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The Birth of Opera:

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... arts, and science in the home of Count Giovanni Bardi as early as the 1570s. ... Invariably, an aria sets a short poem made up of several stanzas. ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: The Birth of Opera:


1
CHAPTER 30
  • The Birth of Opera
  • Florence, Mantua, and Venice

2
  • Opera the term, which literally means "work,"
    was first employed in the Italian phrase opera
    drammatica in musica (a dramatic work, or play,
    set to music). In the West, opera first appeared
    in Florence, Italy, at the turn of the
    seventeenth century. The fundamental premise of
    opera is that sung music can heighten the
    emotional intensity of a dramatic text.
  • Libretto The text that conveys the story of the
    opera, written in poetic verse.

3
Early Opera in Florence
  • Florentine Camerata A "club" or "circle" of
    prominent Florentines gathered to discuss
    literature, arts, and science in the home of
    Count Giovanni Bardi as early as the 1570s. The
    members of the Camerata sought to create a modern
    music that approximated the vocal declamation of
    ancient Greek tragedy.
  • Vincenzo Galilei musician, scientist, and member
    of the Florentine Camerata. He is important to
    history for several reasons he was the father of
    the famous astronomer Galileo Galilei he was one
    of the earliest advocate of equal temperament
    he was one of the first to argue for a new style
    of solo singing in his important treatise Dialogo
    della musica antica, et della moderna (Dialogue
    on Ancient and Modern Music).

4
Funeste piagge
  • Stile rappresentativo a vocal expression
    somewhere between song and declaimed speech
    advocated by the members of the Camerata. The
    singer emphatically declaimed the text so that
    the pitches and rhythms of the voice matched
    exactly the rhythms, accents, and sentiments of
    the text. The bass moves more rapidly or slowly
    as the text requires.

5
Composer-singer Jacopo Peri portraying the
mythological poet-singer Arion in Florence in 1589
  • Ottavio Rinuccini Florentine court poet and
    author of the early opera libretti Dafne (1598)
    and Euridice (1600), the latter based on the
    story of Orpheus and Euridice.
  • Jacopo Peri Florentine composer and singer, he
    created the first true operas the now mostly
    lost score to Rinuccini's Dafne (1598), a unified
    multi-scene drama entirely sung and the first
    completely preserved score to Rinuccini's
    Euridice (1600).
  • Giulio Caccini Florentine composer, singer, and
    music teacher. Only months after the performance
    of Peri's Euridice, he rushed into print his own
    setting of Rinuccini's libretto, intent on making
    sure his own Euridice was seen to be as timely
    and novel as Peri's. In 1602 he published Le
    nuove musiche (The New Music), a collection of
    solo madrigals and strophic solo songs.

6
  • The Orpheus Legend is the mythological tale of
    the poet-singer Orpheus, the son Apollo, of the
    Greek god of the sun and of music. Orpheus (in
    Italian Orfeo) falls in love with the beautiful
    human Euridice, who dies shortly after their
    marriage as a result of a snake bite. Through
    the divine musical powers of his voice, Orpheus
    descends to the Underworld determined to restore
    Euridice to life. This he nearly accomplishes,
    overcoming the furies of Hades with the beauty of
    his expressive song. This mythological tale is
    important to the history of opera as numerous
    composers would set it to dramatic music over the
    next three centuries.

7
  • In the preface to Le nuove musiche, Caccini was
    first to describe early Baroque vocal ornaments,
    which he also wrote out directly in the score
    (see Anthology, No. 80).
  • Esclamazioni the inflections of longer notes by
    means of slight crescendos and diminuendos.
  • Passaggio the practice of filling in larger
    melodic intervals with running scales.
  • Trillo a repeating percussive effect placed on a
    single pitch.
  • Gruppo the counterpart of our modern
    neighbor-note trill.

