composition is a musical theatrical performance based on the synthesis of words, stage action and music. Originated in Italy at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries.
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OPERA
Italian opera - composition), a genre of theatrical art, a musical and dramatic performance based on the synthesis of words, stage action and music. Representatives of many professions participate in the creation of an opera performance: composer, director, writer, composing dramatic dialogues and lines, as well as writing the libretto (summary); an artist who designs the stage with scenery and designs costumes for the characters; lighting workers and many others. But the decisive role in the opera is played by the music, which expresses the feelings of the characters.
The musical “statements” of characters in opera are aria, arioso, cavatina, recitative, choruses, orchestral numbers, etc. The part of each character is written for a specific voice - high or low. The highest female voice is soprano, the middle one is mezzo-soprano, and the lowest is contralto. For male singers, these are tenor, baritone and bass, respectively. Sometimes ballet scenes are included in opera performances. There are historical-legendary, heroic-epic, folk-fairy, lyrical-everyday and other operas.
Opera originated in Italy at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. Music for operas was written by W. A. Mozart, L. van Beethoven, G. Rossini, V. Bellini, G. Donizetti, G. Verdi, R. Wagner, C. Gounod, J. Bizet, B. Smetana, A. Dvorak , G. Puccini, C. Debussy, R. Strauss and many other major composers. The first Russian operas were created in the second half. 18th century In the 19th century Russian opera experienced a bright flourishing in the works of N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, M. I. Glinka, M. P. Mussorgsky, P. I. Tchaikovsky, in the 20th century. – S. S. Prokofiev, D. D. Shostakovich, T. N. Khrennikov, R. K. Shchedrin, A. P. Petrova and others.
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Before considering the genre of opera and ways of working with it in a music lesson, I would like to give a definition of what opera is.
“Opera, and only opera, brings you closer to people, makes your music related to the real public, makes you the property not only of individual circles, but, under favorable conditions, of the entire people.” These words belong to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the great Russian composer.
This is a musical-dramatic work (often including ballet scenes), intended for stage performance, the text of which is sung in whole or in part, usually accompanied by an orchestra. An opera is written based on a specific literary text. The impact of a dramatic work and the acting of an opera is infinitely enhanced by the expressive power of music. And vice versa: music in opera acquires extraordinary specificity and imagery.
The desire to enhance the impact of a theatrical work with the help of music arose already in very distant times, at the dawn of the existence of dramatic art. In the open air, at the foot of the mountain, the slopes of which, processed in the form of steps, served as places for spectators, festive performances took place in Ancient Greece. Actors in masks, wearing special shoes that increased their height, reciting in a sing-song voice, performed tragedies that glorified the strength of the human spirit. The tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, created in these distant times, have not lost their artistic value. Theatrical works with music were also known in the Middle Ages. But all these “ancestors” of modern opera differed from it in that they alternated singing with ordinary spoken language, while the distinctive feature of opera is that the text in it is sung from beginning to end.
Opera in our modern understanding of the word originated at the turn of the 16th and 18th centuries in Italy. The creators of this new genre were poets and musicians who admired ancient art and sought to revive ancient Greek tragedy. But although in their musical and stage experiments they used plots from ancient Greek mythology, they did not revive tragedy, but created a completely new art form - opera.
The opera quickly gained popularity and spread throughout all countries. In each country, it acquired a special national character - this was reflected both in the choice of subjects (often from the history of a particular country, from its tales and legends), and in the nature of the music. Opera quickly conquered the major cities of Italy (Rome, Paris, Venice, Florence).
Opera and its components
What means does music in opera have to enhance the artistic impact of the drama? In order to answer this question, let's get acquainted with the main elements that make up an opera.
One of the main parts of the opera is the aria. The meaning of the word is close to “song”, “chant”. Indeed, the arias from the first operas in their form (mostly verses) and in the nature of the melody were close to songs, and in classical opera we will find many aria-songs (Vanya’s song in Ivan Susanin, Marfa’s song in Khovanshchina ).
But usually an aria is more complex in form than a song, and this determines its very purpose in opera. An aria, like a monologue in a drama, serves as a characteristic of a particular hero. This characteristic can be general - a kind of “musical portrait” of the hero - or associated with certain, specific circumstances of the action of the work.
But the action of an opera cannot be conveyed only by alternating completed arias, just as the action of a drama cannot consist of monologues alone. In those moments of the opera where the characters actually act - in live communication with each other, in conversation, argument, clash - there is no need for such completeness of form as is quite appropriate in an aria. It would slow down the development of actions. Such moments usually have no end musical composition, individual phrases of the characters alternate with exclamations of the choir with orchestral episodes.
Recitative, that is, declamatory singing, is widely used.
Many Russian composers paid great attention to recitative, especially A.S. Dargomyzhsky and M.P. Mussorgsky. Striving for realism in music, for the greatest truthfulness of musical characteristics, they saw the main means to achieve this goal in the musical translation of speech intonations that are most characteristic of a given character.
Opera ensembles are also an integral part. Ensembles can be very different in size: from two voices to ten. In this case, the ensemble usually combines voices of range and timbre. Through the ensemble, one feeling is conveyed, covering several characters; in this case, the individual parts of the ensemble are not opposed, but seem to complement each other, and often have a similar melodic pattern. But often the ensemble unites the musical characteristics of heroes whose feelings are different and opposite.
The symphony orchestra is an integral part of the opera performance. He not only accompanies vocal and choral parts, and not only “paints” musical portraits or landscapes. Using his own means of expressiveness, he participates in the construction of the elements of the production “at the outset” of the action, the waves of its development, climax and denouement. It also denotes the parties to a dramatic conflict. The capabilities of the orchestra are realized in an opera performance exclusively through the figure of the conductor. Beyond coordination musical ensemble and participation, together with singer-actors, in creating characters, the conductor controls all stage action, since the tempo-rhythm of the performance is in his hands.
Thus, all the components of the opera are combined into one. The conductor is working on it, the choir soloists are learning their parts, the director is staging it, and the artists are painting the scenery. Only as a result of the common work of all these people does an opera performance arise.
Opera is one of the most important musical and theatrical genres. It is a mixture of music, vocals, painting and acting, and is highly valued by devotees of the classical arts. It is not surprising that in music lessons, the first thing a child is given is a report on this topic.
Where does it begin?
It begins with an overture. This is the introduction performed by a symphony orchestra. Designed to set the mood and atmosphere of the play.
What's going on
The overture is followed by the main part of the performance. This is a grandiose performance, divided into acts - complete parts of the performance, between which there are intermissions. Intermissions can be long, so that the audience and participants in the production can rest, or short, when the curtain is lowered only to change the scenery.
The main body, the driving force of the whole thing, are the solo arias. They are performed by actors - characters in the story. Arias reveal the plot, character and feelings of the characters. Sometimes recitatives - melodious rhythmic cues - or ordinary colloquial speech are inserted between the arias.
The literary part is based on the libretto. This is a kind of script, a summary of the work . In rare cases, poems are written by composers themselves., such as Wagner. But most often the words for the opera are written by the librettist.
Where does it end?
The finale of the opera performance is the epilogue. This part performs the same function as the literary epilogue. This could be a story about future fate heroes, or summing up and defining morality.
Opera history
Wikipedia has a wealth of information on this topic, but this article provides a condensed history of the musical genre mentioned.
Ancient tragedy and the Florentine Camerata
The birthplace of opera is Italy. However, the roots of this genre go back to Ancient Greece, where they first began to combine stage and vocal art. Unlike modern opera, where the main emphasis is on music, in ancient Greek tragedy They only alternated between normal speech and singing. This art form continued to develop among the Romans. In ancient Roman tragedies, solo parts gained weight, and musical inserts began to be used more often.
The ancient tragedy received a second life at the end of the 16th century. The community of poets and musicians - the Florentine Camerata - decided to revive the ancient tradition. They created a new genre called "drama through music." In contrast to the polyphony popular at that time, camerata works were monophonic melodic recitations. theatrical performance and musical accompaniment were intended only to emphasize the expressiveness and sensuality of poetry.
It is believed that the first opera production was released in 1598. Unfortunately, from the work “Daphne”, written by the composer Jacopo Peri and the poet Ottavio Rinuccini, in our time only the title remains . But “Eurydice” belongs to them., which is the earliest surviving opera. However, this glorious work for modern society is just an echo of the past. But the opera “Orpheus,” written by the famous Claudio Monteverdi in 1607 for the Mantuan court, can still be seen in theaters to this day. The Gonzaga family, which ruled Mantua at that time, made a significant contribution to the emergence of the opera genre.
Drama Theater
The members of the Florentine Camerata could be called "rebels" of their time. Indeed, in an era when the fashion for music is dictated by the church, they turned to the pagan myths and legends of Greece, renouncing the aesthetic norms accepted in society, and created something new. However, even earlier, the dramatic theater introduced their unusual solutions. This trend flourished during the Renaissance.
By experimenting and focusing on the audience's reaction, this genre developed own style. Representatives of the drama theater used music and dance in their productions. The new art form was extremely popular. It was the influence of the dramatic theater that helped “drama through music” reach a new level of expressiveness.
Opera art continued develop and gain popularity. However, this musical genre truly blossomed in Venice, when in 1637 Benedetto Ferrari and Francesco Manelli opened the first public opera house, San Cassiano. Thanks to this event, musical works of this type ceased to be entertainment for courtiers and reached a commercial level. At this time, the reign of castrati and prima donnas in the world of music began.
Distribution abroad
By the middle of the 17th century, the art of opera, with the support of the aristocracy, had developed into a separate independent genre and accessible entertainment for the masses. Thanks to traveling troupes, this type of performance spread throughout Italy, and began to win audiences abroad.
The first Italian representation of the genre to be presented abroad was called Galatea. It was performed in 1628 in the city of Warsaw. Not long after, another work was performed at court - “La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina” by Francesca Caccini. This work is also the earliest extant opera written by women.
Francesco Cavalli's Jason was the most popular opera of the 17th century. In this regard, in 1660 he was invited to France for the wedding of Louis XIV. However, his “Xerxes” and “Hercules in Love” were not successful with the French public.
Antonio Cesti, asked to write an opera for the Austrian Habsburg family, had greater success. His grandiose performance “The Golden Apple” lasted two days. The unprecedented success marked the rise of the Italian operatic tradition in European music.
Seria and buffa
In the 18th century, opera genres such as seria and buffa gained particular popularity. Although both originated in Naples, the two genres represent fundamental opposites. Opera seria literally means "serious opera". This is a product of the era of classicism, which encouraged purity of genre and typification in art. The series is distinguished by the following qualities:
- historical or mythological subjects;
- the predominance of recitatives over arias;
- separation of the roles of music and text;
- minimal character customization;
- static action.
The most successful and famous librettist in this genre was Pietro Metastasio. Different composers wrote dozens of operas based on his best librettos.
At the same time, the buffa comedy genre was developing in parallel and independently. If the series tells stories of the past, then buffa devotes its plots to modern and everyday situations. This genre evolved from short comedy skits, which were staged during intermissions of the main performance and were separate works. Gradually this type of art gained popularity and was realized as full-fledged independent performances.
