Opera E-Book

Rob Weinberg

• Herausgeber: Elliott & Thompson
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 83

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Opera is one of the world's most dramatic art forms. It inspires such dedication among its followers that many will travel the globe for a chance to watch their favourite operas performed in world-famous venues. This handy reference guide from Classic FM covers the major milestones and composers in the history of opera, featuring some of the greatest works ever written, to help you discover the extraordinary world of opera. Some of classical music's most famous works are found in opera, and from film soundtracks to football stadiums, it reaches a vast worldwide audience. Packed full of essential information, this pocket-sized handbook explores the key styles in the genre, from the Baroque era to the modern masters, the greatest composers, voices and venues, as well as recommending essential operas to see and tracks to download. Classic FM's Handy Guides are a fun and informative set of introductions to standout subjects within classical music, each of which can be read and digested in one sitting: a perfect collectible series whether you're new to the world of classical music or an aficionado.

Leseprobe

OPERA

Contents

Introduction

Preface

1 Opera History in a Nutshell

2 The Men Behind the Words

3 Operatic Voices

4 Where to See Opera

5 What To Do at the Opera

6 40 Essential Operas

7 The Top 30 Opera Tracks to Download

8 Useful Operatic Terms

About Classic FM

About the Author

Index

Introduction

At Classic FM, we spend a lot of our time dreaming up wonderful ways of making sure that as many people as possible across the UK have the opportunity to listen to classical music. As the nation’s biggest classical music radio station, we feel that we have a responsibility to share the world’s greatest music as widely as we can.

Over the years, we have written a variety of classical music books in all sorts of shapes and sizes. But we have never put together a series of books quite like this.

This set of books covers a whole range of aspects of classical music. They are all written in Classic FM’s friendly, accessible style and you can rest assured that they are packed full of facts about classical music. Read separately, each book gives you a handy snapshot of a particular subject area. Added together, the series combines to offer a more detailed insight into the full story of classical music. Along the way, we shall be paying particular attention to some of the key composers whose music we play most often on the radio station, as well as examining many of classical music’s subgenres.

These books are relatively small in size, so they are not going to be encyclopedic in their level of detail; there are other books out there that do that much better than we could ever hope to. Instead, they are intended to be enjoyable introductory guides that will be particularly useful to listeners who are beginning their voyage of discovery through the rich and exciting world of classical music. Drawing on the research we have undertaken for many of our previous Classic FM books, they concentrate on information rather than theory because we want to make this series of books attractive and inviting to readers who are not necessarily familiar with the more complex aspects of musicology.

For more information on this series, take a look at our website: www.ClassicFM.com/handyguides.

Preface

Opera – to quote Dr Johnson – is an ‘exotic and irrational entertainment’, one that can elicit a wide range of responses from people. As with any form of music, you will find those who are so passionate about the genre that they spend their entire lives booking their holidays around performances and festivals; collecting, listening to and comparing recordings; and talking animatedly about every aspect of it with like-minded enthusiasts.

And at the other end of the spectrum, there are the ones who simply find it hard to take – or, at least, they say they do. Just hearing the word ‘opera’ spreads revulsion across their faces, their minds suddenly conjuring up the stereotypical image of a larger-than-life soprano, supposedly playing a consumptive teenager in her dying moments, managing to shriek at high pitch for several minutes.

Yet, between these two extremes are the football fans who still get goosebumps whenever they hear Pavarotti singing ‘Nessun dorma’; the millions who vote on TV talent shows for a talented amateur with operatic aspirations; the summertime outdoor concert-goers who’ve tapped their feet along with ‘La donna è mobile’ while their smoked salmon sarnies turned to mush in a downpour; or the movie lovers whose breath was taken away by the use of a Mozart aria in The Shawshank Redemption or The Ride of the Valkyries booming out of helicopters over Vietnam in Apocalypse Now.

If you count yourself among any of the above, this book is for you. Consider it a small, assisted – and hopefully helpful – step into a sublime and often ridiculous art form, offering a taste of the many delights to be discovered.

one

Opera History in a Nutshell

The word ‘opera’ derives from the Italian term opera in musica, meaning ‘work in music’. Having an Italian name, it’s perhaps not surprising to learn that opera began during the Italian Renaissance a little more than 400 years ago.

Baroque Pioneers

The Baroque era lasted roughly from around 1600 to 1750. The earliest works emerged from the discussions of a group of brainy musicians, writers and noblemen, known as the Florentine Camerata. They were based in Florence and most of the music they came across consisted of either choral singing in a religious setting or very florid madrigals. The Camerata wanted to revive the tradition of Greek theatre as they understood it to have been: sung rather than spoken. So they set out to combine music and text to tell gripping stories from classical mythology.

