Enlightenment

Thought
• The leaders of the Enlightenment were French thinkers such as Voltaire,
Montesquieu and Rosseau.
• Voltaire and Rousseau analyzed social and political issues using reason and science,
sparking the Enlightenment.
• Rejected supernatural claims of traditional religion in favour of direct observations
of nature.
• Immanuel Kant held that objective reality can be understood only through empirical
evidence.
• Knowledge was codified in the monumental Encyclopédie (1751–1765), edited by
Diderot and d’Alembert.

Aims of Enlightenment
• To construct an ideal vision of life and nature
• Reflect realism, restraint, harmony, and order
• A humanitarian movement, interested in the promotion and welfare of human kind.
• Rulers promoted social reform, universal education and social equality.

Musical Tastes and Styles
• Audiences preferred a vocally conceived melody in short phrases over spare
accompaniment.
• Writers uphold that the language of music should be universal and should appeal to
all tastes.
• In art, artifice and complexity is rejected.
• Direct communication and ideas of ‘naturalness’ are valued.
• Taste can be governed by existing social norms and subject to the laws of ‘artistic
choice and imitation of nature’.


Opera Buffa (Comic Opera)
• Terms included drama giocoso, drama comico, commedia per musica.
• Full length work with six or more singing characters and sung throughout.
• Plots focused on ordinary people in the present day.
• Staged in public theaters and aimed at middle-class audience.
• Entertained and served a moral purpose.
• Provided caricatures of stock characters from the commedia dell’arte: the bungling
physicians, deceitful husbands and wives, vain ladies, awkward and clever servants.

Opera Seria (Serious Opera)
• Treated serious objects without comic scenes or characters.
• Received its standard form from the Italian poet Pietro Metastasio.
• 18th-century composers set his dramas to music frequently.
• Stories were often heroic and intend to promote morality.
• Characters often based on models of enlightened rulers.
• Famous characters such as Roman emperor Titus in La clemenza di Tito.
• Resolution of the drama often turns on a deed of heroism or renunciation.

Opera reform
• Some composers wanted opera to be more natural.
• Structures became more flexible and often unpredictable.
• Da capo aria forms were modified.
• Composers explored varied musical resources and made greater use of
recitativo obbligato and ensembles.
• The chorus and orchestra became more prominent.
• Some composers resisted singers’ demands for virtuosity.
• Asserted the primacy of the drama and the music instead of star singers.
• Two of the most important figures were Niccolò Jommelli (1714-1774) and Tommaso
Traetta (1727-1779)
• They were both Italian composers and worked at courts where French tastes were
important.
• Both worked towards a more cosmopolitan opera.
• Traetta incorporated French tragédie en musique characteristics and Italian opera
seria into his Ippolito et Aricia (1759).
• Traetta included choruses common in French tradition and Italian recitative and aria.


Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–1787)
• Born to Bohemian parents, Gluck traveled throughout Europe.
• He became court composer at Vienna and flourished in Paris under the patronage of
Marie Antoinette.
• His early operas are conventional.
• Inspired by the impresario Giacomo Durazzo, he led the reform of opera seria.
• With librettist Raniero de Calzabigi, he wrote two major operas for Vienna.
• Orfeo ed Euridice (1762)
• Alceste (1767)
• The preface to Alceste presents many of his views
• He did not want singers’ wishes or the da capo form to restrict the composer.
• He wanted the overture to be an integral part of the opera.
• He lessened the contrast between recitative and aria.
• His goal was to create music of “a beautiful simplicity.”

Orfeo ed Euridice (1762)
• First opera which Gluck collaborated with Ranieri Calzabigi.
• Recitatives, arias and choruses integrated into the scenes.
• The first Orfeo Gaetano Guadigni modelled his acting on actor David Garrick.
• Readapted 7 years later in Paris as Orphée et Euridice with a tenor in the title role.
• Gluck used two orchestras.
• The second included only strings, harp and harpsichord in pizzicato to imitate Orfeo’s
lyre playing.





Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)
Mozart’s Operas
• Mozart’s first opera was an opera buffa, La finta semplice (The Pretend Simpleton,
1769)
• La finta giardiniera (The Pretend Gardener, 1775) and Idomeneo (1781) were
composed on commission for Munich.
• Idomeneo shows reformist tendencies of Traetta and Gluck.
• The Singspiel Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Adbuction from the Harem, 1782)
established Mozart’s success and shows influences from Turkish Janissary bands.

