Has anyone seen the opera "The Merry Widow?" and is it any good?!
Question: Is it speaking or is eveyting sang in opera?
Answers: Is it speaking or is eveyting sang in opera?
most operas do not have spoken dialogue ( although I can think of 3 off the bat that do). Operettas have spoken dialogue, and are the direct fore-runners of Broadway musicals.
Merry Widow is a fun piece. It's got good tunes ( the Vilya Waltz is delicious), can-can girls, lots of silliness, and your usual boy-loves-girl-but they're-not-sure plot. If you're lucky, the leading man will be to die for, and the leading lady a rather modern-minded young woman ( doesn't take too much guff from anybody) that you can't help rooting for.
Lehar, the composer, was one of the leading writers of operetta in his day, and they are all worth the listen.
Technically, it's an operetta, and, thus, there is some dialogue between the musical numbers. I'm not particularly fond of this one.
Often inferior pieces like "Merry Widow" are performed by inferior singers too. - To really enjoy it, you should choose a recording with a good cast. Schwarzkopf has sung Vilya in the 50s (this is supposed to be a benchmark recording). I haven't heard the modern recording with Bryn Terfel.
The Merry Widow is a delightful romp into operetta (it has dialog) tuneful and lots of fun ... and has been previously said they before usually cast with inferior singers? the one I saw had Frederica Von Stade and Placido Domingo, hardly inferior, Frederica stated she was thrilled to play Hannah because she got to play a woman her own age and besides who wouldn't enjoy dancing with Placido every night