In the modern world there is unprecedented access to the international world of opera. Opera is exciting and fun, and newcomers can take advantage of this to learn about what is happening in opera today. I am gathering together material from all my writings.
Gluck has always puzzled me. In music history books he gets a whole chapter named after himself and is treated as some kind of big deal. He reformed opera. The only problem is that these operas are never done. If he rates a whole chapter, I thought, how come I never hear him? I learned "Che faro senza Euridice" and "O del mio dolce ardor" like everyone else, but that was the limit of my contact with him. Between my youth and today there has been much increase in interest in Gluck.
Christoph Willibald (von) Gluck was born in 1714 and grew up during the period of the collapse of counterpoint that happened near the end of Bach's life. By 1740 this collapse was complete. It was the complete disappearance of counterpoint that led Bach to write The Art of the Fugue. So you shouldn't be concerned that Handel said that Gluck knew as much counterpoint as his cook. Or that Metastasio called Gluck's music "barbaric." He was the younger generation.
Cecilia Bartoli recorded an album of Gluck arias, but they were entirely in the Italian style, not the later reform operas. Until the appearance of this album I was not aware that Gluck had composed so much opera seria, including libretti by Metastasio. These operas are performed even less often than the reform operas. The predominate operatic style in Gluck's era was still Neapolitan opera buffa and opera seria.
In 1752 Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote his opera Le Devin du Village and had it performed for the king of France. He was not concerned about the fact that that he was not a composer, nor should he have been. The point of Rousseau writing an opera was to change people's attitude about opera. It's opera for ordinary people. The enormous popular success of Pergolesi’s La serva padrona in Paris occurred that same year. These are comic operas devoid of pomp and serious music. They are for fun.
I put this in an article about Gluck because these were enormously influential in their time, and their influence extended to Gluck who sponsored opéra comique in Vienna. Gluck was right in the middle of a period devoted to the dumbing down of music. They liked folk songs and extreme simplicity. The re-intellectualizing of music was done in the structural advances of Haydn and Mozart. Not Gluck.
I am trying to explain to myself the experience of seeing Iphigénie en Tauride last night at the San Francisco Opera. It simply isn't like anything I've ever heard. The opera was first performed in Paris in 1779 and is considered the ultimate expression of Gluck's reforms. He was aiming for this.
There's no ballet. The San Francisco Opera's production included a lot of ballet work, but none of it is in pieces intended to be ballet. There's no coloratura at all. Not even tiny hints of it. The men's parts are written for men's normal voices. There's no secco recitative, and you have to be really paying attention to catch the transitions from recitative to aria. Clue: the harpsichord goes in and out, in for the recitative, out for the arias and other concerted pieces. There are arias, but they could have been folk songs. If it weren't for occasional high notes, how would we know it was an opera? The orchestration is not fully classical. Nor is it Baroque. He just fools around with sonorities in a completely homophonic texture. I like more to hook my ears to than this.
The plot is unrelentingly grim. Iphegenie is required to kill two men simply because they are strangers. They turn out to be from Mycenae, her home, and she finds out from them what has happened to her parents. They talk endlessly about killing and death, but only King Troas actually dies. Eventually she finds out that one of the two men is her brother Orestes. There is a very nice deus ex machina at the end that ends the curse of Agamemnon's family.
I think the significance of Gluck derives from hind sight. German historians like anyone who has a theory to go with whatever music they are writing. We might have liked Wagner without knowing he had a theory, but would anyone care about Schoenberg if he didn't have a theory? Would anyone listen to these reform operas if we didn't think Gluck was a forerunner of through-composed style operas of the nineteenth century? The existence of the theory seems to validate the significance of the work. Actually enjoying listening to it doesn't seem to be important.
If he was so influential, who did he influence? Where is the vogue he started? Mozart is supposed to be influenced by Gluck, but I don't hear it. Mozart wrote real arias and never abandoned secco recitative. He composed Metastasio just like everyone else. Idomeneo is structurally looser than opera seria generally is. Is this the influence they are talking about? Gluck's reform operas weren't popular enough in Vienna for Mozart to want to imitate them.
I didn't mind the minimalist production--everything was black except for a few words written on the walls. EPHEGENIE. AGAMEMNON. CLYTEMNESTRA. This successfully clarified the plot for me. A bit more differentiation between characters might have helped. It was hard to tell Bo Skovhus as Orestes from Paul Groves as Pylades. Their voices were remarkably similar and occupied a remarkably similar pitch range. Susan Graham was very good. Her voice is lyrical and sweet. A heavier sound in this role would have produced a different opera. Heidi Melton stood in the auditorium while singing Diane, the deus ex machina, thus saving the expense of any actual machinery. She has a huge blasting voice in startling contrast to the mortals in the opera.
