It’s not espe­cial­ly hard to get inex­pen­sive tick­ets to the opera if you live in, say, New York. But it’s not so easy if you live hun­dreds of miles from a major opera house. Opera’s rar­i­ty, how­ev­er, does not make it a “more ele­vat­ed” form than, say, musi­cal the­ater, argues Antho­ny Tom­masi­ni in The New York Times. Musi­cals may have mar­ket share, and opera may bare­ly sus­tain itself from a dwin­dling pool of pri­vate donors, but the com­ic operas of Mozart once played broad­ly to mass audi­ences, “and there is no big­ger crowd pleas­er than Leoncavallo’s impas­sioned ‘Pagli­ac­ci.’”

The major for­mal dif­fer­ence between musi­cal the­ater and opera is that “in opera, music is the dri­ving force; in musi­cal the­ater, words come first. This explains why for cen­turies opera-goers have revered works writ­ten in lan­guages they do not speak,” even in a time before super­ti­tles. “As long as you basi­cal­ly know what is going on and what is more or less being said, you can be swept away by a great opera, not just by music, but by vis­cer­al dra­ma.” In order for that to hap­pen, you’ll need to see and hear much more than high­lights and great­est hits. And a lit­tle bit of con­text goes a long way.

If you don’t live in a major city or can’t get to the opera often, you can watch full-length per­for­mances online at projects like The Opera Plat­form, which not only includes filmed pop­u­lar operas like Verdi’s La Travi­a­ta, but also, as Col­in Mar­shall not­ed in an ear­li­er Open Cul­ture post, “pro­vides a host of sup­ple­men­tary mate­ri­als, includ­ing doc­u­men­tary and his­tor­i­cal mate­ri­als that put the month’s fea­tured opera in con­text.” If you’re ready to dig deep­er, how­ev­er, or are already a schol­ar of the form, or if you, your­self, hap­pen to be an opera singer, then you will absolute­ly want to vis­it the Opera Data­base.

The archival resource describes its pur­pose as three­fold:

• To cre­ate a com­pre­hen­sive data­base of operas.
• To cat­a­log arias and cre­ate PDFs from Pub­lic Domain sources, for the pur­pose of broad­en­ing the opera singer’s audi­tion reper­toire and seek­ing out rarely heard pieces.
• To cre­ate a repos­i­to­ry for oper­at­ic infor­ma­tion, includ­ing libret­ti, scores, and syn­opses.

The drop­down menus on the homepage’s search field alone give you a sense of how expan­sive the data­base is—with dozens of lan­guages, from Ara­bic and Azer­bai­jani to Uzbek and Viet­namese, dozens of nation­al­i­ties, and thou­sands of entries from over four cen­turies. Most of these works will be unknown even to life­long opera lovers who have only lis­tened to the Euro­pean clas­sics. And sev­er­al famous mod­ern com­posers, like John Adams of Nixon in Chi­na fame, have shown how rel­e­vant the form still is for con­tem­po­rary con­cerns and cos­tumes.

All that said, only a por­tion of the entries have links to syn­opses and libret­ti. Search major titles like Nixon in Chi­na or Puccini’s La boheme and you’ll find pdf scores and libret­ti trans­lat­ed into sev­er­al lan­guages. Search any­thing more obscure than these block­busters and you’ll only turn up the most basic infor­ma­tion on the com­pos­er, nation­al­i­ty, and year of com­po­si­tion. Nonethe­less the Opera Data­base has some­thing for every­one, from the opera-curi­ous to the opera-adept, with a sep­a­rate aria data­base that allows users to search voice types from bass to sopra­no in twelve lan­guages.

