Opera

C

The Overture

In most operas, an orchestral overture or short prelude (usually woven from musical themes in the opera itself) sets the production in motion. Overtures are often performed as detachable concert pieces, running anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes. Some were thematically independent of the operas they preceded and could even be recycled. The overture of The Barber of Seville (1816), by Italian composer Gioacchino Rossini, had already been used by Rossini for Aureliano in Palmira (1813) and Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra (1815). As the 19th century progressed, composers increasingly sought unity of mood and thematic material in their overtures. Gradually, however, the overture gave way to the prelude, which—particularly in the case of Wagner—might have the dimensions of an overture, but more importantly provided a thematic résumé of the opera and led directly into it.

The independent overture gradually declined in importance. By the end of the 19th century and the premiere of Tosca (1900) by Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, three abrupt chords were all the 'prelude' given before plunging abruptly into the action. In many contemporary operas, musical preliminaries have been completely eliminated. In some, such as Lear (1978) by German composer Aribert Reimann, the action begins well before the music itself.

III

Opera as Drama

The drama in opera is not only a function of the text but of the music as well. The original creators of opera called their productions dramma per musica (drama through music), and the tradition can be traced back to medieval religious plays, which also used music to tell their stories. An opera is more than a play with song and dance inserted, however. Plays are complete in themselves, but because opera requires a severely compressed text (time must be allowed for musical development), an opera without music is not even half of a dramatic entity. Music must not only carry the text, it must also provide subtext and fill out aspects of character and situation that the text can only hint at. This applies even to operas with considerable spoken dialogue, such as Beethoven’s Fidelio, where the music remains essential.

Few opera librettos (texts) could be performed successfully as stage plays; something is missing that only music can supply. For this reason, few plays make suitable librettos without liberal pruning of verbal imagery, simplification of plot, and reduction in cast. The music needs room to breathe—to repeat itself, to develop instrumentally and harmonically, and to change pace and color as the situation demands. Since singing diminishes the intelligibility of a text, the words themselves must not be too hard to follow. Florid syntax has been the downfall of operas such as Montezuma (1964) by American composer Roger Sessions, while straightforwardness and clarity of dramatic diction have ensured the success of such works as Les Dialogues des Carmèlites (1957), by French composer Francis Poulenc, and Peter Grimes (1945), by British composer Benjamin Britten.

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Opera, then, must forgo a good play’s verbal richness and precision, but in its music it gains the richness of a language that speaks directly to the emotions. The source for Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (1904), a play about a Japanese geisha and a callous American naval lieutenant, now seems hopelessly quaint and even racist, but Puccini’s score has made this drama of betrayed love timeless.

In writing music that will serve the dramatic needs of the text, most composers employ certain conventions, such as writing for the higher registers of a voice or instrument to indicate passion, or employing dissonant harmonies to depict fear. These conventions are not wholly arbitrary, however. Voices do rise when people become excited, and the physical sensation of fear is inharmonious. A skilled opera composer will use still more subtle techniques to enhance the dramatic effect of the music. The melodic line must be suited to the words it is meant to carry, and the harmony must convey the ebb and flow of feeling and action. Rhythms vary for impetuous declamation, stately ceremonial ensembles, love duets, or arias. Composers also draw upon the orchestra to serve dramatic ends, such as using the timbre (quality or color of sound) and tonal possibilities of specific instruments for particular effects. Many great composers, such as Christoph Willibald Gluck and Richard Strauss of Germany, Claude Debussy of France, and Alban Berg of Austria, have emphasized the dramatic in their operas.

IV

The Opera Repertory

Today’s typical opera repertory mainly comprises works from the 19th century, plus a few from the late 18th and early 20th centuries. Romanticism, with its passion for noble deeds and faraway places, stimulated opera composition all over Europe throughout the 19th century. The plots, which usually revolved around romantic love thwarted by social or political forces, promoted a message of human equality in an era when rule by monarchs and aristocrats was giving way to revolutionary movements and a growing merchant class. The rise of the middle class guaranteed opera a vast, ready-made audience.

The conventional operatic repertory tends to reduce the many classifications of the past to two broad areas: tragedy and comedy. Composers have written considerably more tragic operas than comedic operas, and there are more operas, both tragic and comic, in Italian and German than in other languages. The French-language share of the repertory is comparatively small. A growing number of operas in the Russian and Czech languages have entered the repertory; once invariably performed in translation, they are sung more and more in their original tongue.

