Showing posts with label Opera. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Opera. Show all posts

Sunday, February 4, 2018

Theater Arts – Italian Opera

Le Prophète : illustration de presse de la scène du couronnement lors de la création londonienne de l'oeuvre au Royal Italian Opera (1849)
Photo: Wikimedia
Italian opera is the earliest known opera form. Although the Greek and Roman Theater had inspired it, it inspired many countries around the world, including most of Europe. Some say that the word opera has been derived from the Italian words “Opera in Musica” which means work in music. The evidence of the very first opera performed in Italy was at the wedding of Marie de Medici and Henry IV of France. The Italian opera had three stages namely the baroque, the romantic and the modern. 

Baroque period is the name of that period of Italian opera that originated in Italy in the beginning of the 17th century. The voice used was very high pitched along with the instrumental music. This style was known as monody and was developed by Giulio Caccini and Jacopo Peri. It was reflected in the opera Euridice that was based on the story of Eurydice and Orpheus. When there were no dialogues during the performance, there were songs with music. This type of opera inspired many other writes, one of them was Claudio Monteverdi who wrote La Favola D’Orfeo that had the monody style. It was his first play and it still is famous with the audience today. Monteverdi worked hard on synchronizing instrumental music with the words and showed this effort in Mantua, with large choruses with nearly forty instruments that created a really good effect.  He was named as the Maestro Da Cappella in Venice in the year 1613.

The first opera house for the public was opened in the year 1637. Monteverdi wrote many compositions for this theater and his works L’Incoronazione di Poppea and I Ritomo d’Ullise in Patria were prominent out of the many. He even brought the Bel Canto and Buffa styles into Italian opera. Bel canto had a more even tone and eased the singing stress. Buffa had more comic touch with amusing and mocking elements. All these acted as the stepping-stone for many other later composers. At the end of the century, there were three hundred and fifty opera created for the theaters of Venice alone. Many young artists were inspired to work in these theaters and bring out their talents. People came from outside Italy too.    

In the 19th century, romantic opera began to rise and Gioacchino Rossini was responsible for it. The romantic opera involved lots of emotions and imagination along with lots of music and arias. This music was so fine that it overshadowed the blunders in the stories. His composures such as La Cenerentola and Barber of Seville are famous until today. Many others such as Vincenzo Bellini, Giuseppe Verdi, and Gaetano Donizetti followed him.  



Giuseppe Verdi changed the way opera was written at that time. Nabucco was his first work and it was a very big success because of the great choruses along with enormous liveliness in the music. He even wrote Va pensiero, a chorus presentation to inspire the warriors at the time of Italian independence struggle. The works, which followed this had a more patriotic theme and were also based on older romantic works. He began to venture into different musical forms and finally his creation Otello replaced Rossini’s opera. His last work Falstaff finally changed the conventional form of theater and made music and words more free-flowing. 



Friday, January 12, 2018

MOZART's Don Giovanni: How Women Become More Important Than Men

A scene from Don Giovanni as perform'd at the ...
A scene from Don Giovanni as performed at the Kings Theatre (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Mozart used Don Giovanni as a means to show his affinity towards the female roles he experienced in his life. He was one of the first in the 18th century to show that women could be intelligent and vibrant in public life. This extrovert portrayal of the women would be more prevalent at the beginning of the 19th century when women played an important role in European salons and the literary circles. Mozart took the audacious move of showing a "mélange" of social classes. He also showed men to be weak and in need of women rather than the contrary. His men are shown to be pathetic creatures.

In the 18th century, women were given intellectual and artistic liberties as long as they were discrete. Their sitting rooms of the aristocracy had male servants and ladies-in-waiting. The dual existence was to show that their devotion to their husbands took precedence. Donna Anna was engaged to get married though she had been "scorned" by Don Giovanni. It would have put her aristocratic standing in question. Donna Elvira was also supposed to get married She was in constant conflict with Don Giovanni. Their love-hate relationship prevailed throughout the opera.

Sexual freedom was part of the social etiquette in the period of Enlightenment. It was quite common for both men and women to have discrete extramarital affairs in 18th century Europe. Mozart's wife tolerated his affairs only with the servant girls. She would not allow him to philanderer with the aristocrats or other women from the social elite. One must understand Mozart often wrote his female roles for specific women with whom he had a relationship. He was the man who had never found his mother. It was well-known.

Don Giovanni was never discrete. He had not come from the aristocratic class. Mozart was a Don Giovanni in disguise. He was not terribly discrete and he was still considered part of the court. He had his patron and worked under the orders of the Prince or the Church who employed him at the time of his musical composition.

By the end of the first act of the opera, the three women unite together to show they are capable of existing without the need of their male counterparts. In the second act, they work to get Don Giovanni.

Donna Anna, who was engaged, would have had a waiting room with either a man-servant or a lady-in-waiting. She was an strong-willed young woman who obviously pretended as though she had been humiliated. Don Giovanni would never have had access to her inner chambers. Donna Anna shows her aristocratic intelligence by running down the stair singing she had been scorned. Perhaps it was only her pride or ego which had been insulted. She is the stronger of the two showing Don Giovanni running away from her. Mozart liked strong, intelligent women.

