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Musical Theater

Halina Goldberg

in Music in Chopin's Warsaw

Led by Bogusƚawski, Elsner, and Kurpiński, the National Theater — the locale of major operatic productions — became the central cultural institution in Warsaw. It featured a rich repertory of French, ... More

Led by Bogusƚawski, Elsner, and Kurpiński, the National Theater — the locale of major operatic productions — became the central cultural institution in Warsaw. It featured a rich repertory of French, German, and Italian operas. The operatic genres of operas performed in Warsaw ranged from Singspiel, through opéra comique, tragedie lyrique, opera seria, and buffa, to grand opera. This chapter discusses the introduction into Warsaw of the newest foreign works, ushering in the Romantic aesthetic in opera. At the same time, the librettists and composers associated with the National Theater created vernacular operas, which often addressed subjects from Polish history, and conveyed patriotic sentiments though text and folkloristic music. The history and repertory of the national theater is presented, and Chopin's involvement with Warsaw's operatic scene is explained.Less

Foreign-Language Opera Is Exclusive; Vernacular Is “For the People”

Katherine K. Preston

in Opera for the People: English-Language Opera and Women Managers in Late 19th-Century America

This chapter commences with the Panic of 1873 and its profound impact on operatic production in 1870s America. The failure of Italian- and German-language troupes facilitated the triumph of grand ... More

This chapter commences with the Panic of 1873 and its profound impact on operatic production in 1870s America. The failure of Italian- and German-language troupes facilitated the triumph of grand opera in the vernacular—especially the company of Louise Kellogg, which enjoyed extraordinary success during the worst years of the Long Deprecession. Comic opera (including operetta, light opera, and opera bouffe) was important during the period, as were the activities of several pivotal performer/managers (Emily Soldene, Sallie Holman, Alice Oates). Italian- and German-language activity during the late 1870s–1880s and the generally unsettled operatic times of the mid-1880s are covered. During this period German-language opera and its associated principle of cultural uplift first challenged and ultimately replaced Italian-language opera (temporarily) in the American foreign-language market. The chapter ends with the explosion of vernacular-opera activity in the 1880s and the enthusiasm of Americans for all types of opera performed in English.Less

Choosing a Version

in Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera

Before rehearsals for an opera begin, the performers must decide what music to incorporate in the production that is being planned. The availability of multiple versions prepared by the composer ... More

Before rehearsals for an opera begin, the performers must decide what music to incorporate in the production that is being planned. The availability of multiple versions prepared by the composer creates the first problem that must be addressed by modern performers of Italian opera. Surprisingly, few well-known Italian operas exist in a unique version identifiable with the composer; among them are Rossini's Il signor Bruschino and Il viaggio a Reims, Bellini's La sonnambula, and Verdi's Luisa Miller and Rigoletto. In general, the process of deciding which version to perform can be conceptualized in terms of a grid in three dimensions on which to measure the alternatives. These dimensions involve aesthetic and analytic matters, historical circumstances, and the practical conditions of modern performance.Less

Setting the Stage

in Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera

Opera was at the center of Italian culture throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. Fundamental to most Italian opera houses during the first half of the nineteenth century was the ... More

Opera was at the center of Italian culture throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. Fundamental to most Italian opera houses during the first half of the nineteenth century was the operatic season. There were ample opportunities for composers to ply their trade. However, complaints about the terrible conditions under which Italian composers were expected to function—the dreadful pressure and impossible deadlines—must be put into context. It is true that Il barbiere di Siviglia was composed, rehearsed, and performed in less than a month, and so were L'Italiana in Algeri and La sonnambula. During the eighteenth century, composers typically set the same basic libretto again and again. However, early in the nineteenth century, new librettos were generally written for most Italian operas. Italian librettos, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, were almost always written exclusively in poetry, not in prose, and the poetry was governed by specific rules.Less

French Pianos, Italian Opera, and California Gold

R. Allen Lott

in From Paris to Peoria: How European Piano Virtuosos Brought Classical Music to the American Heartland

While in the United States, Henri Herz actively established agents to sell his own pianos and explored the possibilities of building a factory, concert hall, and conservatory, none of which came to ... More

