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OPERA (Italian for " work ")
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See also:OPERA (See also:Italian for " See also:work ") , a See also:drama set to See also:music, as distinguished from plays in which music is merely incidental . Music has been a resource of the drama from the earliest times, and doubtless the results of researches in the See also:early See also:history of this connexion have been made very interesting, but they are hardly relevant to a history of See also:opera as an See also:art-See also:form . If See also:language has meaning, an art-form can hardly be said to exist under conditions where the only real connexions between its alleged origin and its See also:modern maturity are such universal means of expression as can equally well connect it with almost every-thing else . We will therefore pass over the orthodox history of opera as traceable from the music of See also:Greek tragedy to that of See also:miracle-plays, and will begin with its real beginning, the first dramas that were set to music in See also:order to be produced as musical See also:works of art, at the beginning of the rgth See also:century . There seems no See also:reason to doubt the See also:story, given by Doni, of the meetings held by a See also:group of amateurs at the See also:house of the Bardi in See also:Florence in the last years of the 16th century, with the See also:object of trying experiments in emotional musical expression by the use of See also:instruments and See also:solo voices . Before this See also:time there was no real opportunity for music-drama . The only high musical art of the 16th century was unaccompanied choral music: its expression was perfect within its limits, and its limits so absolutely excluded all but what may be called static or contemplative emotion that " dramatic music " was as inconceivable as " dramatic See also:architecture." But the See also:literary and musical dilettanti who met at the house of the Bardi were not mature musical artists; they therefore had no scruples, and their imaginations were fired by the See also:dream of restoring the glories of Greek tragedy, especially on the See also:side of its musical declamation . The first See also:pioneer in the new " monodic " See also:movement seems to have been Vincenzo Galilei, the See also:father of Galileo . This enthusiastic See also:amateur warbled the story of Ugolino to the See also:accompaniment of the See also:lute, much to the amusement of See also:expert musicians; but he gained the respect and sympathy of those whose culture was literary rather than musical . His efforts must have been not unlike a See also:wild See also:caricature of Mr . W . B . Yeats's method of reciting See also:poetry to the See also:psaltery . The first public See also:production in the new See also:style was Jacopo See also:Peri's Euridice (1600), which was followed by a less successful effort of See also:Caccini's on the same subject . To us it is astonishing that an art so See also:great as the polyphony of the 16th century could ever have become forgotten in a new venture so feeble in its first steps . See also:Sir See also:Hubert See also:Parry has happily characterized the See also:general effect of the new movement on contemporary See also:imagination as something like that of laying a foundationstone-the See also:suggestion of a vista of possibilities so inspiriting as to exclude all sense of the triviality of the See also:present achievement . Meanwhile those composers who retained the mastery of poly-phonic music tried to find a purely vocal and polyphonic See also:solution of the problem of music-drama; and the Amfiparnasso of See also:Orazio Vecchi (written in 1594, the See also:year of See also:Palestrina's See also:death, and produced three years later) is not alone, though it is by far the most remarkable, among attempts to make a music-drama out of a See also:series of madrigals . From the woodcuts which adorn the first edition of the Amfiparnasso it has been conjectured that the actors sang one See also:voice each, while the See also:rest of the See also:harmony was supplied by singers behind the See also:stage 1; and this may have been the See also:case with other works of this See also:kind . But the words of Vecchi's See also:introductory See also:chorus contradict this See also:idea, for they tell the See also:audience that " the See also:theatre of this drama is the See also:world " and that the spectators must " hear instead of seeing." 1 The first story in See also:Berlioz's Soirees d'orchestre is about a See also:young 16th-century See also:genius who revolts from this practice and becomes a pioneer of monody . The picture is brilliant, though the young genius evidently learnt all his music inj See also:Paris somewhere about 183o . With the decadence of the See also:madrigal, See also:Monteverde brought a real musical See also:power to See also:bear on the new style . His results are now intelligible only to historians, and they seem to us artistically nugatory; but in their See also:day they were so impressive as to render the further continuance of 16th-century choral art impossible . At the beginning of the 17th century no young musician of lively See also:artistic receptivity could fail to be profoundly stirred by Monteverde's Orfeo (1602), Arianna (16o8) and Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clarinda (1624), works in which the resources of instruments were See also:developed with the same archaic boldness, the same grasp of immediate emotional effect and the same lack of artistic organization as the See also:harmonic resources . The spark of Monteverde's genius produced in musical history a result more like an See also:explosion than an enlightenment; and the emotional See also:rhetoric of his art was so uncontrollable, and at the same time so much more impressive in suggestion than in realization, that we cannot be surprised that the next definite step in the history of opera took the direction of See also:mere musical form, and was not only undramatic but See also:anti-dramatic .
