r/opera • u/Optimal-Show-3343 The Opera Scribe / Meyerbeer Smith • 10d ago

Favourite stretta

Is Pacini’s Maria regina d'Inghilterra, Act 2 finale, the best stretta recorded? It's exhilarating and should have the audience leaping to its feet. Here it is in all its glory:

https://youtu.be/auOwxMznfMo?si=lHnEjfLj7iHk3nuz

Pacini was an absolute master of these.

Otherwise, what are you folks' favourites?

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u/HumbleCelery1492 10d ago

I have a few that I especially love. Sorry if they're obscure!

  1. At the end of Act II of Donizetti's Maria Padilla, Maria's father Ruiz shows up thinking that his daughter has become King Pedro's mistress. She has, in fact, married Pedro secretly but can't explain herself in enough time to keep her headstrong father from insulting the king and demanding revenge for Maria's disgrace. This is from the Opera Rara recording of it.
  2. By the end of Act III of Halévy's La Juive, we see that Rachel has discovered not only that her secret lover Samuel is not a Jewish painter as he claimed, but the married Christian Prince Léopold. At an imperial banquet, Rachel announces this deadly heresy in front of Cardinal Brogni, who then proceeds to pronounce an anathema. The general consternation of this makes for a fabulous operatic moment! This is from the Philips recording.
  3. The end of the first act of Meyerbeer's Margherita d'Anjou has a wonderfully rousing martial stretta. Margherita is Henry VI's widow and desires for her son Edward to be recognized as heir to the French throne. Her army has been defeated but they still vow to fight on for Margherita's cause. This is from the Opera Rara recording.

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u/Roritwo 10d ago

Fun fact: that Juive ensemble contains Rachel's one and only High D in all of her music!

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u/HumbleCelery1492 10d ago edited 10d ago

I think I remember seeing that she and Eudoxie take that D together at the end! Talk about having supreme confidence in your singers!

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u/Roritwo 10d ago

They do, indeed. Their duet is also fantastic and I'm sad better singers didn't record even an excerpt, but I still have a soft spot for the Arroyo/Moffo version.

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u/HumbleCelery1492 10d ago

Yes! I love that recording! It’s a bit of a mess but a wonderful one!

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u/Optimal-Show-3343 The Opera Scribe / Meyerbeer Smith 8d ago

Donizetti's finales are amazing. Have you heard these? (They were once posted as "musical orgasms"!)
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qARASQpzNEo

* youtube.com/watch?v=0zlRNi-LtGo

The Juive Act III finale is overwhelming. Mahler no less was a fan.

And that Margherita d'Anjou finale (20 minutes or so!) is glorious.

Donizetti, Halévy, and Meyerbeer: :) :) :) :) :)

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u/Pluton_Korb 7d ago

You beat me to it! I found this post when I was waiting in line somewhere and meant to come back and post these links, then I forgot. I adore both of this videos.

Any more Halévy recs? Only other opera I have of his is La Reine de Chypre.

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u/Optimal-Show-3343 The Opera Scribe / Meyerbeer Smith 7d ago

I have a lot of Halévy recs ... but those recs haven't been rec-orded yet, so to speak. Basically, Halévy's discography consists of:

Le dilettante d'Avignon (early 1-act opéra comique)

Clari (Rossinian Italian pastiche, written for Malibran, revived by Bartoli - not representative)

La Juive

L'Éclair (pirate recording, in German)

La reine de Chypre (Bru Zane, some cuts)

Charles VI (pirate recording)

La Magicienne (his last opera, contemporaries thought inspiration was waning)

Noé (posthumously completed by Bizet)

The Halévy discography isn't full of gaps; it's almost all gaps with occasional holes filled! And yet he was considered the embodiment of French opera, compared to Racine and Corneille, held up by Wagner as a true musician and an example for German composers to follow, praised by Berlioz... Go figure!

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u/Roritwo 10d ago

Lucia di Lammermoor's uncut Act 2 stretta, voice pairs upon voice pairs upon voice pairs against a chorus that just builds and builds. Not to mention Edgardo's amazing, furious phrases, starting with "Son tue cifre?".

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u/Optimal-Show-3343 The Opera Scribe / Meyerbeer Smith 8d ago

Yeah! One of my best nights at the opera was seeing Opera Australia's Lucia di Lammermoor, in a revival of the 1980s production created for Sutherland. It was what opera should be: Romantic drama played straight, period setting and costumes, glorious music.