While in the United States, Henri Herz actively established agents to sell his own pianos and explored the possibilities of building a factory, concert hall, and conservatory, none of which came to fruition. Herz's claim that Americans covered the legs of their pianos because of their prudishness is not true; it was a means to protect them. During the 1848-9 season, Herz toured with the Dutch violinist Frans Coenen (1826-1904) and an Italian opera troupe. After appearances in Mexico, Herz gave concerts in San Francisco and Sacramento, California, in 1850 during the height of the gold rush. Herz's American tour reflected a more businesslike approach to musical management under Bernard Ullman, and included almost two hundred concerts in at least fifty-eight cities. His simple but elegant stage manners and his graceful music charmed the American public.Less

A Discourse of Change

Hilary Poriss

in Changing the Score: Arias, Prima Donnas, and the Authority of Performance

One of the scenes of Donizetti’s melodrama comico, Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali, which is an opera about an opera, depicts some of the main characters asserting that all of their roles be ... More

One of the scenes of Donizetti’s melodrama comico, Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali, which is an opera about an opera, depicts some of the main characters asserting that all of their roles be given special arias. Because art is believed to imitate life, this scene poses hints of mockery and embraces the fact that singers would indeed ask composers and librettists to highlight their roles, preferably by providing them with opportunities for solo displays. Through an analysis of the play’s textual history, we observe that each version of the opera showed different interpretations. This chapter introduces the notion of a Neopolitan farse, where the original dialect had to be altered if performed outside Naples; thus, some of its meaning has been altered as well. This chapter attempts to examine the complicated discourse of aria insertion, or the lack of it, across Italian opera productions in the nineteenth century.Less

Mare O Monti: Two Summer Festivals

in Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera

This chapter presents a report on two opera festivals on which Philip Gossett worked closely during the summer of 2000: the Santa Fe Opera and the Rossini Opera Festival of Pesaro. During the summer ... More

This chapter presents a report on two opera festivals on which Philip Gossett worked closely during the summer of 2000: the Santa Fe Opera and the Rossini Opera Festival of Pesaro. During the summer of 2000, five nineteenth-century Italian operas were on the boards: Rossini's Ermione and Verdi's Rigoletto in Santa Fe and Rossini's Le Siège de Corinthe, La scala di seta, and La Cenerentola in Pesaro. Each festival has a particular repertory niche. There is ample room for operas to be performed in repertory. This chapter suggests some of the problems faced in bringing these works before the public. These problems are representative of those that recur in opera houses throughout the world when facing this repertory. This chapter clarifies what it means to perform Italian opera.Less

The Romance of the Critical Edition

in Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera

Critical editions of nineteenth-century Italian operas make available the best texts that modern scholarship, musicianship, and editorial technique can produce. A critical edition of Rigoletto is ... More

Critical editions of nineteenth-century Italian operas make available the best texts that modern scholarship, musicianship, and editorial technique can produce. A critical edition of Rigoletto is necessarily an interpretation of Verdi's Rigoletto. The difference is that a critical edition makes its substantive interventions graphically explicit and explains them in ample critical notes. Users of the score can ascertain where “Verdi's Rigoletto” ends and editorial intervention begins. A critical edition also differs from other editions in its insistence that the criteria for editorial interventions are clear and that such interventions are restricted to those that derive from Verdi's explicit indications or meet the levels of consistency and logic that reflect Verdi's notational practice. The critical editions continue to recognize the composer as the central figure in the Italian operatic landscape and seek, where possible, to reproduce his or her voice as fully and accurately as possible.Less

From the Origins to Lully

Vincent Giroud

in French Opera: A Short History

This chapter explores the history of French opera from its early origins to Jean-Baptiste Lully. It explains that before opera was introduced to France there was already a genre which included mixing ... More

This chapter explores the history of French opera from its early origins to Jean-Baptiste Lully. It explains that before opera was introduced to France there was already a genre which included mixing dance and singing, and suggests that the ballet de cour should be considered as a forerunner and not as a rival of French opera. The chapter describes the early beginning of Lully as a composer and the role of Cardinal Mazarin in bringing Italian opera to Paris. It also considers the works of other composers, including Isaac de Benserade, Pierre Perrin, and Robert Cambert.Less

