WHAT IS OPERA?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 508, 18 March 1949, Page 19

WHAT IS OPERA?

OUR contributor

BESSIE

POLLARD

(who has temporarily inter-

"* rupted her series "Know Your Classics"), presents,her second and final article designed to help listeners during the Grand Opera season.

HE union of poetry and music in a more or less dramatic form dates back to very ancient times. The opera proper had its beginnings in Italy near the end of the 16th Century when the Camerata (a group of Florentine amateurs, and admirers of the antique) invented a new dramatic form inspired by their conception of the Greek dramas. The Florentine scholars were under the impression that the music, of these ancient Greek plays was merely an intensification of the tones of ordinary speech, with the result that the first works in the new form by members of the group (Dafne in 1597 and Euridice in 1600, by Peri and Caccini) were mostly recitative (musical declamation) with a very slight orchestral accompani-ment-a harpsichord, a viol da gamba, two or three lutes, and sometimes flutes. Closely following the Florentind group, but not of it, came Monteverdi (15671643) who introduced several innovations; up to this point opera was almost a predominantly Italian institution uritil Lully (1632-1687), a Frenchman by adoption, produced works of such eminence that the "home" of opera seemed to be transferred to Versailles, From 1750 to 1850 the German operatic school played a very important role -Handel was followed by Gluck (17141787) who, from 1762 onwards introduced new features and sweeping re~ forms; then came Mozart and Beethoven, leading to Weber and on to Wagner, the Colossus. At the same time Cherubini, Meyerbeer and Offenbach in Paris, and Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti in Italy, pursued their own lines of development. As the opera developed through the centuries, not only did the solo recitative expand into the aria (or solo air), the a

@uet, and the ensemble, but the orchestra became correspondingly larger, and more complementary to the vocal writing in thematic importance and in colour. The last hundred years has brought forward operas from all parts of the world-the splendid Slav works of Smetana, Dvorak, Glinka, Moussorgsky, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov’ and Tchai- | kovski; the late 19th Century traditional Italian school which is being featured almost exclusively during the present tour-the master, Verdi, the pleasantly lyric Puccini, Mascagni, and Leoncavallo; the modern Germans headed by Richard Strauss and Alan Berg; the English school including: Ethel Smyth, Boughton, Holst, Holbrooke, Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten; the French-Bizet, Massenet and Debussy. Outstanding new trends in opera during the last century have been introduced in such works as the Wagnerian music dramas, most of which combine vocalists, orchestra, and all the resources of the theatre into one gigantic scheme; Wagner’s, leit-motiv (leading themes) plan makes a "germ" phrase stand for a character, and object, or a symbol in the same manner as in an orchestral symphonic poem. The traditional aria, duet and ensemble were abandoned in his later operas. Charpentier’s Louise (1900) is notable for its contemporary costuming .and setting; Richard Strauss’s Salome (1905) and Elektra (1909) .are more like great tone-poems incorporating the human voice; Berg’s Wozzeck (1914-1921) has unusual orchestration and an unorthodox use of the voice; in Debussy’s Pelleas and Melisande .(18921902) the aria was completely supplanted by a sung declamation. Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes (1945) and The Rape of Lucretia (1946) are-amongst the most significant operas of this last century. SN