Gluck reform
German composer Christoph Willibald Gluck firmly imprinted his name in the history of music. When opera seria dominated the stages of Europe, he persistently promoted his own vision of operatic art. He believed that drama should rule the show, and the task of music, vocals and choreography should be to promote and emphasize it. Gluck argued that composers should abandon spectacular performances in favor of "simple beauty." That all elements of the opera should be a continuation of each other and form a single harmonious plot.
He began his reform in 1762 in Vienna. Together with librettist Ranieri de Calzabigi, he staged three plays, but they did not receive a response. Then in 1773 he went to Paris. His reform activities lasted until 1779, and caused a lot of controversy and unrest among music lovers . Gluck's ideas had a great influence on the development of the opera genre. They were also reflected in the reforms of the 19th century.
Types of opera
Over more than four centuries of history, the opera genre has undergone many changes and brought a lot to the musical world. During this time, several types of opera emerged:
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OPERA, drama or comedy set to music. Dramatic texts are sung in opera; singing and stage action are almost always accompanied by instrumental (usually orchestral) accompaniment. Many operas are also characterized by the presence of orchestral interludes (introductions, conclusions, intermissions, etc.) and plot breaks filled with ballet scenes.
Opera was born as an aristocratic pastime, but soon became entertainment for the general public. The first public opera house opened in Venice in 1637, just four decades after the birth of the genre. Then the opera quickly spread throughout Europe. As a public entertainment it reached its greatest development in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Throughout its history, opera has had a powerful influence on other musical genres. The symphony grew out of the instrumental introduction to Italian operas of the 18th century. The virtuoso passages and cadences of the piano concerto are largely the fruit of an attempt to reflect operatic vocal virtuosity in the texture of the keyboard instrument. In the 19th century the harmonic and orchestral writing of R. Wagner, created by him for the grandiose “musical drama”, determined the further development of a whole series musical forms, and even in the 20th century. Many musicians considered liberation from Wagner's influence as the main direction of the movement towards new music.
Opera form.
In the so-called In grand opera, the most widespread type of operatic genre today, the entire text is sung. In comic opera, singing usually alternates with spoken scenes. The name “comic opera” (opéra comique in France, opera buffa in Italy, Singspiel in Germany) is to a large extent arbitrary, since not all works of this type have comic content (a characteristic feature of “comic opera” is the presence of spoken dialogues). The type of light, sentimental comic opera, which became widespread in Paris and Vienna, began to be called operetta; in America it's called musical comedy. Plays with music (musicals) that have gained fame on Broadway are usually more serious in content than European operettas.
All these varieties of opera are based on the belief that music and especially singing enhance the dramatic expressiveness of the text. True, at times other elements played an equally important role in the opera. Thus, in French opera of certain periods (and in Russian opera in the 19th century), dance and the entertainment side acquired very significant importance; German authors often considered the orchestral part not as an accompanying one, but as equivalent to the vocal one. But on the scale of the entire history of opera, singing still played a dominant role.
If the singers are the leads in an opera performance, then the orchestral part forms the frame, the foundation of the action, moves it forward and prepares the audience for future events. The orchestra supports the singers, emphasizes the climaxes, fills gaps in the libretto or moments of scenery changes with its sound, and finally performs at the conclusion of the opera when the curtain falls.
Most operas have instrumental introductions that help set the audience's perception. In the 17th–19th centuries. such an introduction was called an overture. Overtures were laconic and independent concert pieces, thematically unrelated to the opera and therefore easily replaceable. For example, an overture to a tragedy Aurelian in Palmyra Rossini later developed into an overture to a comedy Barber of Seville. But in the second half of the 19th century. composers began to pay much more attention to the unity of mood and thematic connection between the overture and the opera. A form of introduction (Vorspiel) arose, which, for example in Wagner's late musical dramas, includes the main themes (leitmotifs) of the opera and directly introduces the action. The form of the "autonomous" operatic overture had declined, and by the time Tosca Puccini (1900), the overture could be replaced by just a few opening chords. In a number of operas of the 20th century. There are no musical preparations whatsoever for the stage action.
So, the operatic action develops within the orchestral frame. But since the essence of opera is singing, the highest moments of the drama are reflected in the completed forms of aria, duet and other conventional forms where music comes to the fore. An aria is like a monologue, a duet is like a dialogue; a trio usually embodies the conflicting feelings of one of the characters in relation to the other two participants. With further complication, different ensemble forms arise - such as a quartet in Rigoletto Verdi or sextet in Lucia di Lammermoor Donizetti. The introduction of such forms usually stops the action to allow room for the development of one (or more) emotions. Only a group of singers, united in an ensemble, can express several points of view on current events. Sometimes the choir acts as a commentator on the actions of opera characters. In general, the text in opera choirs is spoken relatively slowly, and phrases are often repeated to make the content understandable to the listener.
The arias themselves do not constitute an opera. In the classical type of opera, the main means of conveying the plot and developing the action to the audience is the recitative: fast, melodic declamation in free meter, supported by simple chords and based on natural speech intonations. In comic operas, recitative is often replaced by dialogue. Recitative may seem boring to listeners who do not understand the meaning of the spoken text, but it is often indispensable in the meaningful structure of the opera.
Not all operas can draw a clear line between recitative and aria. Wagner, for example, abandoned completed vocal forms, aiming at the continuous development of musical action. This innovation was taken up, with various modifications, by a number of composers. On Russian soil, the idea of a continuous “musical drama” was, independently of Wagner, first tested by A.S. Dargomyzhsky in Stone Guest and M.P. Mussorgsky in Marriage– they called this form “conversational opera”, opera dialogue.
Opera as drama.
The dramatic content of the opera is embodied not only in the libretto, but also in the music itself. The creators of the opera genre called their works dramma per musica - “drama expressed in music.” Opera is more than a play with songs and dances. The dramatic play is self-sufficient; opera without music is only part of the dramatic unity. This even applies to operas with spoken scenes. In works of this type - for example, in Manon Lescaut J. Massenet – musical numbers still retain a key role.
It is extremely rare that an opera libretto can be staged as a dramatic play. Although the content of the drama is expressed in words and characteristic stage techniques are present, without music something important is lost - something that can only be expressed by music. For the same reason, only occasionally can dramatic plays be used as librettos, without first reducing the number of characters, simplifying the plot and main characters. We must leave room for the music to breathe; it must repeat itself, form orchestral episodes, change mood and color depending on dramatic situations. And since singing still makes it difficult to understand the meaning of the words, the text of the libretto must be so clear that it can be perceived while singing.
Thus, opera subjugates the lexical richness and refinement of the form of good dramatic play, but compensates for this damage with opportunities own language, which appeals directly to the feelings of listeners. So, literary source Madame Butterfly Puccini - D. Belasco's play about a geisha and an American naval officer is hopelessly outdated, and the tragedy of love and betrayal expressed in Puccini's music has not faded with time.
When composing opera music, most composers followed certain conventions. For example, the use of high registers of voices or instruments meant "passion", dissonant harmonies expressed "fear". Such conventions were not arbitrary: people generally raise their voices when excited, and the physical sensation of fear is disharmonious. But experienced opera composers used more subtle means to express dramatic content in music. Melodic line had to organically correspond to the words on which it lay; harmonic writing was supposed to reflect the ebb and flow of emotions. It was necessary to create different rhythmic models for rapid declamatory scenes, ceremonial ensembles, love duets and arias. The expressive capabilities of the orchestra, including timbres and other characteristics associated with different instruments, were also put at the service of dramatic purposes.
However, dramatic expressiveness is not the only function of music in opera. An opera composer solves two contradictory tasks: to express the content of the drama and to give pleasure to the audience. According to the first objective, music serves drama; according to the second, music is self-sufficient. Many great opera composers - Gluck, Wagner, Mussorgsky, R. Strauss, Puccini, Debussy, Berg - emphasized the expressive, dramatic element in opera. From other authors, the opera acquired a more poetic, restrained, chamber appearance. Their art is marked by the subtlety of halftones and is less dependent on changes in public tastes. Lyricist composers are loved by singers, because although an opera singer must be an actor to a certain extent, his main task is purely musical: he must accurately reproduce the musical text, give the sound the necessary coloring, and phrase beautifully. Lyrical authors include the Neapolitans of the 18th century, Handel, Haydn, Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Weber, Gounod, Masne, Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. Rare authors achieved an almost absolute balance of dramatic and lyrical elements, among them Monteverdi, Mozart, Bizet, Verdi, Janacek and Britten.
Opera repertoire.
The traditional operatic repertoire consists mainly of works from the 19th century. and a number of operas from the late 18th and early 20th centuries. Romanticism, with its attraction to sublime deeds and distant countries, contributed to the development of opera throughout Europe; The growth of the middle class led to the penetration of folk elements into the operatic language and provided opera with a large and appreciative audience.
The traditional repertoire tends to reduce the entire genre diversity of opera to two very capacious categories - “tragedy” and “comedy”. The first is usually represented more widely than the second. The basis of the repertoire today is made up of Italian and German operas, especially “tragedies”. In the field of “comedy,” Italian opera, or at least in Italian (for example, Mozart’s operas), predominates. There are few French operas in the traditional repertoire, and those are usually performed in the Italian style. Several Russian and Czech operas occupy their place in the repertoire, almost always performed in translation. In general, large opera companies adhere to the tradition of performing works in the original language.
The main regulator of the repertoire is popularity and fashion. The prevalence and cultivation of certain types of voices plays a certain role, although some operas (like Aide Verdi) are often performed without taking into account whether the necessary voices are available or not (the latter is more common). In an era when operas with virtuoso coloratura roles and allegorical plots went out of fashion, few cared about the appropriate style of their production. Handel's operas, for example, were neglected until the famous singer Joan Sutherland and others began performing them. And the point here is not only in the “new” public that discovered the beauty of these operas, but also in the appearance large quantity singers with high vocal culture who can cope with sophisticated operatic roles. In the same way, the revival of the work of Cherubini and Bellini was inspired by the brilliant performances of their operas and the discovery of the “newness” of old works. The composers of the early Baroque, especially Monteverdi, but also Peri and Scarlatti, were likewise brought out of obscurity.
All such revivals require commentary publications, especially works by 17th century authors, on instrumentation and dynamic principles which we do not have exact information about. Endless repetitions in the so-called. arias da capo in the operas of the Neapolitan school and Handel are quite tiresome in our time - the time of digests. A modern listener is unlikely to be able to share the passion of listeners even of the French grand opera of the 19th century. (Rossini, Spontini, Meyerbeer, Halévy) to entertainment that took up the whole evening (so, the complete score of the opera Fernando Cortes Spontini plays for 5 hours, not counting intermissions). There are often cases when dark places in the score and its dimensions lead the conductor or director into the temptation to cut, rearrange numbers, make insertions and even write in new pieces, often so clumsily that only a distant relative of the work that appears in the program appears before the public.
Singers.
Opera singers are usually divided into six types according to their voice range. Three female type voices, from high to low - soprano, mezzo-soprano, contralto (the latter is rare these days); three male - tenor, baritone, bass. Within each type there may be several subtypes depending on the quality of the voice and singing style. The lyric-coloratura soprano is distinguished by a light and exceptionally agile voice; such singers are able to perform virtuosic passages, fast scales, trills and other embellishments. Lyric-dramatic (lirico spinto) soprano is a voice of great brightness and beauty. The timbre of a dramatic soprano is rich and strong. The distinction between lyric and dramatic voices also applies to tenors. There are two main types of basses: the “singing bass” (basso cantante) for “serious” parts and the comic bass (basso buffo).
