Lecture Ten

Classical-Era Opera: The Development of Opera Buffa, Mozart and the Operatic Ensemble, & Introduction to Le Nozze di Figaro 

Lecture Ten (and eleven) explores the development of Classical-era opera buffa. Opera buffa is discussed as the ideal operatic genre for the Classical era, which rejected the magnificence and overblown characters and emotions of Baroque opera seria in favor of more realistic plots, more “natural” music, and more common characters. This lecture describes the formulaic nature of late Baroque opera seria and the domination of these operas by singers and virtuosic singing. The relevance of these operas to the age of the Enlightenment was questioned by many contemporaries, in particular Jean-Jacques Rousseau. We will consider Rousseau’s objections to Baroque opera seria and his unqualified support of a new type of opera (opera buffa), then emerging from Italy, as the ideal opera for the Enlightenment. We will sample a portion of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s opera La Serva Padrona (1733), a work embraced by Rousseau in the early 1750s as a model for the operas of the future. Scope:        This lecture discusses the operas of Mozart, with special attention to Don Giovanni. It begins with a brief but detailed account of the life of Lorenzo da Ponte, the librettist for Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and Cosi fan tutte. We then discuss the nature and content of an opera buffa finale, an act-ending episode of continuous music which, in Mozart’s operas, is often upwards of twenty minutes in length. As an example of Mozart’s unparalleled ability to sustain a musical-dramatic line, this lecture features a hearing and discussion of Act I, scene 1 of Don Giovanni. We examine the Act II finale of Don Giovanni, during which time the tragic music that initiated the overture returns with the entrance of the statue and the Don’s subsequent (and fiery) demise.  Finally, we will begin our discussion of Le Nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni and continue with a video next week.

Outline We begin with a review of Baroque-era opera

A.    Opera was invented c. 1600 in Florence, Italy. During the seventeenth century it evolved from courtly entertainment to (debased) popular spectacle.

B.    Opera seria represented an early eighteenth-century effort to reform opera.

1.     These opera seria were elaborate, often grandiose productions.

2.     They were based on ancient history and/or mythological characters.

3.     They were often meant to glorify the patron/royalty paying for the production.

C.    By 1740, opera seria had been given its standard form by Pietro Metastasio, the Italian poet/librettist most responsible for standardizing the form of the libretti.

1.     Metastasio wrote hundreds of libretti, almost all in his standard formula.

2.   Musical interest in this sort of opera rested solely in the arias (and the singers who sang them).

3.     Singers exploited their importance, helping to debase opera as a dramatic genre. Artistic irresponsibility was the result.

D.    The relevance of Metastasian opera seria to the Age of Enlightenment was increasingly questioned by artists, writers, philosophers, and~ composers. Operatic reform, bent on returning dramatic coherence to opera, began in Italy during the 1730s. 

II.   The operatic reform that began during the 1730s reflected the new influence of middle-class ideas and was spearheaded by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712—1778)

A.    Rousseau was a hugely influential anti-establishment French intellectual at the cutting edge of the Enlightenment.

B.    He rejected Baroque opera seria as artificial (“unnatural”) and elitist.

C.    He embraced a new sort of opera then emerging in Italy—opera buffa— as the ideal opera for the new, enlightened age. 

III.    Specifically, Rousseau and his followers embraced Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s “La Serva Padrona” as the new operatic ideal.

A.    The extraordinarily talented Pergolesi died at the tender age of 26.

B.    “La Serva Padrona” represented a conscious effort to reform opera by making it more natural.

C.    Like other Baroque opera buffe, La Serva Padrona has the following characteristics.

1.     It is melodically simpler and more “popular” than Baroque opera seria.

2.     It has a typically small cast requiring a minimum of staging/scenery.

3.     Everyday characters and plots are based on real-life situations.

4.     Although opera buffe are not always comic per se, they usually have at least one comic character. 

IV.    Featured Music: Pergolesi, La Serva Padrona (The Maid as Mistress), Recitativo obligato and aria, “Son imbroliato io’ (1733) 

A.    La Serva Padrona was embraced by Rousseau as the “opera of the future.”

B.    The music is lively and catchy.

C.    It has a small cast (three!).

 D.   The plot revolves around a ruse by a servant girl to trick her master into marriage.

 E.    Pergolesi introduces accompanied (or instrumental) recitative. Uberto’ s recitative and aria are delivered in “patter” style.

