The history of opera is a long and complex one; however the seventeenth century is widely considered to be one of the most significant periods of operatic development. Seventeenth-century composers created the foundations of opera which later composers followed and developed upon.
I’ve decided to explore the operas of three composers who heavily influenced certain aspects of operatic tradition which have continued to this day.
Enjoy!
I’ve decided to explore the operas of three composers who heavily influenced certain aspects of operatic tradition which have continued to this day.
Enjoy!
What is opera?
An opera is a musical play in which all, or almost all, of the dialogue is sung. It combines music, poetry and drama to create elaborate productions, staged with extravagant scenery and costumes. The specific style of dramatic singing used in opera is rich in vibrato; the vibrations of which made it easier for the singers’ voices to fill large opera houses before the invention of the microphone. Even nowadays, almost all operatic performances reject microphones in favour of allowing the singers to showcase their voices in their entirety.
An opera is a musical play in which all, or almost all, of the dialogue is sung. It combines music, poetry and drama to create elaborate productions, staged with extravagant scenery and costumes. The specific style of dramatic singing used in opera is rich in vibrato; the vibrations of which made it easier for the singers’ voices to fill large opera houses before the invention of the microphone. Even nowadays, almost all operatic performances reject microphones in favour of allowing the singers to showcase their voices in their entirety.
Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1645)
Although Monteverdi was not the first opera composer, it is inarguable that it was he who made opera a lasting genre of musical performance. Only three of his twelve operas survive, but even these works make it clear that his take on the genre was innovative and exciting. He took inspiration from his predecessors, many of them members of the Camarata (the group of Florentine composers credited for inventing opera), and created the basic framework that is still used by operas today.
His first opera, L’Orfeo, was heavily influenced by Jacopo Peri’s L’Eurydice (1600), the oldest surviving opera. But, although L’Eurydice experienced some success among its contemporaries, what made Monteverdi’s adaptation so effective was the wide range of styles incorporated into the work. Monteverdi was an accomplished composer, having already published two volumes of sacred music and three books of madrigals, and used what he knew of these genres to create greater contrast between the different leitmotifs of each character. This was also the first opera to include a score for a full orchestra and involves recorders, cornets, trumpets, trombones, strings and even a regal – a small, portable organ with a reedy tonality – for the scenes in the Underworld. L’Orfeo premièred on the 24th of February 1607 at the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua and was an instant success.
Like many early operas, the storyline for L’Orfeo was taken from Ancient Greek mythology, in this case, the tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice. It tells of a young man (Orpheus) who, through the power of music, persuades the Gods to allow him to travel to the Underworld (Hades) to retrieve his dead wife (Eurydice). Orpheus inevitably loses Eurydice in the Underworld but is consoled by his father (the God Apollo) and taken up to heaven.
After the success of L’Orfeo, Monteverdi travelled to Venice where, in 1637, the Teatro San Cassiano – the world’s first public opera house – was opened, making Venice the capital of European opera. Now, for the first time, audiences contained non-nobles who went to the opera to experience fancy costumes and sets and dramatic, thrilling arias, as opposed to the pretentious, mythological-based dramas preferred in courts. This was the time of the diva, or ‘star’: female singers whose voices were held in such high regard that they gained a certain level of power over the composers, librettists (script writers) and even the impresarios (producers).
At first, Monteverdi failed to realise this and his next opera, Arianna, proved to be ill-suited to this new audience. This could explain why Arriana’s lament is the only section of the opera to have survived. His last two operas, Il returno de U’lisse in patria (1641) and L’incoronazione de Poppea (1642), written when Monteverdi was in his seventies, were more successful. Il returno de U’lisse included comical elements and complex stage designs, for example the pulley used to bring the goddess Minerva down from ‘Heaven’, while the music in Poppea, the first opera to centre around a non-fictional protagonist, was dramatic and flexible, allowing the orchestra and singers more freedom to incorporate their own style into the performance. This unregimented approach was very different to the precise, almost dictatorial, directions used in L’Orfeo in which even Orpheus’s coloraturas (ornamentations) were written out in full. In his later operas, Monteverdi also attempted to create more realistic, rounded, human characters, as opposed to the symbolic concepts characterised in L’Orfeo; the prologue of L’Orfeo is actually sung by La Musica – the personification of music.