Gradually, rules for choosing a singing timbre for a certain role were formed. The parts of the main characters and heroines were usually assigned to tenors and sopranos. In general, the older and more experienced the character, the lower his voice should be. An innocent young girl - such as Gilda in Rigoletto Verdi is a lyric soprano, and the insidious seductress Delilah in Saint-Saëns' opera Samson and Delilah– mezzo-soprano. The role of Figaro, the energetic and witty hero of Mozart's Weddings of Figaro and Rossinievsky Barber of Seville written by both composers for the baritone, although as the main character's part, the part of Figaro should have been intended for the first tenor. The parts of peasants, wizards, mature people, rulers and old people were usually created for bass-baritones (for example, Don Giovanni in Mozart's opera) or basses (Boris Godunov in Mussorgsky).
Changes in public tastes played a role in the formation of operatic vocal styles. The technique of sound production, the technique of vibrato (“sob”) has changed over the centuries. J. Peri (1561–1633), singer and author of the earliest partially preserved opera ( Daphne), presumably sang with a so-called white voice - in a relatively flat, unchanging style, with little or no vibrato - in accordance with the interpretation of the voice as an instrument, which was in vogue until the end of the Renaissance.
During the 18th century. The cult of the virtuoso singer developed - first in Naples, then throughout Europe. At this time, the role of the main character in the opera was performed by a male soprano - a castrato, that is, a timbre whose natural change was stopped by castration. Castrati singers pushed the range and mobility of their voices to the limits of what was possible. Opera stars such as castrato Farinelli (C. Broschi, 1705–1782), whose soprano was said to be superior in strength to the sound of the trumpet, or mezzo-soprano F. Bordoni, who was said to be able to sustain the sound longer than any singer in the world, completely subordinated to their mastery those composers whose music they performed. Some of them composed operas themselves and directed opera troupes (Farinelli). It was taken for granted that singers decorated the melodies composed by the composer with their own improvised ornaments, without paying attention to whether such decorations suited the plot situation of the opera or not. The owner of any type of voice must be trained to perform fast passages and trills. In Rossini's operas, for example, the tenor must master the coloratura technique no worse than the soprano. The revival of such art in the 20th century. allowed to give new life to Rossini's diverse operatic work.
Only one singing style of the 18th century. Almost unchanged to this day is the style of the comic bass, because simple effects and fast chatter leave little room for individual interpretations, musical or stage; perhaps the square comedies of D. Pergolesi (1749–1801) are performed now no less often than 200 years ago. The talkative, hot-tempered old man is a highly revered figure in the operatic tradition, a favorite role for basses prone to vocal clowning.
The pure singing style of bel canto, shimmering with all colors, so beloved by Mozart, Rossini and other opera composers of the late 18th and first half of the 19th centuries, in the second half of the 19th century. gradually gave way to a more powerful and dramatic style of singing. The development of modern harmonic and orchestral writing gradually changed the function of the orchestra in opera: from accompanist to protagonist, and consequently singers needed to sing louder so that their voices were not drowned out by the instruments. This trend originated in Germany, but influenced all European opera, including Italian. The German "heroic tenor" (Heldentenor) was clearly born of the need for a voice capable of dueling with Wagner's orchestra. The late works of Verdi and the operas of his followers require “strong” (di forza) tenors and energetic dramatic (spinto) sopranos. The demands of romantic opera sometimes even lead to interpretations that seem to run counter to the intentions expressed by the composer himself. Thus, R. Strauss thought of Salome in his opera of the same name as “a 16-year-old girl with the voice of Isolde.” However, the opera's instrumentation is so dense that mature matron singers are needed to perform the main role.
Among the legendary opera stars of the past is E. Caruso (1873–1921, perhaps the most popular singer in history), J. Farrar (1882–1967, who was always followed by a retinue of admirers in New York), F.I. Chaliapin (1873–1938, powerful bass, master of Russian realism), K. Flagstad (1895–1962, heroic soprano from Norway) and many others. In the next generation they were replaced by M. Callas (1923–1977), B. Nilsson (b. 1918), R. Tebaldi (1922–2004), J. Sutherland (b. 1926), L. Price (b. 1927 ), B. Sills (b. 1929), C. Bartoli (1966), R. Tucker (1913–1975), T. Gobbi (1913–1984), F. Corelli (b. 1921), C. Siepi (b. . 1923), J. Vickers (b. 1926), L. Pavarotti (b. 1935), S. Milnes (b. 1935), P. Domingo (b. 1941), J. Carreras (b. 1946).
Opera houses.
Some opera house buildings are associated with a particular type of opera, and in some cases, indeed, the architecture of the theater was determined by one or another type of operatic performance. Thus, the Parisian “Opera” (in Russia the name “Grand Opera” stuck) was intended for a bright spectacle long before its current building was built in 1862–1874 (architect C. Garnier): the staircase and foyer of the palace were designed as would compete with the scenery of ballets and magnificent processions that took place on stage. The “House of Ceremonial Performances” (Festspielhaus) in the Bavarian town of Bayreuth was created by Wagner in 1876 to stage his epic “musical dramas”. Its stage, modeled on the scenes of ancient Greek amphitheatres, has great depth, and the orchestra is located in the orchestra pit and hidden from the audience, due to which the sound is dispersed and the singer does not need to strain his voice. The original Metropolitan Opera building in New York (1883) was designed as a showcase for best singers peace and for respectable lodge subscribers. The hall is so deep that its diamond horseshoe boxes provide visitors with more opportunities to see each other than the relatively shallow stage.
The appearance of opera houses, like a mirror, reflects the history of opera as a phenomenon public life. Its origins lie in the revival of ancient Greek theater in aristocratic circles: the oldest surviving opera house, the Olimpico (1583), built by A. Palladio in Vicenza, corresponds to this period. Its architecture, a microcosm of Baroque society, is based on a distinctive horseshoe-shaped plan, with tiers of boxes fanning out from the center - the royal box. A similar plan is preserved in the buildings of the theaters La Scala (1788, Milan), La Fenice (1792, burned down in 1992, Venice), San Carlo (1737, Naples), Covent Garden (1858, London ). With fewer boxes, but with deeper tiers thanks to steel supports, this plan was used in such American opera houses as the Brooklyn Academy of Music (1908), opera houses in San Francisco (1932) and Chicago (1920). More modern solutions are demonstrated by the new Metropolitan Opera building at New York's Lincoln Center (1966) and the Sydney Opera House (1973, Australia).
The democratic approach is characteristic of Wagner. He demanded maximum concentration from the audience and built a theater where there are no boxes at all, and the seats are arranged in monotonous continuous rows. The austere Bayreuth interior was repeated only in the Munich Prinzregent Theater (1909); even German theaters built after World War II harken back to earlier examples. However, Wagner's idea seems to have contributed to the movement towards the arena concept, i.e. theater without a proscenium, which is offered by some modern architects(prototype - the ancient Roman circus): opera is left to adapt itself to these new conditions. The Roman amphitheater in Verona is well suited for staging such monumental opera performances as Aida Verdi and William Tell Rossini.
Opera festivals.
An important element of Wagner's concept of opera is the summer pilgrimage to Bayreuth. The idea was picked up: in the 1920s, the Austrian city of Salzburg organized a festival dedicated mainly to Mozart’s operas, and invited such talented people as director M. Reinhardt and conductor A. Toscanini to implement the project. Since the mid-1930s, Mozart's operatic work has determined the appearance of the English Glyndebourne Festival. After World War II, a festival appeared in Munich, dedicated mainly to the work of R. Strauss. Florence hosts the Florentine Musical May, where a very wide repertoire is performed, covering both early and modern operas.
STORY
The origins of opera.
The first example of the operatic genre that has come down to us is Eurydice J. Peri (1600) is a modest work created in Florence on the occasion of the wedding of the French king Henry IV and Marie de Medici. As expected, a young singer and madrigalist close to the court was commissioned to provide music for this solemn event. But Peri presented not the usual madrigal cycle on a pastoral theme, but something completely different. The musician was a member of the Florentine Camerata - a circle of scientists, poets and music lovers. For twenty years, members of the Camerata studied the question of how ancient Greek tragedies were performed. They came to the conclusion that the Greek actors pronounced the text in a special declamatory manner, which is something between speech and real singing. But the real result of these experiments in reviving a forgotten art was a new type of solo singing, called “monody”: monody was performed in a free rhythm with the simplest accompaniment. Therefore, Peri and his librettist O. Rinuccini told the story of Orpheus and Eurydice in a recitative, which was supported by the chords of a small orchestra, rather an ensemble of seven instruments, and presented the play in the Florentine Palazzo Pitti. This was Camerata's second opera; score first, Daphne Peri (1598), not preserved.
Early opera had predecessors. For seven centuries the church cultivated liturgical dramas such as Game about Daniel, where solo singing was accompanied by the accompaniment of various instruments. In the 16th century other composers, in particular A. Gabrieli and O. Vecchi, combined secular choruses or madrigals into plot cycles. But still, before Peri and Rinuccini, there was no monodic secular musical-dramatic form. Their work was not a revival of ancient Greek tragedy. It brought something more - a new viable theater genre was born.
However, the full disclosure of the possibilities of the genre of dramma per musica, put forward by the Florentine Camerata, occurred in the work of another musician. Like Peri, C. Monteverdi (1567–1643) was an educated man from a noble family, but unlike Peri, he was a professional musician. A native of Cremona, Monteverdi became famous at the court of Vincenzo Gonzaga in Mantua and until the end of his life he led the choir of the Cathedral of St. Stamp in Venice. Seven years after Eurydice Peri, he composed his own version of the legend of Orpheus - The Tale of Orpheus. These works differ from each other in the same way as an interesting experiment differs from a masterpiece. Monteverdi increased the size of the orchestra fivefold, giving each character his own group of instruments, and prefaced the opera with an overture. His recitative not only voiced the text of A. Strigio, but lived its own artistic life. Monteverdi's harmonic language is full of dramatic contrasts and even today impresses with its boldness and picturesqueness.
Among Monteverdi's subsequent surviving operas are Duel of Tancred and Clorinda(1624), based on a scene from Liberated Jerusalem Torquato Tasso - an epic poem about the crusaders; Return of Ulysses to his homeland(1641) on a plot going back to the ancient Greek legend of Odysseus; Coronation of Poppea(1642), from the time of the Roman Emperor Nero. The last work was created by the composer just a year before his death. This opera became the pinnacle of his work - partly due to the virtuosity of the vocal parts, partly due to the splendor of the instrumental writing.
Distribution of the opera.
During Monteverdi's era, opera rapidly conquered the major cities of Italy. Rome gave the opera author L. Rossi (1598–1653), who staged his opera in Paris in 1647 Orpheus and Eurydice, conquering the French world. F. Cavalli (1602–1676), who sang with Monteverdi in Venice, created about 30 operas; Together with M.A. Cesti (1623–1669), Cavalli became the founder of the Venetian school, which played main role in Italian opera in the second half of the 17th century. In the Venetian school, the monodic style, which came from Florence, opened the way for the development of recitative and aria. The arias gradually became longer and more complex, and virtuoso singers, usually castrati, began to dominate the opera stage. The plots of Venetian operas were still based on mythology or romanticized historical episodes, but now embellished with burlesque interludes that had no relation to the main action and spectacular episodes in which the singers demonstrated their virtuosity. At the Opera of Honor Golden Apple(1668), one of the most complex of that era, there are 50 characters, as well as 67 scenes and 23 changes of scenery.