Donna Elvira also is a strong-willed aristocratic woman who had been deceived two times by Don Giovanni. She unites with Donna Anna. The two of them go looking for him. They find themselves at a tavern. Mozart mixed the social classes again. Don Giovanni who had tried to get into the aristocratic class is now singing to Zerlina, a young tavern girl who was also supposed to be engaged. Mozart shows three women who are off-limits to the outside world.

The three men in the opera can be analyzed as weak and capricious. At the end of the 2nd act, the three women see Don Giovanni for whom he really was He is a young weak man who never gets what he wants. He goes after women who are impossible to have. The father who becomes the stone statue when he loses his life in a dual asks for Don Giovanni to repent. When he refuses, the Commendatore pulls him into the earth. Perhaps they both have been pulled into hell?

The opera shows the social tension. The pride of the woman's public reputation is more important than her own personal integrity. The duality of reputation over sexual freedom behind doors is used by Donna Anna to her benefit. She frees herself from Don Giovanni and she keeps her reputation. No one will ever know what happened. Donna Elvira forgives Don Giovanni and asks him to change his ways. He loses interest in her. Donna Elvira spends her life in a convent. Zerlina is free to go back to her fiancé. Donna Anna refuses requests to get married as her father only just died. Did she want her freedom as Mozart implied, or did she want to respect the year custom after a parent died? Mozart made a mockery of the different social customs



Mozart made a courageous stand by showing that women's existence did not depend on men. Women stood together and achieved what they were after. In the opera, the three women stand together. Mozart was ahead of his time. They were strong, vibrant women who took control. Don Giovanni, the frustrated young man, looks for the mother he never finds. Mozart was a prolific composer who died a pauper. His infatuation with women and his low esteem for men would be the vice which would be his downfall.




Monday, December 18, 2017

Titans of OPERA: A Brief Biography of LUCIANO PAVAROTTI

English: Luciano Pavarotti in Vélodrome Stadiu...
Luciano Pavarotti in Vélodrome Stadium, (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There was no greater opera singer during the latter half of the twentieth century than tenor Luciano Pavarotti [1935-2007], whose spectacular and distinctive voice, plus a larger-than-life career, made him the top-selling classical recording artist of all time. Born in Modena, Italy, Pavarotti learned to sing opera from the records in his father's collection -- inspired by great tenors of the past such as Caruso, Gigli, and Di Stefano -- and enjoyed his first musical success as a member of an all-male choir that included his father, winning first prize in an international competition in Wales. Pavarotti continued vocal instruction with several local teachers, one of whom also taught Pavarotti's childhood friend, Mirella Freni. The pair would enjoy significant worldwide operatic careers, and they appeared onstage together in a number of productions.

In the Italian town of Reggio Emilia, Pavarotti made his professional debut in 1961 as Rodolfo in Puccini's La bohéme, a role that would become one of his favorites throughout his career. Two years later, his first performances outside Italy took him to the Vienna Opera House, where he sang Rodolfo and also appeared in Verdi's Rigoletto as the Duke of Mantua. Later that year he replaced his mentor and idol, Giuseppe Di Stefano, in this same role at Covent Garden (London) when the elder tenor fell ill at the last moment. After being "discovered" by Joan Sutherland, Pavarotti was invited to perform alongside the famous soprano on a tour of Australia. He gave his first U.S. performance in Miami -- hardly an opera hotbed -- in February 1965, appearing as Edgardo opposite Sutherland, who sang her signature role of Lucia in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor.

In 1972, Pavarotti's first appearance at New York's Metropolitan Opera was as Tonio in Donizetti's comic opera La Fille du Régiment, where the aria "Ah, mes amis" includes nine high Cs. His effortless performance of what is generally considered the most difficult lyric tenor aria in the repertoire prompted 17 curtain calls, and a legend was born. During his career, he performed hundreds of more times on the Met's stage, and he was also featured in the very first television broadcast [1977] of the series Live from the Met. For that program, Pavarotti reprised his role of Rodolfo in La bohéme, with Renata Scotto as Mimi. He continued to appear on opera stages throughout the world -- his favorite roles also included Manrico in Verdi's Il trovatore, Nemorino in Donizetti's Le elisir d'amore, and Cavaradossi in Puccini's Tosca -- including La Scala [Milan], where his performance in Radames in Verdi's Aida in 1985 was one of the most heralded in the long history of that particular venue.

His fame grew even greater as one of the Three Tenors -- Placido Domingo and José Carreras were the others -- whose performance in Rome prior to the 1990 World Cup finals resulted in the best-selling classical recording of all time. Their continued appearances throughout the decade in front of stadium-sized audiences helped raise awareness of opera with much of the general public. Pavarotti's final Met Opera performance (as Cavaradossi) took place on March 13, 2004, and his farewell tour of 2006 was cut short when the maestro was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in July. He died at home in Modena in September of the following year.