For the most part, fashion determines repertory. The prevalence or cultivation of certain voice types also has considerable influence, although opera companies regularly perform certain operas—such as Verdi’s Aïda (1871)—whether the proper voices are available or not. During an era when operas with coloratura (highly ornamented singing) or allegorical plots fell out of fashion, few people bothered to learn how to present them. The operas of German-born composer George Frideric Handel, for example, were neglected until Australian singer Joan Sutherland, Americans Marilyn Horne and Beverly Sills, and others began to perform them. Not only did the public rediscover the beauties of Handel’s operas, but also eventually vocal culture produced more singers able to cope with his florid compositions. The same phenomenon occurred with Rossini. The rediscovery of his vast output drastically altered the modern perception of a composer once thought of only in terms of The Barber of Seville. Indeed, by the late 20th century, when the composition of new operas had dwindled, much of the “new” ground being broken was that of the neglected past.

Similarly, brilliant performances of operas by Italians Luigi Cherubini and Vincenzo Bellini stimulated revivals of their works. As interest in discovering authentic historical performance practice rose during the late 20th century, performances of the operas of formerly neglected composers such as Cavalli, Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi, and French composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier became more frequent. All such revivals require scrupulous musical attention and editing, especially the works of 17th-century composers, whose dynamics (loudness and softness) and instrumentation can only be guessed at because surviving documentation is often either fragmentary or contradictory. The seemingly endless repeats in the arias of Handel and of Neapolitan composers of the early 18th century can prove trying for modern audiences; audiences of Handel’s time commonly left their seats during the performance, either to socialize or to eat. All too often, the obscurity and expansiveness of a score have tempted a conductor or director today to abridge, rearrange, interpolate, or even rewrite the opera, often to the extent that the audience hears a distant relative of the opera listed in the program.

V

The Singers

Opera singers are usually classified as one of six types, according to the range of their voices. From highest to lowest, the three female voices are soprano, mezzo-soprano, and contralto. The male voices are tenor, baritone, and bass. Within each range there may be a variety of subdivisions, differentiating voice quality and style of singing. A coloratura soprano has a light and extremely flexible voice; she is trained in the execution of virtuoso passages featuring rapid scales, trills, and other ornamental displays. The lyric soprano has a voice of great clarity and beauty. The voice of the dramatic soprano is full and powerful, able to soar over a large orchestra. The distinction between lyric and dramatic voices occurs among tenors as well. There are also three major types of bass: the comic basso buffo; the basso profondo, who sings with a powerful, deep tone; and the basso cantante, who sings the remaining 'straight' roles.

Certain conventions have arisen concerning the type of voice to which a composer assigns a given role. Heroes and heroines are usually tenors and sopranos. In general, the deeper the voice in an opera, the older or more experienced the character depicted. Thus an unsophisticated young woman, such as Gilda in Rigoletto, is a lyric soprano, while a temptress, such as Maddalena in the same opera, is a sultry mezzo-soprano. Similarly, a role cast for baritone is that of Figaro, the ingenious hero of both Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville, 1816) by Rossini and Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro, 1786) by Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The tenor voice is often reserved for the romantic lead. The parts of villains, sorcerers, and men of maturity and power (Mozart’s Don Giovanni is one example) are usually cast for bass-baritone or bass.

Changing tastes have played a major role in operatic singing styles. Techniques of attack (onset), release, and vibrato (the 'throb' in a trained voice) have varied throughout operatic history. Jacopo Peri, an Italian singer who wrote one of the earliest surviving operas (Dafne, 1598), is likely to have sung with little or no vibrato, in keeping with standard practice at the end of the Renaissance. Within a century, though, the cult of the star singer was flourishing, first in Naples and then throughout Europe, and a fairly liberal use of vibrato became fashionable.

During opera’s infancy, in the 17th and early 18th centuries, the parts of female heroes and villains were often sung by male sopranos and altos—the castrati, whose vocal development had been arrested by means of castration before their voices dropped. 'Long live the little knife,' was the cry of their fans. These singers trained their voices for the utmost in range and flexibility, combining the muscular power of a dramatic tenor with the altitudinous range of a coloratura soprano. The most famous of these was Farinelli, whose soprano voice was deemed more powerful than a trumpet.

Virtuosic female singers were also active during opera’s early years, however; one such was 18th-century mezzo-soprano Faustina Bordoni, wife of composer Johann Hasse, whose ability to sustain a note was legendary. These singers held great sway with the composers whose music they sang. Some even composed operas themselves or (as was the case with Farinelli) directed opera troupes. Composers expected singers to embellish melodies with improvised ornamentation, which singers did in profusion and with varying dramatic aptness. The tenors in Rossini’s operas were expected to be as expert in coloratura technique as the sopranos and mezzos they partnered. The resurgence of this skill in the 20th century gave new life to Rossini’s vast and varied operatic output.

