Klingon Opera

[Trekker4747]

Anyone else chuckle when they hear about Klingon Opera?

Can anyone see Klingons getting all dressed up in suits, fancy dresses going down to opulent, large, and lavish concert halls, sitting infront of the stage all a twitter, some watching with those little glasses that sling over to one side of the pole you use to hold them to your eyes, then at the end standing up and doing subtle hand-to-palm claps while shouting "Bravo!" in Klingon?

 

[Captrek]

Somebody (on Earth) is actually trying to produce a Klingon Opera. You can find rehearsal clips on YouTube, but I don’t recommend it. It sounds absolutely awful.

As for the fancy concert hall, I doubt it. I can see Klingons performing their favorite scenes around campfires and whatnot, but a big extravaganza where all those Klingon warriors do nothing but sit on their butts for three hours and listen? Nah.

 

[Rush Limborg]

Frankly, from what I've heard of Klingon Opera, it actually sounds pretty cool.

No, not the YouTube stuff--I mean the awesome, epic, LOTR-type music that we hear Worf play in "Looking For par-mach In All The Wrong Places" (DS9).

Dang good material....

 

[Bill Morris]

The main purpose of Kingon Opera is for background music at Rura Penthe.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

Indeed, you cannot fully appreciate the works of Richard Wagner until you have heard it in the original Klingon!

 

[Timo]

Clearly, Klingon opera is a somewhat interactive artform... Everybody seems to know the lyrics and can sing the parts reasonably well. That simply isn't true of most human opera. Although sometimes one may be surprised...

(I'm reminded of a polterabend schtick pulled on a friend of some fellow choir singers: while the victim was walking through a city park, seemingly random passersby suddenly launched, one by one, into a mighty SATB crescendo of "Every Sperm is Sacred". In Klingon parks, that sort of thing probably happens all the time...)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Captrek]

Clearly, Klingon opera is a somewhat interactive artform... Everybody seems to know the lyrics and can sing the parts reasonably well. That simply isn't true of most human opera. Although sometimes one may be surprised...

I always imagined Klingon Opera as something like ancient Greek tales of the Trojan War and Odysseus’s voyage home.

As I understand it, the Greeks had a rich oral tradition of stories. Homer came along and collected these stories and constructed a consistent narrative and epic poem that filled two volumes, the Iliad and the Odyssey. There being no printing press in those days, each copy of the volumes was hand written, so there weren’t many. The fact that the stories had been turned into these epics was therefore little more than trivia; the stories continued to be shared as they had always been, through oral tradition and peer-to-peer filesharing. The concept of starting on Page 1 of the Iliad and experiencing the whole epic poem in order through to the last page was highly unusual until teachers began torturing students with it many centuries later.

I like to imagine Klingon Opera the same way. There are these popular songs. Every now and then a Klingon librettist/composer would combine a bunch of those songs into a narratively and musically cohesive work, and the songs would become known as part of that opera, but a whole opera would never be performed or listened to as a single work except to torture Federation high school students.

 

[chuS'ugh]

Clearly, Klingon opera is a somewhat interactive artform... Everybody seems to know the lyrics and can sing the parts reasonably well. That simply isn't true of most human opera. Although sometimes one may be surprised...

I always imagined Klingon Opera as something like ancient Greek tales of the Trojan War and Odysseus’s voyage home.

As I understand it, the Greeks had a rich oral tradition of stories. Homer came along and collected these stories and constructed a consistent narrative and epic poem that filled two volumes, the Iliad and the Odyssey. There being no printing press in those days, each copy of the volumes was hand written, so there weren’t many. The fact that the stories had been turned into these epics was therefore little more than trivia; the stories continued to be shared as they had always been, through oral tradition and peer-to-peer filesharing. The concept of starting on Page 1 of the Iliad and experiencing the whole epic poem in order through to the last page was highly unusual until teachers began torturing students with it many centuries later.

I like to imagine Klingon Opera the same way. There are these popular songs. Every now and then a Klingon librettist/composer would combine a bunch of those songs into a narratively and musically cohesive work, and the songs would become known as part of that opera, but a whole opera would never be performed or listened to as a single work except to torture Federation high school students.

Nicely put! I agree and that's a bit how my group approaches Klingon Opera.

 

[AstroSmurf]

chuS'ugh we prefer that posters not resurrect old threads, unless they are contributing new information. With someone just registered I would normally overlook it but you managed to do it twice for threads dead for more than a year that are about the same topic. Now we have twin topic zombie threads floating around on the first page of the forum.

If you would like to share something, please feel free to post a new thread about it. Actually we would prefer that to thread necromancy. Fresh threads = good. Rotting zombie threads = bad. Thanks!

 

[chuS'ugh]

At the risk of bumping this up again, I apologize (I couldn't find a link to send this via pm--I might just be dense and not seeing it). I'll be more careful about checking how old the thread is before posting!

 

[AstroSmurf]

Thank you.

And to send a pm, all you need to do is click on my name for a drop down menu.

 

[SailorRuss]

Somebody (on Earth) is actually trying to produce a Klingon Opera. You can find rehearsal clips on YouTube, but I don’t recommend it. It sounds absolutely awful.

If there is Klingon Opera than it stands to reason that there was a 'classical' period within the society. Just as humans progressed from Bach to Black Sabbath it makes me wonder what Klingon 'pop' music would sound like.

That could be terrible as well...

 

[1001001]

If there is Klingon Opera than it stands to reason that there was a 'classical' period within the society. Just as humans progressed from Bach to Black Sabbath it makes me wonder what Klingon 'pop' music would sound like.

That could be terrible as well...

First, welcome to the board.

Second, please take some time to acquaint yourself with the rules of posting here, pinned at the top of this forum.

Specifically:

Resurrecting dead threads. If you find a thread that has not had a post in it in over a year, don't post in it. Start a new thread instead. You can, if necessary, link back to the old thread if something crucial is in the thread.

This thread has been dead for over 10 years. Let's let it rest in peace, shall we?

Thanks