r/opera • u/Jack_the_Lizard • 8d ago
Most Misused Piece
So here's a bit of an odd one, I was flipping through TV channels and heard La donna è mobile being used to sell pasta. Because nothing screams pasta than the misogynistic rambling of a Duke who thinks all women are sluts. I've seen Libiamo ne' lieti calici used to sell life insurance and God help me the number of things done to the poor Toreador Song.
But I want some opinions, what is the piece of music from an opera most misused or incorrectly used. What piece have you heard most frequently abused to the point it should probably file a restraining order against the advertising industry?
I'll give mine. Trump started using Nessun Dorma. Let's not talk about the man himself, I have my VERY strong opinions on him. Let's focus on context. The song is a song of hope for victory....while everyone is afraid they're all going to die. The song is about how no one can sleep because they're scared of death, but hey Calaf is doing alright!
Actually that fits Trump in spirit.
It was a song I found very...ill chosen, unless the goal was to tell people to be afraid they'd all die. But they kept using it, seemingly oblivious to everything except Calaf declaring he would win, kind of missing the point.
So what all have you guys found?
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u/Baharnaz Amateaur opera singer 8d ago
Der Holle Rache! I hear it in so many ads and movies including Barbie movies where it’s sung so happily 😂
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u/LeekingMemory28 8d ago
Miss Congeniality did it too!
And beauty pageant women are supposed to also be at most 25?
But it’s “the opera aria” or something for TV and film.
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u/Normal-Locksmith8141 8d ago
exactly! The only time I sing that in my mind is when my fat Austrian mother in law comes over. Her kinky hair we can save for a very different conversation.
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u/prepfection 8d ago
This is so niche but I also have an Austrian mother in law and I adore this comment
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u/Logan9Fingerses 8d ago
Women are fickle, like this pasta over here
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u/Epistaxis 8d ago
Women's minds are limp and pliable, like our brand of boiled spaghetti!
(Except Gilda; she's al dente)
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u/ShadeKool-Aid 3d ago
Perhaps the cure to the Met's financial woes would be to get a prominent pasta brand to sponsor a new production of Rigoletto in which Sparafucile uses sharpened pieces of dry pasta instead of a knife.
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u/JackfruitSlight1704 8d ago
Surprised no one has mentioned the voluntary misuse of "Canzonetta sull'aria" in The Shawshank Redemption. Red says: "I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful it can't be expressed in words, and it makes your heart ache because of it" while they're singing about how to trap a cheater with his pants down. Figuratively. Maybe.
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u/astampmusic 8d ago
Back in the 80s, Pizza Hut had an add campaign featuring ‘quando m’en vo.” To this day I still get hungry for pizza every time I hear that aria.
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u/Leucurus Keenlyside is my crush 8d ago
The Habanera from Carmen is used a lot when advertisers want something so sound “kooky” or quirky, never seductive.
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u/Jack_the_Lizard 7d ago
I once heard the tune of it used to sell a disney movie version of the Three Musketeers. That was madness
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u/Novel-Sorbet-884 8d ago edited 8d ago
Dies irae di Verdi (X factor Italia). Habanera di Carmen (detersivo, Italia). O fortuna Carmina burana, quasi tutto, compresi i lassativi
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u/flyzapper 8d ago
Nesun Dorma has got to be near the top, if not at the top, even before recent political use.
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u/Teembeau 8d ago
Slightly off topic but I always smile when I see restaurants called Don Giovanni and wonder if the ghost of the Commendatore has accepted an invite to dinner.
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u/By_all_thats_good 8d ago
My local theater chain uses vesti la giubba in ads with the narrator saying “don’t miss the big moment” over clips of audience members cheering. Cheering what? A man having a breakdown because of his wife’s infidelity?
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u/fried_calamariiii 8d ago
I think the logical conclusion of this exercise is to figure out what the worst/best combo is for an advertisement and aria. I think if tinder started using la donna e mobile it would be fantastic. Der holle rach would be very fun to advertise a therapy clinic. I feel like nessum dorma and melatonin supplements might be too on the nose. I think using any handel opera to advertise something new and technological would make me laugh too.
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u/jgrumiaux 8d ago
The gallop from the William Tell Overture is usually used in a slapstick or comic context, but it sets the stage for a serious opera about rebellion and freedom from tyranny.
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u/MonsieurCellophane 8d ago
Papageno/Papagena duet used for bottled water (Italy) was quite incongruous to me. Beethoven 7th (3d movement -not opera, but still) was once used to extol the virtues of tyres. But then again, to quote Stravinsky "music is stupid" (or, to be precise: "For I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc., etc.")
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u/MacduffFifesNo1Thane 8d ago
I’ve seen Un Bel Di Vedremo be used for a yogurt commercial.
Which yogurt, as we all know, is the most likely dairy product to have been abandoned by its American lover.
