A young couple sing their love for eachother under the stars.

December 10, 2011 8:22 AM

I would like to have a deeper appreciation of operas, musicals, and regular 'plays'. If I had the money, I would simply go to a ton of them. But I don't - so I ask for your assistance!

I'm currently a student of the sciences in college, and recently took a "music appreciation" course. Throughout the course, I learned to...well... sincerely appreciate the effort that goes into ensembles, orchestras, etc. It was a great experience! I would like to have the same feelings about musicals, operas, and 'plays'. If you could provide some links to documentaries about them, or even just videos of the events themselves, that'd be great. Any videos of the actual performances, I'd prefer ones you would deem 'accessible'. Thanks!

posted by Evernix to media & arts (18 answers total)

Does your school have a full music department, or is there a university nearby that does? Student concerts and productions are usually cheap or free, and often quite good. Also check local performance organizations for student ticket prices.

Now to answer your actual question: MetOpera.org.
posted by matildaben at 8:39 AM on December 10, 2011

Rodgers & Hammerstein Collection

Sondheim Collection

You may be able to rent these from the library, or buy them cheaply on Ebay.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:42 AM on December 10, 2011

For non-musical drama - particularly Shakespeare - you might want to watch Looking for Richard, which is about Shakespeare's "Richard III", and is a combination of scenes from the play and a documentary about the play. If you want to then see the entirety of Richard III, Ian McKellan made a fairly accessible film adaptation, which isn't a film of a play, but could help make the text accessible.

One of my favorite shows is "Sweeney Todd", and there's a recording of the original broadway staging available - it's just the performance filmed, as opposed to being a film adaptation. There was also a film adaptation of it done a couple of years ago, but for appreciation of the staged stuff, I'd look at the recorded performance first.

In musicals, a musical number tends to fill one of two roles: first is sort of the stage equivalent of a film montage - it informs what's going on, fills in backstory or helps describe what's going on then often across some plot progression; the second is to provide a pause and let the character(s) explain what's going on internally for him/them at the time with their internal state. So a big opening number (say, "Good Morning Baltimore" in "Hairspray") serves to set the scene and explain what's happening and who some of our characters are and what their life is like. While a smaller number like "Green Finch and Linnet Bird" in "Sweeney Todd" is much more "here is what's going on for me right now, particularly internally."
posted by rmd1023 at 8:55 AM on December 10, 2011

Reading good critical analysis can be really edifying. Try Terry Teachout of the WSJ; he is plainspoken but I've learned a lot from his columns. He also blogs over at artsjournal.com/aboutlastnight.

No need to stick to contemporary critics, either; the 20th century was very lively both in variety of theatrical offerings and critical output. Try looking for anthologies of critical essays. I'm more familiar with film criticism than I am with opera or theatre, but a bit of Googling might give you some leads. Have fun - this type of reading can be very rewarding.
posted by Currer Belfry at 9:16 AM on December 10, 2011 [2 favorites]

You get the Kobbe's Opera Book and work through it from start to finish, with the help of your Netflix rental list and your local library. Read the libretto as you go along, and use English subtitles. Don't bother with opera in translation, use the original language. Then watch the opera again without reading the libretto.

Monteverdi rocketh in no small wise, I can tell you.
posted by tel3path at 9:16 AM on December 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

I watched a really good documentary called Wonders are Many about the making of Dr. Atomic (an opera about Robert Oppenheimer). I thought it did a pretty good job capturing what it's like to try and pull off a big production.

If you'd really like to gain an appreciation for what goes into making stage productions, and you have some free time available, consider volunteering for stage crew or some other behind the scenes job. You might be able to volunteer with a show on campus, or I'm sure you can find some community theaters in your area that would welcome the help. Watching a show from behind the scenes that you helped make is quite an experience.
posted by Kicky at 9:19 AM on December 10, 2011

Amazingly, you can often find entire performances of musicals and operas on Youtube. I did a quick search and found Die Fledermaus and Don Giovanni both in their entirety. You can also stream many wonderful performances from PBS's Great Performances website. Most public libraries also have musical and opera scores available for checkout, or there are online resources for works in the public domain. You can learn a lot about a work by watching a good performance while following along in the score, particularly at home where you can pause and rewind.
posted by KathrynT at 9:49 AM on December 10, 2011 [2 favorites]

Waiting For Guffman might be a fun place to start.
posted by empath at 10:01 AM on December 10, 2011

Not a direct answer to your question, but have you looked into volunteer ushering? At my university, the performing arts department lets students volunteer as ushers. It's basically very minimal effort but you get to watch the show for free. I've seen so many good shows this way and saved a ton of money.
posted by Durin's Bane at 10:03 AM on December 10, 2011 [2 favorites]

I've never been too keen on stage acting (nor the ticket price to suffer through it), but I do appreciate everything else about the medium, so I read plays, listen to soundtracks, and watch film adaptations.

Soundtracks are pretty great, because there's often a lot of them for each musical--one for every major stage it's played on. (Usually a Broadway one and a London one, at least, plus the Hollywood version.) Listening and comparing them, it's often surprising how completely different two productions of the same numbers can sound, especially on plays that don't have a whole lot of plot (e.g. Hair).

