WHAT IS OPERA?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 507, 11 March 1949, Page 12

WHAT IS OPERA?

[N response to requests from several correspondents, our contributor.

BESSIE

POLLARD

interrupts her series "Know Your Classics"

and begins a short series intended to help listeners during the Grand Opera season. --,

PERA may be simply defined as a "sung play" or a "drama set to music." Its text, plot, dialogue, acting, construction and so on, is known as the libretto (literally, "little book") which in its lay-out resembles a stage play adapted to a musical setting. The libretto is generally specially written for the composer, although some composers-Wagner, Charpentier and Borodin-wrote their own. Sometimes a composer chooses a well-known stage play for adaptation-Debtissy’s Pelleas and Melisande is nearly identical with Maeterlinck’s drama of the same title, and Richard Strauss’s Salome is adapted from Oscar Wilde’s play. The music of an opera, based on the text of the libretto, is made up of solo arias (or airs), concerted pieces, recitatives (musical declamation) and choruses, accompanied by orchestra, acted in costume, with appropriate stage settings. Libretto and music should of necessity be equal in merit; a bad "book" has often doomed good music (as in Weber’s Euryanthe) although a masterly composer can succeed sometimes in masking the shortcomings of a poor text, as Mozart did in his Thé Magic Flute. Grand Opera is a term used to-day to define serious opera in ‘all forms; originally it was applied to French Opera in which every word was sung, and all recitative had an orchestral accompani-’/ ment. Opera Buffa probably had its origins in that ancient form of Italian rural comedy, the Commedia Dell’ Arte;

nowadays the term denotes a classical Italian comic opera with secco-recitative -that is, the musical declamatory passages move very quickly as in normal speech, against an accompaniment of the simplest kind, usually a series of chords which serve to keep the singer on the note. Rossini’s The Barber of Seville is an example of Opera Buffa, Opera Bouffe defines French light opera; its most famous exponent was Offenbach, Opera Comique is French Opera, not necessarily comic or light in character, socalled because some of the dialogue is spoken, not sung. Singspiel is German Opera with spoken dialogue in certain partsMozart’s II Seraglio is an example. Opera Seria stands for large scale tragic or serious opera; musically, the term is used in a historical sense to mark the type of opera which was the pre-18th Century vogue. Handel’s operas, with one or two exceptions, and later, Mozart’s Idomeneo, and Titus, are perfect examples. Chamber Opera is an intimate form using a small chorus and orchestra; Richard Strauss’s Ariadne and Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia are two 20th Century examples. Both works are a complete reversion from the colossal music dramas of the 19th Century. Ballad Opera denotes a type of 18th Century English stage work with music and spoken dialogue; the words of the lyrics were set sometimes to popular English, Irish and Scottish tunes, to airs by contemporary composers, and to typical ballads of the day. Gay’s The Beggar's Opera was the prototype of a long series of such works,