It was a lot less boring than it should have been.
I have been working on my essays about the history of singing (see technique) and have decided I am missing a chapter on Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck. I have always been a doubter and expressed my doubts in this essay on the occasion of seeing a performance of Iphigénie en Tauride.
Since then I have experienced quite a bit of Gluck: two versions of Orfeo ed Euridice and one of Alceste. I still think there is no evidence that he influenced the Italians, but Wikipedia claims that he was actually quite popular in both Vienna and Paris. If the reform operas were popular, there is reason to believe they may also have been influential.
Gluck's life (1714-1787) substantially overlapped with that of Metastasio (1698-1782), the Italian opera librettist. Their careers were also substantially at the same court in Vienna where Metastasio lived from 1730. Metastasio's verses were intended for the florid Italian style which Gluck eventually rejected. It would appear that the two very different reform movements went on almost simultaneously. All the tracks on Cecilia Bartoli's Gluck album are on librettos by Metastasio.
When Gluck presented his first French opera Iphigénie en Aulide in Paris in 1774, it set off a virtual war with the proponents of Neapolitan style opera. Nothing is better for opera than quarreling. Far better than one style of opera that we love or care nothing for is two styles of opera that people can fight over. Today it is Eurotrash vs traditional staging that we fight over, though I would have to say Eurotrash seems to be winning.
He hated the formal structure of the da capo aria, especially the long instrumental introduction to the aria common in operas by Handel and the Italians, which would then be repeated in the da capo section. Here we may sympathize. Nowadays we are amused by the challenge of staging these irrelevant instrumental interludes. We stage the singers to ride up and down on escalators to fill up the time, e.g. Eventually everyone tired of the da capo aria.
Gluck’s operas are never in German, but they are still very much part of a German sensibility. To sing them does not require the lightness of Italian singing, but neither does it imply the heavy intensity of Beethoven’s Leonora. He is lumped stylistically with Mozart, but Mozart was not above expressing through coloratura and did not hesitate to compose some for a particular soprano. Mozart never falls into the kind of lugubrious monotony Gluck is often guilty of.
Gluck's operas appear to sing relatively well in a monotonous pre-Wagnerian sort of way. Alceste is very suitable to the Wagnerian technique of Christine Brewer. I'm thinking the whole thing over.
Callas is the only one who approaches the take no prisoners style I prefer for this aria.
It occurs to me that Gluck will have been the first to create a style
of opera that could compete with the Italians on the international
stage. French opera, which we must presume was popular in France, never
accomplished this. I still see it as an alternative to Italian opera
rather than an improvement on it. Italian Opera shall be presumed to be
opera in Italian written by people from Italy and performed in Italy,
and not German guys writing opera for Vienna.
This new strain of opera cannot be said to have won over the Italians until late Verdi a century later.
The
problem I seem to be having is that I made it all the way to my seventh
decade before ever seeing a staged Gluck opera. It's a little hard to
think he's all that great if no one ever does him.
1756-73 Seven Years War, Prussia & England vs Austria & France
1760-1820 George III, England
1774-92 Louis XVI, France
1776 American Revolution
This is the generation of Gluck's reform opera, first in Vienna, then in Paris. It is also the generation of Mozart's youth and Haydn's formal development of what became of the classical symphony. Bach's children and the later Mannheimers are also prominent.
Vocal Music
Reform opera
No longer guaranteed success in opera seria, Gluck composing in Vienna, wrote the dramatic ballet Don Juan (1761) which was greatly influenced by Jean-Georges Noverre's (1727-1810) treatise Lettre sur la danse (1760) emphasizing mime and gesture. Then with Ranieri de' Calzabigi (1714-95), librettist, he composed Orfeo ed Euridice (1762), the first reform opera. His reforms included
(a) important use of chorus and ballet,
(b) flexible aria forms from opera buffa,
(c) orchestral recitative,
(d) decreased use of vocal ornamentation and cadenzas, and
(e) a return to Greek myth plots.
Other Italian operas with Calzabigi were Alceste (1767) and Paride ed Elena (1769). When the latter was not successful, Gluck moved to Paris where he achieved success in French with Iphegenie en Aulide (1774), Armide (1777) and Iphegenie en Tauride (1779). He adapted Orphée et Euridice (1774) by changing Orfeo from an alto castrato to a tenor, and Alceste (1776).