Ancient Tragedy in Opera, and the Operatic Debut of Oedipus the King (Munich, 1729)

Reinhard Strohm

in Ancient Drama in Music for the Modern Stage

This chapter considers the integration of classical drama into the public operatic world in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It identifies three aspects of seventeenth-century ... More

This chapter considers the integration of classical drama into the public operatic world in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It identifies three aspects of seventeenth-century theatre culture which may be said to have influenced this process. It also discusses the first Oedipus-based opera — a tragedia per musica entitled Edippo by Domenico Lalli, given with music by Pietro Torri in Munich on 22 October 1729.Less

The Transitional Decade I: Competition, 1732–7

Donald Burrows

in Handel

This chapter examines George Frideric Handel's career as the general manager of The King's Theatre, where he made his first attempts at transition from writing Italian opera to English oratorio. ... More

This chapter examines George Frideric Handel's career as the general manager of The King's Theatre, where he made his first attempts at transition from writing Italian opera to English oratorio. Handel's first English oratorio, Esther, was performed in 1732 where he indicated in advertisements that there was to be a lack of stage action. This element, combined with the music of the opera stars and the grand anthem style used in the coronation anthems sung in English, created the recipe for his future theatre career. The chapter concludes by describing his rivalry with the Opera of the Nobility group and his programme at Covent Garden in 1737 which was a repertory of twelve works: eight operas and four oratorios. The programme proved to be the end for the Opera of the Nobility but was also dangerous as Handel's health gave way towards the end of the season.Less

Making the World Weep (Problems with Opera)

Peter Franklin

in Reclaiming Late-Romantic Music: Singing Devils and Distant Sounds

Moving from the concert hall to the opera house (familiarly associated with elitism and expense), this chapter aims to uncover the character of opera as popular theater, not least Wagner’s. An ... More

Moving from the concert hall to the opera house (familiarly associated with elitism and expense), this chapter aims to uncover the character of opera as popular theater, not least Wagner’s. An evocation of the experience of Parsifal in Bayreuth in 2012 leads to a discussion of Italian opera, often scorned in Germany in the nineteenth century for its vulgarity and crowd-pleasing aspects. Puccini's Suor Angelica is considered as an emblematic late-romantic opera, whose subtlety, tragic power, and magical climax might help us better understand and reevaluate its composer's claim to want to “make the world weep.”Less

Phaedra’s Handmaiden: Tragedy as Comedy and Spectacle in Seventeenth-Century Opera

Wendy Heller

in Ancient Drama in Music for the Modern Stage

This chapter explores the tension between theory and practice in mid-seventeenth century Italian opera, characterized by an apparent lack of interest in the literary substance of ancient tragedy and ... More

This chapter explores the tension between theory and practice in mid-seventeenth century Italian opera, characterized by an apparent lack of interest in the literary substance of ancient tragedy and an almost excessive preoccupation with its theoretical underpinnings. The first part examines some of the contemporary writings about theatrical genres, including several of the oft-cited comments of Venetian librettists, in which the persistent self-deprecating and apologetic manner has been taken by scholars as evidence of the librettists' awareness of the literary inferiority of their creations. It demonstrates how these comments coalesced into a surprisingly coherent aesthetic — one in which the trappings of tragedy were readily translated into spectacle and comedy. The second part of the chapter considers how this aesthetic manifested itself in several operas that adopted elements from Greek tragedies. It examines in particular the performance of Fedra incoronata (‘Phaedra Crowned’, 1662), the first part of an elaborate trilogy presented in Munich to celebrate the birth of Maximilian II Emanuel (1662–1726), son of Ferdinand Maria, Elector of Bavaria, and Henriette Adelaide of Savoy.Less

The Transitional Decade II: Confusion, 1737–41

Donald Burrows

in Handel

This chapter considers George Frideric Handel's career after the famous Covent Garden programme where he stood triumphant against the Opera of the Nobility. The period 1737–41 saw Handel switching ... More

