Beethoven only composed one opera, but that opera “Fidelio” is very much part of the repertory. On the other hand, Schubert composer of more than 600 songs/lieder – tried his hand at opera on several occasions and those works rarely get an airing today.
The Italians Rossini and Donizetti had a real gift for melody, a natural theatrical instinct and, more often than not, great wit.
Their ensembles simply sparkle and Rossini introduced what was to become ‘the Rossini crescendo’, a building up and up by means of repetition at the end of an aria or ensemble.
Rossini composed all his works for the stage early in his career and spent the last 30 or 40 years of his life living off his earnings in Paris and writing some music for the Church and other small-scale works.
“The Barber of Seville” and “Cenerentola” are fine examples of Rossini’s comic genius. Donizetti has left us such gems as “L’Elisir d’amore” and “Don Pasquale” and the more dramatic works such as “Lucia di Lammermoor”.
His orchestral score is often fairly straight-forward and for that reason Wagner cruelly referred to the Donizetti orchestra as ‘the big guitar’. Donizetti’s demise was more tragic and like so many others he died from syphilis.
Other notable masters of 19th century bel-canto and grand opera are Bellini, Meyerbeer, Weber, Gounod and Massenet. Bizet is mainly remembered for ‘the Pearl-Fishers duet’ and of course “Carmen”.
Opera was now no longer dealing solely with themes such as nobility, but with “Carmen” the title role was a cigarette girl and the tenor was a killer who deserted from the army. In a by now famous performance of the opera in Mexico, Don Jose, the tenor, was having a cigarette outside the stage-door at the interval in his army costume. He was arrested and thrown into a cell, and the next act had to be held while the police were being convinced of his innocence.
The next big shake-up came with the arrival of Wagner. He pushed classical tonality as far as he could and was a great believer in the ‘oneness’ of music and drama. His theory of “Gesamtkunstwerk” meant that he strived for a ‘total artwork’. Wagner developed the ‘leitmotif’ which was a little musical theme or idea linked to each of the main characters or ideas on the stage.
His themes were often from Norse mythology and were very nationalistic, though ‘Isolde’ from “Tristan and Isolde” was of course Irish, hence ‘Chapelizod’ in Dublin.
Many of Wagner’s ideologies preceded those of ‘the Third Reich’ and Hitler was a big fan of the composer. Rossini, on the other hand, said that “Wagner had lovely moments, but terrible quarters of an hour”.
At the same time in Italy, another ‘opera giant’ was gaining enormous patriotic appeal, so much so that ‘Viva Verdi’ became a political slogan at the time. ‘Long Live the King’ was ‘Viva Vittorio Emaniele Re d’Italia’ (Verdi). The ‘Chorus of the Hebrew slaves’ from “Nabucco” became a sort of alternative national anthem. Verdi’s dramas were often violent and bloody, from ‘Otello’ – the consummation of tragic opera – to his only comic opera “Falstaff” which is perfection of the genre. And I can’t omit “Traviata”, “Rigoletto” and “Don Carlos”!
In Russia at this time Tchaikovsky was composing such glorious masterpieces such as “Eugene Onegin” and “The Queen of Spades” and Mussorgsky’s ‘magnum opus’ has to be “Boris Godunov”.
Moving into the 20th century, Mascagni and Leoncavallo with “Cavalleria Rusticana” and “Pagliacci” were preaching the merits of ‘verismo opera’ (‘truthism’).
Puccini took this even further and his heroes and heroines were little seamstresses dying of consumption, geisha girls being dumped by horridly racist American naval officers, and even cowboys and cowgirls!
Richard Strauss, Berg, Dvorak, Janacek, Stravinsky, Britten and many others pushed opera even further into the 20th century, and some pushed it too far – no names mentioned.
Despite a serious lack of funding, especially in this country, and sadly often elitism, opera has survived for centuries now. Opera only acquired the ‘snob element’ in the last century or so, and before that was the pop music of its day, so let’s get rid of the elitism. Those of you who may never have been to one, try a “Boheme”, “Carmen”, “Butterfly” or an equally accessible piece – you may surprise yourselves!