Opera seria
The stagnant condition of opera seria is well illustrated in the repeated settings of Metastasio's libretti: his Poro or Alessandro nell'Indie was composed by Porpora, Hasse and Handel in 1731, Gluck in 1764, Johann Christian Bach (1735-82) in 1762, Antonio Sacchini (1730-86) in 1763, Piccinni in 1774 and Cimarosa in 1781.
Opéra-comique
With librettos by Charles Simon Favart (1710-92), it used spoken dialogue, simple ariettes and no ensembles or choruses. Examples were Recontre imprévue (1764) by Gluck, Tom Jones (1765) by F. A. Danican Philidor (1726-95), Le Déserteur (1769) by Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny (1729-1817) and Zemire et Azor (1769) by André Ernest Gretry (1742-1813).
Singspiel
Modeled after the opéra-comique, it included some ensembles and choruses. Examples were Die Jagd (1770) by Johann Adam Hiller (1728-1804) and Bastien und Bastienne (1768) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91).
Melodrama
First used in Rousseau's Pygmalion (1762), it consisted of spoken dialogue with orchestral background. Other examples were Ariadne auf Naxos (1775) and Medea (1778) by Georg Benda (1722-95) and Mozart's unfinished Zaide (1779).
1780 Death of Maria Theresa, Austria 1781 Mozart moved to Vienna 1786 Death of Frederick the Great, Prussia 1789 French Revolution
This was the generation of Mozart's maturity, Haydn's late style and Beethoven's first style period.
Opera seria
The mature operas of Mozart followed the established forms of his day and included two opera seria, Idomeneo (1781), considered his best in this form, and La Clemenza di Tito (1791) on a libretto by Metastasio.
Opera seria
Opera buffa
Opéra-comique &
Singspiel
Reform opera
Secco
and accompagnato recitative
Secco
recitative
Spoken
dialogue (melodrama)
Orchestral
recitative
Arioso,
da capo arias, ornamentation
Flexible
arias
Popular
songs
Flexible
arias, less ornamentation
Little
chorus or ensemble
Ensemble
finales
Singspiel: ensembles and choruses
chorus
No
ballet
No
ballet
No
ballet
Ballet
This aria from La Clemenza di Tito is shockingly performed with spoken Italian dialog instead of recitative, something that is completely unheard of.
Opera buffa
Mozart composed his best operas in this form on librettos by Lorenzo da Ponte (1749-1838): Le Nozze di Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), considered a dramma giocoso (including elements of both seria and buffa), and Cosi fan tutte (1790). Elements of his style included characterization through music, even in the complex ensemble finales, and elaborate orchestration which made the orchestra equal in importance to the voices. Other important opera buffe were Giovanni Paisiello's (1740-1816) Il Barbiere di Siviglia (1782), on the same libretto as Rossini's famous opera (Mozart's Figaro may be considered a sequel), and Il Matrimonio segreto (1792) by Domenico Cimarosa (1749-1801).
Singspiel
This was the third type of opera composed by Mozart, including Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782), Der Schauspieldirektor (1786), and Die Zauberflöte (1791). Except for the use of spoken dialogue, Mozart's style resembled his opera buffa. Other popular examples were Doktor und Apotheker (1786) by Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf (1739-99) and Der Dorfbarbier (1796) by Johann Schenk (1753-1836).
French Opera
Operas in French continued in the heroic style of Gluck, including Piccinni's Atys (1780) and Didon (1783), Luigi Cherubini's (1760-1842) Lodoiska (1791), Médée (1797) which used melodrama, Les Deux Journées (1800), an early rescue opera, and Antonio Salieri's (1750-1825) Les Danaïdes (1784). The first rescue opera was Richard Coeur de Lion (1784) by Gretry.
Oratorio
Influenced by Handel after trips to England in 1791-2 and 1794-6, Haydn composed the important oratorios The Creation (1798) and The Seasons (1800) on texts translated into German by Baron Gottfried van Swieten (1737-1803). He used simpler arias than Handel, but added a symphonic overture and descriptive orchestral passages. At this time Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) composed his Christus am Ölberg (1800).
Second Berlin Song School
Influenced by Goethe and Klopstock, an important early collection was Lieder im Volkston (1782) by J.A.P. Schulz (1747-1800). The composers, including Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1752-1814) and Carl Zelter (1758-1832), self-consciously imitated folk style in strophic songs with subordinate accompaniment. A new form was the ballade, usually through-composed songs on narrative poems by Johann Zumsteeg (1760-1802).
Opera Overture
Mozart's opera overtures were usually in first movement sonata-allegro form.