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u/earbox 8d ago
The Habañera from Carmen, an opera that is famously set in Spain and written in French, being used to sell pasta sauce, with lyrics about Italian food.
"Love is grand/and love is good/but to Italians, love is food"
IT DOESN'T EVEN RHYME PROPERLY
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u/Spud2599 8d ago
Since 99.9999% of TV audiences have no idea what the true meaning of the operatic song being played represents, and I'm wagering 99.9999% of the ad folks don't either, I'm just happy that people are getting exposed to opera!
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u/en_travesti The leitmotif didn't come back 8d ago edited 8d ago
Petal fisher's duet gets pretty frequent use. The most beautiful renditioning of two guys saying bros before hoes while one of them is lying out of his ass.
I don't really think there's any way to use it that would be thematically correct.
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u/reueltidhar 8d ago
“O Fortuna” from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. It is used very often as background music for religious documentaries, church history clips, and programs on religion and ethics. This use of “O Fortuna” is done in spite of the lyrics that deny divine providence and though that the authors of the piece were actually mocking the church.
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u/Malficitous 8d ago
"No more Rice Krispie's." I won't tell you the music.
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u/Iolanthe1290 8d ago
Ha ha ha!!! Also, “Just look, 29 elephants loaded with Golden Grain…” From the same era. I wonder if they were both done by the great Stan Freberg?
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u/Individual-Wonder518 8d ago
Bro they used opera songs in a bunch of looney tunes and tom and Jerry skits too! SMH
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u/standard-sp 8d ago
100%. But it's so catchy so I don't entirely blame people who use la donna e mobile...Verdi didn't give the orchestra and singers the score until the day, and then it still caught on.
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u/Silent_Escape3640 8d ago
”Ride of the valkyrie” used in a dish-washing detergent ad, misleading because ut has nothing to do with cleaning
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u/Jack_the_Lizard 7d ago
You're going to ride flying horses and carry those stains to a worthy afterlife!
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u/Capital_Fan4470 8d ago
I once heard, and have mightily tried to forget, some evangelical religious styling set to the tune of the Moritat.
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u/SirRegFortescuePonk 8d ago
There's some Verdi and Rossini operas I can't listen to because they now sound like pizza commercials to me. Can't listen to Carmen either because some football club stole the Toreador's song. Then there's "Kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit." Not sure what the single most abused piece is though; possibly Nessun Dorma but somehow it hasn't affected my enjoyment of that.
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u/Late-Network-8579 7d ago
I'm pretty sure that around a decade ago, I saw Red Bull using a sports car doing stunts to advertise themselves...to the "tune" of the Lacrimosa from the MoReq
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u/Late-Network-8579 7d ago
As far as Trump and Nessun Dorma, recall that his outro to Camp David in January 2021 was accompanied by "Gloria," a song about a woman losing her mind.
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u/Jack_the_Lizard 7d ago
I always figured that was a good fit, Melania probably has it playing every day when she sees Eric
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u/Ramerrez Snog Marry Pass- Wagner, Ludwig II, von Bülow 7d ago
Any piece of Wagner used for anything remotely heterosexual.
Change my mind.
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u/ShadeKool-Aid 3d ago
Better than a few months ago when I was preparing to send audition materials for a High Holidays job at a synagogue. I'm going over stuff in my head and thinking "well, I guess--NO! Do NOT sing Wagner for the synagogue!"
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u/parnassus744 8d ago
I don’t know of “misused” is even the right term here. I mean, if someone is totally against classical pieces being used on TV, in stadiums, or anywhere else where it’s being used to promote something other than the music or composer, then it’s all being misused; there’ll be no positive, correct example for them.
And suggesting that using La donna é mobile doesn’t work for selling pasta because it’s a slut-shaming piece, well, 99.9% of people watching that TV commercial will have zero clue what the aria is even about; it sounds sunny and cheerful and inviting like an Italian restaurant, so that’s pretty effective and all that matters. Same with Carmen’s most famous aria and everything that has helped to sell over the decades.
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u/Jack_the_Lizard 8d ago
I think you're missing the point of the post and the fun to have
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u/parnassus744 8d ago
No, wasn’t missing a thing, just thought your premise was off. But have your “fun”, knock yourself out.
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u/ShadeKool-Aid 3d ago
You are definitely missing a thing if you thing this thread is about advertising acumen.
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u/IrisVoiceTrainer 8d ago
"La donna è mobile " doesn't say or imply women are sluts... In any sprt of way. Opera seen through woke culture = 😂
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u/Jack_the_Lizard 8d ago
You are the one who is clearly confused. And I doubt Verdi had anything to do with Woke culture. Please spend more time at the opera house and less time on reddit
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u/mrkitster 8d ago
O mio babbino caro has been used to sell everything from fast food to champagne.
Un bel di don’t get me started on this one. Longing for something that will never happen is pretty much the opposite of conspicuous consumption.