Italian influence even reached England. At the end of the reign of Elizabeth I, composers and librettists began to create the so-called. masks - court performances that combined recitatives, singing, dance and were based on fantastic plots. This new genre occupied a large place in the work of G. Laws, who in 1643 set it to music Comus Milton, and in 1656 created the first real English opera - Siege of Rhodes. After the Stuart restoration, opera gradually began to gain a foothold on English soil. J. Blow (1649–1708), organist of Westminster Cathedral, composed an opera in 1684 Venus and Adonis, but the essay was still called a mask. The only truly great opera created by an Englishman was Dido and Aeneas G. Purcell (1659–1695), Blow's student and successor. First performed at a women's college around 1689, this little opera is noted for its astonishing beauty. Purcell mastered both French and Italian techniques, but his opera is a typically English work. Libretto Dido, owned by N. Tate, but the composer revived it with his music, marked by the mastery of dramatic characteristics, extraordinary grace and meaningfulness of arias and choruses.
Early French opera.
Like early Italian opera, French opera of the mid-16th century. came from the desire to revive ancient Greek theatrical aesthetics. The difference was that Italian opera emphasized singing, while French opera grew out of ballet, a favorite theatrical genre at the French court of that time. A capable and ambitious dancer who came from Italy, J.B. Lully (1632–1687) became the founder of French opera. He received his musical education, including studying the basics of compositional technique, at the court of Louis XIV and was then appointed court composer. He had an excellent understanding of the stage, which was evident in his music for a number of Moliere's comedies, especially To the tradesman in the nobility(1670). Impressed by the success of the opera troupes that came to France, Lully decided to create his own troupe. Lully's operas, which he called "lyrical tragedies" (tragédies lyriques) , demonstrate a specifically French musical and theatrical style. The stories are taken from ancient mythology or from Italian poems, and the libretto, with its solemn verses in strictly defined meters, is guided by the style of Lully’s great contemporary, the playwright J. Racine. Lully intersperses the development of the plot with long discussions about love and glory, and in prologues and other plot points he inserts divertissements - scenes with dances, choirs and magnificent scenery. The true scale of the composer's work becomes clear these days, when productions of his operas are resumed - Alceste (1674), Atisa(1676) and Armids (1686).
“Czech Opera” is a conventional term that refers to two contrasting artistic movements: pro-Russian in Slovakia and pro-German in the Czech Republic. A recognized figure in Czech music is Antonin Dvořák (1841–1904), although only one of his operas is imbued with deep pathos Mermaid– has become entrenched in the world repertoire. In Prague, the capital of Czech culture, the main figure of the operatic world was Bedřich Smetana (1824–1884), whose The sold bride(1866) quickly entered the repertoire, usually translated into German. The comic and simple plot made this work the most accessible in Smetana’s legacy, although he is the author of two more fiery patriotic operas - the dynamic “opera of salvation” Dalibor(1868) and picture-epic Libusha(1872, staged in 1881), which depicts the unification of the Czech people under the rule of a wise queen.
The unofficial center of the Slovak school was the city of Brno, where Leoš Janáček (1854–1928), another ardent supporter of the reproduction of natural recitative intonations in music, in the spirit of Mussorgsky and Debussy, lived and worked. Janáček's diaries contain many musical notations of speech and natural sound rhythms. After several early and unsuccessful experiments in the opera genre, Janáček first turned to the stunning tragedy from the life of Moravian peasants in opera Jenufa(1904, the composer's most popular opera). In subsequent operas, he developed different plots: the drama of a young woman who, out of protest against family oppression, enters into an illicit love affair ( Katya Kabanova, 1921), life of nature ( Cheating fox, 1924), supernatural incident ( Makropoulos remedy, 1926) and Dostoevsky’s narrative about the years he spent in hard labor ( Notes from a Dead House, 1930).
Janacek dreamed of success in Prague, but his “enlightened” colleagues treated his operas with disdain - both during the composer’s lifetime and after his death. Like Rimsky-Korsakov, who edited Mussorgsky, Janáček's colleagues believed that they knew better than the author how his scores should sound. Janáček's international recognition came later as a result of the restoration efforts of John Tyrrell and the Australian conductor Charles Mackeras.
Operas of the 20th century.
The First World War ended romantic era: the sublimity of feelings characteristic of romanticism could not survive the shocks of the war years. The established operatic forms were also declining; it was a time of uncertainty and experimentation. A craving for the Middle Ages, expressed with particular force in Parsifale And Pellease, gave last flashes in such works as Love of Three Kings(1913) Italo Montemezzi (1875–1952), Knights of Ekebu(1925) Riccardo Zandonai (1883–1944), Semirama(1910) and Flame(1934) Ottorino Respighi (1879–1936). Austrian post-Romanticism represented by Franz Schrecker (1878–1933; Distant sound, 1912; Stigmatized, 1918), Alexander von Zemlinsky (1871–1942; Florentine tragedy;Dwarf– 1922) and Eric Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957; Dead city , 1920; Miracle of Heliana, 1927) used medieval motifs for artistic research spiritualistic ideas or pathological mental phenomena.
The Wagnerian legacy, picked up by Richard Strauss, then passed on to the so-called. new Vienna school, in particular to A. Schoenberg (1874–1951) and A. Berg (1885–1935), whose operas are a kind of anti-romantic reaction: this is expressed in a conscious departure from traditional musical language, especially harmonic, and in the choice of “cruel” stories. Berg's first opera Wozzeck(1925) - the story of an unfortunate, oppressed soldier - is a grippingly powerful drama, despite its unusually complex, highly intellectual form; the composer's second opera, Lulu(1937, completed after the death of the author F. Tserkhoy) is an equally expressive musical drama about a dissolute woman. After a series of small acute psychological operas, among which the most famous is Expectation(1909), Schoenberg worked on the plot all his life Moses and Aaron(1954, the opera remained unfinished) – by biblical history about the conflict between the tongue-tied prophet Moses and the eloquent Aaron, who seduced the Israelites to worship the golden calf. Scenes of orgy, destruction and human sacrifice, which can outrage any theatrical censor, as well as the extreme complexity of the work, hinder its popularity in the opera house.
Composers of various national schools began to leave the influence of Wagner. Thus, the symbolism of Debussy served as the impetus for the Hungarian composer B. Bartok (1881–1945) to create his psychological parable Duke Bluebeard's Castle(1918); another Hungarian author, Z. Kodály, in opera Hari Janos(1926) addressed folklore sources. In Berlin, F. Busoni reinterpreted old plots in operas Harlequin(1917) and Doctor Faustus(1928, remained unfinished). In all the works mentioned, the all-pervasive symphonism of Wagner and his followers gives way to a much more laconic style, even to the point of predominance of monody. However, the operatic heritage of this generation of composers is relatively small, and this circumstance, together with the list of unfinished works, testifies to the difficulties that the operatic genre experienced in the era of expressionism and impending fascism.
At the same time, new trends began to emerge in war-ravaged Europe. Italian comic opera gave its last escape in G. Puccini's small masterpiece Gianni Schicchi(1918). But in Paris, M. Ravel picked up the dying torch and created his wonderful Spanish hour(1911) and then Child and magic(1925, libretto by Collet). The opera also appeared in Spain - Short life(1913) and Maestro Pedro's booth(1923) by Manuel de Falla.
In England, opera was experiencing a real revival for the first time in several centuries. The earliest examples are Immortal hour(1914) Rutland Boughton (1878–1960) on a subject from Celtic mythology, Traitors(1906) and Bosun's wife(1916) Ethel Smith (1858–1944). The first is bucolic love story, and the second tells about pirates who settled in a poor English coastal village. Smith's operas enjoyed some popularity in Europe, as did the operas of Frederick Delius (1862–1934), especially Village of Romeo and Juliet(1907). Delius, however, was by nature incapable of embodying conflict dramaturgy (both in text and in music), and therefore his static musical dramas rarely appear on stage.
The burning problem for English composers was the search for a competitive plot. Savitri Gustav Holst was written based on one of the episodes of the Indian epic Mahabharata(1916), and Driver Hugh R. Vaughan Williams (1924) is a pastoral richly enriched with folk songs; the same is true in Vaughan Williams' opera Sir John in Love according to Shakespearean Falstaff.
B. Britten (1913–1976) managed to raise English opera to new heights; His first opera was already a success Peter Grimes(1945) - a drama taking place on the seashore, where the central character is a fisherman rejected by people who is in the grip of mystical experiences. Source of comedy-satire Albert Herring(1947) became a short story by Maupassant, and in Billy Budde Melville's allegorical story is used, treating of good and evil (the historical background is the era of the Napoleonic wars). This opera is generally recognized as Britten's masterpiece, although he later worked successfully in the genre of "grand opera" - examples include Gloriana(1951), which tells about the turbulent events of the reign of Elizabeth I, and A dream in a summer night(1960; the libretto based on Shakespeare was created by the composer’s closest friend and collaborator, singer P. Pierce). In the 1960s, Britten devoted a lot of attention to parable operas ( Woodcock River – 1964, Cave action – 1966, Prodigal Son– 1968); he also created a television opera Owen Wingrave(1971) and chamber operas Turn the screw And The Desecration of Lucretia. The absolute pinnacle of the composer’s operatic creativity was his last work in this genre - Death in Venice(1973), where extraordinary ingenuity is combined with great sincerity.
Britten's operatic legacy is so significant that few English authors of the subsequent generation were able to emerge from his shadow, although it is worth mentioning the famous success of the opera by Peter Maxwell Davies (b. 1934). Taverner(1972) and operas by Harrison Birtwistle (b. 1934) Gavan(1991). As for composers from other countries, we can note such works as Aniara(1951) by the Swede Karl-Birger Blomdahl (1916–1968), where the action takes place on an interplanetary spacecraft and uses electronic sounds, or an operatic cycle Let there be light(1978–1979) by the German Karlheinz Stockhausen (the cycle has the subtitle Seven days of creation and is designed to be completed within a week). But, of course, such innovations are fleeting. More significant are the operas of the German composer Carl Orff (1895–1982) - for example, Antigone(1949), which is built on the model of ancient Greek tragedy using rhythmic recitation against the background of ascetic accompaniment (mainly percussion instruments). The brilliant French composer F. Poulenc (1899–1963) began with a humorous opera Breasts of Tiresias(1947), and then turned to an aesthetic that emphasized natural speech intonation and rhythm. Two of his words are written in this key best operas: mono-opera Human voice after Jean Cocteau (1959; libretto structured as a telephone conversation of the heroine) and opera Dialogues of the Carmelites, which describes the suffering of nuns of one Catholic order during the French Revolution. Poulenc's harmonies are deceptively simple and at the same time emotionally expressive. The international popularity of Poulenc's works was also facilitated by the composer's requirement that his operas be performed in local languages whenever possible.
