Concert Versions

[Humph Warden Bennett]

Does anybody actually enjoy them? I would rather pay an extra few quid & watch a show with costumes & dancing, rather than watch singers line up on a stage with a chorus seated behind them.

[SteveH]

The only Opera I have ever seen live was a concert version of 'The Marriage of Figaro" with the Halle Orxhestra in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, c. 1970. I enjoyed it, but I suppose a fully-staged version would be better.

[Humph Warden Bennett]

I did take part in a concert version of "Carmen" once, my boys school was helping out a local girls school. Looking back it seems an odd choice for a school performance, but this was the mid seventies & the new prudery was decades in the future.

I can perhaps see a use for concert performance of a work rarely performed in full, but surely there would be a sufficient audience for something such as a rare Offenbach work so as to justify spending money on scenery & costumes?

[Walter]

Does anybody actually enjoy them? I would rather pay an extra few quid & watch a show with costumes & dancing, rather than watch singers line up on a stage with a chorus seated behind them.

I've always been a friend of Dorothy

see me flounce out the theatre!

[Nearly Sane]

There might be a happy medium though here, I find the over the top effort made on stage design in particular for famous opera theatres and companies distracting, and for 'occasion' musicals an attempt to make the evening for those who don't like musicals. 

[Humph Warden Bennett]

There might be a happy medium though here, I find the over the top effort made on stage design in particular for famous opera theatres and companies distracting, and for 'occasion' musicals an attempt to make the evening for those who don't like musicals.

A kind of "You cannot see the wood for the trees?" Yes I think I can understand that.

[Robbie]

I've enjoyed concert performances, a couple at the proms years ago. I go (or went, haven't been for ages), with different expectations to a full blown opera so there was no disappointment.

[Humph Warden Bennett]

I've enjoyed concert performances, a couple at the proms years ago. I go (or went, haven't been for ages), with different expectations to a full blown opera so there was no disappointment.

But does the story not suffer? OK a concert performance of Don Giovanni would be easier on the singer/actor playing the Commentadore, but the superbly dramatic moment when the stone man opens his eyes would surely be lost in a concert performance?

[Robbie]

Yes.  A concert performance is a different sort of enjoyment, we have to accept that or else not go to them. I like to hear good singing, even had some concert performances on video - probably still have but nothing to play them on now.

[Harrowby Hall]

In recent years there have been semi-staged concert performances at the Proms of My Fair Lady, Kiss Me, Kate and Oklahoma!. The staging frequently left something to be desired.  What can be stated, however, is that from a musical viewpoint these were all excellent - a first class orchestra and good singers for whom vocal delivery was more important than acting. It goes without saying that John Wilson was in charge.

[Robbie]

Excellent! Not been to proms for years but v much enjoyed when did & glad to hear you're up to date.

[Humph Warden Bennett]

In recent years there have been semi-staged concert performances at the Proms of My Fair Lady, Kiss Me, Kate and Oklahoma!. The staging frequently left something to be desired.  What can be stated, however, is that from a musical viewpoint these were all excellent - a first class orchestra and good singers for whom vocal delivery was more important than acting. It goes without saying that John Wilson was in charge.

I have seen a concert performance of The Gondoliers and it fell flat, IMHO the problem was that the same contains several small parts who add greatly to the visual & spoken parts, in a concert version one simply hears voices singing a few lines here and then, by the time that the audience has worked out whom is singing, s/he has finished. My Fair Lady which has few singing parts, may perhaps work in a concert version, but not something such as Showboat I do see a big difference between an oratorio, and an opera, and to my mind a concert version is a modern version of the former.

[Dicky Underpants]

But does the story not suffer? OK a concert performance of Don Giovanni would be easier on the singer/actor playing the Commentadore, but the superbly dramatic moment when the stone man opens his eyes would surely be lost in a concert performance?

I think that it may depend on what the composer and his librettist have thought dramatically possible in the first place. Wagner (who was his own librettist) presents quite a few problems, not least when he requires Brunnhilde to jump on her horse into the pyre in her immolation scene - let alone all those mounted Valkyries flying through the air.

[Humph Warden Bennett]

I think that it may depend on what the composer and his librettist have thought dramatically possible in the first place. Wagner (who was his own librettist) presents quite a few problems, not least when he requires Brunnhilde to jump on her horse into the pyre in her immolation scene - let alone all those mounted Valkyries flying through the air.

At the end of Ruddigore, the ancestors are supposed to step down from their portrait frames.

What they actually do is to walk onto the stage.

Problem solved.