The See also:system of See also:free musical declamation known as recitative is said to have been used by Emilie del Cavalieri as early as 1588, and it was in the nature of things almost the only means of vocal expression conceivable by the pioneers of opera
.
Formal See also:melody, such as that of popular songs, was as much beneath their dignity as it had been beneath that of the high art from which they revolted; but, in the See also:absence of any harmonic system but that of the See also: Gluck wasa much greater artist than Monteverde, but he too was not over-loaded with See also:academic mastery; indeed, though historians have denied it, Monteverde was by far the better contrapuntist, and seems rather to have renounced his musical See also:powers than to have struggled for need of them . But instead of memories of a Golden Age, Gluck had behind him 150 years of harmonic and orchestral knowledge of See also:good and evil . He also had almost as clear a sense of symphonic form as could find See also:scope in opera at all; and his melodic power was generally of the highest order . It is often said that his work was too far in advance of his time to establish his intended reform; and, if this means that undramatic Italian operas continued to outnumber those dramatic masterpieces which no smaller See also:man could achieve, the statement is as true as it is of every great artist . If, however, it is taken to mean that because Mozart's triumphs do not See also:lie in serious opera he owes nothing to Gluck, then the statement is misleading (see GLUCK) . The influence of Gluck on Mozart was profound, not only where it is relevant to the particular type of libretto, as in Idomeneo, but also on the broad dramatic basis which includes Greek tragedy and the 18th-century See also:comedy of See also:manners . Mozart, whose first impulse was always to make his music coherent in itself, for some time continued to cultivate side by side with his growing polyphony and freedom of movement certain Italian formalities which, though musically effective and flattering to singers, were dramatically vicious . But these features, though they spoil Idomeneo, correspond to much that in Gluck's operas shows mere helplessness; and in comic opera they may even become dramatically appropriate . Thus in Cosi See also:fan See also:tulle the florid arias in which the two heroines protest their fidelity are the arias of ladies who do protest too much; and in See also:Die Zauberflote the extravagant vocal See also:fireworks of the See also:Queen of See also:Night are the displays of one who, in the words of the high See also:priest Sarastro, " hopes to cajole the See also:people with illusions and superstition." In the See also:article MOZART we have discussed other evidences of his stagecraft and insight into See also:character, talents for which his comic subjects gave him far more scope than those of classical tragedy had given to Gluck . Mozart always extracts the utmost musical effect from every situation in his absurd and often tiresome libretti (especially in vocal ensemble), while his musical effects are always such as give dramatic life to what in other hands are conventional musical forms . These merits would never have been gainsaid but for the violence of See also:Wagner's earlier partisans in their revolt from the uncritical classicism of his denser and noisier opponents . Wagner himself stands as far aloof from Wagnerian Philistinism as from uncritical classicism . He was a fierce critic of social conditions and by no means incapable of hasty iconoclastic judgments; but he would have treated with scant respect the See also:criticism that censures Mozart for superficiality in rejecting the radically unmusical See also:element of See also:mordant social See also:satire which distinguishes the See also:Figaro of See also:Beaumarchais from the most perfect opera in all classical music . It cannot be said that in any high artistic sense Italian comic opera has developed continuously since Mozart . The vocal athleticism of singers; the See also:acceptance and great development by Mozart of what we may See also:call symphonic (as distinguished from Handelian) forms of aria and ensemble; and the enlargement of the See also:orchestra; these processes gave the Italian composers of Mozart's and later times prosaically golden opportunities for lifting spectators and singers to the seventh See also:heaven of flattered vanity, while the music, in itself no less than in its relation to the drama, was steadily degraded . The decline begins with Mozart's contemporary and survivor, D . See also:Cimarosa, whose ideas are genuine and, in the main, refined, but who lacks power and resource . His style was by no means