a masterpiece tale not a stupid story, and Bergman realisation is a masterpiece movie... But here all the music serve a goal which is telling the tale especially the visuals use by the director...Nothing is pure music in itself like in the Cosi case...The goal of Mozart is more philosophicaql than musical here ...

The greatest opera of Mozart are the magic flute and Don Giovanni...but his greatest pieces are the Requiem and Cosi fan Tutte... Which are more than a mass and more than an opera, in the case of Cosi especially pure music like the Art of the fugue by Bach...It is like Mozart saying, gave to me a stupid text and a stupid play and i will create an absolute piece of music... Incredible he did it...But he could not do it again like Bach writing once the art of the fugue...Mozart wrote the art of song...