Opera and Choral?

[ChrisAZ]

Hell, a lot of Operas I've seen are filled with violence - poisonings, suicides, leaps from parapets. ; ) And you're right, they're filled with emotion. Too bad as an art form its not being more widely appreciated. I was fortunate enough to be a season ticket holder at the Lyric Opera in Chicago for years, I've been spoiled.

[LordoftheRingsEE]

-- Ever been to a Heavy Metal music concert?

* Some Operas contain violence; knives, pistols, killings, poisons, suicides, etc., because they represent some of the historical and most important events of world 'premieres' (men and women history).
But they don't spread red blood all over the stage now do they. ...The main interests are in the voices. The story is just the canvas.

Opera and Choral-goers are the most happiest people on the planet.
Churches have some great attributes too.

[howiebrou]

Originally Posted by ChrisAZ

Hell, a lot of Operas I've seen are filled with violence - poisonings, suicides, leaps from parapets. ; ) And you're right, they're filled with emotion. Too bad as an art form its not being more widely appreciated. I was fortunate enough to be a season ticket holder at the Lyric Opera in Chicago for years, I've been spoiled.

You're absolutely right about the availability of good quality Opera. I have spent years trying to find decent LPs or even CDs of opera. Recently in the UK I came back with a suitcase load of old Opera LPs in mint condition and I buy anything my dealer can find.

Unfortunately it is really hard to reproduce Opera on a Hifi even a very good Hi fi. I went and saw La Traviata the night before last and it is still Soooooooo much better live!

howie

[Still-One]

Originally Posted by howiebrou

You're absolutely right about the availability of good quality Opera. I have spent years trying to find decent LPs or even CDs of opera. Recently in the UK I came back with a suitcase load of old Opera LPs in mint condition and I buy anything my dealer can find.

Unfortunately it is really hard to reproduce Opera on a Hifi even a very good Hi fi. I went and saw La Traviata the night before last and it is still Soooooooo much better live!

howie

Howie
It is not just Opera that is so difficult to reproduce on even the very best Hi Fi's. Any complex form of live music is but a mere facsimile of what we hear in an auditorium, theater, concert hall or stadium. That is why most "audiophile approved" recordings are usually simple vocals or contain a minimal number of instruments.

[Kal Rubinson]

There are HD choral and a few opera downloads at Linn, Channel Classics and 2L websites. However, they are the tip of the iceberg compared with what is on disc.

[ChrisAZ]

Kal - that's been my experience to. Time to look at a Modwright/Oppo Universal player I fear.

[AudioNut]

Chris,

There are a number of folks here that appreciate and love opera and choral music. Looking through the various classical music threads here on AA, it becomes obvious that a lot of us actually listen to the stuff!

Note in the "what classical music are you listening to" thread, that new choral music seems to come along regularly - For example, Linn seems to issue new recordings often and I believe they have downloads available. (I buy SACD's and don't download)

I personally have several thousand opera and choral recordings on LP, many of which I bought long after they were released, many long after they were discontinued.

I used to frequent "used record stores", thrift stores, yard and garage sales, etc. and found that classical box sets were nearly always available in mint, never played, probably not even looked at, condition. And, Operas were always in near brand-new condition. The best thing about these sources was the fact that they would practically give the box sets/operas away just to get rid of them.

I still see stacks of records at Goodwill, Salvation Army, etc, and many box sets, including operas, are usually included in the $1.00/haul me away/ bins.

You say that you want to locate "audiophile quality" LP's. Please let me assure you that many, many of the original issue LP's from the mid 1950's through 1960's are hard to distinguish from the "remastered" versions (and are often actually better). Find RCA Living Stereo, Mercury Living Presence, London Blue Backs, and others, inspect the surfaces, clean them before you play them, and you will usually find that you have true audiophile quality LP's at a fraction of the cost of the re-released versions.

In the meanwhile, though, an OPPO player and a good selection of SACD's would be a really good alternative. Because I have so many LP's (14,000±) and storage has become a challenge, I buy mostly SACD's now and they are really good!

Good Luck!

[AudioNut]

Originally Posted by howiebrou

You're absolutely right about the availability of good quality Opera. I have spent years trying to find decent LPs or even CDs of opera. Recently in the UK I came back with a suitcase load of old Opera LPs in mint condition and I buy anything my dealer can find.

