The Indispensable Composers by Anthony Tommasini

Author:Anthony Tommasini
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-11-05T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

—

Audiences for Italian opera in the first decades of the nineteenth century had grown accustomed to long-standing conventions of the art form, particularly regarding matters of structure. Take, for example, the standard double aria. In the first part, a character would sing a cavatina, usually a reflective aria in a moderate tempo expressing some contentment, or yearning, or cautious expectation of a lover’s coming, or perhaps sadness over some loss. Then, typically, something happens: someone bursts in with good news, or a warning, delivered in agitated recitative. This leads the character who sang the cavatina to break into a cabaletta, a faster and usually more ornate and showy aria, expressing resolve to take action or joy over some desired outcome. Of course, master composers like Donizetti and Rossini found ways to personalize this convention and introduce subtle variety.

Verdi came of age artistically during a period when the conventions of Italian opera were pervasive. Even after being proclaimed a bold new voice for the art form, he was expected to honor the heritage and not shake up things too much. As his success spread and his confidence grew, he expressed frustration with the outmoded conventions that he feared were inhibiting his work and the whole genre of Italian opera.

In a letter to the librettist Salvatore Cammarano about the in-progress Il Trovatore (The Troubadour), Verdi espoused a radical vision of what sounds like through-composed musico-dramatic structure. “If in the opera there were no cavatinas, duets, trios, choruses, finales, etc.,” he wrote, “and if the whole work consisted . . . of a single number I should find that all the more right and proper.”

These were fleeting thoughts, a busy composer venting his restlessness. Mostly Verdi was content to adapt the conventions to his personal artistic aims and tweak the forms from within. For all his complaining, Verdi benefited by taking these conventions into account, by channeling his inspiration into time-tested structures. He found ways to refine and adapt the conventions of his day without abandoning them completely. Verdi’s career can be seen as a gradual but steady effort to transform traditional structures and forge fresh ways to create music drama.

Even in his earlier works, Verdi took standard forms, like the double aria, and brought such keen dramatic insight and musical sophistication to bear that you almost don’t notice a scene is basically hewing to convention. Take the double aria in Act I of Macbeth, when we first meet Lady Macbeth.

Verdi’s tenth opera but first truly great one, Macbeth was written for Teatro della Pergola in Florence, where it premiered in 1847. (Verdi revised it significantly in 1865.) A lifelong devotee of Shakespeare, Verdi had already considered a King Lear opera, but in 1846 Macbeth seemed more doable. Verdi was so eager to turn “one of the greatest creations of man,” as he described the play, into an opera that he wrote his own prose libretto and sent it to Francesco Maria Piave, who was quickly becoming his preferred librettist, to make adjustments and turn it into verse.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.