Three years after writing Poppea, Monteverdi died and his pupil, Francesco Cavalli, stepped up to claim the operatic stage.
Although Monteverdi was not the first opera composer, it is inarguable that it was he who made opera a lasting genre of musical performance. Only three of his twelve operas survive, but even these works make it clear that his take on the genre was innovative and exciting. He took inspiration from his predecessors, many of them members of the Camarata (the group of Florentine composers credited for inventing opera), and created the basic framework that is still used by operas today.
His first opera, L’Orfeo, was heavily influenced by Jacopo Peri’s L’Eurydice (1600), the oldest surviving opera. But, although L’Eurydice experienced some success among its contemporaries, what made Monteverdi’s adaptation so effective was the wide range of styles incorporated into the work. Monteverdi was an accomplished composer, having already published two volumes of sacred music and three books of madrigals, and used what he knew of these genres to create greater contrast between the different leitmotifs of each character. This was also the first opera to include a score for a full orchestra and involves recorders, cornets, trumpets, trombones, strings and even a regal – a small, portable organ with a reedy tonality – for the scenes in the Underworld. L’Orfeo premièred on the 24th of February 1607 at the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua and was an instant success.
Like many early operas, the storyline for L’Orfeo was taken from Ancient Greek mythology, in this case, the tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice. It tells of a young man (Orpheus) who, through the power of music, persuades the Gods to allow him to travel to the Underworld (Hades) to retrieve his dead wife (Eurydice). Orpheus inevitably loses Eurydice in the Underworld but is consoled by his father (the God Apollo) and taken up to heaven.
After the success of L’Orfeo, Monteverdi travelled to Venice where, in 1637, the Teatro San Cassiano – the world’s first public opera house – was opened, making Venice the capital of European opera. Now, for the first time, audiences contained non-nobles who went to the opera to experience fancy costumes and sets and dramatic, thrilling arias, as opposed to the pretentious, mythological-based dramas preferred in courts. This was the time of the diva, or ‘star’: female singers whose voices were held in such high regard that they gained a certain level of power over the composers, librettists (script writers) and even the impresarios (producers).
At first, Monteverdi failed to realise this and his next opera, Arianna, proved to be ill-suited to this new audience. This could explain why Arriana’s lament is the only section of the opera to have survived. His last two operas, Il returno de U’lisse in patria (1641) and L’incoronazione de Poppea (1642), written when Monteverdi was in his seventies, were more successful. Il returno de U’lisse included comical elements and complex stage designs, for example the pulley used to bring the goddess Minerva down from ‘Heaven’, while the music in Poppea, the first opera to centre around a non-fictional protagonist, was dramatic and flexible, allowing the orchestra and singers more freedom to incorporate their own style into the performance. This unregimented approach was very different to the precise, almost dictatorial, directions used in L’Orfeo in which even Orpheus’s coloraturas (ornamentations) were written out in full. In his later operas, Monteverdi also attempted to create more realistic, rounded, human characters, as opposed to the symbolic concepts characterised in L’Orfeo; the prologue of L’Orfeo is actually sung by La Musica – the personification of music.
Three years after writing Poppea, Monteverdi died and his pupil, Francesco Cavalli, stepped up to claim the operatic stage.
