Favorite Opera Transcriptions

[Skeptopotamus]

What are everyone's favorite Opera Transcriptions and/or Operas?  I'm more interested in knowing the answer to the second but then it wouldn't be about piano and I couldn't put it here ^^

Transcriptions:

Wagner-Liszt Isolda's Liebestod
Wagner-Liszt Tannhauser Overture
Verdi-Liszt Rigoletto Paraphrase
Verdi-Finnissy Verdi Transcriptions
Bizet-Sorabji Pastiche on a Theme from Carmen
Bizet-Busoni Sonatina No. 6 "Carmen"


Operas:

Berg Wozzeck
Leoncavallo Il Pagliacci
Puccini Tosca
Verdi Otello
Verdi Rigoletto

[thalbergmad]

Thalberg-Rossini-La Semiramide
Liszt-Meyerbeer-Robert le Diable

[pita bread]

Wagner-Liszt Liebestod
Wagner-Liszt Tannhauser Overture
Rimski-Korsakov-Sorabji Pastiche on the Hindu Merchant Song

By the way Skepto, do you have a recording of the Bizet-Sorabji you could send me?

[Skeptopotamus]

Yeah I do =)  I'll send it to you when I get back to my own computer.

[ako]

Favorite operas:
1. Verdi- La Traviata
2. Mozart- Cosi Fan Tutte
3. Mozart- Le nozze de Figaro
4. Strauss- Die Fledermaus

[brokenagraffe]

Rossini-Ginzburg something blah-blah-blah from Barber of Seville

[jehangircama]

hey you guys
can you tell me where to get the Barber of Seville and Carmen transcriptions please?
oh, and has anyone heard a transcription of John William's Star Wars theme (the full piece, not just the theme) by any chance? I've been looking for that one for ages.

[fliszt]

my favorit is Liszt - Wagner Parsifal, solemn march to the holy grail.

[joell12068]

Earl Wild's "Fantasy on Porgy and Bess" is wonderful.

[Kassaa]

Reminiscences de Norma
Miserere du Trovatore

[stevie]

Earl Wild's "Fantasy on Porgy and Bess" is wonderful.

id like to hear that, i somehow have the score and it looks really awesome

my favorutie song from that opera is 'it aint necessarily so', heifetz's violin+piano version is also awesome(1 of his favourite encores).

[brewtality]

Robert le Diable. Btw the Liszt anecdote about this in Schonberg's book is hilarious.

[stevie]

Robert le Diable. Btw the Liszt anecdote about this in Schonberg's book is hilarious.

thats one of my favourites too, can you remind me of the anecdote?
i read it a hile ago..need refreshing

the wagner-liszt liebestod - especially in horowitz's recording is indescribably beautiful and emotional

i love the norma transcription too, awesome stuff

the norma is VERY underplayed, and don juan isnt really that much more difficult!

[liszt1022]

I'm learning Liszt's Reminiscences de Boccanegra (underplayed, but recorded well by John "OC" Ogdon) and I think it's wonderful.
Tannhauser Overture is great.


but as far as piano transcriptions go, there are two that blow me away every time. One is Dag Aschatz's CD recording of his own arrangement of The Rite of Spring on one piano (not his live video!) and Francois-Rene Duchable's own transcription of Berlioz' Symphonie fantastique, neither of which are published, sadly.

[arensky]

                                   Norma Fantasy Bellini/Liszt
                                   Carmen Variations Bizet/Horowitz
                                   The Evening Star from Tannhauser Wagner/Liszt
                                   Spinning Song from The Flying Dutchman Wagner Liszt
                                   Don Juan Fantasy Mozart/Liszt


                                         Boris Goudunov
                                         Don Giovanni
                                         The Magic Flute
                                         Tosca
                                         Turandot
                                         Carmen
                                         Don Pasqule
                                         Falstaff
                                         L'heure Espagnole
                                         Lucia de Lammermoor
                                         The Elixir of Love
                                         The Barber of Seville
                                         Il Trovatore
                                         Lulu
                                         Wozzeck
                                         The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh

                                  the Operas are not in any particular order...

[brewtality]

thats one of my favourites too, can you remind me of the anecdote?
i read it a hile ago..need refreshing

I don't have the book with me so I might not have it exactly right.

Liszt was playing a recital where the programme included a sonata for violin and piano. Before the violinist and Liszt had started the sonata, the crowd started chanting "robert le diable, robert le diable!" This continued for a while until Liszt said something like "I am always the humble servant of the audience, but wouldn't you prefer to hear the fantasy after the sonata?" to which the crowd repeated "Robert le Diable!" So Liszt dismissed the poor violinist with a wave of his hand and proceeded to play the fantasy. Not as funny as the Dreyschock one but amusing nonetheless

I also like the norma fantasy, the theme sounds similar to the Hexameron theme. Is it taken from the same thing?

[klavierkonzerte]

rossini/thalberg Moïse

[lisztwasgod]

My favorite transcriptions are perhaps:

Horowitz - Bizet (Encore piece) Variations on a theme from Carmen

Liszt - Auber  Tarantella (from Muette de Portici)

Liszt - Wagner Isoldens Liebestod (from Tristan und Isolde)

Liszt -Wagner (also my favorite to play) Tannhauser Overture

Liszt - Mozart Reminiscences de Don Juan

Liszt - Bellini Reminiscences de Norma (Bolet and Leslie Howard are the best recordings of this piece in my opinion)

Sorabji - Bizet (The same carmen theme Horowitz did as an encore)

[thalbergmad]

rossini/thalberg Moïse

Superb choice

[rafnael]

Favorite Opera : Lulu, and I'm tempted to say all time favorite music, period. Every month or so I dig out the splendid Schaefer DVD to watch a few select scenes... and weep along..

I've never been a huge fan of orchestral transcriptions, but Aschatz's one-piano transcription of the Rite on CD is fantastic indeed. Not so much technically (while it is also) but musically.

Ravel's La Valse, the 1 piano version again, which strangely I've always found better suited to the piano than to the orchestra. And I hate all the annoying glissandi in the 2 pianos version. Claire-Marie Le Guay has recorded a nice Daphnis & Chloé too, using a bit of studio re-recording. I say only "nice", cause I found it a bit tame at times. And the second movement sounds quite nasty on piano. Bleh. But ok, these two might not count really as transcriptions, since I understand Ravel used to compose everything on piano first, and then orchestrate.

I long for transcriptions of Webern's Passacaglia and Strauss Metamorphosen, 2 of my favorite works, NOW that would be something to play

Aah, sorry, I just realized I'm going a little off topic (not strictly opera).

[ahinton]

I long for transcriptions of Webern's Passacaglia and Strauss Metamorphosen, 2 of my favorite works, NOW that would be something to play

I imagine that the latter would be something absolutely awful to listen to! Metamorphosen is indeed a most glorious work (there is a rather odd arrangement of it for a much smaller string group which I really don't think works successfully either), but it is so inextricably bound up with string counterpoint that even the most sensitive piano arrangment would risk losing a large amount of what it has to say. I imagine that a piano transcription of Schönberg's Verklärte Nacht would be a similarly unpleasant prospect, for not dissimilar reasons...

Best,

Alistair

[burstroman]

One of my favorite opera transcriptions is not too difficult, but lovely.  It is the "Barcarolle" from Les Contes d'Hoffman by Moszkowski.

[rob47]

liszt's reminicences of don giovanni or norma.

[brewtality]

One that I've recently come to love is Godowsky's take on Strauss' Die Fledermaus, as played by Fiorentino.