debased, but it was just so slight that contemporaries found it fairly easy . His most famous work, Il Matrimonio Segreto, is an opera See also:buffet which is still occasionally revived, and it is very like the sort of thing that people who despise Mozart imagine Figaro to be . Unless it is approached with sympathy, its effect after Figaro is hardly more exhilarating than that of the once pilloried See also:spurious " Second See also:Part " to the Pickwick Papers . But this is harsh See also:judgment; for it proves to be a good semi-classic as soon as we take it on its own merits . It is far more musical, if less vivacious, than See also:Rossini's Barbiere; cannot be denied that native and naturalized See also:French operatic and the decline of Italian opera is more significantly foreshadowed art has suffered from many forms of musical a.nd dramatic in Cimarosa's other chef-d'oeuvre, the remarkable opera seria, Gli Orazzi ed i Curiazzi . Here the arias and ensembles are serious art, showing a See also:pale reflection of Mozart, and not wholly without Mozart's spirit; the choruses, notably the first of all, have See also:fine moments; and the treatment of conflicting emotions at one crisis, where military music is heard behind the scenes, is masterly . Lastly, the abrupt conclusion at the moment of the See also:catastrophe is good and was novel at the time, though it foreshadows that See also:sacrifice of true dramatic and musical breadth to the See also:desire for an "effective See also:curtain," and that mortal fear of anti-See also:climax which in classical French opera rendered a great musical See also:finale almost impossible . But the interesting and dramatic features in Gli Orazzi are unfortunately less significant historically than the vulgarity of its See also:overture, and the impossibility, after the beautiful opening chorus, of tracing any unmistakably tragic style in the whole work except by the negative sign of dullness . Before Cimarosa's overwhelming successor Rossini had retired from his indolent career, these tendencies had already reduced both composers and spectators to a supreme indifference to the See also:mood of the libretto, an indifference far more fatal than mere inattention to the See also:plot . Nobody cares to follow the plot of Mozart's Figaro; but then no spectator of Beaumarchais's Mariage de Figaro is prevented by the intricacy of its plot from enjoying it as a See also:play . In both cases we are interested in the character-See also:drawing and in each situation as it arises; and we do no See also:justice to Mozart's music when we forget this interest, even in cases where the libretto has none of the literary merit that survives in the transformation of Beaumarchais's comedy into an Italian libretto . But with the Rossinian decline all charitable scruples of criticism are misplaced, for Italian opera once more became as purely a pantomimic See also:concert as in the Handelian period; and we must not ignore the difference that it was now a concert of very vulgar music, the vileness of which was only aggravated by the growing range and interest of dramatic subjects . The best that can be said in See also:defence of it was that the vulgarity was not pretentious and unhealthy, like See also:Meyerbeer's; indeed, if the famous " Mad Scene " in See also:Donizetti's See also:Lucia di Lammermoor had only been meant to be funny it would not have been vulgar at all . Occasionally the drama pierced through the empty breeziness of the music; and so the spirit of Shakespeare, even when smothered in an Italian libretto unsuccessfully set to music by Rossini, proved so powerful that one spectator of Rossini's Otello is recorded to have started out of his seat at the catastrophe, exclaiming "Good Heavens! the See also:tenor is murdering the See also:soprano!" And in times of See also:political unrest more than one opera became as dangerous as an over-censored theatre could make it . An See also:historical case in point is brilliantly described in See also:George See also:Meredith's See also:Vittoria . But what has this to do with the progress of music ? The history of Italian opera from after its See also:culmination in Mozart to its subsidence on the big See also:drum amd See also:cymbals of the Rossinians is the history of a protected See also:industry . See also:Verdi's art, both in its burly youth and in its shrewd old age, is far more the See also:crown of his native genius than of his native traditions; and, though opinions differ as to the spontaneity and See also:depth of the change, the See also:paradox is true that the Wagnerization of Verdi was the musical emancipation of See also:Italy . After Mozart the next step in the development of true operatic