Opera As Drama by Joseph Kerman

Author:Joseph Kerman [Kerman, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-83400-3
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2013-08-21T00:00:00+00:00

The music moves in a somber circle of fifths by steady four-bar phrases: from F# to D, using a two-bar arpeggio motive begun by a triplet sixteenth-note figure; then from D to F, using a compressed version of the motive. As Iago tells Roderigo to rouse the town, the bass starts to move up tensely, supporting a chromatically descending scale motive related to the original one through the triplet. Both triplet and scale come out of the Drinking Song, and are snake-like sounds characteristic of Iago. The key is stabilized towards F# with new derived themes; the thematic and modulatory complexity gives the effect of confusion, urgency, intensity. Then Otello’s entrance to the words “Abbasso le spade!” carries splendid authority by taking the F# up to G, rather than by resolving it back to b minor, the key of the Drinking Song. A new section is obviously in order; by means of the deceptive resolution to G, it is smoothly yet dramatically worked in.

The section for the duel is integrated with the rest of the scene as meticulously as a section in Mozart—as meticulously as the section of Figaro’s interrogation is joined into the total ensemble. Notice also how the stiff strophic outline of the Drinking Song is eased into the following action. Passages of parlante are introduced in Otello with the greatest cunning to shade the edges of the highly charged arias and ensembles. In addition, the texture is used for its own sake in longer and longer passages.

Some recitative is kept for properly unemotional details—“How now, Roderigo?” “I like not that,” “Prithee unpin me.” But again, recitative must absolutely blend in soon with sections of parlante or arioso; it must never go on for long; it develops interesting orchestral background material at the least provocation, so that recitative is scarcely to be distinguished from fully musical sections. The continuum is amazingly flexible. If the librettist could not feed this style by making all conversations turn passionate at the first possible occasion, so much the worse. With the initially very dry recitative between Iago and Roderigo near the beginning of Act I, for instance, there is really no pressing reason why Iago should keep flaring up into arioso (“Se un fragil voto di femmina,” “Ed io rimango,” etc.). As he does, he takes on at once an aspect of particular pent-up violence. Verdi may not have quite sensed the danger of over-emotionality latent in this treatment of recitative.

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