Standard opera repertoire, the operas you are most likely to see, begin with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791). Mozart lived most of his life in Austria, first Salzburg and later Vienna. He was a famous child prodigy who spent his childhood in the important centers of Europe. He learned about Italian opera in Italy and French music in Paris. He was personally acquainted with Emperor Franz Joseph and Maria Teresa of Austria. And of course he knew Haydn. Thus the scope of his musical compositions covered all of the important styles and forms of his time. He took these materials and combined them into something new and wonderful.
He is most famous in opera for three operas which he composed with the librettist Lorenzo da Ponte, a fascinating man who was a jew, an ordained Roman Catholic priest, an opera librettist and finally a teacher of Italian literature at Columbia University in New York City. Mozart's three Da Ponte operas are Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and Cosi fan tutte, all operas about relationships between men and women.
Mozart wrote a lot of other operas in other formats. He wrote operas in German, most notably Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio) andDie Zauberflöte (The Magic flute). Towards the end of his life he wrote the magnificent opera seria La clemenza di Tito (The Clemency of Titus).
These are Mozart's operas in date order:
Bastien und Bastienne (2 October 1768) German Singspiel
La finta semplice (1 May 1769) Italian opera buffa
Mitridate, re di Ponto (26 December 1770) Italian opera seria
Ascanio in Alba (17 October 1771) Italian
Il sogno di Scipione (1 May 1772) Italian Serenata drammatica
Lucio Silla (26 December 1772) Italian Dramma per musica
La finta giardiniera #87 (13 January 1775) Italian Dramma giocoso
Il re pastore (23 April 1775) Italian Serenata
Zaide (27 January 1866) German Singspiel
Idomeneo, re di Creta #45 (29 January 1781) Italian Dramma per musica
Die Entführung aus dem Serail #21 (16 July 1782) German Singspiel
Der Schauspieldirektor(7 February 1786) German Comedy with music
This is an early Upstairs/Downstairs story. Count Almaviva is now bored with his Rosina, the girl he courted and married in Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia, and seeks his pleasure elsewhere. The pleasure he seeks is with the fiance of his servant Figaro who helped in the count's courtship of Rosina. Figaro is betrayed, but can do nothing. It is the women who save the day. To keep the plot moving there are plenty of side romances.
More Information
First performed in 1786, the music is Viennese Classical with recitative. The plot is Lorenzo da Ponte domestic comedy.
At the time Mozart wrote Le Nozze di Figaro (1786), Paisiello had already composed a very popular opera called Il barbiere di Siviglia which was in turn based on a play by Beaumarchais. Mozart was in step with his era which apparently enjoyed raunchy French comedies. He and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte were two souls with one mind.
Mozart's famous operas were all written in the final quarter of the 18th century in a style that included the Italian coloratura found in composers like Paisiello and Salieri, but with a focus on the orchestra that can only be found in Germany. I think this is the reason that our modern idea of opera generally begins here. It is easier to hear Baroque operas now, but only Handel's Giulio Cesare in Egitto is in the top 100 most frequently performed operas.
The Story
Act I
We find ourselves in a storage room in a palazzo where Figaro is measuring the space for a bed. His fiance Susannah is showing off her veil she has made for the wedding. The master, Count Almaviva, has promised they will be married.
Cherubino shows up to complain that he falls in love with every woman. Susannah sympathizes and he makes a pass at her.
Hit Tune
This brief clip is from a recent season at the Metropolitan Opera and features Isabel Leonard as Cherubino.
First performed in 1787 in Prague, the music is Viennese Classical with recitative. The plot is by Lorenzo da Ponte, modeled after the legendary Don Juan. It is called a dramma giocoso and is somewhere between a comedy (opera buffa) and a tragedy (opera seria). Structurally it is far closer to a buffa than to an opera seria. Throughout the nineteenth century Don Giovanni was considered
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's greatest opera. In Prague at the time it was composed there was a vogue for Don Juan stories.
The title character in Mozart's Don Giovanni is probably modeled on the legendary Don Juan, or perhaps even the great real life Venetian seducer Giacomo Casanova. Though everyone seems always to be angry with him, the Don is most reasonably seen as a seducer. It is not directly stated in the libretto, but many believe that he was only able to seduce Donna Elvira by actually marrying her. Leporello does his best to dissuade her.
What is this opera about?
This is the original scent of a woman story. If there are women around, Don Giovanni can smell them. He seems to be completely cosmopolitan in his taste. Donna Anna is a noble woman living in her father's house while Zerlina is clearly lower class and on the verge of marriage. He meets them, attempts to seduce them, succeeds or fails, and moves on. The libretto seems to condemn him soundly and ends by sending him to hell. I would imagine that in our time this was far too common for us to react with so much anger. The only woman who may seem to deserve our pity is Donna Elvira who clearly loves the Don.
