Learning Kit No.

8
st
(1 Year, Music in English)
December 3rd, 2020

THE INVENTION OF OPERA

Opera – it. Plural for ‘work’ (sing. opus – pl. opera) – is a complex genre, featuring
versified theatre, music, dance, stage production
- the text of the opera is written in a libretto (it. ‘little book’)
- Continuous or near-continuous singing
- Staged, with scenery, costumes, and action
- the model would be the rebirth of the Greek ancient tragedy.
- it is divided into acts (5 acts, later reduced to 3 acts)
- first subjects were mythological, later historical.
- it involves: orchestra, singers, chorus, dancers
- main divisions of the act: aria, duet, ensemble, recitativo, arioso, chorus etc.

Forerunners of Opera

Renaissance antecedents
Pastoral drama – a play in verse, interspersed with incidental music and songs
- Stories of idyllic love in rural settings
- first staged in 1471: Favola d'Orfeo (The Orpheus Legend)
- the earliest opera composers borrowed heavily from this genre.

Madrigal
- Solo madrigals and madrigal cycles had simple plots and expressed emotion.
- Best-known was L'Amfiparnaso (The Slopes of Parnassus, 1594) by Orazio Vecchi
(1550-1605).

Intermedio (pl. intermedii) was the most direct antecedent.

- Musical entertainment before, after, and between the acts of plays
- There were usually six for each play.
- Subjects were pastoral, allegorical, or mythological.
- For special occasions they could be very elaborate, including chorus, dance
numbers, costumes, and staged effects.
 - they were composed and staged as part of wedding festivities and other important
events
- earliest composers of opera had previously written intermedii

Emilio de' Cavalieri, composer and choreographer

Ottavio Rinuccini, poet
Jacopo Peri, singer-composer
Giulio Caccini, singer-composer
Florentine count Giovanni de' Bardi conceived of the unifying themeâ €”the power
of ancient Greek music.
- during the Renaissance, a renewed interest for the ancient Greek cultures arised.
Tragedy was believed to have been entirely sung (it was later proven to be wrong!)

The Florentine Camerata

- A group of scholars in Florence who discussed literature, science, and the arts.
- The host was Count Bardi.
- Members included Vincenzo Galilei (ca. 1520-1591), theorist and composer, son of the
famous astronomer, and Giulio Caccini (ca. 1550-1618).
- Vincenzo Galilei's Dialogo della musica antica et della moderna (Dialogue of Ancient and
Modern Music, 1581)
- Argued against counterpoint and madrigalisms
- The solo melody was ideal for emotional expression.
- The term for accompanied vocal melodies of this era, including the type described
by Galilei, is monody.

Caccini's Le nuove musiche (1602)

- Collection of songs (arias) in monody and solo madrigals
- The introduction describes ornaments and their use.
- Ornamentation enhances the message of the text.
- experimentation with the basso continuo and figured bass
- The melody is shaped to the natural declamation of the text.

The First Musical Stage Works

Dafne (1598)
- Poetry by Ottavio Rinuccini, music by singer-composer Jacopo Peri
- Only fragments of the music survive.

Rappresentatione di Anima et di Corpo (Representation of the Soul and Body, 1600)

- A musical morality play
- Music by Emilio de' Cavalieri
- Longer than any previous staged musical work.

L'Euridice (1600)
- Music by Peri, libretto by Rinuccini, and directed by Cavalieri
- Produced for the wedding of Maria de' Medici and King Henry IV of France
- Caccini also set this libretto to music. Caccini's setting is more melodious and lyrical.
- Peri considered his setting to be better suited for drama. Some of Caccini's music was
sung in the production of Peri's version.
- The settings by Peri and Caccini are the earliest surviving complete operas.
- The story demonstrates music's power to move the emotions.

The myth - Orfeo (Orpheus) descends into the underworld to weep through his
music. He persuades the underworld to restore his wife, Euridice, to life. The core of the
myth: the power of music to restore life!

- the Recitative style

- Peri invented a new idiom later known as recitative.
- A speech-song that was halfway between oratory and song
- Notes of the basso continuo are held while the voice moves freely through
consonances and dissonances.
- The voice simulates the free declamation of poetry.
- Consonances occur on all stressed syllables.

Aria
- Strophic form
- Tuneful and rhythmic
- Introduced by a brief sinfonia, an ensemble piece that serves as a prelude
- The ritornello (Italian for "small return") is an instrumental refrain that follows each
stanza.
Recitative
- The bass chords have no rhythmic profile.
- The voice imitates the inflections and rhythms of poetic speech. It is dramatized through
musical effects: rests, dissonances, chromaticism, and unusual harmonic progressions.
- stile concitato (agitated) – used in opera recitatives – in order to portray distress, through
rush repeated notes.
Arioso – inbetween aria and recitative, a more melodious recitative.

Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, favola in musica (1607)

- The first work to show the full potential of opera
- Commissioned for performance in Mantua
- Alessandro Striggio is the librettist.
- The subject is the same as in L'Euridice.
- He organized the drama into five acts, each centered around a song by Orfeo and ending
with a chorus that comments on the situation.
- Monteverdi specified instruments in his score: recorders, cornetts, trumpets, trombones
(signigy the descent into the Underworld), strings, and continuo. A regal, a buzzy-sounding
reed organ, portrays the underworld.

