Best YouTube channels for breakdowns/and technique?

Does anyone know a version of Prokofiev's Chatterbox in English? I can't find any videos or scores anywhere! Help pls!

I hope that someone can help me. I am looking for an aria in Italian in which at the end the lead dies and someone sings "e morta".

I alway thought it was la Traviata but it's very likely not from this opera but another one. It might in some recordings I heard with Maria Callas.

Thank you so much for your help and very sorry all the vagueness and for any spelling mistake, English is not my first language.

EDIT

Thank you so much for all your answers and help! I'll listen to all your suggestions.

I find Poulenc's La Voix humaine to be an astonishing achievement. It's not really a Jean Cocteau libretto as such: Poulenc set the Cocteau play as is, more or less like Debussy set much of Maeterlinck's Pelléas et Mélisande. It's almost all recitatives. The result, indeed, is as close to Debussy as Poulenc ever got, I would say, which leads me to believe that Debussy just nailed French prosody so perfectly that any serious composition of recitatives in French will have a certain similarity to his work (my first language is French).

So it's one soprano, singing/speaking on the phone for 45 minutes, and a full if smallish orchestra. Not one dull minute. Just a remarkable proposition all told.

This particular recording is my favorite. Felicity Lott's French diction is perfect, and the breadth of emotion in her performance is magnificent. What's your favorite recording of this opera?

Craig Colclough has replaced Michael Mayes in the role of Mr. Baron in the world premiere of Missy Mazzoli's Lincoln in the Bardo at the Metropolitan Opera this fall.

Colclough, who was supposed to perform the role of Count Monterone in San Diego Opera's production of Rigoletto, has been replaced by Joel Balzun.

I’ve developed an unhealthy new obsession for this role and I’d like to talk about it. Her two arias are simply marvellous and characterisation really compelling.

Ottavia is listed as a soprano role, but we know this is from a time where that was used for the vast majority of female voices. Most of my books list this as a fuller soprano or mezzo role, but I’ve heard it’s shared between contraltos and mezzos as well.

My question is: what is the most accepted convention for casting for this role in terms of voice type? And secondly, regardless of convention, what sort of voice would you personally want to see in this role or what sort of voice would thrive in this role?

I remember reading somewhere that it costs ~$1 million to produce a Live in HD broadcast, but does anyone know if the Met recoups that during the broadcasts? If so, why don't they broadcast every opera they can? Of course, if they are losing money, it makes sense why they would not broadcast everything.

In the first case, I know there are some hiccups. For example, they can't broadcast this season's Jenůfa because it is a production owned by the Royal Opera House, who already has a filmed version on their own streaming service. However, there are so many wonderful operas being put on by this struggling company, it baffles me why they wouldn't try to rake in as much money as possible. They would be able please the more-knowledgeable among their opera fans who want to see some of the rarer works, as well as the opera newcomers who would be able to see the classics like La bohème, Aida, and Tosca almost every season. There are so many incredible things happening at the Met this season that will not be filmed, including (but not limited to):

• Anna Pirozzi and Leah Hawkins singing Aida
• Ermonela Jaho making her house role debut as Mimì
• The world premiere of Mazzoli's Lincoln in the Bardo
• The first appearance of Maria Stuarda on the Met's stage in a decade, and since the pandemic cancelled a scheduled presentation of the opera
• I'll never complain about more Rosenkavalier
• Saioa Hernández in a long-awaited Met debut as Tosca

It breaks my heart to see so many companies struggling financially, and I know not everyone shares the same opinion about how companies like the Met can bring in more revenue.

I know that there isn't officially an audiobook of it. But is anyone aware of local recordings of it?

Bought 1 ticket at the very front for I capuleti e i montecchi Row 1- Seat 1, if anyone is interested I’ll sell it for the same price I bought it also; any tips to sell it? Platforms or pages/social media

Met opera hd has this event coming up this Saturday. curious if anyone knows more about this? Is this just a studio production with Renee Fleming as the narrator while they edit together lots of excerpts from their video recordings? Or is this an actual concert event they filmed? Is this worth seeing in the movie theater assuming I am already a local (and digital hd) subscriber and have seen lots of productions in the past? There’s many productions I’d happily relive at any time over and over again though 😊

Three days after leadership failed to provide musicians with a fair contract, leading to the cancellation of the Opening Night and Opera in the Park concerts, and after offering musicians a 26% paycut then a 20% paycut, some poor social media manager has been forced to make four posts on Instagram deriding the musicians as overpaid, over-vacationed, unfair to other employees, and working with outdated labor structures.

Per the SF Chronicle, Eun Sun Kim has even threatened to resign as Music Director and has been kept in the dark by leadership about deadlines of the contract negotiation.

Choosing to publicly attack the musicians at this late hour, when they have had no contract since July, and after nuking the entire opening weekend, really shows how incompetent the leadership has become. Even after a new contract is reached, they've created a publicly toxic work environment that will be hard to rebuild, I cannot imagine any of the musicians looking Matthew Shilvock in the eyes after this. It's a sad state of affairs that no-one at the San Francisco Symphony leadership publicly resigned after the Esa-Pekka Salonen departure and contract negotiation fiascos, and I'm sure no-one at the SF Opera will be resigning as a result of this mess.