Whether you’re look­ing to expand your knowl­edge beyond “kill the wab­bit” par­o­dies or expand your already advanced reper­toire of mate­r­i­al, you’ll find this online opera cat­a­logue offers a wealth of infor­ma­tion for bet­ter under­stand­ing an emo­tion­al­ly engag­ing, if endan­gered, cul­tur­al form.

via Nico­la Fred­do

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Web Site, “The Opera Plat­form,” Lets You Watch La Travi­a­ta and Oth­er First-Class Operas Free Online

Stephen Fry Hosts “The Sci­ence of Opera,” a Dis­cus­sion of How Music Moves Us Phys­i­cal­ly to Tears

J.S. Bach’s Com­ic Opera, “The Cof­fee Can­ta­ta,” Sings the Prais­es of the Great Stim­u­lat­ing Drink (1735)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

In 1996, the Fugees burst on the scene with “Ready or Not,” and most lis­ten­ers were not ready: for the omi­nous, eclec­tic, Caribbean-inflect­ed pro­duc­tion, the smooth, sexy men­ace of Lau­ryn Hill’s hook (“you can’t hide / Gonna find you and take it slow­ly”), or the inter­play of ref­er­ences in the break­out star’s rhymes. “Rap orgies with Por­gy and Bess / Cap­ture your boun­ty like Eliot Ness,” Hill raps, and then a few lines lat­er, “So while you’re imi­tat­ing Al Capone, I’ll be Nina Simone / And defe­cat­ing on your micro­phone.”

The tongue-in-cheek line intro­duced a gen­er­a­tion of fans to the icon­ic singer and vir­tu­oso pianist, who could and did play every­thing from blues, jazz, soul, cabaret, clas­si­cal, and Broad­way tunes like those from the Gersh­win clas­sic (hear Simone’s “I Loves You Por­gy,” here).

Hill has paid homage to Simone ever since. In 2015, she pro­mot­ed the trib­ute album, Nina Revist­ed—the sound­track to doc­u­men­tary What Hap­pened to Nina Simone?—at the Apol­lo. Report­ing on the event in The Verge, Kwame Opam like­ly spoke for thou­sands in admit­ting he’d “first heard Nina’s name in that clas­sic line on ‘Ready or Not.’”

Last year saw the release of The Mise­d­u­ca­tion of Eunice Way­mon, a title com­bin­ing Hill’s acclaimed solo album with Simone’s birth name. The record, pro­duced by Ameri­go Gaz­a­way, is a “mashup of songs by Fugees emcee and hip hop leg­end Lau­ryn Hill, and the jazz and soul icon Nina Simone.” What might have come off like a mar­ket­ing stunt trad­ing on both names instead “ele­vates them to new heights,” writes Zack Gin­grich-Gay­lord at KMUW, “putting them in con­ver­sa­tion with each oth­er and mak­ing it sound like the col­lab­o­ra­tion was always meant to be.”

Maybe one rea­son these imag­i­nary stu­dio ses­sions work so well has to do not only with Hill’s ven­er­a­tion of Simone, and the har­mo­nious meet­ing of their two voic­es and sen­si­bil­i­ties, but also with Simone’s promi­nence in so much recent hip hop. Among the dozens of soul artists whose grooves have giv­en loops and hooks to many a rap clas­sic, she now holds a spe­cial place, as the Poly­phon­ic video at the top shows in an explo­ration of four Simone songs that have left an indeli­ble mark on hip hop’s cur­rent sound.

The first of those songs, “Feel­ing Good,” appears on both the Hill/Simone mashup album and in a pow­er­ful cov­er by Hill on Nina Revis­it­ed. Simone’s soar­ing ver­sion of the song—originally from the British musi­cal The Roar of the Greasepaint—The Smell of the Crowd—“turned it into a musi­cal stan­dard” for the next sev­er­al decades. In the 2000s, it popped up in tracks from Wax Tai­lor, Lil Wayne, and Jay Z and Kanye West, “two artists who have made careers out of sam­pling the high priest­ess” of soul and whose names come up fre­quent­ly in this dis­cus­sion.