Francesco Cavalli (1602–1676) Cavalli has been described as ‘the most important opera composer from the early days of the opera houses in Venice’, second only to Monteverdi himself. A member of the Camerata, Cavalli wrote over forty operas during his lifetime, the most celebrated being Giasone (1649) for its lyrical arias. However, it was the radical La Calisto (1651) which had the most effect on the operas which would follow it. | |
With La Calisto, Cavalli combined two Greek myths about Gods seducing mortals into a complex, racy (for the time), three-act opera. After the King of the Gods’s (Jupiter’s) attempts to drug and rape a chaste young woman (Calisto) fail, he disguises himself as Diana (the goddess of the hunt), whom Calisto idolises, by switching his low baritone voice for a high falsetto one, and manages to trick Calisto into sleeping with him. At the same time, the real Diana, who has taken a vow of chastity, succumbs to the advances of a shepherd boy (Endimione). The aftermath of what has happened, and the confusion between the two Dianas, eventually resolves itself. Diana and Endimione escape to live together on an island, Jupiter returns to heaven and Calisto is transformed into an immortal bear.
The sensual subject matter of La Calisto, completely different from the solemn, sacred music Cavalli would have experienced under Monteverdi’s tuition at the Basilica of St Mark, would have thrilled the Venetian public who, at the time, enjoyed a level of religious and moral freedom that didn’t hit the rest of Europe until much later.
The sensual subject matter of La Calisto, completely different from the solemn, sacred music Cavalli would have experienced under Monteverdi’s tuition at the Basilica of St Mark, would have thrilled the Venetian public who, at the time, enjoyed a level of religious and moral freedom that didn’t hit the rest of Europe until much later.
Jean-Baptiste Lully
Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–1687)
For France, this freedom came when King Louis XIV took the throne in 1661. A lover of culture, Louis built six royal academies – each centred on one of the arts – including one for opera (which had been introduced to Parisian audiences by Cardinal Jules Mazarin, Louis’s father’s Italian adviser, in the 1640s).
Around that time, an Italian boy named Jean-Baptiste Lully travelled to France to work as a pageboy to Louis’s cousin. The king, impressed by Lully’s natural talent for mime, music and dance, granted him increasingly influential positions at court until eventually, in 1662, he was made ‘Music Master to the Royal Family’.
For a long time, Lully had insisted that the lyrical style of opera was unsuited to the French language but, shocked by the success of Robert Cambert’s Pomone (1671) – the first opera to be performed in French – he began to warm to the idea. He attended French plays and studied the nuances of French speech, focusing particularly on the rolling alexandrines (12-syllabled lines of rhyming couplets) used in French tragedies which he incorporated into his earlier works. He also crafted a new style of recitative to fit French speech patterns.
For France, this freedom came when King Louis XIV took the throne in 1661. A lover of culture, Louis built six royal academies – each centred on one of the arts – including one for opera (which had been introduced to Parisian audiences by Cardinal Jules Mazarin, Louis’s father’s Italian adviser, in the 1640s).
Around that time, an Italian boy named Jean-Baptiste Lully travelled to France to work as a pageboy to Louis’s cousin. The king, impressed by Lully’s natural talent for mime, music and dance, granted him increasingly influential positions at court until eventually, in 1662, he was made ‘Music Master to the Royal Family’.
For a long time, Lully had insisted that the lyrical style of opera was unsuited to the French language but, shocked by the success of Robert Cambert’s Pomone (1671) – the first opera to be performed in French – he began to warm to the idea. He attended French plays and studied the nuances of French speech, focusing particularly on the rolling alexandrines (12-syllabled lines of rhyming couplets) used in French tragedies which he incorporated into his earlier works. He also crafted a new style of recitative to fit French speech patterns.
King Louis XIV of France
In 1672, Lully took advantage of his special relationship with the king to secure exclusive rights to the creation and performance of opera. After that, no theatre was allowed to produce any musical act without it first being sanctioned by Lully. In essence, Lully had created an operatic monopoly and unashamedly exploited it to further his own career; over the next 14 years, Lully composed, produced and directed over twenty operas and ballets.