In 1597, one of their members, Jacopo Peri (1561–1633), wrote what is generally considered to be the first known opera, Dafne, in which he himself played the role of Apollo. It was a big success but hardly any music from it survives. Three years later, Peri composed another work, Euridice, based on the Greek legend that went on to become the subject of so many operas. It tells the story of heartbroken Orpheus venturing to Hades to retrieve his deceased wife Euridice. Peri’s version was composed for the wedding of King Henry IV of France and his bride, Marie de’ Medici of Florence. It’s the earliest opera for which the score still exists today and already it’s noticeable that Peri was experimenting with a new style of vocal delivery – something midway between speech and song where a solo voice was accompanied by simple chords played on a harpsichord or lute. This style of singing became known as recitative and the accompaniment as continuo.

As opera began to spread beyond Florence, it found its first major practitioner in the person of Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643), composer to the Duke of Mantua. Monteverdi’s own version of the Orpheus story, L’Orfeo, premiered in 1607 and took opera to a new level of sophistication. In it the poetry and the music began to become equal partners. The protagonists were given real human feelings and characteristics, and orchestral instruments began to play a significant role. The continuo became more varied, perhaps plucked on strings or provided by an organ.

The first public opera house in Venice – the Teatro di San Cassiano – opened in 1637 and Monteverdi was commissioned to write a new work for it. Adone (1639) was such a hit that it ran continuously for six months. In 1642, his last and greatest work L’incoronazione di Poppea (‘The Coronation of Poppea’) told the steamy story of the mistress of the Roman emperor Nero. Unlike other operas up to that point, Poppea was rooted in historical fact rather than legend. It also features one of opera’s first stunning love duets, ‘Pur ti miro’, which nowadays is almost universally thought not to be by Monteverdi at all, but a colleague who worked on Poppea or one of its early revivals.

Thanks to the efforts of touring companies from Italy, opera began to spread throughout the rest of Europe. It took a while longer to catch on in France but, when it did, a different style evolved which combined the French nobility’s passion for dance with simpler yet more expressive music. French opera’s first great practitioner was Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–1687), who was actually an Italian serving as the court composer for King Louis XIV. Lully’s first opera, Cadmus et Hermione (1674), was a great success; the king was reportedly ‘extraordinarily satisfied with this superb spectacle’. Lully pioneered special effects, made the dance an essential component of his works – much to the king’s pleasure – and added ever more instruments to the opera orchestra. The Belgian film Le Roi danse (2000) brilliantly recreates the court of Louis XIV seen through the eyes of Lully.

A native Frenchman, Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764) built on the foundations established by Lully. Rameau was already fifty when he wrote his first opera but went on to create many more. While retaining the use of classical myths, dance episodes and spectacular effects, Rameau approached his texts on a more human scale, making the music bring the emotional content to life. This dramatic intensity caused controversy among the circles that had been raised on Lully. Hippolyte et Aricie (1733) was acclaimed by many as bold and daring, but dismissed by others as ‘turbulent’ and ‘a lot of noise’. Outraged Lullistes were worried that Rameau’s growing popularity would oust their hero’s music from the repertoire. They attacked Rameau’s operas, while Ramistes hailed their man as the ‘new Orpheus’. Long before the mods and rockers battled it out on Brighton’s seafront, tension escalated between the two music fan factions throughout the 1730s. When Rameau’s Dardanus opened in 1739, the composer was the subject of satirical engravings and a scurrilous poem, which resulted in physical violence.

Across the Channel, Henry Purcell (1659– 1695) composed the first English opera, Dido and Aeneas (1689). He was commissioned to write it for a girls’ school in London that had strong connections to the court and the London stage. The composer kept the opera short and easy to sing for his young performers. Dido told the story of the Queen of Carthage and her love for the heroic Aeneas from Troy. In general, however, English audiences in Purcell’s day didn’t have much of an appetite for opera; they preferred stage plays that included some musical elements and dance. Purcell’s remarkable ability for setting words in a subtle way that communicated emotions was lost on London audiences whose passion for opera would not be ignited until Handel arrived in their midst, early in the following century.

But in the rest of Europe, by the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, opera was hugely popular; there were some seventeen opera houses in Venice alone. Members of the nobility poured their money into creating opera companies and staging spectacular productions.

Two major styles emerged – opera seria (serious opera) and opera buffa