The sec­ond song iden­ti­fied as one of “hip hop’s secret weapons,” Simone’s inter­pre­ta­tion of the gospel “Sin­ner­man,” may be her “great­est accom­plish­ment” and appears in tracks by Tim­ba­land and Fly­ing Lotus and in the Tal­ib Kweli track “Get By,” pro­duced by a young Kanye West.

Simone’s appeal to hip hop artists goes beyond her incred­i­bly pow­er­ful voice and piano. She was a fierce civ­il rights activist who used her music as a form of protest. Her ver­sion of “Strange Fruit,” a song first turned into a civ­il rights anthem by Bil­lie Hol­i­day from a poem by Abel Meeropol, has inspired tracks by Cas­sidy, Com­mon, and, most famous­ly, West again on his 2013 “Blood on the Leaves.” West uses the song as a back­drop for a nar­ra­tive of his per­son­al prob­lems and rela­tion­ship woes, which doesn’t real­ly hon­or its his­to­ry, the Poly­phon­ic argu­ment in favor of his use notwith­stand­ing.

That’s not the case with reimag­in­ings of the last Simone song in this explain­er, her orig­i­nal com­po­si­tion “Four Women,” which imag­ines four dif­fer­ent women express­ing the pain racism has caused them. In 2000, Tal­ib Kweli and pro­duc­er Hi-Tek came togeth­er as Reflec­tion Eter­nal and record­ed their own ver­sion, men­tion­ing Simone’s South­ern inspi­ra­tions in the intro before telling con­tem­po­rary tales of four women in New York. “More than just a sam­ple,” the track “rein­ter­prets the mes­sage” of “Four Women” and applies Simone’s 1966 insights to the present, some­thing Jay Z also does on 2017’s “The Sto­ry of O.J.”

It is worth not­ing that all of the tracks the Poly­phon­ic video men­tions as exam­ples of Simone’s influ­ence on hip hop were released after Lau­ryn Hill and the Fugees brought Simone to the atten­tion of young rap­pers, DJs, pro­duc­ers, and fans just com­ing of age in the mid-nineties. Since then, Simone’s music has since left its mark all over the genre, and it’s easy to see why so many would be drawn to her intense, author­i­ta­tive musi­cian­ship and polit­i­cal urgency.

Simone may not have had the chance her­self to enter into con­ver­sa­tions with Lau­ryn Hill, Tal­ib Kweli, Com­mon, Kanye, or Jay Z, but through hip hop’s end­less­ly cre­ative abil­i­ty to make the musi­cal heroes of its past live again in song, it is as if she is still speak­ing, singing, and play­ing to the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of black artists—and through them, to the future of hip hop.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Watch a New Nina Simone Ani­ma­tion Based on an Inter­view Nev­er Aired in the U.S. Before

The His­to­ry of Hip Hop Music Visu­al­ized on a Turntable Cir­cuit Dia­gram: Fea­tures 700 Artists, from DJ Kool Herc to Kanye West

Watch Nina Simone Sing the Black Pride Anthem, “To Be Young, Gift­ed and Black,” on Sesame Street (1972)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

It can be dif­fi­cult to know what to do some­times with adding machine heir and Naked Lunch and Junky author William S. Bur­roughs. In the trick­le-down acad­emese of con­tem­po­rary jar­gon, he is a “prob­lem­at­ic” fig­ure who doesn’t fit neat­ly inside anyone’s ide­o­log­i­cal com­fort zone, what with his unre­pen­tant hero­in addic­tion, occult weird­ness, con­spir­a­cy mon­ger­ing, and exten­sive first­hand knowl­edge of crim­i­nal under­worlds.

There was no one bet­ter qual­i­fied to mid­wife the coun­ter­cul­ture.

NME’s Leonie Coop­er calls Bur­roughs “a dour punk in a sharp suit,” and lists some of the high­lights of his biog­ra­phy, includ­ing his famous acci­den­tal shoot­ing of his wife and moth­er of his only child—an event that did noth­ing to dimin­ish his love of guns. “He wrote bleak­ly com­ic tales which were sub­ject to obscen­i­ty tri­als in the States thanks to their dwelling on sodomy and drugs but which lat­er saw him elect­ed to the pres­ti­gious Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Arts and Let­ters.”