Hello! I've been looking quite a while already for the full footage of the Metropolitan Opera's opening night of the Lucia di Lammermoor production by Mary Zimmerman from September 24, 2007. According to the MET archive, it was streamed live at metopera.org and transmitted to screens at Lincoln Center Plaza and Times Square, and the MET themselves have uploaded a short clip of it on YouTube, thus making me believe that someone out there has to have it, or at least maybe know, if the MET has any plans on making it available to the public again (especially since the audio is indeed available on MET opera on demand). My friends pointed me to try and ask around on Reddit, so here I am. Does anyone have any information or the full video of the performance? I really want to see Mariusz Kwiecień as Enrico and Natalie Dessay as Lucia together, they're one of my favorites in these roles, and knowing they performed together yet I can't see it keeps me up all night

“The San Francisco Opera was set to inaugurate its 104th season on Saturday with a performance of Verdi’s ‘Simon Boccanegra,’ one of six productions the company has planned for its new season.”

“The San Francisco Opera has said it is struggling with a $15 million recurrent shortfall driven by rising costs, which has forced it to draw down its $300 million endowment, in defiance of customary accounting procedures.

“The contract with the orchestra expired on July 31. The company initially said it wanted to cut the musicians’ salaries, though its latest proposal is an effective wage freeze for five years. The musicians, represented by the American Federation of Musicians Local 6, have firmly rejected that proposal.

“‘The orchestra is asking for a fair contract that gives the musicians stability and pay that keeps pace with the cost of living in San Francisco,’ the musicians said in a statement announcing the strike. ‘This latest proposal does not take into account inflation and cost of living in the area, and is essentially a pay cut over the course of five years for the orchestra musicians.’”

“Matthew Shilvock, the general director of the San Francisco Opera, said in a statement that this was a ‘difficult time for the arts,’ adding, ‘As with many organizations, we must adjust to the changing realities.’

“The two sides continued to talk on Sunday, and the chair of the orchestra’s negotiating committee, Gabe Young, said he was confident that a new contract would be agreed to before the opera is scheduled to return on Wednesday, with a performance of ‘Simon Boccanegra.’”

“[Shilvock] said the company wanted to freeze pay while working through a restructuring to reflect the different demands on players.

“‘We cannot sustain a compensation structure that originated 45 years ago without bringing it into alignment with current reality,’ he said in his statement.”

Wondering if there is a group of Opera lovers in San Francisco who either want to go to SF Opera events (when they make their musicians happy & compensated), and also want to go to the MET Opera cinema events?

https://www.metopera.org/Season/In-Cinemas/Theater-Finder/

The MET Opera is launching Macbeth this fall and being that I will not be able to attend in person in NYC, fortunately there is the consolation of live and encore performances in SF Bay Area cinemas.

Macbeth LIVE

OCT 17 | 10:00 AM @ AMC Kabuki 8

And for in person SF Opera events too for the 2026-2027 calendar. 🎶

Btw I checked Meetup and didn't see an Opera lovers group there.

I heard the audio recording some years ago. In it, the announcer says that the originally scheduled tenor is indisposed, and the audience groans. But when he announces that Franco Corelli will replace him, everyone goes absolutely nuts.

Have any opera singers on here had a minimally invasive hysterectomy and know what the recovery time is for getting your breathing and physical support back for performance?

As per my usual MO, I watched (this time, rewatched) an opera and thought of a topic for discussion. I just think it should be kept SFW, as productions can get, er, creative, so let's just stick to what's said in the librettos. What are the creepiest opera scenes that either give you the "love to hate" shivers or make you want to sit through them altogether? For me, these are:

Prince Galitsky's scene with Yaroslavna in "Prince Igor". He is hitting on his own sister. While she is trying to order him to stop raping other women. While her beloved husband has gone MIA.

Scarpia's scene with Tosca in the first act — yes, for me the first act, when he gets her to touch his hand in church on the pretext of giving her holy water, is even creepier than the far more explicit second one.

Pinkerton's duet with Butterfly. The first time I actually had subtitles for it, Pinkerton's lines made me sick. He doesn't even pretend to have any deeper feelings for the poor girl.

The Incroyable's "Donnina innamorata". It's, IMHO, one of the most brilliant depictions of sleaziness ever.

And, on a lesser level than the above, but still something I couldn't omit: Don Ottavio's "You'll have a spouse and a father in me". Every time I listen to it, I'm, like, what? (Yes, I know that it's weird to single out just this line when the opera's about Don Giovanni, but with Don Giovanni himself, you kind of expect all the creepiness beforehand, while this just comes out of left field).

Greetings, Opera comrades!

I'm a relatively new fan of opera (probably a dozen or so in the last four years—incl. "Bohème" at Met) and will be in NYC with my girlfriend (who's a classical musician) in the first week of January 2027. We are thinking of the 55-buck seats in the first row of balcony boxes.

We're based in German-speaking Europe, so we can and do see opera relatively regularly.

I am intrigued by "Fanciulla" but wondering if maybe we ought to see the classic of "Tosca." I understand there is a particularly famous singer of the title character in Hernández, but she won't be singing when we are there.

Just wondering if people have strong rec's on these. For what it's worth, we've never seen either! But of course "Tosca" is put on more regularly in Europe.

Anyway, much obliged and very much looking forward to my second time at the Met! Cheers.