This chapter considers George Frideric Handel's career after the famous Covent Garden programme where he stood triumphant against the Opera of the Nobility. The period 1737–41 saw Handel switching between Italian opera and English oratorio in his work. He seemed to want to keep both options open, from season to season, developing one line or the other according to the opportunities that presented themselves. After writing and performing The ways of Zion do mourn for the funeral of Queen Caroline, Handel performed Faramondo and Serse, to prove to himself that he could repeat the intensity of the previous year's creative energy The chapter also describes how this period proved to be a turning point in his reputation with the London public. Although he would continue to have ‘enemies’ among influential opera patrons, he was becoming an accepted part of London life.Less

Operatic Battlefields, Theater of War

Flora Willson

in Hearing the Crimean War: Wartime Sound and the Unmaking of Sense

Willson’s chapter explores how opera inflected listening for British officers and tourists in and near Crimea: in particular it discusses operatic perceptions in the Pera district of Constantinople, ... More

Willson’s chapter explores how opera inflected listening for British officers and tourists in and near Crimea: in particular it discusses operatic perceptions in the Pera district of Constantinople, the site of the city’s first opera house, as well as ways of listening to traveling military bands connected with the Ottoman imperial court. It also examines European elites’ perceptions of foreign battlefields and cityscapes, with the aim of examining a larger shift in the history of listening: that of middle-class audiences falling silent in theatrical spaces during the nineteenth century, supposedly to devote more concentrated attention to elite music. The chapter argues that these listening habits, formed in part in the opera house, persisted well beyond its hallowed enclosures when war came to extend the complex geographies of attentive listening.Less

Opera Librettos and Greek Tragedy in Eighteenth-Century Venice: The Case of Agostino Piovene

Robert C. Ketterer

in Ancient Drama in Music for the Modern Stage

The period between 1690 and 1710 saw a predilection for violence and tragic denouement in Italian opera, which produced plots nearer to what we think of as tragedy. A part of this shift towards a ... More

The period between 1690 and 1710 saw a predilection for violence and tragic denouement in Italian opera, which produced plots nearer to what we think of as tragedy. A part of this shift towards a classical ideal of tragedy in musical drama was Venetian librettist Agostino Piovene, who showed an imaginative approach and attractive versatility in adapting his source materials. This chapter examines Piovene's translations of Greek tragedy. It places them in the context of his libretto production to illustrate how direct experience with the performance of Greek tragedy in combination with his familiarity with neoclassical theory had a formative effect on his dramaturgy.Less

The Early Operas (I):: Farse for Venice’s Teatro San Moisè

Richard Osborne

in Rossini: His Life and Works

In 1810, Italian opera was in serious need of a rebirth. Such emergent talent as there was generally lacked personality, vision, and the power to innovate. Gioachino Rossini, who possessed all three ... More

In 1810, Italian opera was in serious need of a rebirth. Such emergent talent as there was generally lacked personality, vision, and the power to innovate. Gioachino Rossini, who possessed all three qualities, was 18 when he made his professional debut at the Teatro San Moisè with La cambiale di matrimonio. As he later recalled, conditions in shrewdly administered theatres such as the San Moisè were ideal for an apprentice composer. The cast usually consisted of six singers. There was no chorus. Working to a strictly limited budget, with minimal scenery and limited rehearsal time, the company would stage two or three new one-act operas per season. The designation of these operas was farsa, a term which has little to do with the English word “farce.” Some of them are funny but not all.Less

The Gods out of the Machine…and their Comeback*

Bruno Forment

in Ancient Drama in Music for the Modern Stage

This chapter first considers the presence of both of human and divine interests in Italian opera. It then describes how French classicist drama found its way into Italian libretto adaptations, and in ... More

This chapter first considers the presence of both of human and divine interests in Italian opera. It then describes how French classicist drama found its way into Italian libretto adaptations, and in so doing, pushed the narratives of Italian opera — history, myth, romance, or pastoral — through the rationalist filter. However, Italian opera overcame its rationalist hubris and re-endorsed its own past. No longer feeling the need to enshrine itself as a descendant of spoken tragedy, the dramma per musica crossed the borders of reason to enter the realm of the marvellous, thus exploring topoi that had formerly been locked up behind the bars of Aristotelianism.Less