Whole albums of Sinéad O’Connor would make a good fit.
Robin Holcomb’s The Graveyard Song.
Any easy listening/light jazz female alto popular with audiophiles.
There are a lot of them.
All opera of any kind is intolerable and depressing to me
This made me laugh - there do seem to be a lot of them, occasionally I like one too
Also @brett66 - Opera - dreadful noise, can’t abide it.
With a minor and very occasional exception being Gilbert and Sullivan, but I am reliably informed that that is not opera (wouldn’t surprise me if it were partly written to take the mickey out of “High Opera” anyway).
Their comic operas are a hoot.
They were primarily taking shots at society, but there certainly are bits mocking serious opera as well.
Very clever gentlemen.
The one that gives me the greatest distress and untold misery is hearing Daniel la O’Donnell singing, both pre and post-ops…
that good eh!
so an older version of spitting image then
Do you refer to the singing or the the other…
You added a few words extra…
is there other? i guess i need to google!
NO… I am only “havering”… Just like you do most of the time…
“Il dolce suono” from Lucia di Lamermoor is well-known from the film The Fifth Element. Here is Lisette Oropesa singing it in Madrid in what looks like the English National Opera production. She starts at 1:59:55. Even if you hate opera, you cannot love this music.
I was very lucky to hear her sing Lucia in her Royal Opera debut for which she got stunning reviews, a 20 minute standing ovation at the performance I went to and put her in the world elite. Found a photo I took of the curtain call.
hmmph. we’ll see, i’ll listen to it in the morning when i’m sufficiently awake.
doubtless there is a part of me likes poking a finger at a perceived elitism associated with opera, but it’s mostly just those warbling voices that get to me, like nails on a chalk board. we shall see, i’ll give it the benefit of the big speakers in the morning
Talk about depressing: the mad scene where Lucia laments “What have I done?” as she retreats into madness after stabbing the man she was forced to marry on their wedding night.
I would not expect someone who does not enjoy operatic sopranos to enjoy this.
Here is the The Fifth Element version, which is only a small part of it, that actually misses the point of the song.
The main solo instrument in the film is flute, but the original score has the glass harmonica, which you can see in the Oropesa video on the left of the stage for example at 2:04:24 and has a very distinctive sound. That confirms it is the English National Opera production. In the Royal Opera production they use flute. Besides being extraordinarily difficult, the song is about 15 minutes of solo coloratura singing, which is just ridiculous.
The English National Opera crowd at the Coliseum is one the least elitist you could possibly find. Very working class. I last saw their production in Oslo, of all places, with a soprano from @michael-denmark’s home town, Henriette Bonde-Hansen.
I thought you loved your dog. That screaming banshee racket will be cruel…
ha i’ll wait until she’s abandoned me later in the small hours, or i could use headphone to protect the rest of the household.
i k ow the sequence in the film, it will be interesting to hear the non-sci-fi source of the work