One of the first of these operas was Alceste, Ou Le Triomphe D’Alcide (1674), which was written in praise of Louis XIV and is loosely based on the Greek legend of Hercules. In the prologue, a nymph on the banks of the River Seine eagerly awaits the return of a ‘hero’ (heavily implied to be Louis) and, in the final act, the appearance of Apollo (the sun god) is a more blatant example of Lully’s sycophantism: Louis XIV often referred to himself as le Roi-Soleil (the sun king).
Lully pandered to Louis XIV’s vanity in many of his operas, often inserting him into the work, normally as a hero or a god. In Atys (1676), an opera even more erotic than Cavalli’s La Castilo, Lully includes a framing device in which a hero, based on Louis XIV, is told the main story while he waits for a battle to begin – it is made clear that the hero’s campaign will win.
This close relationship between Lully and the king wasn’t to last, however. In 1685, it was brought to the king’s attention that Lully had been having an affair with a young male page in his service. Despite remaining influential and relatively rich, Louis removed his patronage and Lully’s exclusivity was retracted. Lully died two years later of a gangrene infection in his big toe.
One of the first of these operas was Alceste, Ou Le Triomphe D’Alcide (1674), which was written in praise of Louis XIV and is loosely based on the Greek legend of Hercules. In the prologue, a nymph on the banks of the River Seine eagerly awaits the return of a ‘hero’ (heavily implied to be Louis) and, in the final act, the appearance of Apollo (the sun god) is a more blatant example of Lully’s sycophantism: Louis XIV often referred to himself as le Roi-Soleil (the sun king).
Lully pandered to Louis XIV’s vanity in many of his operas, often inserting him into the work, normally as a hero or a god. In Atys (1676), an opera even more erotic than Cavalli’s La Castilo, Lully includes a framing device in which a hero, based on Louis XIV, is told the main story while he waits for a battle to begin – it is made clear that the hero’s campaign will win.
This close relationship between Lully and the king wasn’t to last, however. In 1685, it was brought to the king’s attention that Lully had been having an affair with a young male page in his service. Despite remaining influential and relatively rich, Louis removed his patronage and Lully’s exclusivity was retracted. Lully died two years later of a gangrene infection in his big toe.
Over the course of the seventeenth century, opera moved away from the austere, cerebral dramas of Monteverdi’s predecessors. Monteverdi developed the leitmotif and introduced realistic characters (sometimes even employing historical figures); Cavalli included raunchy erotic scenes; and Lully pandered to the desires and instructions of his royal patron. Since then opera has continued to expand and develop across the globe and is as rich and vibrant today as it was in its early stages four hundred years ago.
Bibliography
Burkholder, J. Peter, Grout, Donald Jay. and Palisca, Claude V. A History of Western Music (New York, 2010)
Gammond, Peter. An Illustrated Guide to Composers of Opera (London, 1980)
Kennedy, Michael. and Kennedy, Joyce. Oxford Concise Dictionary of Music (Oxford, 2007)
Knapp, J. Merrell. The Magic of Opera (New York, 1985)
Levin, David J. Opera Through Other Eyes (California, 1993)
Riding, Alan. and Dunton-Dower, Leslie. Opera (London, 2006)
Schonberg, Harold C. The Lives of the Great Composers (United States of America, 2003)
Stanley, John. Classical Music - The Great Composers and their Masterworks (London, 1994)
Burkholder, J. Peter, Grout, Donald Jay. and Palisca, Claude V. A History of Western Music (New York, 2010)
Gammond, Peter. An Illustrated Guide to Composers of Opera (London, 1980)
Kennedy, Michael. and Kennedy, Joyce. Oxford Concise Dictionary of Music (Oxford, 2007)
Knapp, J. Merrell. The Magic of Opera (New York, 1985)
Levin, David J. Opera Through Other Eyes (California, 1993)
Riding, Alan. and Dunton-Dower, Leslie. Opera (London, 2006)
Schonberg, Harold C. The Lives of the Great Composers (United States of America, 2003)
Stanley, John. Classical Music - The Great Composers and their Masterworks (London, 1994)