You've got 20 minutes, haven't you? Here's some opera.

June 17, 2009 1:13 PM

All the Great Operas in 10 minutes (1992) is a very quick overview of La Traviata, Carmen, Don Giovanni, Aida, Tosca, Tristan and Isolde, Madame Butterfly, Ring of the Nibelung (a four-parter), resulting 26 dead, plus all the gods of Valhalla, which brings the grand total to 38 dead. 10 More Operas in 10 Minutes is a tribute to the original, created by the students of the Tulsa School of Arts and Sciences, covering The Merry Widow (technically an operetta), The Force of Destiny, Lucia di Lammermoore, The Magic Flute, Falstaff, The Damnation of Faust, Rigoletto, Romeo and Juliet, La Bohème, and William Tell. Only 14 deaths tallied (not counting armies fighting).
posted by filthy light thief (13 comments total)

If you're looking for a physical copy of All The Great Operas, it was released on VHS in 1999, according to Amazon.com. Also noted from Amazon's page, this was seen on Bravo, and is "award winning ****"
posted by filthy light thief at 1:18 PM on June 17

I saw this in the middle the day during a pledge drive on PBS many years ago, and have never seen it since. At one point I had convinced myself that I had imagined it. Thank you for posting this.
posted by hobgadling at 1:59 PM on June 17

cheers...queuing this for later.

i'm probably not in a demographic known for opera appreciation (u.s., 30, male) but one of the coolest opera stories ive found recently is Una Furtiva Lagrima
posted by lslelel at 2:03 PM on June 17

Love For Three Oranges is a fantastic surreal opera. I heard part of it on the international Met Opera afternoon broadcast a while back, and it's really strange.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:58 PM on June 17 [1 favorite has favorites]

10: A van full of musicologists is on its way to your house to beat your up for calling The Damnation of Faust an opera.

20: Another van full of musicologists will be by shortly to beat up the aformentioned van full of musicologists.

30: GOTO 20
posted by HotPants at 2:58 PM on June 17

I think the kids from the Tulsa School of Arts and Sciences didn't go too far into checking how much of an "opera" the work was, as they also managed to slip some errors into their brief summaries, as noted on At The Lighthouse, my source for the second video.

Sadly, Kim Thompson (narrator, animator, art director, cinematographer, director and editor of the original All the Great Operas in 10 Minutes) has disappeared from the internet, or maybe never appeared on it, beyond her IMDB page.
posted by filthy light thief at 3:58 PM on June 17

Let's all hope tha Kim is in school somewhere learning that opera is not about the stories, duh - it is the music.
posted by Cranberry at 4:02 PM on June 17

I got the impression (garbled though the memory may be) that there was a Battlestar Galactica series recap read in the style of "All the Great Operas..." and possibly even read by the same person. But I could be wrong. You decide.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 4:42 PM on June 17

Apparently, there's a LOT you can shove into 10 minutes or less.
posted by filthy light thief at 5:00 PM on June 17

it's a great idea, but whereas many people know the music (or at minimum, the popular arias) of many operas and not the plot, why make a movie like this without having that very useful mnemonic device? i hate to agree with youtube commenters, but not including any musical resonances was kinda of stupid of them.
posted by yonation at 5:03 PM on June 17

I logged in just to favourite this.
merci!
_{that's French for gracias}
posted by bitteroldman at 6:11 PM on June 17

Sadly, Kim Thompson (narrator, animator, art director, cinematographer, director and editor of the original All the Great Operas in 10 Minutes) has disappeared from the internet, or maybe never appeared on it, beyond her IMDB page.

I believe this is her home page. (The only thing causing me to hedge my bets is that I can't get through to said site right now.) Also note that she left an appreciative note in the comments section for the Tulsa video, which I thought was kind of sweet.

Oh, and her video came up just last week on Ask Metafilter.
posted by Johnny Assay at 6:26 PM on June 17 [1 favorite has favorites]

Hmm. Nice try by the Tulsa kids, but I had to stop listening after the summary of Die lustige Witwe with the horribly mangled pronunciation of the names, etc. It wasn't clear to me that they were particularly familiar with the works.
posted by slkinsey at 8:00 AM on June 18