This opera is very hard to stage due to the many scenes and constant changing of locale. Recently there was a production from Salzburg which set the opera in a hotel lobby where people of all classes naturally come and go, weddings are held and parties, there's a bar, etc. This solves everything.
The Story
Act I
Scene 1
While Leporello (buffo bass) stands guard, Don Giovanni (baritone) is inside the home of the Commendatore (bass) and his daughter Donna Anna (spinto soprano) trying we have to assume unsuccessfully to seduce the daughter. Donna Anna screams for help and goes off while the Don and the Commendatore fight. Don Giovanni kills the Commendatore and escapes. Anna finds her fiance Don Ottavio (Mozart tenor) and laments the death of her father.
Scene 2
Donna Elvira (soprano) has followed Don Giovanni to yet another city. He sees her and at first he does not recognize her. Instinctively he begins to pay suit, but then sees who it is, that the unfaithful lover is himself. After Giovanni flees, Leporello sings the Catalog Aria.
with its long list of conquests. "And in
Spain there are 1003."
Hit Tune
Luca Pisaroni sings "Madamina."
Apparently they are all written down.
Scene 3
This scene is in the country at the wedding of Zerlina (soubrette) and Masetto (baritone). Undeterred by her imminent nuptials, Don Giovanni pays suit to Zerlina.
Scene 4
Hit Tune
Scene 5
Act II
Scene 1
Scene 2
Scene 3
Scene 4
Scene 5
Complete Film
Don Giovanni - Cesare Siepi,
Leporello - Otto Edelmann,
Donna Anna - Elisabeth Grümmer,
Don Ottavio - Anton Dermota,
Donna Elvira - Lisa della Casa,
Zerlina - Erna Berger,
Masetto - Walter Berry,
Il commendatore - Dezső Ernster,
Conductor - Wilhelm Furtwängler
1803 Beethoven's Eroica Symphony 1804-14 Napoleon, Emperor of France 1814-24 Louis XVIII, France 1815 Waterloo 1824-30 Charles X
This generation must be subdivided: 1803-15 was Beethoven's second style period and time of greatest influence, including symphonies 3-8 and Fidelio, and 1815-27 was his third style period in which he revived the art of counterpoint, including the Ninth Symphony, Missa solemnis and "Grosse Fuge" for string quartet. Schubert composing in the second half of the period led the transition to Romanticism. Rossini and Weber's operas also fell into the second half of the period.
Italian Opera
The last generation of the Neapolitan tradition, led by Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868), composed the last important roles for castrati and last used recitative secco. This is the last generation of opera seria. Rossini began to write out the important virtuosic ornamentation in his 38 operas composed from 1810 to 1829, including the serious operas Tancredi (1813) and Otello (1816), and the comic operas L'Italiana in Algeri (1813), La Cenerentola (1817), and Il Barbiere di Siviglia (1816).
French Opera
Heroic operas in the tradition of Gluck continued with La Vestale (1807) by Gasparo Spontini (1774-1851) and Joseph (1807) by Nicolas Méhul (1763-1817).
German Opera
Beethoven's Fidelio (1808) was strongly influenced by the revolutionary French operas of Cherubini. Transitional works were Undine (1813) by E.T.A. Hoffman (1776-1822) and Faust (1816) by Ludwig Spohr (1784-1859) The model for German Romantic opera was established with Der Freischütz (1821) by Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826). Less successful were his Euryanthe (1823) and Oberon (1826). Some common features were (a) sonata-allegro overture, (b) spoken dialogue, including melodrama in FidelioFreischütz, (c) chorus, (d) dramatic arias and (e) important orchestral accompaniment.
Lied
Though the simple strophic style of the Second Berlin Song School prevailed in the early period, the through-composed Romantic Lied was established with Franz Schubert's (1797-1828) "Gretchen am Spinnrad" (1814). His over 600 songs included the song cycles Die schöne Müllerin (1823) and Winterreise (1827) on texts by Wilhelm Müller. Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte (1816) is considered the first song cycle. Carl Loewe (1796-1869) was most successful in songs in the ballade form.
Overture
Beethoven's "Cariolan" (1807) and "Egmont" (1810) were overtures for plays. Fidelio had four overtures composed at different times: Leonore I (1805), Leonore II (1805), Leonore III (1806) and Fidelio (1814).
