The Invention of Opera

Opera was invented.  It's an odd story, actually.

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.

Claudio Monteverdi

(1567-1643)

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.

Monteverdi's L'Orfeo

The Opera

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.

I love Baroque but want only Handel and Vivaldi.