art was neither Italian nor See also:German, but French . The French sense of dramatic fitness had a wonderfully stimulating effect upon every See also:foreign composer who came to France . Rossini himself, in See also:Guillaume Tell, was electrified into a dramatic and orchestral life of an incomparably higher order than the rollicking rattle of serious and comic Italian opera in its decline . He was in the See also:prime of life when he wrote it, but it exhausted him and was practically his last important work, though he lived to a cheerful old age . The defects of its libretto were See also:grave, but he made unprecedented efforts to remedy them, and finally succeeded, at the cost of an entire See also:act . The experience was very significant; for, from the time of Gluck onwards, while it debasement, we may safely say that no opera has met 'with success in France that is without theatrical merit . And the French contribution to musical history between Gluck and Rossini is of great See also:nobility . If See also:Cherubini and Maul had had Gluck's melodic power, the See also:classics of French opera would have been the greatest achievements in semi-tragic music-drama before Wagner . As it is, their austerity is not that of the highest classics . It is negative, and tends to exclude outward attractiveness rather because it cannot achieve it than because it contains all things in due proportion . Be this as it may, Cherubini had a real influence on See also:Beethoven; not to mention that the libretti of Fidelio and See also:Les Deux journees were originally by the same author, though Fidelio underwent great changes in See also:translation and revision . It is impossible to say what French opera might have done for music through Beethoven if Fidelio had not remained his solitary (because very nearly unsuccessful) operatic See also:monument; but there is no doubt as to its effect on See also:Weber, whose two greatest works, Der See also:Freischutz and Euryanthe, are two See also:giant strides from Cherubini to Wagner . Euryanthe is in respect of Leit-motif (see below) almost more Wagnerian than See also:Lohengrin, Wagner's See also:fourth published opera .
It failed to make an See also:epoch in history because of its dreary libretto, to which, however,, the highly dramatic libretto of Lohengrin owes a surprising number of points
.
The libretti of classical opera set too See also:low a literary See also:standard to induce critics to give sufficient See also:attention to their aesthetic See also:bearings; and perhaps the great See also:scholar See also:Otto See also:Jahn is the only writer who has applied a first-See also:rate literary See also:analysis to the subject (see his Life of Mozart); a subject which, though of great importance to music, has, like the music itself, been generally thrust into the background by the countless externals that give theatrical works and institutions a See also:national or political importance See also:independent of artistic merit and historical development
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Much that finds prominent See also:place in the orthodox history of opera is really outside the scope of musical and dramatic discussion; and it may therefore be safely See also:left to be discovered under non-musical headings elsewhere in this See also:Encyclopaedia
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Even when what passes for operatic history has a more real connexion with the art than the history of locomotion has with See also:physical See also:science, the importance of the connexion is often overrated
.
For example, much has been said as to the progress in German opera from the choice of remote subjects like Mozart's Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail to the choice of a subject so thoroughly German as Der Freischutz: but this is only part of the general progress made, chiefly in France, towards the choice of romantic instead of classical subjects
.
Whatever the See also:intrinsic interest of musical See also:ethnology, and whatever See also:light it may throw upon the reasons why an art will develop and decline sooner in one See also:country than in another, racial character will not suffice to produce an art ffir which no technique as yet exists
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Nor will it suffice in any country to check the development or destroy the value of an art of which the principles were developed elsewhere
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No music of Mozart's time could have handled Weber's romantic subjects, and all the Teutonism in history could not have pre-vented Mozart from adopting and developing those Italian methods that gave him scope
.
