OTF Short Stories (2021 Edition)

[itywltmt]

Happy New Year!

For 2021, we launch a new thread of Short Stories - highlights from our daily podcasts that venture into the world of lyrical, operatic or just plain interesting music we may (or not) have mused about in these pages in the past ten years.

FYI - our podcast programming calendar for the first four months opf 2021 can be found here.

New Year in Vienna

The first pair of featured podcasts cover New Year's Eve and New Year's day, both with a taste of Vienna.

Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre. Though it is a genre made popular in France (notably by German transplant Jacques Offenbach), operetta was alive and well in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Its most significant composer in the genre was Johann Strauss II; his first operetta was Indigo und die vierzig Räuber (1871). His third operetta, Die Fledermaus (1874), became the most performed operetta in the world, and remains his most popular stage work. Its libretto was based on a comedy written by Offenbach's librettists. In all, Strauss wrote 16 operettas and one opera, most with great success when first premiered.

Original OTF Post - https://operalively.com/forums/showt...iener-Operette

Active Podcast - https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/i...06_00_00-08_00

Archive Page - https://archive.org/details/pcast169

At the stroke of midnight, the giant Pummerin bell of Vienna’s St Stephen’s cathedral rings in the New Year with the chimes broadcast across TV and radio. Once the last echoes of the Pummerin fade away, all hell breaks loose as fireworks across the city burst into action.

Broadcasters then switch to the Blue Danube waltz and everyone dances in the New Year as lights explode across the night sky.

All of the works featured today carry Vienna in their title - most of them by Austrian composers, including members of the Strauss family. The lone exception is the final work - Ravel's masterpiece La valse.


Read today's post - hhttps://itywltmt.blogspot.com/2021/01/wien.html

Active Podcast - https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/i...23_00_00-08_00

[itywltmt]

A pair of Verdi podcasts are available for your listening pleasure. They are:

Giuseppe Verdi was to opera in the Italian tradition what Beethoven was to the symphony. When he arrived on the scene some had suggested that effective opera after Rossini was not possible. Verdi, however, took the form to new heights of drama and musical expression. Partisans see him as at least the equal of Wagner, even though his style and musical persona were of an entirely different cast. In the end, both Verdi's popular vein—as heard in the operas Rigoletto, Il trovatore, and La traviata—and his deeper side—found in Aida, Otello, and Falstaff—demonstrate his mastery and far-reaching development of Italian opera.

Read my original post - http://itywltmt.blogspot.com/2014/10/viva-verdi.html

Active Podcast - https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/i...06_00_01-08_00

Archive Page - https://archive.org/details/pcast168


While the Verdi Requiem has its unmistakably operatic moments, it is a work of far-reaching spiritual and emotional magnitude that at once pushed the religious music envelope and gave new meaning to the phrase “to each his own,” as evidenced by its cross-denominational/cross-cultural longevity and popularity.

Read my original post - http://itywltmt.blogspot.com/2014/04...a-requiem.html

Active Podcast - https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/i...06_00_00-08_00

Archive Page - https://archive.org/details/pcast151

[itywltmt]

The opening piece, Plaisir d'amour (literally "The pleasure of love") takes its text from a poem by Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian (1755–1794), which appears in his novel Célestine. The refrain probablty summarizes every love song ever written:

Plaisir d'amour ne dure qu'un moment, chagrin d'amour dure toute la vie.
(The pleasure of love lasts only a moment, the grief of love lasts a lifetime.)

Original OTF Post - https://operalively.com/forums/showt...laisir-d-amour


Active Podcast - https://podomatic.com/podcasts/itywl...06_00_00-08_00


Archive Page - https://archive.org/details/pcast303