- Arias are strophic, but strophes are varied to reflect the text (strophic variation).
- Recitative style varies depending on the situation in the drama.
- Ensembles and choruses provide contrast, with ritornellos as division points.
- tonal centres are used in accordance to certain characters or situations

Other operas of Monteverdi: Arianna (only Arianna’s Lament survives), Il ritorno d’Ulisse in
Patria (1640), L'Incoronazione di Poppea (Coronation of Poppea, 1643) – historical subject

- Rome became the center for opera development in the 1620s.

- The range of topics expanded to include epics, saints' lives, and comedy.
- Stage effects were spectacular (e.g., flames consuming devils).
- Recitative and aria became more clearly defined. Recitative became more speechlike.
Arias became melodious and were usually strophic.
- Extended finales for each act, including choral singing and dancing
- Two-part instrumental sinfonias introduced the operas (slow-fast).

Venice
- The first public theaters
- 1637: Teatro San Cassiano opened as the first public opera house. By 1678, there were
nine stages devoted to opera.
- Visitors who celebrated carnival season from December 26 to Lent attended operas in
public theaters.
- Stories for librettos were chosen for their dramatic content and opportunity for special
effects. Sources for plots included mythology, classic epics, and Roman history.
- A three-act structure replaced the earlier five-act convention.
- Choruses and dances were limited due to financial constraints.
- Recitative and aria became further delineated. Arias became very lyrical, with persistent
rhythmic motives and simple harmonies. There were more arias per act.
- The main composers were Francesco Cavalli (1602-1676) and Antonio Cesti (1623-
1669).
- Italian operas were performed in Paris in the 1640s.
- Austria became a major center of Italian opera. Cesti composed operas for the archduke of
Tyrol and for the imperial court at Vienna.

Italian opera at midcentury

- Many style features established during this era would remain standard for Italian opera
over the next two hundred years.
- Concentration on solo singing
- Separation of recitative and aria
- Use of varied styles
- Singers and spectacle replaced drama as the focus of interest.

- Opera began as an effort to place drama at the center of a staged musical performance, but
solo singing and spectacle soon overcame this effort.
- Later composers would seek to reform opera, bringing drama to the fore again.

Premiere – Mantua, 24 February 1607, selected audience (200 people), minor impact at
that time. It is nowadays considered to be the birth of opera!
The Libretto
- Written by Alessandro Striggio (the son), multicultural figure of the time, knew
classical languages (Greek, Latin).
- the libretto is based in the earlier version of Ottavio RInuccini (one of the greatest poets
of the time) used by Peri and Caccini in L'Euridice (1600)
- the libretto cumulates episodes from the two literary versions of the ancient myth
(Vergil – The Georgics and Ovid - Metamorphoses).
- as in Rinuccini, Striggio’s libretto is intensely poetic, in verse, but has a higher
preocuppation for structure (elements of symmetry, built like an arch:acts 1 and 5, 2 and 4, act 43
in the middle, around Orfeo’s aria, Possente spirito)
- element of novelty: the character La Speranza, guides Orfeo towards the entrance into
the Underworld.
- structure: 5 acts, according to the model of the Greek tragedy, begins with a Prologo
(the forerunner of the ouverture).
 The music
- the orchestra: giganticaccording to the standards of the time (40 instruments), the
instruments and the basso continuo create atmosphere.
- Monteverdi’s goal: „to depict real people, showcasing their real feelings and passions”.
- the opera has two different endings (score published in 1609 and republished in 1615):
1. Orfeo dies, is slaughered by the baccantae, 2. Orfeo is risen to the skies by his father, Apollo,
together with his lyre. None of the endings accept the lieto fine.
- recitatives are dramatized and well adapted to the unfolding of the action.
- soloistic moments (ancestors of the aria…) – highly melodic (more than in Peri’s
version Peri), lyrical and dramatic.
- the choir: fulfills both the role of the collective character and commentator on the action
(as in the Greek tragedy).
- Alegorical characters: La Musica, La Speranza.
- the unforseen element (Caronte falls asleep!) – for the first time in opera!
- Orfeo is mute before the Gods!
- christian elements (the loss of hope makes Orfeo’s attempt fail, the finale – the rising to
the skies).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EWX3p1ahWY (Giulio Caccini, L’Euridice, 1600)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcRFFmgVGlc (Claudio Monteverdi, Orfeu, 1607,
regia J. P. Ponnelle) L’Orfeo, favola in musica
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2_Ur3IiBDM (Stefano Landi, La morte d’Orfeo,
1619) – elementul comic!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=AcSarppKYDQ&list=PLZjX6oZLb3BiyYkXhcn15LBrYtjXcwVhh&index=3 (Stefano
Lando, La morte d’Orfeo, 1619, scena bacantelor)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLpe65m6JNY (Luigi Rossi, Orfeo, 1648. fragm.
Ah, piangete!), prima operă reprezentată pe tărâm francez
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MI3rU5gKK9E (Luigi Rossi, Orfeo, fragm., arie
Euridice, Mio ben!)
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=gtQ2qyeoXdM&list=OLAK5uy_kHFvKNQDTwc2kCge36ThIM3KYg9Vqf2Kc (Antonio
Sartorio, L’Orfeo, 1673), operă-manifest, demitizarea personajului Orfeu.