Lorenzo Da Ponte (1749–1838)
• Lorenzo Da Ponte (1749–1838) provided librettos for Mozart’s next three operas.
• Da Ponte was the poet for the imperial court theater and later came to
America, where he became a professor in New York.
• All three operas were comic.
• Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro, 1786)
• Don Giovanni (Don Juan, 1787)
• Così fan tutte (All Women Are Like That, 1790)
• Da Ponte and Mozart gave greater depth to their characters.
• Include not only comic but also serious characters.
• Characters who occupy a middle ground between serious and comic = mezzo
carattere (middle character).
• In particular, Mozart excelled in using larger ensembles to depict character.

Don Giovanni (1787)
• Premiered in Prague.
• Mozart took the legendary character Don Juan as a rebel against authority.
• The plot mixes characters from opera seria and opera buffa.
• Based on the story of an amoral seducer Don Juan.
• Da Ponte and Mozart elevated the character of Giovanni into one who is fiercely
defiant in the face of common morality.
• He is an individualist and his pursuit of sexual gratification presents an opportunity
to display the different facets in his character.
• The heroic nature can be seen in his duel with Commendatore, he chaffs Leporello in
buffa style, woos Anna with courtly flattery, evades Zerlina.












The Roles of Opera in the 19th-century
• New operatic theaters were built around western Europe and extended to the
United States.
• These theaters were run for profit by an impresario, usually backed by government
subsidies or private support.
• Opera became a new platform for the middle to upper classes to display of their
social status.
• Opera became part of popular and elite culture.
• Music publication industry benefitted from popular arias rearranged and published
in various versions for performance by amateur performers.
• Italian opera highlighted a new style of singing termed as bel canto style.
• The orchestra played an important role in conveying drama in French and German
operas.
• Star singers, prima donnas fetched high rates and drew in large crowds.
• By later 19th century, the composer’s status and role was more prominent.
• 1850: A canon of opera repertory emerged with operas by Bellini, Rossini, Donizetti,
Meyerbeer, Weber, late Mozart operatic works

Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868)
• Rossini may have been the most famous composer in Europe in the 1820s.
• The popularity of his operas is partially due to his ability to blend opera buffa and
opera seria.
• The conventions that he created for Italian opera would endure for over fifty years.
• Rossini helped establish bel canto.
• Literally “beautifully singing,” the term refers to lyrical lines, effortless vocal
technique, and florid delivery.
• In bel canto, melody is the most important element.

Il barbiere di Siviglia (1816)
• Commedia in two acts to a libretto by Cesare Sterbini after Beaumarchais’ Le
barbiere de Séville.
• Premiered in Rome, Teatro Argentina, 20 February 1816.
• Count Almaviva/Lindoro – tenor
• Rosina – contralto
• Bartolo, a doctor in Seville – baritone
• Figaro, a barber – baritone
• Don Basiliio, music teacher - bass

Synopsis of Il barbiere di Siviglia
• Count Almaviva disguised as a poor student Lindoro tries to win the hand of Rosina.
Rosina’s guardian Dr Bartolo wants to marry her for himself and intends to stop
Almaviva’s advances. With the help of Figaro, the barber, Almaviva (Lindoro) plots
and tricks Bartolo to approach Rosina. In the end, Almaviva reveals his true identity,
manages to persuade Bartolo and marries Rosina.



Una voce poco fa from The Barber of Seville
• Rosina’s entrance aria, cavatina.
• Rosina sings of her love for the Count and determination to outwit her guardian.
• The aria juxtaposes two principal sections.
• An opening cantabile
• A faster cabaletta

Rossini’s operatic style
• Rossini combines tunefulness with snappy rhythms and clear phrases.
• The sparse orchestration lightly supports the voice and has occasional instrumental
solos for color.
• Harmonic schemes are simple and original; he favored third-related keys.
• A popular device is the “Rossini crescendo,” created by gradually getting louder as a
single phrase repeats.


19th-century Opera in Paris
• French opera was centered in Paris and largely influenced by politics.
• Napoleon’s rule allowed only three theatres to present opera.
• A new theater for French opera, the Opéra was built in 1821 during the Restoration.
• After the ‘July Revolution’ in 1830, the government subsidized operas with the royal
family contributing informally.
• Tickets were bought by the public and boxes were rented at high prices.
• The increasing power and interest of the middle class led to a new kind of opera:
grand opera.