One 18th-century fashion, the basso buffo, has remained essentially unchanged since its inception. The garrulous, easily outwitted old man, a common basso buffo character, is a venerable figure in operatic tradition that originated in the commedia dell’arte, a form of improvisational theater that arose around 1550. The role’s characteristic broad effects and rapid patter do not preclude inventive interpretation, so long as the singer observes the proper style. It is likely that the low comedy of Italian composer Domenico Cimarosa is played out today much as it was more than 200 years ago.

The clear and brilliant bel canto (Italian for “beautiful singing”), favored by Mozart, Rossini, and other composers of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, gradually gave way by the mid-19th century to a more powerful and dramatic type of singing. The development of modern harmony (principally by Wagner and French composer Hector Berlioz) gradually promoted the role of the orchestra from accompanist to protagonist, and singers needed more power if they were to be heard above the orchestra. The German Heldentenor (heroic tenor) evolved from powerful, bright-toned tenors, such as Josef Tichatschek and Albert Niemann, who premiered many of Wagner’s operas and could project their voices over his rich orchestration.

Verdi’s later works and those of his successors called for tenors and sopranos whose voices combined bulk with carrying power. The demands of romantic opera, which arose in the 19th century, have sometimes necessitated performances that run counter to a composer’s ideal. Richard Strauss, for example, conceived of his Salome as “a 16-year-old with the voice of an Isolde” (a Wagner role that requires a hefty voice). Strauss’s orchestration is so dense that any soprano who can plausibly sing Salome will likely have sung for many years and be robust of build.

The opera stars of the past have become legends. Italian tenor Enrico Caruso, probably the most popular singer in history, had the good fortune to come of age soon after the invention of the phonograph. American soprano Geraldine Farrar was followed about New York City by her imitative “Gerryflappers.” The towering Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin remained a permanent influence with his imperious, outsized dramatic naturalism. Kirsten Flagstad, a heroic Wagnerian soprano from Norway, and Lauritz Melchior, a bearish and big-voiced Danish-American tenor, both left their mark as Wagner specialists. Over time, the stature of these artists was attained by such greats as Swedish soprano Birgit Nilsson; Australian soprano Joan Sutherland; American sopranos Maria Callas, Marilyn Horne, Jessye Norman, Beverly Sills, and Leontyne Price; New Zealand-born soprano Kiri Te Kanawa; Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli; American tenor Richard Tucker; Italian baritone Tito Gobbi; German bass-baritone Hans Hotter; American baritone Robert Merrill; Canadian tenor Jon Vickers; Bulgarian bass Boris Christoff; Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti; and Spanish tenors Plácido Domingo and José Carreras.

VI

Opera Houses

With the advent of opera came the need for theaters built to accommodate and highlight its best qualities. Certain opera houses became associated with particular features, usually within the genre of opera that helped to create the house. The original Paris Opéra, completed in 1875 and housed in the Palais Garnier, was noted for spectacular display in its productions as well as for its ornate design. Its staircase and foyer seem to have been designed to vie with the ballets and exotic processionals that appear on its stage. The Bayreuth Festspielhaus in Germany, completed in 1876 to accommodate Wagner’s vast music dramas, focuses its bank of seats on a deep stage, in imitation of Greek amphitheaters. The orchestra sits under the stage, within a pit, diffusing the sound and allowing the singers to be heard. The original Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, built in 1883, was conceived as a showcase for the world’s best singers and for many of its fashionable box-holders. Its auditorium was so deep that the boxes commanded as good a view of each other as of the relatively shallow stage.

Opera-house design developed in a way that mirrored the social history of opera itself. The art form began as an attempt to recreate the drama of classical Greece. The first operas were therefore suitable for performance in the Teatro Olimpico (completed 1583) in Vicenza, Italy, a building by architect Andrea Palladio based upon classical design. The horseshoe configuration that developed in later opera houses reflected social class distinctions with its tiers of boxes that fanned out from a royal box. This form is preserved at La Scala (1778) in Milan, La Fenice in Venice (1792), the Teatro San Carlo of Naples (1737), and London’s Covent Garden (1858). It persists—with fewer boxes and deeper tiers, thanks to steel construction—in such American opera houses as New York’s Brooklyn Academy of Music (1908), San Francisco’s War Memorial Auditorium (1932), and the Lyric Opera of Chicago (1929). More modern settings are provided by the present Metropolitan Opera House (1966) at New York City’s Lincoln Center and the Sydney Opera House (1973) in Sydney, Australia.

A more democratic seating arrangement arose when Wagner, restricting boxes and demanding absolute concentration from his audiences, ranked seats in identical, unbroken rows at the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth, Bavaria (an arrangement since known as continental seating). Wagner’s aim seems to have been carried a step further by the arena theater, in which the audience is seated on all sides of the stage. Ancient Roman arenas have been used for opera in this way in Arles, France, and Verona, Italy. Touring opera singers sometimes perform in sports stadiums and similar venues.

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