La Scala di Seta (9 May 1812) libretto by Giuseppe Maria Foppa
Tancredi (6 Feb 1813) libretto by Gaetano Rossi
L'Italiana in Algeri #55 (22 May 1813) libretto by Angelo Anelli
Il Turco in Italia (14 Aug 1814) libretto by Felice Romani
Il Barbiere di Siviglia #9 (20 Feb 1816) libretto by Cesare Sterbini
Otello (4 Dec 1816) libretto by Francesco Maria Berio di Salsa
Armida (11 Nov 1817) libretto by Giovanni Schmidt
La Cenerentola #29 (25 Jan 1817) libretto by Jacopo Ferretti
Ermione (27 March 1819) libretto by Andrea Leone Tottola
La Donna del Lago (24 Oct 1819) libretto by Andrea Leone Tottola
Maometto II (3 Dec 1820) Libretto by Cesare della Valle
Matilda di Shabran (24 Feb 1821) libretto by Jacopo Ferretti
Semiramide (3 Feb 1823) libretto by Gaetano Rossi
Il Viaggio a Reims #83 (19 June 1825) libretto by Luigi Balocchi (Paris)
Le siège de Corinthe (9 Oct 1826) libretto by Luigi Balocchi and Alexandre Soumet
Le Comte Ory (20 Aug 1828) libretto by Eugène Scribe
Guillaume Tell (3 Aug 1829) libretto by Victor-Joseph-Ėtienne de Jouy, Hippolyte-Louis-Florent Bis and Armand Marrast
There are many more, but the regularly performed operas are included here. I have bolded those operas that have played at the Met. Rossini is the first Italian composer whose works have continued on in the repertoire. He trained himself in the orchestral style of Mozart and composed a greater percentage of a work than was generally the case. Donizetti, Bellini and Verdi followed in his steps.
He composed no operas after William Tell. There may have been more than one reason. Current thinking points to his ill health. However we may still point to the presence of Giacomo Meyerbeer and Fromental Halévy and the sudden popularity of Grand Opera. This new style did not appeal to Rossini.
Everything about it was suddenly new. To give you an idea, here is a contemporary madrigal by Carlo Gesualdo.
This is what European music sounded like before opera. It is very important to notice how sometimes the different voices sing the same melody one after the other, sometimes in different keys. Soprano sings it, baritone sings it, etc. This is the standard style of the Renaissance and was invented in the Netherlands. This piece is relatively modern for Renaissance music, so often they all sing together.
Florentine Camerata
Something I cannot find in any book is that if you are walking along a street in Florence and happen to notice it, there will be this sign.
It stands on the side of this unassuming building where met the famous Florentine Camerata. This is a rough translation: "In this house of Bardi, Giovanni, conte di Vernio, who fought with great valor against Siena and Malta, held a studio on science and letters, especially poetry and music. They studied the stories from ancient Greek drama which were set to music, and they invented the sung recitative and reformed melody, creating the musical art of modern times." Here is the building in Florence where the sign stands.
Count Bardi founded the group in about 1573. Among the members were
the theorist Vincenzo Galilei (father of Galileo Galilei), the composer
Giulio Caccini, the poet Ottavio Rinuccini, the musician Emilio de'
Cavalieri and the composer Jacopo Peri. Bardi collaborated with these and other Florentine
musicians in court entertainments from 1579 to 1608.
Briefly,
they were trying to recreate Greek drama. The word camerata was newly minted to refer to Bardi's group. The Camerata read everything available at the time and speculated on the actual experience of Greek drama. They concluded that in a proper play in ancient Greece all the words were sung. They also concluded that there was no place for counterpoint in such a drama, and composed their own pieces with simple chordal accompaniment.
Hit Tunes
This piece by Caccini from Le Nuove Musiche is in the new style and should be compared to the piece above.
Here is another example.
You can hear how different this sounds from the Gesualdo. There are broken chords and small ornaments, but no counterpoint during the singing. The point was to emphasize the words.
I apologize for this long sample with no visuals. There are words in Italian and English and some pretty fantastic singing. I want to try to include a complete opera in every chapter. The story is of the lost Euridice and Orfeo's brave attempt to rescue her from hell. It is the first complete surviving opera, but not the first written one. Caccini's version (some of the numbers are supposed to be by Peri) of Euridice was first performed at the Pitti Palace in Florence on 5 December 1602. This is across the Arno from the Duomo and the Casa di Bardi, and in summer you can sit in the same courtyard and hear music today.
It is strange and unusual but arguably the greatest thing ever invented by a committee. The words are very clear. You are unlikely to ever see this piece performed.
Had enough? Go to Puccini.
Love it and want more? See the Venetian operas later in the century.
I love Baroque but most people only know Bach and Handel. Jump to Handel.
Monteverdi was an extraordinarily gifted composer who composed successfully in all the styles of his era. This is astounding because of how radically styles changed from what is called pervading imitation of the Renaissance to the homophonic style of the early Baroque. His L'Orfeo is the earliest opera still performed often today.