8
Early opera in Mantua Monteverdi's Orfeo.
  • Apparently inspired by Peri's Euridice, Claudio
    Monteverdiin the early 1600s director of music
    at the northern court of Mantuatook up the
    legend of Orpheus and Euridice in his opera
    titled Orfeo (1607), based on a new libretto by
    Alessandro Striggio. Compared to earlier
    settings of the Orpheus legend, Monteverdi's is a
    richer, more opulent score. As well as a larger
    number and variety of instruments, Orfeo features
    diverse kinds of music choral songs, choral
    dances, instrumental interludes, and various
    kinds of solo singing.
  • Toccata an instrumental piece for keyboard or
    other instruments, requiring the performer to
    touch the instru-ment with great technical
    dexterity. Literally meaning "a touched thing," a
    toccata is an in instrumental showpiece.
    Monteverdi's Orfeo opens with such a "toccata"
    (Anthology, No. 81a), a brief fanfare that also
    exemplifies the remarkable variety of instruments
    of the Baroque period.

9
  • Recitative musically heightened speech that in
    opera usually tells the audience what has
    happened. As it attempts to mirror the natural
    stresses, the stile recitativo ("recited style")
    is often made up of rapidly repeating notes
    followed by one or two longer notes at the end of
    phrases, after which the reciter might rest to
    catch a breath (Ex. 30-3).
  • Simple recitative A recitative that is
    accompanied only by the basso continuo.

10
  • Arioso style a manner of singing halfway between
    a recitative and a full-blown aria. It involves
    fewer repeating pitches and is rhythmically more
    elastic than a purely declamatory recitative, but
    it is not as song-like and expansive as an aria.

11
  • Aria Italian for "song" or "ayre," is more
    florid, more expansive, and more melodious than
    recitative or arioso. Invariably, an aria sets a
    short poem made up of several stanzas. Indeed, a
    closed strophic poem in the libretto became a cue
    to the composer to create a lyrical aria. While
    the recitative maintains a narrative function,
    the expressive lyricism and affective rhetorical
    power of an aria provides the musical high points
    of most operas. When set for two or three
    singers, an aria is called a "duet" or "trio."
  • Strophic variation aria An aria in which the
    same melodic and harmonic plan appears, with
    slight variation, in each subsequent strophe.
    Possente spirto from Monteverdi's Orfeo
    (Anthology, No. 81b-d) is an example of a
    strophic variation aria.

12
Early opera in Venice
  • When the first public theater opened in Venice in
    1637, opera as we know it today was born. While
    in Florence, Rome, and Mantua opera was sponsored
    by aristocratic courts, in Venice it became the
    enterprise of wealthy merchant families who saw
    it as a way to make money. The audience was no
    longer a select group of two-hundred aristocratic
    guests, but a fee-paying crowd of as many as
    1,500 drawn from many sections of society.
  • The transition from courtly to commercial opera
    led to important changes star singers acquired
    great importance and wealth as opera houses
    competed amongst themselves for audience more
    and more, composers were forced to tailor the
    music to suit the voice of leading singers, while
    librettists wrote texts that would appeal to
    their audience stage machinery and elaborate
    sets created an air of the spectacular (Ex. 30-3).

Ships sail on the high seas as gods descend from
heavens in Giacomo Torelli's stage set for the
opera Bellerofonte (Venice, 1642).
13
  • In 1613 Monteverdi quit his job in Mantua and
    moved to Venice, where he had accepted the
    prestigious position of maestro di cappella
    (director of music) at St. Mark's Basilica. In
    1640, three years after the first public theater
    was opened for business in Venice, Monteverdi
    returned to the operatic stage apparently for the
    first time since his Mantuan years. He did so
    with Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (The Return of
    Ulysses), followed by Le nozze d'Enea (The
    Marriage of Aeneas, 1641) and L'incoronazione di
    Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea, 1642). The
    latter, based on a historical rather than
    mythological subject matter, is considered by
    many today as the greatest opera of the
    seventeenth century.
  • Other important composers of Venetian opera are
    Monteverdi's pupil Francesco Cavalli and follower
    Antonio Cesti.

14
Point of Discussion
  • The exquisite and memorable finale of Poppea, the
    duet "Pur ti miro" (Anthology No., 82), may have
    been added later to Monteverdi's opera, and
    perhaps was not composed by Monteverdi at all.
    Does it matter? Do questions of authenticity
    diminish or augment the aesthetic worth of a work
    of art? Should modern stage productions
    eliminate or include the final duet according to
    its authorship?
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