Grand opera
• Leading figures
• Eugène Scribe, librettist
• Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791–1864), composer
• Spectacle was as important as music.
• Machinery
• Ballets
• Choruses
• Crowd scenes
• Meyerbeer and Scribe established the features of grand opera with two works:
• Robert le diable (Robert the Devil, 1831)
• Les Huguenots (1836)









Les Huguenots (1836)
• Written by Giacomo Meyerbeer with his librettist Eugène Scribe.
• Based on the Saint Bartholomew Massacre in France during the sixteenth century,
the opera relates the tragic fate of two lovers.
• Renewed interest through a novel by Mérimée in 1829 and the 1830 Revolution.
• A new kind of historical drama, where the real forces controlling historical events are
groups of people and not the rulers who failed to control them.
• The 1572 attempt to broker peace by Queen Marguerite de Valois between the
Catholics and Protestants later led to much bloodshed.
• Musically Meyerbeer borrowed a format from Italian opera finals:
• Orchestral introduction to scena - (scene) in dialogue that mixes short songs
and choruses
• A slow section
• A middle section with dialogue in accompanied recitative
• A final stretta or fast conclusion

Characters of Les Huguenots
• Queen Maguerite de Valois
• Valentine, Maguerite’s maid in waiting and daughter of Catholic Count of Saint-Bris
• Raoul de Nangis, Protestant nobleman
• Marcel, a zealous Protestant and Raoul’s servant
• Count of Nevers, whom Valentine was once betrothed to

Les Huguenots
• The combination of entertaining spectacle and glorious singing is exemplified in the
closing scene of Act II.
• A dramatic crowd scene
• Protestants sing Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott (A Mighty Fortress Is Our God),
giving the opera a political-religious flavor.
• Grand opera characteristics
• Five acts
• Large cast
• Ballet
• Dramatic scenery and lighting effects

Other grand operas
• William Tell (1829) by Rossini
• La muette de portici (The Mute Girl of Portici, 1828) by Rossini
• Ends with the eruption of Vesuvius
• The title role of a mute is danced.
• Les Troyens (1856–58) by Berlioz
• The libretto is from Virgil’s Aeneid.
• Berlioz condensed the narrative into a series of powerful scene-complexes
that incorporate ballets, processions, and other musical numbers.
• The traditions of grand opera survive into the twentieth century.


Giuseppe Verdi
• Verdi was the dominant opera composer in Italy for fifty years after Donizetti.
• Between the ages of twenty-six and eighty, Verdi composed twenty-six operas.
• His first opera, Oberto was a success.
• The death of his children and wife led him to despair and almost abandonment of his
composition career.
• The royalties earned from each opera offer Verdi more time to compose.

Verdi’s opera
• Opera was often a vehicle for expression of nationalistic ideas.
• Although Verdi supported unification, nationalism was not an overt element of his
operas.
• Verdi’s name became a patriotic rallying cry: “Viva Verdi” was an acronym for “Viva
Vittorio Emanuele Rè d’Italia” (Long live Victor Emmanuel, king of Italy)
• The opera Nabucco with the chorus ‘Va pensiero’, which was sung in unison became
an emblem for the Risorgimento
• 1842-1853 were the busiest years in Verdi’s career where he wrote for Rigoletto
(1851), Il trovatore (1853) and La traviata (1853).
• Luisa Miller (1849) relates an intimate story of personal tragedy.
• Rigoletto (1851) was adapted from a play by Victor Hugo.
• The period culminates in 1853 with Il trovatore and La traviata.

Verdi and Singers
• Verdi often worked with the original singers in mind and aim to enhance the abilities
of each performer.
• He sought control over what singers should sing and insisted that they performed as
written.
• The bel canto tradition of singing became obsolete and rejected embellishments and
improvisations.
• Verdi and Wagner believed that singers should be accomplished actors and should
be versed in theatrical and dramatic techniques.

La traviata (1853)
• La traviata is based on a novel La dame aux Camellias by Alexandre Dumas fils.
• The libretto is by Francesco Maria Piave.
• The title role is unusual in depicting a women that seems to be trapped between her
gilded life as a courtesan and someone who wants to lead a normal life.
• The Act III duet follows Rossini’s standard structure.
• In the tempo d’attacco, the lovers alternate phrases of a tuneful song.
• In the cantabile, they sing a simple and direct melody looking to the future.
• Tempo di mezzo
• Hope gives way to despair.
• Stark contrasts of style capture the changing moods.
• Cabaletta
• The form is AABA' with coda.
• The coda builds to a climax of despair.