As his career progressed, he moved to Venice to work at San Marco. He wasted no time by starting Venetian commercial opera.
His most popular operas are:
L'Orfeo (1607) to a libretto by Alessandro Striggio, first performed in Mantua.
Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (SV 325, The Return of Ulysses to his Homeland), Librettist Giacomo Badoaro
Language Italian
Based on Homer's Odyssey
Premiere 1639–1640 Carnival season
Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice
L'incoronazione di Poppea (SV 308, The Coronation of Poppea) with a libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello, first performed in 1643 also in Venice.
Many of his works have been lost forever. This piece is all that is left of one of his earliest operas.
First performed in 1607, the music is right at the birth of the Italian Baroque, near the time of the death of Elizabeth I of England. This is the earliest opera to appear in the repertoire in the 21st century.
Since the purpose of the Florentine Camerata was to recreate Greek drama, the stories of these earliest operas come from ancient European literature, but curiously not from Greek drama. There doesn't seem to be even one example of an actual Greek drama used as the basis for an opera by these early opera composers. Their operas were more likely to be from the Roman Ovid's Metamorphosis, a set of transformation myths. Early opera composers felt that a singer who could charm the gods to release his lover from hell was the best possible subject for a work about singing. Early operas produced in Mantua were Claudio Monteverdi's (1567-1643) L'Orfeo (1607), considered the outstanding example of early opera, and his Ariana (1608), now lost. Today L'Orfeo, the most famous of the early operas, stands at number 72 in the list of most frequently performed operas. L'Orfeo is unusual for the fact that it includes brass instruments, instead of just the usual strings and continuo. All the high voices were sung by castrati.
There are no hit tunes from L'Orfeo, but this is as close as we come. Monteverdi was a far better musician than either Caccini or Peri, in fact probably the greatest of his era. He composed in all the styles of his time and place, and probably invented a few himself. You can hear that this music is far more sophisticated though it is only a very few years later. The Story
We are greeted by a prologue like in Pagliacci.
Act I
Orfeo and his Euridice are in a field with nymphs and shepherds. There is dancing. He sings of his happiness and goes back to town to prepare for his wedding, leaving Euridice behind.
Act II
Orfeo returns to find that Euridice has been bitten by a snake and has died. Because he holds so much faith in the power of his singing, he decides to descend into hell and plead with Pluto for her freedom.
Act III
Orfeo arrives at the gates of hell and tries to persuade the ferryman to take him in. When this doesn't work, Orfeo soothes him to sleep and steals his boat.
Act IV
Now we are in the underworld, and Orfeo has persuaded Proserpina to allow him to take Euridice. She in turn persuades Plutone to allow this, but he agrees only on the condition that Orfeo must not look back at her until they reach the surface. He starts out boldly but soon gives in and looks back. Euridice fades away.
Act V
Back in Thrace there is lamenting and a renunciation of love. Apollo descends and takes Orfeo away with him into the heavens. Apparently there was originally an ending where Orfeo is assaulted by followers of Bacchus and driven off.
Complete Film
This is an excellent recreation of that opera with Harnoncourt conducting.
Had enough? Go back to Puccini.
Love it and want more? See the Venetian operas later in the century.
Opera from Monteverdi to Rossini contains a dirty little secret: the castrato. Dramatic presentations in Rome in this period, whether operas or oratorios, used all male casts, because of the church’s complete oppression of women. For some reason not clear to modern minds it was felt better to castrate men so that they would retain their high child voices than to allow women to appear in public performances. The Roman opera, from its origin in the 1620’s, performed with all male casts with castrated men playing the female roles. L'Orfeo by Monteverdi also used all men for the high parts.
The notes to Cecilia Bartoli’s Sacrificium goes into detail about when, where, how and how frequently the castration took place.
Outside Rome, though, the castrati generally played most of the male roles and women sang the female parts. That means that throughout the entire period from Monteverdi to Rossini major male parts were assigned to sopranos and altos. The dramatic tenor who became the hero in opera in the romantic period had not been invented yet. I maintain that Florestan in Beethoven's Fidelio was the first dramatic tenor.
It is virtually never the case with comic operas that roles are intended for castrati, which explains why we are so familiar with Mozart’s comedies and only rarely see his more serious operas. There are no castrato parts in the comedies. Cherubino is part of another tradition—assigning teenage boy roles to women. Castrati were big guys. They just had high voices and no beards, like any eunuch. Cherubino needs to appear pre-pubescent and harmless, and a woman is better for that. Mozart intended Cherubino to be sung by a woman.