Again, in the time of Lully, who was the contemporary of See also:Moliere, the French genius of stagecraft was devoted to reducing opera to an effective series of ballets; yet so little did this hamper composers of real dramatic power that See also:Quinault's libretto to Lully's very successful See also:Amide served Gluck unaltered for one of his greatest works 90 years later
.
If Lully owes so little to See also:Cambert as to be rightly entitled the founder of French opera, if Gluck is a greater reformer than his predecessor See also:Rameau, if Cherubini is a more powerful artist than Maul, and if, lastly, Meyerbeer developed the vices of the French histrionic machinery with a plausibility which has never been surpassed, then we must reconcile our racial theories with the historic See also:process by which the French See also:Grand Opera, one of the most pronounced national types in all music, was founded by an Italian See also:Jew, reformed by an See also:Austrian,
classicized by another Italian, and debased by a German Jew
.
This only enhances the significance of that French dramatic sense which stimulated foreign composers and widened their choice of subjects, as it also preserved all except the Italian forms of opera from falling into that elsewhere prevalent early 19th-century operatic style in which there was no means of guessing by the music whether any situation was tragic or comic
.
From the time of Meyerbeer onwards, trivial and vulgar opera has been as See also:common in France as elsewhere; but there is a world of difference between, for example, a garish tune naively intended for a funeral See also: 
As Wagner slowly and painfully attained his maturity he learned to abhor the influence of Meyerbeer, and indeed it accounts for much of the inequality of his earlier work . But it can hardly have failed to stimulate his sense of effect; and without the help of Meyerbeer's outwardly successful novelties it is doubtful whether even Wagner's determination could have faced the task of his early work, a task so negative and destructive in its first stages . We have elsewhere (see Music, SONATA FORMS ad finem, and SYMPHONIC POEM) described how if music of any kind, instrumental or dramatic, was to advance beyond the range of the classical See also:symphony, there was need to devise a kind of musical See also:motion and proportion as different from that of the sonata or symphony as the sonata style is different from that of the See also:suite . All the vexed questions of the See also:function of vocal ensemble, of the structure of the libretto, and of instrumentation, are but aspects and results of this change in what is as much a See also:primary See also:category of music as See also:extension is a primary category of See also:matter . Wagnerian opera, a See also:generation after Wagner's death, was still an unique phenomenon, the rational influence of which was not yet sifted from the concomitant confusions of thought prevalent among many composers of symphony, See also:oratorio, and other forms of which Wagner's principles can be relevant only with incalculable modifications . With Wagner the history of classical opera ends and a new history begins, for in Wagner's hands opera first became a single art-form, a true and indivisible music-drama, instead of a kind of dramatic See also:casket for a collection of objets d'art more or less aptly arranged in theatrical tableaux . Forms and Terminology of Opera . The history of pre-Wagnerian opera is not, like that of the sonata forms, a history in which the technical terminology has a clear relationship to the aesthetic development . In order to understand the progress of classical opera we must understand the whole progress of classical music; and this not merely for the general reason that the development of an art-foitfn is inseparable from the development of the whole art, but because in the case of opera only the most See also:external terminology and the most unreal and incoherent history of fashions and factions remain for See also:consideration after the general development of musical art has been discussed . For completeness, however, the terminology must be included; and a commentary on it will See also:complete our See also:sketch in better historical See also:perspective than any See also:attempt to amplify details on the lines of a continuous history . 1 . Secco-recitative is the delivery of See also:ordinary operatic See also:dialogue in prosaic recitative-formulas, accompanied by nothing but a See also:harpsichord or See also:pianoforte . In comic operas it was not so See also:bad a method as some critics imagine; for the conductor (who sat at the harpsichord or pianoforte) would, if he had the wits expected of him by the composer, extemporize his accompaniments in an unobtrusively amusing manner, while the actors delivered their recitative rapidly in a conversational style known as parlante . In serious operas, however, the conductor dare not be frivolous; and accordingly secco-recitative outside comic opera is the dreariest of makeshifts, and is not tolerated by Gluck in his mature works . He accompanies his recitativeswith the See also:string See also:band, introducing other instruments freely as the situation suggests . 