 F.    The naturalistic, real-life focus of “La Serva Padrona” (and of J.S. Bach’s “Coffee Cantata”) marks, perhaps, the advent of the Classical style.

G.   Even as it evolved, opera buffa continued to use character types drawn from the Italian commedia dell’arte.

1. The plots of opera buffe pitted savvy, street-smart servants and members of the lower class against blundering, pompous aristocrats, doctors, lawyers, and merchants.

2.  Thus opera buffa plots were highly politicized at a time when the relationship among the common, middle, and aristocratic classes was undergoing profound reexamination.

Classical-Era Opera: Mozart and the Operatic Ensemble 

Outline: Mozart wrote the following mature operas (it don’t get any better than this, my friends).

A.    Opera seria— Italian

1.     Idomeneo, 1780

2.   La Clemenza di Tito (The Mercy of Titus), 1791

B.    Singspiel— German

1.     Die Entfürung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Harem), 1782

2.     Die Zaube,flote (The Magic Flute), 1791

C.    Opera Buffa— Italian

1.     Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage ofFigaro), 1786

2.   Don Giovanni, 1787

3.     Cosi fan Tutte (Thus Do They All), 1789

D.    Lorenzo da Ponte was the librettist of Mozart’s great opera buffe. He turned opera buffe into high literary art.

1.     He was born Jewish but was converted to Catholicism at age 14 by his father.

2.   One year later, da Ponte entered the seminary, and at age 24 he was ordained a priest.

3.   After being run out of Venice for adultery in 1779, he moved eventually to Vienna, where he wrote libretti and pursued women. His first big success was his adaptation for Mozart of Beaumarchais’s “Marriage of Figaro.”

4.   To escape his creditors, da Ponte moved in 1 792 to London, and again in 1805 to New Jersey.

5.     The climax of his life in the United States was the production of Don Giovanni in New York City in 1825. He died in 1828 at age of 89! 

II.     We noted in Lecture nine the following features of Don Giovanni:

A.    The overture themes are comic and light.

B.    The introduction is dark and foreboding. 

C.    The introduction presages events later in the opera. 

III.    We pause for a momentary diversion on the operatic ensemble, in which two or more characters sing simultaneously.

A.    An ensemble is continuous, aria-like music sung by a number of different characters.

B.    Mozart was arguably the great master of ensemble.

C.    Mozart’s most extraordinary ensembles are those that end acts.

1.     They are often over twenty minutes long.

2.     They combine the melodic fluency and power of aria with the dramatic momentum of recitative. 

IV.  Featured Music: Don Giovanni, 1787 

A.    The music virtually creates and defines the characters.

B.  Act I, scene I

1.     Mozart creates a continuous dramatic flow.

2.   The mood changes from comedy to high tragedy to black comedy.

3.     There is no sense of formula, predictability, or manipulation.

4.     The characters include:

a.    Leporello—all fear and conscience.

b.    Don Giovanni—no fear or conscience.

c.    Donna Anna—the Don’s current love interest.

d.    The Commandatore—Donna Anna’s father.

5.     The scene begins with a comic aria by Leporello.

6.     The music becomes more dramatic as Donna Anna, Don Giovanni, and Leporello sing a trio.

7.     The third episode begins with the arrival of the Commandatore. The trio among the Don, Leporello, and the Commandatore concludes with the sword fight and the Commandatore’s death.

8.     Don Giovanni and Leporello conclude the scene with a secco recitative. 

C.    Act II, scene V

1. The ensemble finale is twenty-three minutes long.

2. The music heard during the overture introduction returns as the statue of a man the Don has killed—the Commandatore—comes to take (drag!) Don Giovanni to hell.

    3. The finale is a tour de force of dramatic line, psychological insight, and compositional virtuosity. 

V.   Featured Video: Le Nozze di Figaro. 

We will watch the entire opera.  Please refer to handouts for writing assignment on this opera.