Romantic Opera and Musical Theater to Midcentury Flashcards
The Roles of Opera
- opera excerpts became a part of popular and elite culture
- individual numbers were scored for amateur pianists
Italian, French, and German Opera Differences
- focus on beautiful singing
- French and German had the orchestra playing a role in conveying emotions
Composer/Singer Hierarchy
- at first, composers were barely mentioned because their work was edited so much and singers sold tickets
- then, composers gradually became the most prominent part of opera
- the staple repertory was: Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Meyerbeer, and Weber
Exoticism
- the evocation of a foreign land or culture
- rose with nationalism
Gioachino Rossini 1792-1868
- The Italian Woman in Algiers
- The Barber of Seville
- William Tell
- blended opera buffa and seria, more true to human character
Bel canto
- most important element of Rossini’s operas is the voice
- effortless, beautiful
- before bel canto, Italian singing was dramatic and heavy
Rossini crescendo
-repetition of the same phrase getting louder
Two Sections of a Romantic Aria
- cantabile: lyrical
- cabaletta: lively and brilliant
Form of a Romantic Aria as deemed by Rossini
-orchestra introduction, recitative, cantabile, tempo di mezzo, cabaletta
Vincenzo Bellini 1801-1835
-younger contemporary of Rossini
Gaetano Donizetti 1797-1848
- oratorios, cantatas, chamber, church music, symphonies, operas
- Anna Bolena, The Elixir of Love, Don Pasquale
Lucia di Lammermoor
- Donizetti
- Lucia is tricked into thinking her lover is unfaithful; marries someone else; murders him the first night; goes crazy after hearing voices
- the final crazy scene creates an unbroken flow of events through tempo changes and numerous entrances
Reminiscence Motive
-especially in Lucia di Lammermoor, it’s a call to an earlier theme
Opera Theaters in France
- Napoleon allowed three
- The Opera: tragedy
- The Opera-Comique: spoken dialogue, but serious plots
- The Theatre Italien: Italian operas
Grand Opera
- appealed to new middle class, and was a spectacle alongside musical
- Rossini’s Guillaume Tell with an onstage lake
- La muette de Portici by Auber with an eruption of Vesuvius (this was about a rebellion, and it sparked Belgium’s independence)
Eugene Scribe
- librettist for grand opera
- cowrote La muette de Portici
- Robert the Devil, Les Huguenots
Giacomo Meyerbeer
- Robert le diable (Robert the Devil)
- Les Huguenots
- German/Jewish born Jakob, but Italianized his name
Les Huguenots
- typical French grand opera
- five acts, enormous cast, ballet, dramatic scening and lighting
- events leading to St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572
Marie Taglioni 1804-1884
- created Romantic ballet in France
- dance troupes present independent ballets rather than small parts of opera
- pointe shoes
Carl Maria von Weber
- Der Freischutz (The Magic Rifleman) put ordinary people center stage, talking and singing about their concerns, loves, and fears
- it wasn’t intended to be nationalistic, but ended up being that way
German Romantic Opera
- mortal characters are agents of superhuman forces
- use of folklike melodies
- chromatic harmony and orchestral importance
melodrama
-musical theater that combines spoken dialogue with background music
Mikhail Glinka 1804-1857
- first Russian composer recognized as a equal of his Western contemporaries
- A Life for the Tsar: modal scales, quotation of folk songs, and a mix of Western traditions
- Ruslan and Lyudmilla: based on a poem by Aleksander Pushkin, chromaticism, dissonance and whole-tone scale to represent supernatural
minstrelsy
- white performers blackened their faces and impersonated African Americans in jokes
- explored issues of social and political power and proper and improper behavior