2 . Accompanied recitative was used in all kinds of opera, as introductory to important arias and other movements, and also in the course of finales . Magnificent examples abound in Idomeneo, Figaro and See also:Don Giovanni; and one of the longest recitatives before Wagner is that near the beginning of the finale of the first act of Die Zauberflote . Beethoven's two examples in Fidelio are See also:short but of overwhelming pathos . 3 . See also:Melodrama is the use of an orchestral accompaniment to spoken dialogue (see See also:BENDA) . It is wonderfully promising in theory, but generally disappointing in effect, unless the actors are successfully trained to speak without being dragged by the music into an out-of-tune sing-See also:song . Classical examples are generally short and cautious, but very impressive; there is one in Fidelio in which the orchestra quotes two points from earlier movements in a thoroughly Wagnerian way (see Leitmotif below) . But the See also:device is more prominent in incidental music to plays, as in Beethoven's music for See also:Goethe's See also:Egmont . Mendelssohn's music for A Midsummer Night's Dream contains the most brilliant and resourceful examples yet achieved in this art; but they are beyond the musical capacity of the See also:English stage, which, however, has practised the worst forms of the method until it has become a disease, many modern performances of Shakespeare attaining an almost operatic continuity of bad music . 4 . Opera buffa is classical Italian comic opera with seccorecitative . Its central classics are, of course, Figaro and Don Giovanni, while Cimarosa's Matrimonio Segreto and Rossini's Barbiere are the most important steps from the culmination to the fall . 5 . Opera seria is classical Italian opera with secco-recitative; almost always (like the Handelian opera from which it is derived) on a Greek or See also:Roman subject, and, at whatever cost to dramatic or historic propriety, with a happy ending . Gluck purposely avoids the See also:term in his mature works . The only great classic in opera seria is Mozart's Idomeneo, and even that is dramatically too unequal to be more than occasionally revived, though it contains much of Mozart's finest music . 6 . The Singspiel is German opera with spoken dialogue . In early stages it advanced from the farcical to the comic . With Beethoven it came under French influence and adopted " thrilling " stories with happy endings; and from this stage ' it passed to specifically " Romantic " subjects . 'Its greatest classics are Mozart's Entfiihrung and Zauberflote, Beethoven's Fidelio, and Weber's Freischiitz . 7 . Opera comique is the Singspiel of France, being French opera with spoken dialogue . It did not originate in See also:farce but in the refusal of the Academic de Musique to allow See also:rival companies to infringe its See also:monopoly of Grand Opera; and it is so far from being essentially comic that one of its most famous classics, Maul's See also:Joseph, is on a Biblical subject; while its highest achievement, Cherubini's Les Deux journees, is on a story almost as serious as that of Fidelio . All Cherubini's mature operas (except the ballet See also:Anacreon, which is uninterrupted music from beginning to end) are operas comiques in the sense of having spoken dialogue; though Medee, being, perhaps, the first genuine tragedy in the history of music-drama,' is simply called " opera" on the See also:title-See also:page . In the smaller French works, especially those in one act, there is so much spoken dialogue that they are almost like plays with incidental music . But they never sink to the See also:condition of the so-called operas of the English composers since Handel . When Weber accepted the See also:commission to write See also:Oberon for the English stage in 1825, he found that he was compelled to set the musical See also:numbers one by one as they were sent to him, without the slightest See also:information as to the plot, the situation, or even the order of the pieces ! And, to crown his disgust, he found that this really did not matter . Even Gluck never contemplated any alternative to the absurd happy ending of Orfeo; and all his other operatic subjects include a See also:deus ex machina . 8 . Grand opera is French opera in which every word is sung, and generally all recitative accompanied by the orchestra .