Juggling like a wizard different styles, I.F. Stravinsky (1882–1971) created an impressive number of operas; among them - a romantic written for Diaghilev’s enterprise Nightingale based on the fairy tale by H.H. Andersen (1914), Mozartian A Rake's Adventures based on Hogarth's engravings (1951), as well as static, reminiscent of ancient friezes Oedipus the King(1927), which is intended equally for the theater and the concert stage. During the period of the German Weimar Republic, K. Weil (1900–1950) and B. Brecht (1898–1950), remade Beggar's Opera John Gay into an even more popular The Threepenny Opera(1928), composed a now forgotten opera on a sharply satirical plot The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahogany(1930). The Nazis' rise to power put an end to this fruitful collaboration, and Weill, who emigrated to America, began working in the genre of the American musical.
Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera (1916–1983) was all the rage in the 1960s and 1970s with his expressionist and overtly erotic operas. Don Rodrigo (1964), Bomarzo(1967) and Beatrice Cenci(1971). The German Hans Werner Henze (b. 1926) gained fame in 1951 when his opera was staged Boulevard Loneliness libretto by Greta Weil based on the story of Manon Lescaut; The musical language of the work combines jazz, blues and 12-tone technique. Henze's subsequent operas include: Elegy for Young Lovers(1961; set in the snowy Alps; the score is dominated by the sounds of xylophone, vibraphone, harp and celesta), Young Lord, imbued with black humor (1965), Bassarids(1966; by Bacchantes Euripides, English libretto by C. Kallman and W. H. Auden), anti-militaristic We'll come to the river(1976), children's fairy tale opera Pollicino And Betrayed Sea(1990). Michael Tippett (1905–1998) worked in the opera genre in Great Britain ) : Midsummer wedding(1955), Garden labyrinth (1970), The ice has broken(1977) and science fiction opera New Year(1989) - all based on the composer's libretto. Vanguard English composer Peter Maxwell Davies is the author of the above opera Taverner(1972; plot from the life of the 16th century composer John Taverner) and Resurrection (1987).
Famous opera singers
Björling, Jussi (Johan Jonathan)(Björling, Jussi) (1911–1960), Swedish singer (tenor). He studied at the Royal Opera School in Stockholm and made his debut there in 1930 in a small role in Manon Lescaut. A month later Ottavio sang in Don Juan. From 1938 to 1960, with the exception of the war years, he sang at the Metropolitan Opera and enjoyed particular success in the Italian and French repertoire.
Galli-Curci Amelita .
Gobbi, Tito(Gobbi, Tito) (1915–1984), Italian singer (baritone). He studied in Rome and made his debut there in the role of Germont in Traviata. He performed a lot in London and after 1950 in New York, Chicago and San Francisco - especially in Verdi's operas; continued to sing in the largest theaters in Italy. Gobbi is considered the best performer of the role of Scarpia, which he sang about 500 times. He starred in opera films many times.
Domingo, Placido .
Callas, Maria .
Caruso, Enrico .
Corelli, Franco-(Corelli, Franco) (b. 1921–2003), Italian singer (tenor). At the age of 23 he studied for some time at the Pesaro Conservatory. In 1952 he took part in vocal competition festival "Florentine Musical May", where the director of the Rome Opera invited him to undergo a test at the "Experimental Theater" of Spoletto. Soon he performed in this theater as Don Jose in Carmen. At the opening of the La Scala season in 1954 he sang with Maria Callas in Vestal Spontini. In 1961 he made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera as Manrico in Troubadour. Among his most famous roles are Cavaradossi in Tosca.
London, George(London, George) (1920–1985), Canadian singer (bass-baritone), real name George Bernstein. He studied in Los Angeles and made his Hollywood debut in 1942. In 1949 he was invited to the Vienna Opera, where he made his debut as Amonasro in Aide. He sang at the Metropolitan Opera (1951–1966), and also performed in Bayreuth from 1951 to 1959 as Amfortas and the Flying Dutchman. He performed the roles of Don Giovanni, Scarpia and Boris Godunov superbly.
Milnes, Cheryl .
Nilsson, Birgit(Nilsson, Birgit) (1918–2005), Swedish singer (soprano). She studied in Stockholm and made her debut there as Agatha in Free shooter Weber. Her international fame dates back to 1951, when she sang Elektra in Idomeneo Mozart at the Glyndebourne Festival. In the 1954/1955 season she sang Brünnhilde and Salome at the Munich Opera. She made her debut as Brünnhilde at London's Covent Garden (1957) and as Isolde at the Metropolitan Opera (1959). She was also successful in other roles, especially Turandot, Tosca and Aida. She died on December 25, 2005 in Stockholm.
Pavarotti, Luciano .
Patti, Adeline(Patti, Adelina) (1843–1919), Italian singer (coloratura soprano). She made her debut in New York in 1859 as Lucia di Lammermoor, in London in 1861 (as Amina in Somnambulist). She sang at Covent Garden for 23 years. Possessing a magnificent voice and brilliant technique, Patti was one of the last representatives of the true bel canto style, but as a musician and as an actress she was much weaker.
Price, Leontina .
Sutherland, Joan .
Skipa, Tito(Schipa, Tito) (1888–1965), Italian singer (tenor). He studied in Milan and in 1911 made his debut in Vercelli in the role of Alfredo ( Traviata). He performed regularly in Milan and Rome. In 1920–1932 he had an engagement with the Chicago Opera, and sang constantly in San Francisco from 1925 and at the Metropolitan Opera (1932–1935 and 1940–1941). Excellently performed the roles of Don Ottavio, Almaviva, Nemorino, Werther and Wilhelm Meister in Mignone.
Scotto, Renata(Scotto, Renata) (b. 1935), Italian singer (soprano). She made her debut in 1954 at the New Theater of Naples as Violetta ( Traviata), in the same year she sang for the first time at La Scala. She specialized in the bel canto repertoire: Gilda, Amina, Norina, Linda de Chamounix, Lucia di Lammermoor, Gilda and Violetta. Her American debut was as Mimi from Bohemians took place at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1960, and first appeared at the Metropolitan Opera as Cio-chio-san in 1965. Her repertoire also includes the roles of Norma, Gioconda, Tosca, Manon Lescaut and Francesca da Rimini.
Siepi, Cesare(Siepi, Cesare) (b. 1923), Italian singer (bass). He made his debut in 1941 in Venice as Sparafucillo in Rigoletto. After the war he began performing at La Scala and others Italian operas ny theaters. From 1950 to 1973 he was a leading bass singer at the Metropolitan Opera, where he sang, in particular, Don Giovanni, Figaro, Boris, Gurnemanz and Philip in Don Carlos.
Tebaldi, Renata(Tebaldi, Renata) (b. 1922), Italian singer (soprano). She studied in Parma and made her debut in 1944 in Rovigo as Elena ( Mephistopheles). Toscanini chose Tebaldi to perform at the post-war opening of La Scala (1946). In 1950 and 1955 she performed in London, in 1955 she made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera as Desdemona and sang in this theater until her retirement in 1975. Among her best roles are Tosca, Adriana Lecouvreur, Violetta, Leonora, Aida and other dramatic roles. roles from Verdi's operas.
Farrar, Geraldine .
Shalyapin, Fyodor Ivanovich .
Schwarzkopf, Elizabeth(Schwarzkopf, Elisabeth) (b. 1915), German singer (soprano). She studied with her in Berlin and made her debut at the Berlin Opera in 1938 as one of the flower maidens in Parsifale Wagner. After several performances in Vienna Opera was invited to play leading roles. Later she also sang at Covent Garden and La Scala. In 1951 in Venice at the premiere of Stravinsky's opera A Rake's Adventures sang the role of Anna, in 1953 at La Scala she participated in the premiere of Orff’s stage cantata Triumph of Aphrodite. In 1964 she performed for the first time at the Metropolitan Opera. She left the opera stage in 1973.
Literature:
Makhrova E.V. Opera house in the culture of Germany in the second half of the twentieth century. St. Petersburg, 1998
Simon G.W. One Hundred Great Operas and Their Plots. M., 1998
1. THE EMERGENCE OF THE GENRE ……………………………………………………… p.3
2. OPERA GENRES: OPERA SERIA AND OPERA BUFFA…………...p.4
3. WESTERN EUROPEAN OPERA OF THE 19TH CENTURY……………………...p.7
4. RUSSIAN OPERA ……………………………………………………………p.10
5. MODERN OPERA …………………………..p.14
6. STRUCTURE OF AN OPERA WORK………………………...p.16
References……………………………………………………….p.18
1. THE EMERGENCE OF THE GENRE
Opera as a musical genre arose due to the fusion of two great and ancient arts - theater and music.
“...Opera is an art that is born of mutual love between music and theater,” writes one of the outstanding opera directors of our time, B.A. Pokrovsky. “It is also similar to theater expressed by music.”
Although music has been used in theater since ancient times, opera as an independent genre appeared only at the turn of the 16th-17th centuries. The very name of the genre - opera - arose around 1605 and quickly replaced the previous names of this genre: “drama through music”, “tragedy through music”, “melodrama”, “tragicomedy” and others.
It was at this historical moment that special conditions arose that gave birth to the opera. First of all, it was the life-giving atmosphere of the Renaissance.
Florence, where the culture and art of the Renaissance flourished first in the Apennines, where Dante, Michelangelo and Benvenuto Cellini began their journey, became the birthplace of opera.
The emergence of a new genre is directly related to the literal revival of ancient Greek drama. It is no coincidence that the first operatic works were called musical dramas.
When at the end of the 16th century a circle of talented poets, actors, scientists and musicians formed around the enlightened philanthropist Count Bardi, none of them thought about any discovery in art, much less in music. The main goal that Florentine enthusiasts set for themselves was to bring back to life the dramas of Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles. However, staging the works of ancient Greek playwrights required musical accompaniment, and no examples of such music have survived. It was then that it was decided to compose our own music, corresponding (as the author imagined) to the spirit of ancient Greek drama. So, trying to recreate ancient art, they discovered a new musical genre that was destined to play decisive role in the history of art - opera.
The first step taken by the Florentines was to set small dramatic passages to music. As a result, monody was born (any monophonic melody, an area of musical culture based on monophony), one of the creators of which was Vincenzo Galilei, a subtle connoisseur of ancient Greek culture, composer, lutenist and mathematician, father of the brilliant astronomer Galileo Galilei.
Already the first attempts of the Florentines were characterized by a revival of interest in the personal experiences of the heroes. Therefore, instead of polyphony, a homophonic-harmonic style began to predominate in their works, in which the main carrier of the musical image is a melody, developing in one voice and accompanied by a harmonic (chord) accompaniment.
It is very characteristic that among the first examples of opera created by various composers, three were written on the same plot: it was based on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The first two operas (both called Euridice) belonged to the composers Peri and Caccini. However, both of these musical dramas turned out to be very modest experiments compared to Claudio Monteverdi's opera Orpheus, which appeared in 1607 in Mantua. A contemporary of Rubens and Caravaggio, Shakespeare and Tasso, Monteverdi created a work from which the history of opera art actually begins.
Monteverdi made much of what the Florentines only outlined complete, creatively convincing and viable. This was the case, for example, with recitatives, first introduced by Peri. This special type of musical expression of the heroes should, according to its creator, be as close as possible to colloquial speech. However, only with Monteverdi did recitatives acquire psychological strength, vivid imagery, and truly begin to resemble living human speech.