The main­stream­ing of Bur­roughs hap­pened in part because of his appeal to musi­cians, from Paul McCart­ney, Mick Jag­ger, and David Bowie to Kurt Cobain, Tom Waits, Throb­bing Gris­tle, and Ministry’s Al Jour­gen­son. “Musi­cians flocked to him in a quest for authen­tic­i­ty.” Although the dead­pan Bur­roughs usu­al­ly appeared “mas­sive­ly unim­pressed” by their atten­tions, he was “hap­py to com­ply and asso­ciate him­self with artists both up and com­ing and estab­lished.”

David Bowie went fur­ther than seek­ing a pho­to op or one-off col­lab­o­ra­tion, adopt­ing Bur­roughs’ cut-up tech­nique as his pri­ma­ry method for writ­ing lyrics, a tech­nique also put into prac­tice at var­i­ous times by The Bea­t­les, Cobain, and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke. Oth­er artists, like Steely Dan and The Soft Machine, took their names from Bur­roughs’ work but shared lit­tle of his night­mar­ish sci-fi-cult-noir sen­si­bil­i­ty.

Bur­roughs “pre­ferred to asso­ciate him­self with an edgi­er kind of per­former,” col­lab­o­rat­ing with R.E.M., Waits, and Cobain and “hang­ing out at sem­i­nal rock club CBG­Bs” in the 70s and 80s. He became a friend and men­tor to artists like Pat­ti Smith, Lou Reed, and Thurston Moore. Although Iggy Pop is often referred to as the “god­fa­ther of punk,” that title might as well belong to William S. Bur­roughs.

Dur­ing the birth of rock and roll in the 50s, Bur­roughs was a most­ly unknown fringe fig­ure. By the late six­ties, his influ­ence became cen­tral to pop­u­lar music thanks to The Bea­t­les, Led Zep­pelin, and The Rolling Stones. But he would not be tamed or san­i­tized. An ear­ly gay hero who sided with out­siders and under­dogs against cor­po­rate machines, he was defi­ant to the end, leav­ing a lega­cy that con­tin­ues to inspire anti-estab­lish­ment artists, even if they’re unaware of their debt to him.

In the new book William S. Bur­roughs and the Cult of Rock ‘n’ Roll, by Casey Rae, you can learn much more about Bur­roughs’ major influ­ence on rock and roll in the 60s, 70s, 80s, “when it became a rite of pas­sage to hang out with the author or to exper­i­ment with his cut-up tech­niques,” as the book descrip­tion notes. His direct influ­ence con­tin­ued into the punk revival of the grunge era and has become “more sub­lim­i­nal” since his death in 1997, as Rae tells Jim DeRo­gatis and Greg Kot in the Sound Opin­ions inter­view above. (Scroll to the 14:50 minute mark.)

It’s hard to find con­tem­po­rary artists who aren’t influ­enced by the artists Bur­roughs influ­enced, and who—wittingly or not—haven’t inher­it­ed some of the Bur­rough­sisms that are every­where in the past fifty-plus years of rock and roll his­to­ry. Hear a playlist of Bur­roughs-adja­cent songs ref­er­enced in Rae’s book at the top of the post (open­ing with Duke Elling­ton’s “East St. Louis Too­dle Oo,” lat­er cov­ered by Steely Dan), and learn more about Bur­roughs’ musi­cal adven­tures at the links below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How David Bowie, Kurt Cobain & Thom Yorke Write Songs With William Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Tech­nique

William S. Bur­roughs Drops a Posthu­mous Album, Set­ting Read­ings of Naked Lunch to Music (NSFW)

Hear a Great Radio Doc­u­men­tary on William S. Bur­roughs Nar­rat­ed by Iggy Pop

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Who­ev­er Bob Mar­ley was singing for, it could sound like he’s singing for all of us. Of course, this is received opin­ion, on the oth­er side of almost 50 years of Mar­ley wor­ship since the Wail­ers crossed over to a rock audi­ence with Catch a Fire and Clapton’s cov­er of “I Shot the Sher­iff.” Call­ing Mar­ley an icon is per­haps iron­i­cal­ly accu­rate in ways he would nev­er con­done. In death he has become a brand.