Richard Wagner (1813–1883)
• Wagner was a crucial figure in nineteenth-century culture and one of the most
influential musicians of all times.
• He brought German Romantic opera to new heights.
• He created the music drama.
• Although the term was rejected by Wagner, he preferred the term opera or
Bühnenfestspiel.
• Wagner condemned superficial arias.
• Wagner’s orchestra plays a significant role in the drama.
• Wagner wrote extensively on a variety of topics in a series of writings such as The
Artwork of the Future (1850) and Opera and Drama (1851).
• Gesamtkunstwerk (total artwork): poetry, scenic design, staging, action, and music
work together to create a unified work of art.
• Wagner thought that art and his ideas on the Gesamtkunstwerk could help to reform
society.
• Wagner created drama on two levels.
• The inner drama: the orchestra
• The outer drama: the sung words
• The core of drama is in the music and the text are part of the musical texture.

Nationalism and Anti-Semitism in Wagner
• Wagner expressed his most radical nationalism in an anti-Semitic tract, Das
Judentum in der Musik (Judaism in Music), 1850.
• The reason for such radical views is his antipathy against Meyerbeer whom he once
admired.
• In order to establish his identity from Meyerbeer, Wagner attacked Meyerbeer’s
music saying that it lacked national roots.
• Wagner’s nationalistic views established the idea that only people of the same
ethnicity could be part of a nation.
The National Socialist party (Nazi) and especially Hitler appropriated Wagner’s operas as the
best of German culture

Operas
• Rienzi (1842), a grand opera
• Der fliegende Hollander (The Flying Dutchman, 1843), a romantic opera
• Tannhäuser (1845) and Lohengrin (1850)
• Adapted from Germanic legends about sin and redemption
• Feature a new, flexible, semi-declamatory vocal line
• Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelungen, 1848-52)
• Parsifal (1882)






Der Ring des Nibelungen
(The Ring of the Nibelungs)
• Wagner composed four music dramas based on Teutonic and Nordic legends.
• Das Rheingold (The Rhine Gold)
• Die Walküre (The Valkyrie)
• Siegfried
• Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods)

Der Ring des Nibelungen
(The Ring of the Nibelungs)
• Wagner built his own theater in Bayreuth, where he gave the first performance of
the Ring cycle in 1876.

Leitmotivs
• A leitmotif is a musical theme or motive associated with a person, thing, emotion, or
idea in the drama.
• Use of leitmotifs
• The meaning of the motive is usually established the first time it is heard.
• The leitmotif recurs whenever its subject appears or when it is mentioned.
• A leitmotif can be transformed and varied as the plot develops.
• Similarities among leitmotifs may indicate connections between the subjects
they signify.

Schopenhauer’s Influence
• Arthur Schopenhauer’s views about music impressed several Romantic composers.
• He believed that music embodied the deepest reality of human experience.
• He defined “Appearance” as the product of reason (words and ideas) and “Will” as
emotions; Will dominates.

Tristan und Isolde (1857-59)
• Wagner wrote the libretto, basing it on a thirteenth-century romance by Gottfried
von Strassburg.
• Was written between composing for Siegfried and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
• The tale of illicit love reflects the conflict between Will and Appearance.

Tristan und Isolde (1857-59), synopsis
Tristan has slain in combat Morold and, having been dangerously wounded, places
himself, without disclosing his identity, under the care of Morold’s affianced, Isolde. She
discerns who he is but she spares him and carefully tends him. Tristan also becomes
enamoured of her, but both deem their love unrequited. Soon after Tristan is dispatched by
Marke, King of Cornwall, that he may win Isolde as Queen for the Cornish king. While on the
ship to Cornwall, Isolde determines to end her sorrow by quaffing a death-potion; and
Tristan readily consents to share it with her. But Brangäne, Isolde’s companion, substitutes a
love-potion for the death-draught. This rouses their love to resistless passion. Not long after
they reach Cornwall, they are surprised in the castle garden by the King and his suite, and
Tristan is severely wounded. Kurwenal, Tristan’s faithful retainer, bears him to his native
place. Hither Isolde follows him, arriving in time to fold him in her arms as he expires.
Tristan und Isolde (1857-59)
• Prelude
• Chromatic harmony and delayed resolutions convey yearning.
• The opening motive suggests longing.
• The first chord—F–B–D-sharp–G-sharp— is known as “the Tristan chord.”
• Act 1, scene 5 shows the intertwining of action, scenery, and musical forces
• The passage uses a number of leitmotivs
• A rising chromatic motive represents longing.
• Tristan’s honor is developed throughout the section.
• The melodic idea at measure 64 is associated with the love potion.

Wagner’s influence
• More has been written about Wagner than any other musician.
• His view of the total artwork affected all later opera.
• A master of orchestral color, he influenced many composers.
• Later film music composers would integrate concepts of the leitmotif to signify
characters, moods, ideas.