Monteverdi created a type of aria - lamento - (plaintive song), a brilliant example of which was the complaint of the abandoned Ariadne from the opera of the same name. “Ariadne’s Complaint” is the only fragment that has survived to this day from this entire work.
“Ariadne touched me because she was a woman, Orpheus because he was a simple man... Ariadne aroused true suffering in me, together with Orpheus I begged for pity...” In these words, Monteverdi expressed not only his creative credo, but also conveyed the essence of the discoveries that he made in the art of music. As the author of Orpheus rightly pointed out, composers before him tried to compose “soft”, “moderate” music; He tried, first of all, to create “excited” music. Therefore, he considered his main task to be the maximum expansion of the figurative sphere and expressive possibilities of music.
The new genre - opera - had yet to establish itself. But from now on, the development of music, vocal and instrumental, will be inextricably linked with the achievements of the opera house.
2. OPERA GENRES: OPERA SERIA AND OPERA BUFFA
Having originated in the Italian aristocratic environment, the opera soon spread to all major European countries. It became an integral part of court festivities and a favorite entertainment at the courts of the French king, the Austrian emperor, the German electors, other monarchs and their nobles.
The bright entertainment, the special festivity of the opera performance, impressive due to the combination in the opera of almost all the arts that existed at that time, fit perfectly into the complex ceremony and life of the court and the elite of society.
And although during the 18th century opera became an increasingly democratic art and in large cities, in addition to the courtiers, public opera houses were opened for the general public, it was the tastes of the aristocracy that determined the content of operatic works for more than a century.
The festive life of the court and aristocracy forced composers to work very intensively: every celebration, and sometimes just another reception of distinguished guests, was certainly accompanied by an opera premiere. “In Italy,” says music historian Charles Burney, “an opera that has already been heard once is looked upon as if it were last year’s calendar.” Under such conditions, operas were “baked” one after another and usually turned out to be similar to each other, at least in terms of plot.
Thus, the Italian composer Alessandro Scarlatti wrote about 200 operas. However, the merit of this musician, of course, is not in the number of works created, but primarily in the fact that it was in his work that the leading genre and forms of operatic art of the 17th - early 18th centuries - serious opera (opera seria) - finally crystallized.
The meaning of the name opera seria will easily become clear if we imagine an ordinary Italian opera of this period. It was a pompous, extraordinarily lavishly staged performance with a variety of impressive effects. “Real” battle scenes, natural disasters or extraordinary transformations of mythical heroes were depicted on stage. And the heroes themselves - gods, emperors, generals - behaved in such a way that the entire performance left the audience with a feeling of important, solemn, very serious events. Opera characters performed extraordinary feats, crushed enemies in mortal battles, and amazed with their extraordinary courage, dignity and greatness. At the same time, the allegorical comparison of the main character of the opera, so advantageously presented on stage, with a high-ranking nobleman, on whose order the opera was written, was so obvious that each performance turned into a panegyric for the noble customer.
Often the same plots were used in different operas. For example, dozens of operas were created on themes from two works alone - Ariosto's Roland Furious and Tasso's Jerusalem Liberated.
Popular literary sources were the works of Homer and Virgil.
During the heyday of opera seria, a special style of vocal performance was formed - bel canto, based on the beauty of sound and virtuoso control of the voice. However, the lifelessness of the plots of these operas and the artificial behavior of the characters caused many complaints among music lovers.
The static structure of the performance, devoid of dramatic action, made this opera genre especially vulnerable. Therefore, the audience listened to the arias in which the singers demonstrated the beauty of their voices and virtuoso skill with great pleasure and interest. At her request, the arias she liked were repeated several times as an encore, but the recitatives, perceived as a “load,” were so uninteresting to the listeners that during the performance of the recitatives they began to talk loudly. Other ways to “kill time” were also invented. One of the “enlightened” music lovers of the 18th century advised: “Chess is very suitable for filling the emptiness of long recitatives.”
The opera was experiencing the first crisis in its history. But it was precisely at this moment that a new opera genre appeared, which was destined to become no less (if not more!) beloved than the opera seria. This is a comic opera (opera buffa).
It is characteristic that it arose precisely in Naples, the birthplace of opera seria; moreover, it actually arose in the bowels of the most serious opera. Its origins were comic interludes played during intermissions between acts of the play. Often these comic interludes were parodies of the events of the opera.
Formally, the birth of opera buffa occurred in 1733, when Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s opera “The Maid and Mistress” was first performed in Naples.
Opera buffa inherited all the main means of expression from opera seria. It differed from “serious” opera in that instead of legendary, unnatural heroes, characters whose prototypes existed in real life came to the opera stage - greedy merchants, flirtatious maids, brave, resourceful military men, etc. That is why opera buffa with was received with admiration by the broadest democratic public in all corners of Europe. Moreover, the new genre did not at all have a paralyzing effect on domestic art like opera seria. On the contrary, he brought to life unique varieties of national comic opera based on domestic traditions. In France it was a comic opera, in England it was a ballad opera, in Germany and Austria it was a singspiel (literally: “play with singing”).
Each of these national schools produced remarkable representatives of the comedy opera genre: Pergolesi and Piccini in Italy, Grétry and Rousseau in France, Haydn and Dittersdorf in Austria.
Here we should especially remember Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Already his first singspiel “Bastien and Bastien”, and even more “The Abduction from the Seraglio” showed that the brilliant composer, having easily mastered the techniques of opera buffa, created examples of truly national Austrian musical dramaturgy. The Abduction from the Seraglio is considered the first classical Austrian opera.
Mozart’s mature operas “The Marriage of Figaro” and “Don Giovanni”, written to Italian texts, occupy a very special place in the history of opera. The brightness and expressiveness of the music, not inferior to the highest examples of Italian music, are combined with a depth of ideas and drama that the opera theater has never known before.
In “The Marriage of Figaro,” Mozart managed to create individual and very lively characters of the characters through musical means, and to convey the diversity and complexity of their mental states. And all this, it would seem, without going beyond the comedy genre. The composer went even further in the opera Don Giovanni. Using an ancient Spanish legend for the libretto, Mozart creates a work in which comedic elements are inextricably intertwined with the features of serious opera.
The brilliant success of the comic opera, which made its victorious march through European capitals, and, most importantly, Mozart’s creations showed that opera can and should be an art organically connected with reality, that it is capable of truthfully depicting very real characters and situations, recreating them not only in comic, but also in a serious aspect.
Naturally, leading artists from different countries, primarily composers and playwrights, dreamed of updating the heroic opera. They dreamed of creating works that, firstly, would reflect the era’s desire for high moral goals and, secondly, would assert an organic fusion of music and dramatic action on stage. This difficult task was successfully solved in the heroic genre by Mozart's compatriot Christoph Gluck. His reform became a true revolution in world opera, the final meaning of which became clear after the production of his operas Alceste, Iphigenia in Aulis and Iphigenia in Tauris in Paris.
“When starting to create music for Alceste,” the composer wrote, explaining the essence of his reform, “I set myself the goal of bringing the music to its true goal, which is to give poetry more new expressive power, to make individual moments of the plot more confusing, without interrupting the action and without dampening it with unnecessary decorations.”
Unlike Mozart, who did not set a special goal to reform opera, Gluck consciously came to his operatic reform. Moreover, he concentrates all his attention on revealing the inner world of the heroes. The composer did not make any compromises with aristocratic art. This happened at a time when the rivalry between serious and comic opera reached its highest point and it was clear that opera buffa was winning.
Having critically rethought and summed up the best that the genres of serious opera and the lyrical tragedies of Lully and Rameau contained, Gluck creates the genre of musical tragedy.
The historical significance of Gluck's opera reform was enormous. But his operas also turned out to be an anachronism when the turbulent 19th century began - one of the most fruitful periods in world opera.
3. WESTERN EUROPEAN OPERA OF THE 19TH CENTURY
Wars, revolutions, changes in social relations - all these key problems of the 19th century are reflected in opera themes.
Composers working in the opera genre try to penetrate even deeper into the inner world of their heroes, to recreate on the opera stage such relationships between characters that would fully correspond to complex, multifaceted life collisions.
Such figurative and thematic scope inevitably led to further reforms in the art of opera. Opera genres developed in the 18th century were tested for modernity. Opera seria virtually disappeared by the 19th century. As for the comic opera, it continued to enjoy constant success.
The vitality of this genre was brilliantly confirmed by Gioachino Rossini. His “The Barber of Seville” became a true masterpiece of comedic art of the 19th century.
The bright melody, the naturalness and liveliness of the characters depicted by the composer, the simplicity and harmony of the plot - all this ensured the opera a real triumph, making its author “the musical dictator of Europe” for a long time. As the author of opera buffa, Rossini places emphasis in his own way in The Barber of Seville. He was much less interested in the internal significance of the content than, for example, Mozart. And Rossini was very far from Gluck, who believed that the main goal of music in opera is to reveal the dramatic idea of the work.
With every aria, every phrase in “The Barber of Seville,” the composer seems to remind that music exists for joy, the enjoyment of beauty, and that the most valuable thing in it is its charming melody.
Nevertheless, “Europe’s darling, Orpheus,” as Pushkin called Rossini, felt that the events taking place in the world, and above all the struggle for independence waged by his homeland, Italy (oppressed by Spain, France and Austria), required him to turn to serious topic. This is how the idea of the opera “William Tell” was born - one of the first works of the operatic genre on a heroic-patriotic theme (in the plot, Swiss peasants rebel against their oppressors, the Austrians).
The bright, realistic characterization of the main characters, impressive crowd scenes depicting the people with the help of the choir and ensembles, and most importantly, the unusually expressive music earned “William Tell” the glory of one of the best works of operatic drama of the 19th century.
The popularity of "Welhelm Tell" was explained, among other advantages, by the fact that the opera was written on a historical plot. And historical operas became widespread at this time on the European opera stage. Thus, six years after the premiere of William Tell, the production of Giacomo Meyerbeer's opera The Huguenots, which tells about the struggle between Catholics and Huguenots at the end of the 16th century, became a sensation.
Another area conquered by opera art of the 19th century centuries, there were fabulous and legendary stories. They became especially widespread in creativity German composers. Following Mozart's opera-fairy tale "The Magic Flute", Carl Maria Weber created the operas "Freeshot", "Euryanthe" and "Oberon". The first of these was the most significant work, in fact the first German folk opera. However, the most complete and large-scale embodiment of the legendary theme, folk epic found in the work of one of the greatest opera composers - Richard Wagner.
Wagner is a whole era in musical art. Opera became for him the only genre through which the composer spoke to the world. Wagner was also faithful to the literary source that gave him plots for his operas, which turned out to be the ancient German epic. Legends about the Flying Dutchman doomed to eternal wanderings, about the rebel singer Tangeyser, who challenged hypocrisy in art and for this renounced the clan of court poets and musicians, about the legendary knight Lohengrin, who rushed to the aid of an innocent girl condemned to execution - these legendary , bright, prominent characters became the heroes of Wagner’s first operas “The Wandering Sailor”, “Tannhäuser” and “Lohengrin”.
Richard Wagner dreamed of embodying in the operatic genre not individual plots, but an entire epic dedicated to the main problems of humanity. The composer tried to reflect this in the grandiose concept of “The Ring of the Nibelung” - a cycle consisting of four operas. This tetralogy was also based on legends from the Old Germanic epic.
