TS: Comic Opera vs. Tragic Opera

Undisputed best opera of all-time "Don Giovanni" was called 'opera buffa' by Mozart, so I'd assume "The Magic Flute" is comedic as well.

This poll is asking a lot.

...Are you implying "Carmen" is a comic opera?

wau you are more goth than even I thought

Opéra comique (plural: opéras comiques) is a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged out of the popular opéra comiques en vaudevilles of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent (and to a lesser extent the Comédie-Italienne),[1] which combined existing popular tunes with spoken sections. Associated with the Paris theatre of the same name, the Opéra-Comique, opéra comique is not always comic or light in nature — indeed, Carmen, perhaps the most famous opéra comique, is a tragedy.

(maybe I'm misreading your intent re: the poll options)

This poll is asking a lot.

This poll basically comes from the tortured child psyche of little-dude underrated a the piano student feeling like he had to CHOOSE between baroque/classical/romantic/modern as soon as he found out about the classifications but yeah it's kind of dumb & insane. still to me there seems like stuff to think about, for me anyway, like I say I'd naturally consider myself an automatic vote for "tragic" until I think about the stuff that sticks with me most

xp lol there's always that possibility, ever present when I'm the person doing the talking, that I have no idea of what I'm talking about

also can somebody resurrect Schubert and make him write an opera

wau check this out, here's Wikipedia's list of opera genres:

Acte de ballet
Afterpiece
Azione sacra
Azione teatrale
Ballad opera
Ballet héroïque
Bühnenfestspiel
Bühnenweihfestspiel
Burletta
Comédie en vaudeville
Comédie lyrique
Comédie mêlée d'ariettes
Drame lyrique
Dramma eroicomico
Dramma giocoso
Dramma pastorale
Dramma per musica
Fait historique
Farsa
Festa teatrale
Género chico
Género grande
Gesamtkunstwerk
Grand Opera
Handlung
Intermède
Intermezzo
Liederspiel
Märchenoper
Melodramma
Musikdrama
Opéra
Opera ballo
Opéra-ballet
Opera buffa
Opéra bouffe
Opéra bouffon
Opéra comique
Opéra féerie
Opéra lyrique
Opera semiseria
Opera seria
Operetta
Operette
Opérette
Pasticcio
Pastorale héroïque
Posse mit Gesang
Romantische Oper
Sainete
Savoy opera
Saynète
Schauspiel mit Gesang
Schuloper
Semi-opera
Sepolcro
Serenata
Singspiel
Songspiel
Spieloper
Syngespil
Tonadilla
Tragédie en musique
Verismo
Zarzuela
Zauberoper
Zeitoper
Zwischenspiel

man I should have gone to grad school to study this stuff

Which one is Tommy?

Musikdrama

Skirt Opera.

sadly "rock opera" is not yet a recognized sub-genre of opera

we'll see what happens 40 years from now

It's asking a lot b/c operas are and aren't divisible in terms of "comedy" and "tragedy" in the same way that say Shakespeare plays are (with "historical" as a necessary addendum). I mean, where would you put Eugene Onegin? or Pelleas and Melisande? Both would I guess be termed 'lyric operas', and have laffs as well as a death at the end.

The question really is Option A: The serious operas of Wagner, Berg, "Dido and Aeneas" and "Turn of the screw". Option B: a gigantic mass of Italian opera, featuring every famous aria ever sung, and also let us not forget Kurt Weill.

Schubert wrote a dozen operas and singspiels by the way. I listened to some on Radio 3's recent Schubertfest and I would recommend
Fierrabras, Alfonso und Estrella and the proto-Wagnerian Die Zauberharfe.

Purcell's not even considered proper opera, right?

Dido is opera even if you wanna call it proto-opera or something

Schubert wrote a dozen operas

! Jesus Christ didn't he die when he was like thirty?

that proto-opera stuff is always interesting to me but I usually end up passing on it when there's more glamorous-looking stuff on the same racks. Handel wrote like tons of opera right?

i like the Handel operas I've seen/heard, they are a different to deal to Mozart and everything after, obv

incidentally aero they did an experiment on that radio 3 season to see if it was physically possible to write down the amount of music Schubert composed within the timespan he had

Purcell wouldn't obey either the Italian nor the French dictates of the genre, including dance and whatnot. There are lots of jokes in 'King Arthur' and 'The Faerie Queen', though.

bollocks to Italo-Gallic hipsters tho

I remeber reading that he thumbed his nose partly because English audiences wanted something a bit more rollicking than the French and you know, ya gotta pay the bills.

Dido and Aeneas is heart-breakingly beautiful tho, i feel like the staticness of his stories/staging is the unoperatic touch if anything

Poor Dido...

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