There were recently a couple of projects that started out as movies, became Broadway musicals based on movies, then became movies based on Broadway musicals based on movies: The Producers and Hairspray. The former, while certainly not a documentary, is about the process of getting a musical on the stage, and would be a good start. Compare the 1968 version to the 2005 version, paying special attention to the parts where new numbers were added in.
posted by Sys Rq at 10:03 AM on December 10, 2011

I would like to introduce you to the Metropolitan Opera. Evernix, this is the Metropolitan Opera. Metropolitan Opera, this is Evernix. There, now you're introduced. The Met does Saturday matinee radio broadcasts (i.e. free) every Saturday throughout the winter and spring. The matinee is always a full length opera and there are commentators who give a bit of background before the opera starts, during intermission, and afterwards. Very interesting. And, did I mention, free? The Met also does Live in HD performances, which means that you can go to a local movie theater and watch a performance for a lot less money than an actual opera ticket.
posted by colfax at 10:10 AM on December 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

Another fun show that's about putting on a show is [Title of Show], which is a musical that documents the process of writing the musical itself sort of as it's happening.

There's a soundtrack and some youtube content out there.
posted by rmd1023 at 11:17 AM on December 10, 2011

You can watch the met for less than thirty bucks at the movies. Look up met hd performances.

I'm at the intermission for Faust right now and it's amazing.

Look at the met HD website for details.
posted by winna at 12:35 PM on December 10, 2011

I am out of the opera now, having cried the requisite buckets at the end.

t3l3path is right - the Kobbes Opera Book is good. I like Sir Denis Forman's book A Night at the Opera a tiny bit more for people who are just dipping in their toes - it's more breezy and fun, if strongly based on his personal opinion and thus controversial. But that's why I like it - you can argue with it.

You can often find good recordings of opera on sale - Amazon is prone to offering deep discounts on opera and other classical pieces if you keep an eye out.

One thing I personally do, is buy at the used cd store, which also has some really deep discounts. Don't worry at first about if it's a 'good' recording or not. I have learned more about opera from listening to some really bad recordings than good ones, because you can figure out what is wrong and then when you hear it done right it blows you away.

I would also recommend not taking other people's opinions too seriously, particularly if you read youtube comments. The opera comments are usually of a higher order than normal, but everyone has a different opinion and it's possible to get very confused by what people say. If you like a singer or a performance, don't worry if someone else doesn't - rest assured that there are other people who think that that person or performance is the greatest thing since Peach Melba.
posted by winna at 3:00 PM on December 10, 2011

There are some performances of musicals available on DVD - for Sondheim, the Sweeney Todd mentioned above, Into the Woods, Passion and the revival of Company have all been recorded. The London revival of Oklahoma with Hugh Jackman is available on DVD; Memphis just got released. I'm sure there are others, none of which I can think of offhand, but they're there. If you want to read about musicals, Scott Miller has written some really good books. Deconstructing Harold Hill is my favorite.

If you want to listen to songs from musicals, AccuRadio's Broadway Channels, Maximum Broadway, and WERS's Standing Room Only are all really good.

For straight plays, the National Theatre of London is now broadcasting filmed versions of some of their stuff into U.S. movie theaters. I've seen two, and they're more than worth it.
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 3:34 PM on December 10, 2011

It's hard to recommend a standard course of "appreciation" because everyone's taste is different. My first opera was Carmen and my next was Wagner's Ring, all before the age of 14. And for a long time my favorite musical was Dames at Sea, of all things.

I fed my early interest (1960s) in musical theater and opera via my local public library, and then in the 1970s at my college library. There wasn't much in the way of video back then of course, but now most libraries have both musicals and opera on DVD.

However, I will say that what actually got me hooked was not so much the unmediated performances but rather the reading of criticism and description of various works. For example, the musical Follies fascinated me before I heard a note of the score because I read an article about the design of the original production of the show in a magazine called Theatre Crafts. That led me to borrowing the cast recording from the library, then, when I could afford it, the LP which was at that time the only recorded documentation. Then I tracked down a copy of the script in my college library.

Today, there are many more choices: if you're interested in any title of a musical or opera or straight play, you can peruse YouTube. When I looked earlier today, there was even a complete version of a telecast of Don Giovanni that was filmed on Wednesday of this week! There are lots of other clips of shorter excerpts as well.

For reading about musicals, I recommend the series of books by Ethan Mordden that examines Broadway decade by decade (e.g., Coming up Roses: The Broadway Musical in the 1950s). He's a very opinionated writer and his political views get a bit abrasive around the 1970s volume, but he does communicate that passionate sense of how some things simply must be seen. He also has a book called Demented, out of print now, that discussed the phenomenon of the opera diva, and it's simultaneously campy and deeply perceptive.

A couple of good free resources for opera are the Met's free streaming service, a live performance once a week, playable on a computer or smartphone, and a wonderful aggregation site called Operacast that lists internet radio performances of opera from around the world: on Saturday afternoons, for example there are sometimes as many as 20 different operas to choose from.


And not to blow my own horn, but I used to host a series of podcasts of operas; the whole four years of shows are archived here and are available for on-demand play or free download. They're on iTunes too; just search for "Unnatural Acts of Opera."
posted by La Cieca at 11:37 PM on December 10, 2011

PBS aired a documentary called Broadway: The American Musical. It's been released on DVD; check your library. (Also, do check out that link; they have tons of resources.)

Deconstructing Harold Hill has some pretty great insights into a number of classic musicals. (It's a follow-up to From Assassins to West Side Story.)

The Teaching Company's Great Courses collection has a lecture series on How to Listen to and Understand Opera - again, check your library.
posted by kristi at 5:23 PM on December 11, 2011

Also - look for the biographies of Stephen Sondheim. The stories of how Oscar Hammerstein mentored him, and some of the other show-specific insights about various works he's written, are pretty great.
posted by kristi at 5:24 PM on December 11, 2011