Opera in the Rococo -- the Transition to Mozart

1740-1760 is Handel's oratorio period, when all types of comic operas replaced the public's interest in serious opera. In this period Gluck was a standard Italian opera composer.  Rameau is strong in this period, but for the beginner you should just skip it.  Nothing rises to the level of standard repertoire.


The transition from baroque to classic style, begun in the style galant of Couperin, consisted of

(a) the sudden collapse and disappearance of the German polyphonic style,

(b) a more gradual shift of popular interest away from opera to the new symphony and within opera from the international opera seria to the national comic opera genres and

(c) the establishment of tonality and modulation as the chief means of musical expression.  After this everything is tonal.

Opera seria

Opera seria was still predominant in Italy by Nicola Porpora (1686-1768), Johann Adolf Hasse, "Il Sassone" (1699-1783), and Niccolo Jommelli (1713-74). Important in Berlin was Carl Heinrich Graun's (1703/4-59) Montezuma (1755), and in Vienna Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-87) wrote 19 operas on librettos by Metastasio.

Opera buffa

Sophisticated librettos by Carlo Goldoni (1707-93) represented contemporary figures in realistic situations with natural voices, therefore, there were

(a) very few castrati,

(b) bass soloists in

(c) secco recitative,

(d) flexible arias and

(e) important ensemble finales.

Works were Il Filisofo di campagna (1754) by Baldassare Galuppi (1706-85), La Buona figliuola (1760) by Niccolo Piccinni (1728-1800), and Gluck's Il Tigrane (1743).

Oratorio

When his opera ventures failed, Handel turned to oratorio in English, beginning with Israel in Egypt (1737), and including Messiah (1742), Samson (1743), Semele (1744), Judas Maccabeus (1746), Solomon (1749), and Jephtha (1752).  He used fewer da capo arias, varied the degree of difficulty in order to use English singers, and adapted English choral polyphony to his own Italianate style. Graun's Der Tod Jesu (1755) was a pale rival.  These works are often presented as staged operas today.

 

Opéra-comique

The enormous popular success of Pergolesi's La serva padrona in Paris in 1752 set off the War of the Buffons between supporters of comic opera and defenders of the grand opera. Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) composed Le Devin du village (1752) as a model opéra-comique.

Singspiel

Coffey's English ballad opera The Devil to Pay was sung in Germany in 1743 and then reset by J.C. Standfuss in 1752 as Der Teufel ist los, the first Singspiel.