Why castrati? The only possible explanation is the sound. Early opera must simply have meant the sound of castrati singing. The original idea was to eliminate the requirement for women singing in public, but soon many of them became celebrities.
This is a huge body of opera and encompasses all of opera seria, including all the operas of Handel. Mozart, Gluck and Rossini all composed for this voice and all wrote major roles for castrati. Opera seria is the Italian term for serious opera of the type invented in Naples.
All included roles for castrati which no longer exist in the modern world, and to present these operas to modern audiences this problem has to be solved. Just using the available videos we know easily which solution has worked the best: the Marilyn Horne solution. She can be seen in all her glory on the Bel Canto Society’s Semiramide. For years the San Francisco Opera only presented opera seria when Marilyn was available. In my memory the stunning Orlando Furioso of Vivaldi stands out. As long as Marilyn was still singing, this was the preferred solution.
One solution is to transpose the role down an octave and give it to a tenor or baritone. This was the solution in Maria Ewing’s performance of Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea. The role of Nerone is supposed to be sung by a castrato. To accept the tenor solution you must accept that the music now sounds very different. A duet for two sopranos is quite a different sound from a duet for soprano and tenor. It is also difficult to find coloratura tenors capable of executing the ornamentation. This solution is not preferred. For those who hate cross-dressing, this is the preferred solution.
Contrast with this version where Nerone is sung by Alice Coote in the original pitch. In both examples Poppea is sung by Danielle de Niese.
Now that Marilyn has retired we have to move on. In Mozart's Mitridate Re di Ponto there are three castrato parts. In the video I reviewed two were assigned to women and one to a countertenor or falsettist. If the castrato was a true soprano, it is difficult to find a countertenor capable of singing that high. In Mitridate the part assigned to a falsettist is the lowest of the three.
One curious fact about countertenors is that they’re usually baritones. Maybe it’s easier for a baritone to slip completely into falsetto at a lower pitch. This is key, because the whole role has to be sung in falsetto, not just the high parts. Here is an excellent discussion of how falsetto works. It explains why the tone is so uninteresting.
In Idomeneo the castrato part is sung by Cecilia Bartoli. In Julius Caesar Cecilia sang the heroine, and the three castrato parts were sung by two men and a woman. Julius Caesar was sung by a man—Franco Fagioli. He was actually quite spectacular for a countertenor, but slips occasionally out of his falsetto on the low notes.
So those are the three solutions: transpose it down, give it to a woman, give it to a man singing falsetto. None are ideal. Transposing it down violates the musical intentions. Giving it to a woman creates a certain amount of gender confusion. Marilyn was not very tall, but wore big hats. Susan Graham plays men more often than not and is quite convincing. She was excellent in Alcina. The countertenor solution might appeal to many, but there were no countertenors in Italian Baroque opera.
This is strictly from my imagination, but a castrato voice has to have sounded very much like a powerful woman’s voice. Marilyn was probably not too far off. The one thing we can be absolutely sure of is that they did not sound like falsettists.
The first public opera house, Teatro San Cassiano, opened in Venice in 1637. The most important feature of Venetian opera was the fact that it completely depended on making money from the public. Florentine and Roman operas were paid for by the ruling class.
Musical style traits for opera in seventeenth century Venice were
(a) separation of recitative and aria,
(b) use of instrumental ritornelli,
(c) very little chorus or ballet to control expenses,
(d) bel canto singing, "Beautiful
singing," smooth melodic arias in triple meter over simplified
harmonies, separated from recitative, dominated opera oratorio and
cantata.
(e) elaborate stage machinery necessary for the miraculous plot conclusions, "deus ex machine."
(f) women in the cast, and
(g) no separation of comedy and trajedy.
The bel canto aria was fully established in Didone (1641) by Francesco Cavalli (1602-76), also Giasone (1649), La Calisto (1651) and Ercole Amante (1662).
Early examples of this school were the final operas of Monteverdi: Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria (1641) and La Incoronazione di Poppea (1642). These two operas will appear in modern day productions.
For me a famous modern production of a Venetian style opera is Francesco Cavalli's La Calisto, a work from 1651.
I very much recommend the René Jacobs version of this opera available on the film below. It is available on YouTube in audio only, but you may buy it on Amazon with full staging.
These people are up to no good. I have a very deep feeling that this production will tell you more about Venetian opera than anything I could possibly write, or anything you will read in textbooks. Gods and goddesses come and go on bizarre stage machinery. Many claims of chastity are proclaimed, but none are actually maintained. Giove starts out as a baritone, and then makes a fabulous change over to falsetto in his disguise as Diana. There is wonderful coloratura throughout and a complete utter lack of pomposity. Here is a different production with more famous singers and rather bad video.