Such an unusual and grandiose idea (the composer spent about twenty years of his life on its implementation) naturally had to be solved by special, new means. And Wagner, trying to follow the laws of natural human speech, refuses such necessary elements of an operatic work as aria, duet, recitative, chorus, ensemble. He creates a single musical action-narrative, not interrupted by the boundaries of numbers, which is led by singers and an orchestra.
Wagner's reform as an opera composer also affected him in another way: his operas are built on a system of leitmotifs - bright melodies-images that correspond to certain characters or their relationships. And each of his musical dramas - and this is how, like Monteverdi and Gluck, he called his operas - is nothing more than the development and interaction of a number of leitmotifs.
Another direction, called “lyric theater,” was no less important. The birthplace of the “lyric theater” was France. The composers who formed this movement - Gounod, Thomas, Delibes, Massenet, Bizet - also resorted to both fabulously exotic subjects and everyday ones; but this was not the main thing for them. Each of these composers, in their own way, strove to depict their heroes in such a way that they were natural, vital, and endowed with qualities characteristic of their contemporaries.
A brilliant example of this operatic trend was Georges Bizet's Carmen, based on a short story by Prosper Mérimée.
The composer managed to find a unique method for characterizing the characters, which is most clearly seen in the example of the image of Carmen. Bizet reveals the inner world of his heroine not in an aria, as was customary, but in song and dance.
The fate of this opera, which conquered the whole world, was very dramatic at first. Its premiere ended in failure. One of the main reasons for such an attitude towards Bizet’s opera was that he brought ordinary people onto the stage as heroes (Carmen is a tobacco factory worker, Jose is a soldier). The aristocratic Parisian public of 1875 could not accept such characters (it was then that Carmen premiered). She was repulsed by the realism of the opera, which was believed to be incompatible with the “laws of the genre.” Pujin’s then authoritative Dictionary of Opera said that Carmen needed to be remade, “weakening the realism inappropriate for opera.” Of course, this was the point of view of people who did not understand that realistic art, filled with life’s truth and natural heroes, came to the opera stage quite naturally, and not at the whim of any one composer.
It was precisely the realistic path that Giuseppe Verdi, one of the greatest composers who ever worked in the opera genre, followed.
Verdi began his long journey in operatic work with heroic and patriotic operas. "Lombards", "Ernani" and "Attila", created in the 40s, were perceived in Italy as a call for national unity. The premieres of his operas turned into massive public demonstrations.
Verdi's operas, written by him in the early 50s, had a completely different resonance. “Rigoletto”, “Il Trovatore” and “La Traviata” are three operatic canvases by Verdi, in which his outstanding melodic gift was happily combined with the gift of a brilliant composer-playwright.
Based on Victor Hugo's play The King Amuses himself, the opera Rigoletto describes the events of the 16th century. The setting of the opera is the court of the Duke of Mantua, for whom human dignity and honor are nothing compared to his whim, the desire for endless pleasures (Gilda, the daughter of the court jester Rigoletto, becomes his victim). It would seem like another opera from court life, of which there were hundreds. But Verdi creates a most truthful psychological drama, in which the depth of the music fully corresponded to the depth and truthfulness of the feelings of its characters.
La Traviata caused a real shock among his contemporaries. The Venetian public, for whom the opera's premiere was intended, booed it. Above we talked about the failure of Bizet’s “Carmen,” but the premiere of “La Traviata” took place almost a quarter of a century earlier (1853), and the reason was the same: the realism of what was depicted.
Verdi was very upset about the failure of his opera. “It was a decisive fiasco,” he wrote after the premiere. “Let’s not think about La Traviata anymore.”
Huge man vitality, a composer with rare creative potential, Verdi was not, like Bizet, broken by the fact that the public did not accept his work. He would create many more operas, which would later form a treasury of operatic art. Among them are such masterpieces as “Don Carlos”, “Aida”, “Falstaff”. One of the highest achievements of the mature Verdi was the opera Othello.
The grandiose achievements of the leading countries in the art of opera - Italy, Germany, Austria, France - inspired other composers European countries- Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary - to create their own national opera art. This is how “Pebble” by the Polish composer Stanislav Moniuszko, the operas of the Czechs Berdzhich Smetana and Antonin Dvorak, and the Hungarian Ferenc Erkel were born.
But Russia rightly occupied the leading place among young national opera schools in the 19th century.
4. RUSSIAN OPERA
On the stage of the St. Petersburg Bolshoi Theater on November 27, 1836, the premiere of “Ivan Susanin” by Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka, the first classical Russian opera, took place.
In order to more clearly understand the place of this work in the history of music, we will try to briefly outline the situation that developed at that moment in Western European and Russian musical theater.
Wagner, Bizet, Verdi have not yet said their word. With rare exceptions (for example, the success of Meyerbeer in Paris), everywhere in European opera the trendsetters - both in creativity and in the manner of performance - are Italians. The main opera “dictator” is Rossini. There is an intensive “export” of Italian opera. Composers from Venice, Naples, Rome travel to all corners of the continent, work for long periods of time different countries. Bringing along with their art the invaluable experience accumulated by Italian opera, they at the same time suppressed the development of national opera.
This was the case in Russia as well. Such Italian composers as Cimarosa, Paisiello, Galuppi, Francesco Araya stayed here, who was the first to attempt to create an opera based on Russian melodic material with the original Russian text by Sumarokov. Later, a noticeable mark on St. Petersburg musical life was left by the activities of a native of Venice, Caterino Cavos, who wrote an opera under the same name as Glinka - “A Life for the Tsar” (“Ivan Susanin”).
The Russian court and aristocracy, at whose invitation Italian musicians arrived in Russia, supported them in every possible way. Therefore, several generations of Russian composers, critics, and other cultural figures had to fight for their own national art.
Attempts to create a Russian opera date back to the 18th century. Talented musicians Fomin, Matinsky and Pashkevich (the latter two were co-authors of the opera “St. Petersburg Gostiny Dvor”), and later the wonderful composer Verstovsky (today his “Askold’s Grave” is widely known) - each tried to solve this problem in their own way. However, it took a powerful talent, like Glinka’s, for this idea to be realized.
Glinka's outstanding melodic gift, the closeness of his melody to Russian song, the simplicity in the characterization of the main characters, and most importantly, his appeal to a heroic-patriotic plot allowed the composer to create a work of great artistic truth and power.
Glinka's genius was revealed differently in the opera-fairy tale “Ruslan and Lyudmila”. Here the composer masterfully combines the heroic (the image of Ruslan), the fantastic (the kingdom of Chernomor) and the comic (the image of Farlaf). Thus, thanks to Glinka, for the first time the images born of Pushkin stepped onto the opera stage.
Despite the enthusiastic assessment of Glinka’s work by the leading part of Russian society, his innovation and outstanding contribution to the history of Russian music were not truly appreciated in his homeland. The Tsar and his entourage preferred his music to Italian music. Visiting Glinka's operas became a punishment for offending officers, a kind of guardhouse.
Glinka had a hard time with this attitude towards his work from the court, the press, and theater management. But he was firmly aware that the Russian national opera must follow its own path, feed on its own folk musical sources.
This was confirmed by the entire further course of development of Russian opera art.
Alexander Dargomyzhsky was the first to pick up Glinka’s baton. Following the author of Ivan Susanin, he continues to develop the field of opera music. He has several operas to his credit, the most lucky fate fell to the lot of "Rusalka". Pushkin's work turned out to be excellent material for an opera. The story of the peasant girl Natasha, deceived by the prince, contains very dramatic events - the suicide of the heroine, the madness of her miller father. All the most complex psychological experiences of the characters are resolved by the composer with the help of arias and ensembles, written not in the Italian style, but in the spirit of Russian song and romance.
In the second half of the 19th century, the operatic work of A. Serov, the author of the operas “Judith”, “Rogneda” and “Enemy Power”, had great success, of which the latter (based on the text of the play by A. N. Ostrovsky) was in line with the development of Russian national art.
Glinka became a real ideological leader in the struggle for national Russian art for composers M. Balakirev, M. Mussorgsky, A. Borodin, N. Rimsky-Korsakov and Ts. Cui, united in the “Mighty Handful” circle. In the work of all members of the circle, except for its leader M. Balakirev, opera occupied the most important place.
The time when the “Mighty Handful” was formed coincided with extremely important events in the history of Russia. Abolished in 1861 serfdom. For the next two decades, the Russian intelligentsia was carried away by the ideas of populism, which called for the overthrow of the autocracy by the forces of the peasant revolution. Writers, artists, and composers are beginning to be especially interested in subjects related to the history of the Russian state, and especially the relationship between the tsar and the people. All this determined the theme of most of the operatic works that came from the pen of the “kuchkists”.
M. P. Mussorgsky called his opera “Boris Godunov” “folk musical drama.” In fact, although the human tragedy of Tsar Boris lies at the center of the opera’s plot, the real hero of the opera is the people.
Mussorgsky was essentially a self-taught composer. This greatly complicated the process of composing music, but at the same time did not limit it to any musical rules. Everything in this process was subordinated to the main motto of his work, which the composer himself expressed with a short phrase: “I want the truth!”
Mussorgsky also sought truth in art, extreme realism in everything that happens on stage in his other opera, Khovanshchina, which he did not manage to complete. It was completed by Mussorgsky's colleague in The Mighty Handful, Rimsky-Korsakov, one of the largest Russian opera composers.
Opera forms the basis of Rimsky-Korsakov's creative heritage. Like Mussorgsky, he opened up the horizons of Russian opera, but in completely different areas. Using operatic means, the composer wanted to convey the charm of Russian fabulousness, the originality of ancient Russian rituals. This can be clearly seen from the subtitles that clarify the genre of the opera, which the composer provided to his works. He called “The Snow Maiden” a “spring fairy tale”, “The Night Before Christmas” - a “true carol”, “Sadko” - an “opera-epic”; fairy tale operas also include “The Tale of Tsar Saltan”, “Kashchei the Immortal”, “The Tale of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevronia”, “The Golden Cockerel”. Rimsky-Korsakov's epic and fairy-tale operas have one amazing feature: they combine elements of fairy tales and fantasy with vivid realism.
Rimsky-Korsakov achieved this realism, so clearly felt in every work, by direct and very effective means: he widely developed in his operatic work folk melodies, skillfully wove into the fabric of the work genuine ancient Slavic rituals, “the legends of deep antiquity.”
Like other "kuchkists", Rimsky-Korsakov also turned to the genre of historical opera, creating two outstanding works depicting the era of Ivan the Terrible - "The Pskov Woman" and "The Tsar's Bride". The composer masterfully depicts the difficult atmosphere of Russian life of that distant time, pictures of the cruel reprisal of the Tsar against the Pskov freemen, the controversial personality of Ivan the Terrible himself (“The Pskov Woman”) and the atmosphere of general despotism and oppression of the individual (“Pskovite”). The Tsar's Bride", "The Golden Cockerel");
On the advice of V.V. Stasov, the ideological inspirer of the “Mighty Handful”, one of the most gifted members of this circle, Borodin, creates an opera from the life of princely Rus'. This work was “Prince Igor”.