It originated in the Academie de Musique, which, from its See also:foundation in 1669 to the See also:proclamation of the liberte See also:des theatres in 1791, claimed the monopoly of operas on the lines laid down by Lully, Rameau and Gluck
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Rossini's Guillaume Tell, See also:Spontini's Vestala and the works of Meyerbeer crown this theoretically promising art-form with what Sir Hubert Parry has justly if severely called a crown of no very See also:precious See also:metal
.
Weber's Euryanthe, See also:Spohr's Jessonda, and others of his operas, are German parallel developments; and Wagner's first published work, See also:Rienzi, is like an attempt to See also:beat Meyerbeer on his own ground
.
9
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Opera bouffe is not an See also:equivalent of opera buffa, but is French light opera with a prominent See also:strain of persiflage
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Its See also:chief representative is See also:Offenbach
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It seems to be as native to France as the austere opera comique which it eclipsed
.
See also:Sullivan assimilated its adroit orchestration as See also: This step was foreshadowed by Weber, in whose Euryanthe the numbering of the later movements of each act is quite arbitrary . Great finales are less frequent in Singspiel than in opera buffa . They can hardly be said to exist in opera seria, climax at the end of an act being there (even in Gluck) attained only by a collection of ballet movements, whereas the essence of Mozart's finale is its capacity to See also:deal with real turning-points of the See also:action . A few finales of the first and second acts of operas comiques (which are almost always in three acts) are on the great classical lines, e.g. that to the first act of Les Deux journees; but a French finale to a last act is, except in Cherubini's works, hardly ever more than a short chorus, often so per.. functory that, for instance, when Maul's Joseph was first produced by Weber at See also:Dresden in 1817, a three-movement finale by Franzl of See also:Munich was added; and Weber publicly explained the difference between French and German notions of finality, in excuse for a course so repugnant to his principles in the performance of other works . 11 . The introduction is sometimes merely an instrumental entr'acte in classical opera; but it is more especially an extension of continuous dramatic music at the beginning of an act, like the extension of the finale backwards towards the See also:middle of the act, but much smaller . Beethoven, in his last version of Fidelio, used the term for the perfectly normal See also:duet that begins the first act, and for the instrumental entr'acte which leads to the rise of the curtain on Florestan's great scene in the second act . The classical instances of the See also:special meaning of " introduction " are the first number in Don Giovanni and, more typically, that in the Zauberflote . 12 . Leit-motif, or the association of musical themes with dramatic ideas and persons, is not only a natural means of progress in music drama, but is an See also:absolute musical See also:necessity as soon as the lines dividing an opera into See also:separate formal pieces are broken down, unless the music is to become exclusively " atmospheric " and inarticulate . Without recurrence of themes a large piece of music could no more show coherent development than a drama in which the characters were never twice addressed by the same name nor twice allowed to appear in the same See also:guise . Now the classical operatic forms, being mainly limited by the sonata style, were not such as could, when once worked out in appropriate designs of aria and ensemble, be worlled out again in recognizable transformations without poverty and monotony of effect . And hence a system of Leit-motif was not appropriateto that ingenious See also:compromise which classical opera made between music that completed from 12 to 30 independent designs and the drama that meanwhile completed one . But when the music became as continuous as the drama the case was different . There are plenty of classical instances of a theme superficially marking some See also:cardinal incident or See also:personal characteristic, without affecting the See also:independence of the musical forms; the commonest case being, of course, the allusion some-where in the overture to salient points in the See also:body of the opera; as, for instance, the allusion to the words " cosi fan tutti " in the overture to Mozart's opera of that name, and the Masonic three-See also:fold chord in that to the Zauberflote . Weber's overtures are sonata-form fantasias on themes to come: and in later and lighter operas such allusiveness, being childishly easy, is a meaningless matter of course . Within the opera itself, songs, such as would be sung in an ordinary non-musical play, will probably recur, as in Les Deux journees; and so will all phrases that have the character of a call or a See also:signal, a remarkable and