Unfortunately it is really hard to reproduce Opera on a Hifi even a very good Hi fi. I went and saw La Traviata the night before last and it is still Soooooooo much better live!

howie

Howie, I recently bought a La Traviata BluRay (video) from La Scala, and was really surprised how much better the visual cues on screen made the opera sound.

If I close my eyes, the opera sounds, well, very good, but if I open them and watch the thing on my fairly big screen, WOW it sounds so much better.

Go Figure!

Julian

[ChrisAZ]

All: So after all of this discussion (which I'm not trying to end by the way), I've come to a few realizations:

- From what I've seen, high resolution downloads of opera and choral works are almost non-existent. HD tracks nets me almost zero results (and what very little they have I'm not interested in) and while Linn Records lists 22 downloads for choral music, I didn't see much in the way of opera. For example, I searched "boheme", "traviata", "aida" and "butterfly" and didn't come up with any pertinent hits. More may be available outside of the US, but for US consumers there is very little available. So for us "computer audiophiles", not much out there that doesn't come from spinning media. (Note: Software from Amarra, Pure Music, etc., still seems to have to get the hang of "gapless playback" in any event so that we don't have pauses between sections of an opera).

- I recently bought a good turntable and slowly started rebuilding my record collection from scratch. A search of on line record stores such as Music Direct and Soundstage Direct netted similar disappointing returns to the download sites for new audiophile vinyl recordings of opera and choral. (Note: Analog vs digital sound issues aside, I'd prefer a download for opera (provided the gapless issue is rectified) so that I could sit and listen to the entire opera (or at least an entire act) without jumping up to flip the disc. I'm not being lazy - well maybe a little - I just don't want the experience interrupted).

- I live in Houston (the nation's 5th largest city) and I can count the number of vinyl record stores (including used vinyl) on one hand and the number of stores that sell decent turntables (excluding Magnolia) on two fingers, one of which appears to be on its last legs and the other now seems to be focusing on HT rather than music. The vinyl record stores are adequate on rock/pop, less so on jazz, blues and other forms of "popular" music, and abysmal for classical, opera and choral. So for classical/opera/choral vinyl, I'm apparently left to Amazon.com and searching yard sales, etc. Makes for some fun being a collector (although a PITA), and I do visit used record stores in other cities, but to me it is a sad commentary on the state of music.

- There are lots of classical/opera/choral CDs out there still but the number of CD stores is dwindling as iTunes takes over. Again, there are on-line vendors, but in any event I'd prefer if possible a better source than Redbook. And, again, when I download the CDs to my computer music server, I have that gapless playback issue.

- Finally that brings us to BluRay and SACD. I own some of each for music and they sound terrific in my HT. I will need, however, to get a player for my 2 channel music only system. Question is, do you all think that BluRay is the next thing to be replaced or that SACD - which has never had widespread public acceptance - will remain a viable source? I bought into Betamax and Sony's MiniDisc and am getting sick of finding my equipment and software becoming redundant after a couple of years. But that's the way of this hobby I'm afraid.

Bottom line is, while still available in some formats, good new recordings of Opera and Choral music seem to me to be almost an endangered species particularly as the CD is replaced in the market place by low-res iTune downloads. Question is, what does this mean for the sustainability of the art form itself since not many can, or can afford to, attend performances at the Met, Lyric Opera, etc?

[bart]

Originally Posted by AudioNut

Howie, I recently bought a La Traviata BluRay (video) from La Scala, and was really surprised how much better the visual cues on screen made the opera sound.

If I close my eyes, the opera sounds, well, very good, but if I open them and watch the thing on my fairly big screen, WOW it sounds so much better.

Go Figure!

Julian

I concur.
If you have a big screen, and a decent hi-fi system, operas can be quite enjoyable.
It's not the real thing of course and, with my wife, I attend at least 15 classical concerts a year, but hey, sometimes on a rainy or lazy Sunday afternoon, it's an immense pleasure to listen and see the singers suffer in yet another dramatic and tragic situation.
Blu-ray has awesome HD sound and image, and I guess 50 Gb of data will not likely be downloadable in the next years.