"Prince Igor" became a model of Russian epic opera. As in an old Russian epic, the opera slowly and gradually unfolds the action, which tells the story of the unification of Russian lands and scattered principalities to jointly repel the enemy - the Polovtsians. Borodin’s work is not of such a tragic nature as Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov” or Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Pskov Woman,” but the plot of the opera also centers on the complex image of the leader of the state, Prince Igor, experiencing his defeat, deciding to escape from captivity and finally gathering a squad to crush the enemy in the name of their homeland.
Another direction in Russian musical art is represented by the operatic work of Tchaikovsky. The composer began his journey in operatic art with works on historical subjects.
Following Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky turns to the era of Ivan the Terrible in Oprichnik. Historical events in France, described in Schiller's tragedy, served as the basis for the libretto of The Maid of Orleans. From Pushkin's Poltava, which describes the times of Peter I, Tchaikovsky took the plot for his opera Mazepa.
At the same time, the composer creates lyrical-comedy operas (“Blacksmith Vakula”) and romantic operas (“The Enchantress”).
But the peaks of operatic creativity - not only for Tchaikovsky himself, but for the entire Russian opera of the 19th century - were his lyrical operas “Eugene Onegin” and “ Queen of Spades».
Tchaikovsky, having decided to embody Pushkin’s masterpiece in the operatic genre, faced a serious problem: which of the diverse events of the “novel in verse” could constitute the libretto of the opera. The composer settled on showing the emotional drama of the heroes of Eugene Onegin, which he managed to convey with rare conviction and impressive simplicity.
Like the French composer Bizet, Tchaikovsky in Onegin sought to show the world of ordinary people, their relationships. The composer's rare melodic gift, the subtle use of Russian romance intonations characteristic of everyday life described in Pushkin's work - all this allowed Tchaikovsky to create a work that is extremely accessible and at the same time depicts complex psychological states heroes.
In The Queen of Spades, Tchaikovsky appears not only as a brilliant playwright with a keen sense of the laws of the stage, but also as a great symphonist, constructing the action according to the laws of symphonic development. The opera is very multifaceted. But its psychological complexity is completely balanced by captivating arias, permeated with bright melodies, various ensembles and choirs.
Almost simultaneously with this opera, Tchaikovsky wrote an opera-fairy tale, “Iolanta,” amazing in its charm. However, The Queen of Spades, along with Eugene Onegin, remain unsurpassed Russian opera masterpieces of the 19th century.
5. CONTEMPORARY OPERA
Already the first decade of the new 20th century showed what a sharp change of eras took place in the art of opera, how different the opera of the last century and the century of the future are.
In 1902, the French composer Claude Debussy presented the opera “Pelléas et Mélisande” (based on Maeterlinck’s drama) to the audience. This work is unusually subtle and elegant. And just at the same time, Giacomo Puccini wrote his last opera “Madama Butterfly” (its premiere took place two years later) in the spirit of the best Italian operas of the 19th century.
Thus ends one period in opera and begins another. Composers representing opera schools established in almost all major European countries try to combine in their work the ideas and language of modern times with previously developed national traditions.
Following C. Debussy and M. Ravel, the author of such brilliant works as the opera buffa “The Spanish Hour” and the fantastic opera “The Child and the Magic,” a new wave in the art of music appears in France. In the 1920s, a group of composers emerged here, which went down in music history as the “Six”. It included L. Durey, D. Milhaud, A. Honegger, J. Auric, F. Poulenc and J. Taillefer. All these musicians were united by the main creative principle: to create works devoid of false pathos, close to everyday life, not embellishing it, but reflecting it as it is, with all its prose and everyday life. This creative principle was clearly expressed by one of the leading composers of the Six, A. Honegger. “Music,” he said, “must change its character, become truthful, simple, music of wide gait.”
Like-minded creative composers of the “Six” followed different paths. Moreover, three of them - Honegger, Milhaud and Poulenc - worked fruitfully in the genre of opera.
An unusual work, different from the grandiose mystery operas, was Poulenc’s mono-opera “The Human Voice.” The work, lasting about half an hour, is a telephone conversation between a woman abandoned by her lover. Thus, there is only one character in the opera. Could opera authors of past centuries imagine anything like this!
In the 30s, the American national opera was born, an example of this is “Porgy and Bess” by D. Gershwin. Main feature This opera, as well as Gershwin’s entire style as a whole, began to widely use elements of black folklore and the expressive means of jazz.
Domestic composers have written many wonderful pages into the history of world opera.
For example, Shostakovich’s opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” (“Katerina Izmailova”), written based on the story of the same name by N. Leskov, caused heated debate. The opera does not have “sweet” Italian melodies, there are no lush, spectacular ensembles and other colors familiar to the opera of past centuries. But if we consider the history of world opera as a struggle for realism, for a truthful portrayal of reality on stage, then “Katerina Izmailova” is undoubtedly one of the pinnacles of operatic art.
Domestic operatic creativity is very diverse. Significant works were created by Y. Shaporin (“Decembrists”), D. Kabalevsky (“Cola Brugnon”, “The Family of Taras”), T. Khrennikov (“Into the Storm”, “Mother”). A major contribution to world opera art was the work of S. Prokofiev.
Prokofiev made his debut as an opera composer back in 1916 with the opera The Gambler (based on Dostoevsky). Already in this early work His handwriting was clearly felt, as in the opera “The Love for Three Oranges” that appeared somewhat later, which was a great success.
However, Prokofiev’s outstanding talent as an opera playwright was fully revealed in the operas “Semyon Kotko”, written based on the story “I am the son of the working people” by V. Kataev, and especially in “War and Peace”, the plot of which was the epic of the same name by L. Tolstoy .
Subsequently, Prokofiev would write two more operatic works - “The Tale of a Real Man” (based on the story by B. Polevoy) and the charming comic opera “Betrothal in a Monastery” in the spirit of opera buffa of the 18th century.
Most of Prokofiev's works had a difficult fate. The striking originality of the musical language in many cases made it difficult to immediately appreciate them. Recognition came late. This was the case with both his piano and some orchestral works. A similar fate awaited the opera War and Peace. It was truly appreciated only after the death of the author. But the more years have passed since the creation of this work, the more deeply the scale and grandeur of this outstanding creation of world operatic art have been revealed.
In recent decades, rock operas based on modern instrumental music. Among these are “Juno and Avos” by N. Rybnikov, “Jesus Christ Superstar”.
In the last two or three years, such outstanding rock operas as “Notre Dame de Paris” by Luc Rlamon and Richard Cochinte, based on the immortal work of Victor Hugo, have been created. This opera has already received many awards in the field of musical art and has been translated into English. This summer the opera premiered in Moscow in Russian. The opera combined amazingly beautiful character music, ballet performances, and choral singing.
In my opinion, this opera made me look at the art of opera in a new way.
In 2001, the same authors created another rock opera, Romeo and Juliet, based on the Shakespearean tragedy. This work is spectacular in its musical content not inferior to Notre Dame Cathedral.
6. STRUCTURE OF AN OPERA WORK
It is the idea that is the starting point in the creation of any work of art. But in the case of opera, the birth of a concept has a special meaning. Firstly, it predetermines the genre of opera; secondly, it suggests what could serve as a literary outline for a future opera.
The primary source from which the composer starts is usually a literary work.
At the same time, there are operas, for example Verdi's Il Trovatore, which do not have specific literary sources.
But in both cases, work on the opera begins with the preparation of a libretto.
To create an opera libretto so that it is truly effective, meets stage laws, and most importantly, allows the composer to build a performance as he hears it internally, and to “sculpt” each opera character, is not an easy task.
Since the birth of opera, poets have been the authors of the libretto for almost two centuries. This did not mean at all that the text of the opera libretto was presented in verse. Something else is important here: the libretto must be poetic and the future music must already sound in the text - the literary basis of arias, recitatives, ensembles.
In the 19th century, composers who wrote future operas often wrote the libretto themselves. The most striking example is Richard Wagner. For him, the artist-reformer who created his grandiose canvases - musical dramas, word and sound were inseparable. Wagner's fantasy gave birth to stage images, which in the process of creativity were “overgrown” with literary and musical flesh.
And even if in those cases when the composer himself turned out to be the librettist, the libretto lost in literary terms, but the author did not deviate in any way from his own general plan, his idea of the work as a whole.
So, having a libretto at his disposal, the composer can imagine the future opera as a whole. Then comes the next stage: the author decides which operatic forms he should use to implement certain turns in the opera’s plot.
The emotional experiences of the heroes, their feelings, thoughts - all this is clothed in the form of an aria. At the moment when an aria begins to sound in the opera, the action seems to freeze, and the aria itself becomes a kind of “snapshot” of the hero’s state, his confession.
A similar purpose - conveying the internal state of an opera character - can be fulfilled in opera by a ballad, romance or arioso. However, the arioso occupies an intermediate place between the aria and the other most important operatic form - recitative.
Let's turn to Rousseau's "Musical Dictionary". “Recitative,” argued the great French thinker, “should serve only to connect the position of the drama, divide and emphasize the meaning of the aria, and prevent hearing fatigue...”
In the 19th century, through the efforts of various composers who strived for unity and integrity of the opera performance, recitative practically disappeared, giving way to large melodic episodes, similar in purpose to recitative, but in musical embodiment approaching arias.
As we said above, starting with Wagner, composers refuse to divide opera into arias and recitatives, creating a single, integral musical speech.
In addition to arias and recitatives, ensembles play an important constructive role in opera. They appear during the action, usually in those places when the characters of the opera begin to actively interact. They play a particularly important role in those fragments where conflict, key situations occur.
Often the composer uses as important means of expression and the chorus - in the final scenes or, if the plot so requires, to show folk scenes.
So, arias, recitatives, ensembles, choral, and in some cases ballet episodes are the most important elements of an opera performance. But it usually begins with an overture.
The overture mobilizes the audience, includes them in the orbit of musical images and characters who will act on stage. Often the overture is built on themes that are then carried through the opera.
And now, finally, a huge amount of work is behind us - the composer created the opera, or rather, made its score, or clavier. But there is a huge distance between fixing music in notes and performing it. To opera - even if it is outstanding musical composition- has become an interesting performance, bright, exciting, it requires the work of a huge team.
The production of the opera is led by a conductor, assisted by a director. Although it happened that great directors of the drama theater staged an opera, and the conductors helped them. Everything that concerns musical interpretation - the orchestra's reading of the score, working with singers - is the domain of the conductor. It is the director's responsibility to implement the stage design of the play - to build the mise-en-scène, to perform each role as an actor.
Much of the success of a production depends on the artist who sketches the sets and costumes. Add to this the work of a choirmaster, a choreographer and, of course, singers, and you will understand what a complex undertaking, uniting the creative work of many dozens of people, is staging an opera on stage, how much effort, creative imagination, perseverance and talent must be put in to give birth to this greatest a festival of music, a festival of theater, a festival of art, which is called opera.
Bibliography
1. Zilberkvit M.A. The world of music: Essay. - M., 1988.
2. History of musical culture. T.1. - M., 1968.
3. Kremlev Yu.A. About the place of music among the arts. - M., 1966.
4. Encyclopedia for children. Volume 7. Art. Part 3. Music. Theater. Cinema./Ch. ed. V.A. Volodin. – M.: Avanta+, 2000.
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