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‘Tis the season to survey the spooky side of life! The opera house has a vast treasure of witches, ghosts, devils and various creepy scenarios. Here are a few:
Giuseppe Verdi: Macbeth. Based on the Shakespeare tragedy of a man’s fatal ambition, witches’ prophecies and the eerie Witches’ Chorus brew conditions for delusion and murder.
Carl Maria von Weber: Der Freischütz. In this tale of good versus evil, a sinister character leads an innocent marksman to a spooky Wolf’s Glen at midnight to craft magic bullets, a gruesome setting for the Devil’s appearance with apparitions, spectral voices, owls and those clanging chains!
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Don Giovanni. The Don Juan-inspired main character receives a scary comeuppance with the shocking appearance of the Commendatore – a man who Don Giovanni had murdered – who appears in the form of a spectral stone ghost, and in a booming voice, brings the Don to his knees to drag him to permanent punishment in the underworld.
Arrigo Boito: Mefistofele. This take on the Faust temptation legend is full of chilling music, showcased by terrifying arias from the devil’s sinister agent, Mefistofele.
Richard Wagner: The Flying Dutchman. The overture sets the stage with turbulence of a raging storm at sea and a ship manned by a ghost – the Flying Dutchman – who is cursed to sail the seas until he finds redemption through the love of a faithful wife.
Engelbert Humperdinck: Hansel and Gretel. A fairy tale of lost children lured to an evil witch’s cottage so that they made be made into gingerbread (but the plan is thwarted by the clever children!)
Béla Bartok: Bluebeard’s Castle. With sustained scary music, the mysterious Bluebeard brings his bride to his creepy castle with seven secret doors that hint of murder and ghosts.
Benjamin Britten: The Turn of the Screw. Based on a novella of Henry James, psychological terror takes hold in a creepy haunted house inhabited by ghosts and whispers of previous caregivers.
Claudio Monteverdi: L’Orfeo. In this very early opera, a Chorus of Infernal Spirits and other ghostly images greet Orfeo as he descends into the underworld in search of his beloved Eurydice.
Heinrich Marschner: Der Vampyr (The Vampire). In this work from the German Romantic era, inspired by Weber and Wagner, a vampire seeks victims so that he may have extended life, but is ultimately condemned to Hell by a group of demons.
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