Let Me Terrify You: Ten Halloween-Worthy Songs from the Opera

Opera is for every season... Halloween included. Here are ten selected scenes from various operas to keep you spooked through the holiday...

1. Gluck: Orfeo ed Euridice: Chi mai dell'Erebo (Maestoso- Quel est l'audacieux)
Sample:www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwoDVINl4TE
Well... I'm afraid this is the only youtube clip of the scene I found... and it isn't a very good performance. Orpheus, the ultimate mythical musicman has been granted the permission to descend down to Hades to rescue his recently deceased wife, Euridice, and attempt to sing his way through the nasty furies and Cerberus the three-headed dog that guards the gate to the land of the dead. This was Gluck's first reform opera where the music is used to enhance the drama of the story rather than to provide show-off platform for superstar singers. You do sort of get a glimpse of the dramatic potential from this clip, but for a really good rendition, look for the Studio Farao DVD of Orphée et Eurydice from the Bavarian State Opera starring Vesselina Kasarova and Rosemary Joshua.

2. Mozart: Don Giovanni: Commendatore Scene
Sample:www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ue72gvJvpi8
'Don Giovanni a cenar teco m'invitasti, e son venuto! (Don Juan invited me to dinner...and here I am!)' If you ever need a good reason not to invite a stone statue home for dinner... Don Giovanni, the bad boy of opera and literature, caps off his very unsuccessful day by having the tomb-statue of the man he killed not 24 hrs ago arriving at dinner to demand his repentance. What's a cad to do but to refuse to surrender... and is thus dragged off the face of the earth to an inferno of music by Wolfgang Mozart. I may not want Don G anywhere near my community, but I can't deny that the dude went out in style