• 19th century was a “golden age of opera” throughout Europe

• 2 main romantic themes

• Idea of breaking down barriers between art genres

• “Celebration of music as the most profound of all the arts”

• Many operas used subjects from novels

Verdi and Italian Opera

• Giuseppe Verdi was “the greatest of Italian opera composers”

• Commonly compared with Wagner

• Bel canto principles (orchestra never overshadowed vocals)

• Operas had a dramatic quality

Recitative and Aria: The Role of the Orchestra

• Orchestra was not unimportant, plays a rich role

  • More active

• Had declamation (recitative) and melody (arias), plot and action were always accompanied by the full orchestra

• Verdi’s “recitative” (this name is not “satisfactory”) was highly melodramatic

• Arias/duets have a smaller orchestral role, but w/ “rich harmonies underpinning melodic high points and climaxes”

Early Romantic Opera

• Romantic opera started seriously in the 1820s

• Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868)

  • Famous today for opera buffas

  • Famous then for serious bel canto opera (Italian Romantic opera)

  • Gave up opera in 1829 after the success of William Tell

• Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848)

  • Dominated Italian bel canto after Rossini

  • Wrote more than 60 operas and died young

  • “Simple, sentimental arias and blood-and-thunder action music”

• Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835)

  • Most refined of the three early bel canto composers

  • Didn’t write as many operas

  • Very Romantic arias

• Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826)

  • Founder of German Romantic opera

  • Set the basis for “supernatural subject matter with a strongly moral overtone”

    • Most famous work was Der Freischütz (The Magic Bullet)

Rigoletto (1851)

• Scandalous subject of Victor Hugo’s “Le roi s’amuse” (The King Amuses Himself), but with a womanizing duke instead of a king

  • Rigoletto is the Duke of Mantua’s “hunchbacked court jester” who is a “split character” (love and hate). The Duke successfully seduces Rigoletto’s hidden daughter Gilda. Rigoletto then hires assassin Sparafucile, who lures the Duke to an inn where the Duke tries to seduce Sparafucile’s sister Maddalena (while Gilda sadly watches). Rigoletto seeks to kill the Duke.

• Among most frequently performed operas today, also extremely popular then

• Final act outline

  • Recitative: the Duke enters the inn and Gilda sees him

  • Aria: “La donna è mobile”

    • The Duke talks about the fickleness of women

    • Strophic form

  • Recitative: Orchestra keeps moving, Sparafucile confirms that this is the duke that Rigoletto wants killed

  • Quartet: “Bella figlia dell’amore” (Allegro)

    • Ensemble of Rigoletto and Gilda outside the inn and the Duke and Maddalena inside

    • The Duke flirts with Maddalena and Gilda is horrified

  • Andante

    • the Duke continues to pursue Madalena

      • 16 measures (aa’ba’ evenly divided)

    • 4 voices then alternate and express each of their emotions w/ rich Romantic harmonies and modulations

  • Recitative: Rigoletto tells Gilda to go to Verona and he will follow later (no orchestra here), but she does not, and is instead murdered instead of the Duke (climactic thunderstorm)

Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) Biography

• Son of a small-town storekeeper in northern Italy

• Spotty education in youth, later studied music in Milan

• First success at 29 with his biblical opera Nabucco

• Quickly composed operas after this throughout Europe

• Later works were richer and more subtle

• Large supporter of the Risorgimento (Italian liberation movement)

  • Patriotic themes in his early operas

  • Later was an honorary deputy in the 1st Italian parliament

  • VERDI represented Vittorio Emmanuele, Re d’Italia (Vittorio Emmanuele, King of Italy)

• Tough businessman and “dour character”

• Lost his first wife, the daughter of Barezzi (early patron), and their two young children, later remarried a singer, Giuseppina Strepponi

• Died very famous at 87

Wagner and Music Drama

• Had musical innovations in harmony and orchestration

  • Gesamtkunstwerk (“total work of art” concept) and leitmotiv (operatic technique)

• Philosopher and composer, to some extent

• Wagner “wanted to do away with all the conventions of earlier opera”

The Total Work of Art

• Wagner developed music drama in the 1850s, a new kind of opera

• Wagner also coined the term Gesamtkunstwerk, the “total work of art”

  • Music is matched to the words

• Romantic music also used myths

  • Wagner unofficially “paved the way for Hitler”

• Wagner “raised the orchestra to new importance in opera”

Richard Wagner (1813-1883) Biography

• Born in Leipzig during the Napoleonic Wars

• Father died young, and his stepfather was an actor and writer

• Idolized Shakespeare and Beethoven

• Worked as an opera conductor as a young man

  • After an unsuccessful stint in Paris that inspired anti-French sentiments in his later writing

• His early impressive operas adhered to the early Romantic opera style of Carl Maria von Weber

• Was exiled from Germany for 13 years after his activity in the revolution of 1848-49

• Gained the support of King Ludwig II of Bavaria, which helped him immensely

• Had a “hypnotic personality” (“half con man and half visionary, bad poet and very good musician”

• 50 years after his death, his anti-Semitic writings and operas were taken up by the Nazis

• Most important of the Romantic composers

Leitmotivs

• A leitmotiv is a leading musical motive associated with some person, thing, idea, or symbol

  • Guide the listener through a story

• Wagner also used thematic transformation, a variation-like technique in which the changing of motives could show a person/idea developing and changing “under the impact of dramatic action”

Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde (1859)

• Wagner’s first completed music drama

• Great medieval love story of Tristan and Isolde

• Includes philosophy, expanding the story to “something more”

The Nibelung’s Ring (1848-74)

• Very grandiose

  • Huge music drama in 4 long parts (and therefore 4 nights)

  • “Quarter century in the making”

• Commonly called “The Ring”

• Elaborate mythology for a “simple modern tale”

• Das Rheingold is about the “moral decline of the world” because of greed

The Valkyrie (1851-1856)

• Second opera in The Ring

• About long separated siblings Siegmund and Sieglinde coming together

• Orchestra has a large role

• Leitmotivs are unique every time, and are more free-formed

• First and Second Drinks and then Communion

Late Romantic Opera

• There was still an emphasis on strings, emotions, and powerful music

• Freer and more fragmentary melodic forms

• Blurred distinctions between recitative and aria

• Wagner’s leitmotiv technique commonly used

• Less “mythical, quasi-philosophical ideal for opera”

• Emphasized “sordid and violent aspects of life”

Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924)

• Main Italian opera composer after Verdi

• Realist tendencies

• Varied “locales” in his operas

• “Specialized in intimate portraits of helpless women in hopeless situations”

Madame Butterfly (1904)

• Derived from a play by American author David Belasco

• About a cynical young naval American officer (Lieutenant Pinkerton) who marries and has a child with a Japanese girl, only to leave and marry an American woman, then return with the new wife to the Japanese girl (Cho-Cho-San, aka “Madame Butterfly”) killing herself