Though he wrote some beau­ti­ful love songs, Mar­ley also didn’t water down his mes­sage to Rasta­far­i­an true believ­ers, nor tem­per his pan-African­ism for scores of new white fans when fame struck. Like the waves of reg­gae bands that broke into the inter­na­tion­al scene in the 70s, the cul­tur­al par­tic­u­lar­i­ties of Marley’s reli­gion and pol­i­tics didn’t seem much hin­drance to his wide appeal.

Proof is in the lis­ten­ing, and no song in the Mar­ley oeu­vre seems more point­ed­ly direct­ed to the his­toric black experience—even quot­ing Mar­cus Garvey—while also appeal­ing to uni­ver­sal sen­ti­ments, than “Redemp­tion Song.” (To very dif­fer­ent emo­tion­al effect, U2’s “Sun­day Bloody Sun­day” comes to mind as accom­plish­ing a sim­i­lar feat.)

The song telegraphs a kind of wise but ten­der strength, announces its inten­tions with con­fi­dent can­dor, and invites its lis­ten­ers, all of them, to join in. The ref­er­ences may not be part of your expe­ri­ence, but if this can be redeemed, Mar­ley sug­gests, maybe every­thing can.

In its essen­tials, “Redemp­tion Song” is clas­sic Marley—tough-minded but gen­tle, hope­ful but real, and pure melod­ic genius. But musi­cal­ly, it’s a sig­nif­i­cant depar­ture, and per­haps a know­ing farewell to the world, as the last song to appear on the Wail­ers’ twelfth and final album, 1980’s Upris­ing,

“While there’s no indi­ca­tion that Mar­ley knew for sure that the song would be his last record­ed doc­u­ment,” writes Jim Beviglia at Amer­i­can Song­writer, “the con­tem­pla­tive mood of Upris­ing and the fact that he had been bat­tling the can­cer for years seems to sug­gest that he knew the end was near.”

The song’s “empa­thet­ic strains and social con­cerns, along with its camp­fire sing-along qual­i­ty,” has made it a favorite to cov­er almost since its release. Now, in its 40th year anniver­sary, it’s final­ly got a prop­er video, thanks to French artists Octave Marsal and Theo De Guelt­zl. The “breath­tak­ing ani­ma­tion,” notes Twist­ed Sifter, fea­tures “2,747 orig­i­nal draw­ings” and “uses pow­er­ful sym­bols to ampli­fy the mag­ni­tude of the song’s time­less lyrics and impor­tance in today’s world.”

Its black and white imagery direct­ly ref­er­ences the Rasta­far­i­an themes and Mid­dle Pas­sage expe­ri­ence in Marley’s lyrics, but pulls back now and then to show his sta­di­um-sized crowds, and the whole Earth, as if to say, “this is a glob­al sto­ry.” The video is the first in a year-long cel­e­bra­tion of Marley’s 75th birth­day, which would have been Feb­ru­ary 6th, 2020. Learn more about upcom­ing events here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John­ny Cash & Joe Strum­mer Sing Bob Marley’s “Redemp­tion Song” (2002)

Bob Mar­ley, The Leg­end, Live in San­ta Bar­bara: Watch the Com­plete 1979 Con­cert

Watch a Young Bob Mar­ley and The Wail­ers Per­form Live in Eng­land (1973): For His 70th Birth­day Today

Video: Bob Mar­ley Plays a Big Soc­cer Match in Brazil, 1980

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness