Part of the boys brigade centenary year, I sang Josephs coat of many colours to an audience of thousands, BBC broadcast it on the news or some other show.. However since we were either too poor, or video wasn't invented yet, I never saw myself on TV, I just heard about it from people. Maybe they have archives, but do i really wanna see that??
Your daughter would love to see it I think it would be worth checking if there isn't an archived version somewhere, but admittedly it is so much easier now when a performance is filmed and they can reproduce dvd copies quicker than rabbits multiply.
The one I'm going to is sung in Italian as it was written, by Alfredo Catalani.. But subtitles will be available in EN / FR. And yeah I think you would lose the spirit by siting reading the subtitles.
Most operas I've seen are sung in the original language. In the US, there were "overtitles" (like subtitles but up top). But the truth is, if you're into the opera......you get it. And for me at least, it was more about listening to the amazing voices and beautiful music than understanding each and every word.
Mighty mouse, the US cartoon, was almost entirely sung iirc. Mighty mouse might have been an opera too.
Depends on the language of the libretto. Some are in italian, other in german. There are even some operas that were translated to and sung in english. Usually there will be a screen that displays the translation of what is sung. The best is to come prepared by reading the plot and knowing main characters.
Before going to my first opera ever I spent a few weeks listening it again and again, reading the plot etc...it was le nozze di figaro probably the best opera to start.
I never liked performing until it got to be a couple of times a week, and in great places with good acoustics, same for rock gigs. But the best singing ever were our singing camps. Conveniently placed in a vinyard area.
I am not the most vigorous shower singer in our household
I was going to ask whether operas in Switzerland were subtitled, and you answered my question. I'm surprised to see that they are subtitled in English as well as French. Is this opera being performed in Geneva? I suspect that in parts of Switzerland with a smaller expat population, they'd only show subtitles in German and/or French. (In Ticino, they would rarely have to use subtitles at all.)
...which, even if you speak the language, you might not understand 100% - oftentime the language is from the 1800s or earlier, and some expressions or words are not used anymore or hard to catch. Of course one gets the general gist of it.
I like reading the libretto a couple of times beforehand (a translated version for the German operas as I don't really understand the language), so that when I am in the actual performance I can focus on the music, the voice, and the scene without freaking out about understanding every single word.
The opera in Zurich is quite nice, I liked it (quiet audience notwithstanding ). If you have never been to the opera, perhaps you want to start with something "lighter" and a bit more engaging - I would recommend Verdi, particularly Nabucco, Aida, Traviata (sorry, DB!) - or Bizet's Carmen.
Both my ex boyfriends were opera virgins and had to be "educated". I made the mistake of taking #1 to see Puccini's "Madame Butterfly" (which I like, but it's not the lightest opera out there) and he snoozed the whole time. With #2 I opted for La Traviata and he was interested/engaged in the story.
This prompted me to look up Mighty Mouse, as I only vaguely remembered it from childhood, so my curiosity was piqued. Doing so, I found this little gem. Excuse the off topic posting.
I still remember Leipzig. We were a group of press men clad in jeans and t-shirts and gymshoes. Our "better gear" was in the suitcases, but after arrival we had o access to our stuff which was driven to the hotel. I apologozed to the local manager in the opera who lead us to the Ulbricht-Loge, but he broke in laughters and stated that nobdy cared about our jeans and gym-shoes, and that our t-shirts would just show that we were of the "Arbeiter_Klasse" --- all problems solved. Some years before I was in the Basel Opera and it there was also easy going ... even with "decent shoes"