pathetic instance of which may be found in Maul's Melidore et Phrosine, where the orchestra makes a true Leit-motif of the music of the heroine's name . But it is a See also:long way from this to the system already clearly marked by Weber in Per Freischutz and developed in Euryanthe to an extent which Wagner did not surpass in any earlier work than See also:Tristan, though in respect of the obliteration of sections his earliest works are in advance of Weber . Yet not only are there some thirteen recurrent musical incidents in the Freischutz and over twenty in Euryanthe, but in the latter the See also:serpentine theme associated with the treacherous See also:Eglantine actually stands the Wagnerian test of being recognizable when its character is transformed . This can hardly be claimed even for the organization of themes in Lohengrin . Mature Wagnerian Leit-motif is a very different thing from the crude system of musical labels to which some of Wagner's disciples have reduced it, and Wagner himself had no See also:patience with the See also:catalogue methods of modern operatic analysis . The Leit-motif system of Tristan, the See also:Meistersinger, the See also:Ring and See also:Parsifal is a profoundly natural and subtle See also:cross-current of musical thought, often sharply contrasted with the externals of a dramatic situation, since it is free to reflect not only these externals, not only the things which the audience know and the persons of the drama do not know, not only those workings of the dramatic character's mind which he is trying to conceal from the other characters, but even those which he conceals from himself . There was nothing new in any one of these possibilities taken singly (see, for example, Gluck's ironic treatment of " le calme rentre Bans mon cceur "), but polyphonic Leit-motif made them all possible simultaneously . Wagner's mind was not concentrated on the merely literary and theatrical aspects of music-. drama; he fought his way to the topmost heights of the See also:peculiar musical mastery necessary to his ideals; and so he realized that principle in which none but the very greatest musicians find freedom; the principle that, however constantly necessary and powerful homophonic music may be in passages of artificial simplicity, all harmonic music is by nature and origin polyphonic; and that in polyphony lies the normal and natural means of expressing a dramatic blending of emotions . Wagnerian Leit-motif has proved rather a giant's robe for later composers; and the most successful of recent operas have,while aiming less at the See also:sublime, cultivated Wagner's musical and dramatic continuity more than his principles of musical texture . Certainly Wagnerian continuity is a permanent postulate in modern opera; but it shows itself to be a thing attainable quite independently of any purely musical style or merit, so long as the dramatic movement of the play is good . This condition was always necessary, even where opera was most symphonic . Mozart was incessantly disputing with his librettists; and all his criticisms and changes, though apparently of purely musical purport, had a brilliant effect on the movement of the play . In one desperate case, where the librettist was obstinate, Mozart abandoned a work (L'Oca del See also:Cairo) to the first act of which he had already sketched a great finale embodying a grandiose farcical figure that promised to be unique in classical opera . definite themes (even in the shortest of figures) as Wagner uses in ten minutes . It remains to be seen whether a further development of Wagnerian opera, in the sense of addition to Wagner's resources in musical architecture, is possible . The uncompromising See also:realism of See also:Strauss does not at first sight seem encouraging in this direction; yet his treatment of Elektra's first invocation of See also:Agamemnon produces a powerful effect of musical form, dimly perceived, but on a larger scale than even the huge sequences of Wagner . In any case, the best thing that can happen in a period of musical transition is that the leading revolutionaries should make a See also:mark in opera . Musical revolutions are too easy to mean much by themselves; there is no purely musical means of testing the sanity of the revolutionaries or of the critics . But the stage, while boundlessly tolerant of bad music, will stand no nonsense in dramatic movement . (The case of Handelian opera is no exception, for in it the stage was a mere topographical term.) In every period of musical See also:fermentation the art of opera has instantly sifted the men of real ideas from the aesthetes and See also:doctrinaires; Monteverde from the See also:prince of See also:Venosa, Gluck from See also:Gossec, and Wagner from See also:Liszt . As the ferment subsides, opera tends to a complacent decadence; but it will always revive to put to the first and most See also:crucial test every revolutionary principle that enters into music to destroy and expand . See also ARIA; OVERTURE; CHERUBINI; GLUCK; MOZART; VERDI; WAGNER; WEBER . (D . F . |
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