Turn your sound up and watch this:
We need more of this.
via Curmudgeonly and Skeptical.
Incidentally, a “brindisi” is a musical “invitation to drink“.
Here’s another performance (with subtitles), Placido Domingo and Teresa Stratas in Zeffirelli’s movie version . I love this production.
And just for fun, one of my favorite incidental opera scenes, from The Music Teacher, featuring, by coinkydink, another piece from La Traviata, “Follie!… Sempre libera”:
It’s an extraordinary movie, and the power of this scene is vastly undercut by being out of context. When I saw it, it was like a thunderbolt.
From the note at YouTube:
An excerpt from the movie by Gerard Corbiau, Le Maitre de Musique (1988) which captures the heart of operatic passion in a cinematic medium, earning it an Oscar nomination. Young love, life and death; a story about integrity, power, and struggle wrapped up with intense beauty, and set in a world in transition. The old world order recedes ungraciously, but its not over until the old man sings.
Anne Roussel plays Sophie Maurier, sung by Dinah Bryant; Jérôme Pruett plays Jean, sung by Philippe Volter.
[This post dedicated to Kathy, in memorium.]