CHAPTER 30

The Birth of Opera:

Florence, Mantua, and

Venice

• 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.

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

• Vincenzo Galilei: musician, scientist, and member of the Florentine Camerata.

• He is important to history for several reasons: 1) He was the father of the famous

astronomer Galileo Galilei.

2) He was one of the earliest advocate of

equal temperament (modern tuning).

3) 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).

Funeste piagge

Stile rappresentativo (dramatic/theater style): 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.

• 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.

• 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.

Composer-singer Jacopo Peri portraying the mythological poet-singer Arion in Florence in

1589

Jacopo Peri: Florentine

composer and singer, he created the first true operas: Dafne (1598) and Euridice (1600).

• The Orpheus Legend is the mythological tale of the poet-singer Orpheus, the son of Apollo, 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.

Early opera in Matua: Monteverdi's Orfeo.

• Apparently inspired by Peri's Euridice.

• Claudio Monteverdi took up the legend of Orpheus and Euridice in his opera titled Orfeo (1607).

• 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– various kinds of solo singing

Toccata

• Toccata: an instrumental piece for keyboard or other instruments, requiring the performer to touch the instrument with great technical dexterity.

• Literally meaning "a touched thing," a toccata is an instrumental showpiece.

• Monteverdi's Orfeo opens with such a "toccata” – a brief fanfare that also exemplifies the remarkable

variety of instruments of the Baroque period.

• Recitative: musically heightened speech that in opera usually tells the audience what has happened.

• Simple recitative: A recitative that is accompanied only by the basso continuo.

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.

• 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.

• 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 is an example of a strophic variation aria.

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.

Ships sail on the high seas as gods descend from heavens in

Giacomo Torelli's stage set for the opera Bellerofonte (Venice, 1642).

• 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.

– librettists wrote texts that would appeal to their audience.

– stage machinery and elaborate sets created an air of the spectacular.