Maggie's Farm

This is not what most people probably think of when they hear the word 'opera'... If you only know Puccini and Verdi - or even Mozart and Donizetti - this is quite different.

The stately repetitions, sedate dynamics, and rolling molasses of Baroque music challenges impatient modern listeners.

YouTube offers up some interesting master classes in opera. In many of them, experienced singers discuss the challenge of adding varied color and dramatic motivation to the repetitions and curlicues.... In previous generations singers freely improvised many of these figures, but now they are weighted down by the burden of "authentic historical performance".