Music 346. Music in Western Culture & Society II. Dr.

James Parsons Perspectives on Opera of the Classical Era

One way of looking at and in turn thinking about opera whatever its time period is to try and determine the relative importance a composer (and, by extension the librettist) has given: (1) the purely musical; (2) the purely dramatic; and (3) spectacle, by which is meant such elements as staging, scenery, costumes, lighting, and dancing. One could argue that the ideal division of labor might be 33 and 1/3 % for each component. As with most ideals, however, such has never been borne out in reality. In fact, it would be possible to write the entire history of opera by charting the relative importance assigned to each element. To appreciate opera of the Classical era

Vienna, Burgtheater, interior c 1830: theater where two of Mozarts operas Le nozze di Figaro (1782) and Cos fan tutte (1790) were first performed

one needs to know something about the sort of opera that came before it, that is opera of the Baroque. During the Baroque, by and large, the purely musical and specifically flashy virtuoso singing assumed the greatest importance. (Remember the aria from the Bach cantata (No. 62) I played in class, Streite, siege, starker Held! [Fight, conquer, mighty hero!]) Yet starting with the Classical era, a growing number of people were becoming convinced that change was needed to put opera back on track; that is, to put it more in touch with the ideal balance between the three constituent parts that make up opera. To understand this, and in the hope of getting you to reflect on Don Giovanni in perhaps a more meaningful manner, I share with you in condensed format the views of one of the most influential operatic composers of t he Classical era, Christophe Willibald Gluck. Glucks views are set forth in his well-known and often-cited dedication to his opera Alceste (1769) wherein he tells us the type of opera from which he is attempting to distance himself and that he most emphatically will not compose. (For a full translation of Glucks operatic manifesto, see the Bonds textbook, page 342.) In reflecting on Mozarts opera, consider whether Don Giovanni complies with the various points, which, according to Gluck, make a good opera. 1. Most importantly, Gluck is seeking to rid opera of all those abuses, introduced into it either by the mistaken vanity of singers or by the too great complaisance of co mposers, which have disfigured opera and made of the most splendid and most beautiful of spectacles the most ridiculous and wearisome. 2. Secondly, to restrict music to its true office of serving poetry by means of expression and by following the situations of the story. 3. To avoid the conventions of form associated with Baroque opera, namely the Baroque da capo aria, which in the hands of many an operatic singer had become little more than a pretense for show-stopping virtuoso display instead of furthering the plot. To that end, Gluck writes of his wish to avoid arresting an actor [i.e., a singer] in the greatest heat of dialogue in order to wait for a tiresome ritornello, nor to hold him up in the middle of a word or a vowel favorable to his voice, nor to make display of the agility of his fine voice in some long-drawn passage, nor to wait while the orchestra gives him time to recover his breath for a cadenza. Gluck goes on to say, I did not think it my duty to pass quickly over the second se ction of an aria of which the words are perhaps the most impassioned and important, in order to repeat regularly four times over those of the first part, and to finish the aria where its sense may perhaps not end for the

convenience of the singer who wishes to show that he can capriciously vary a passage in a number of guises; in short, I have sought to abolish all the abuses against which good sense and reason have long cried out in vain. Note here the emphasis on reason, one of the guiding precepts of the Enlightenment. 4. I have felt that the overture ought to apprise the spectators of the nature of the action that is to be represented and to form, so to speak, its argument. (Note, in Mozarts Don Giovanni the opening strains of the overture return at the operas dramatic highpoint, in Act 2, when the funeral statue of the Commandatore appears at the banquet.) 5. Again in contrast to the prevailing style of Baroque opera, Gluck writes: I believed that my greatest labor should be devoted to seeking a beautiful simplicity, and I have avoided making displays of difficulty at the expense of [dramatic] clearness; nor did I judge it desirable to discover novelties if it was not naturally suggested by the situation and the expression; and there is no rule which I have not thought it right to set aside willingly for the sake of an intended effect. 6. Lastly, Gluck reveals: By good fortune my designs were wonderfully furthered by the libretto, in which the celebrated author, [i.e., the librettist or author of the purely dramatic text for Alceste, namely Ranieri de Calzabigi] devising a new dramatic scheme, for florid descriptions, unnatural paragons, and sententious, cold morality, had substituted heartfelt language, strong passions, interesting situations and an endlessly varied spectacle.

Mozart, age fourteen, oil painting by Saverio della Rosa, Verona, 6-7 January 1770