    The two video clips that accompany this article are from two distinctly different periods of his career, but both show off his magnificent voice. The first is a recital performance (piano accompaniment only) of "Che gelida manina" from Puccini's La bohéme, recorded in 1964 when he was 29. The second is "Vesti la giubba" from a live performance of Leoncavallo's I pagliacci at the Met in New York in 1994, when he was 59.

    Article Source: EzineArticles


Wednesday, November 1, 2017

GEORGE FREDERICK HANDEL and the Hallelujah Chorus


George Frederick Handel (23 February 1685 - 14 April 1759) was a German-English Baroque composer who was born in Halle, Germany (Halle is the largest city in the German State of Saxony-Anhalt.) Handel moved to Hamburg in 1703 after being unsatisfied as the organist at the local Protestant cathedral. He got a position as violinist and harpsichordist in the orchestra of the opera house. In 1706 Handel travelled to Italy at the invitation of Gian Gastone de' Medici, whom Handel had met in 1703/1704 in Hamburg. In 1710, Handel moved to Hanover Germany to become Kapellmeister to George, Elector of Hanover, who would become King George I of Great Britain in 1714. In that year Handel moved back to London and stayed there for 35 years with yearly salary for the rest of his life.

Handels was influenced by his father and the duke: Handel's father wanted him to become a lawyer and have nothing to do with music or playing an instrument however a clavichord was smuggled in with muffled strings so his father would not be able to hear him play. His father took him to Weissenfels where his playing on the chapel organ attracted the attention of the duke. The duke was amazed by Handel's abilities in the chapel that he insisted that Handel is allowed to study music. The duke thought it would be a crime to rob the world of such genius.

Handel wrote many works including:

Operas eg. Araphina which brought him fame in Italy in 1709 and Rinaldo which brought him fame in London in 1711
Dramatic Oratorios eg The Messiah in 1741 which is famous all around the world and Athalia in 1742 which is famous in Dublin
100 Cantatas and 20 Chamber Duets
Church Music eg. Gloria Patri (1707), Funeral Anthem (1707)
Orchestra-eg. Water Music (1717),
Instrumental And Chamber Music ~ Including 9 Trio Sonatas, 5 Concerti for Orchestra.
Vocal Music eg. Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne (1713)



Oratorio:
An oratorio is a musical play based on a bible story or scripture. It uses choruses, ensembles and solos to tell a story and usually, an organ or orchestra accompanies the singers. Oratorios are not acted out with costumes or props. The Messiah is an oratorio. You go along and listen to it or sing along to it near Christmas time. This is because The Messiah is about Christs' life and Christmas Day is his birthday.

The Messiah:
In 1741 Handel began putting Charles Jennens' Biblical libretto to music, and 24 days later Messiah was complete (August 22 - September 14). The Messiah was written because Handel was discouraged with his opera writing and after being sent libretto from Charles Jennings Handel felt inspired and immediately began setting the work to music. Legend says that when Handel had finished his work, a servant of his heard him exclaim "Hallelujah Chorus," "I did think I did see all of the heaven before me and the great God Himself!"

The Hallelujah Chorus:
A chorus is a musical ensemble of singers who perform the non-soloist parts of an opera or musical theatre production (or sometimes an oratorio). Handel was known as the master of the oratorio where no composer before or after has surpassed his abilities in writing them. The Hallelujah Chorus was typical of his writing because he wrote 27 oratorios in the later part of his life and wrote many operas which indicate he enjoyed composing music which consists of instruments and singing.

The Hallelujah Chorus is a typical piece of music written in the Baroque period because of the religious text used and the use of English to please the middle class. Religious text is found throughout the Hallelujah Chorus including in bars 36-51 where the text states that "He shall reign forever and ever." referring to Christ. Another thing that makes the Hallelujah Chorus typical of the Baroque period is the way Handel used a mix of homophonic, polyphonic and a small amount of monophonic texture eg. Bars 33-41 of the Hallelujah Chorus is homophonic and bars 41-51 are polyphonic.




Thursday, October 26, 2017

Richard WAGNER - Titan of Opera

RichardWagner.jpg
Richard Wagner - Photo Wikipedia (CC)
Because of the lack of discrimination in ascertaining how the composers used t motives, we can understand Massenet's et Cie. ambivalence about Wagner's influence. The Wagner system was not only about motives but also in how they were employed and what kinds of things they were meant to symbolize, that was all part of the "system." Other composers broke with that system by using motives entirely differently, Verdi, for example, used them extremely sparingly and kept them intact, to him they were used as recontextualized reminiscence.

Massenet followed that path as well, his theme usage in Manon and Werther are sparse. They highlight just a few issues and moments within the work. Though their job was to see these discrete techniques and artistic conceptions, critics at the time became partisans and polemicists and Wagner's breakthroughs led to a decade of deep creative frustration and ambivalence.


A look at Manon and Carmen shows how "Mademoiselle Wagner" was as much an inheritor of Bizet and of traditional opera as he was an acolyte of Wagner. Though published at a time when operas had firmly become "Music Drama" Manon is comfortably within the same family as its famous predecessor.

Some of the scenes in both operas are startlingly parallel. They open with huge tableaux showing us all these slices of life scenes, the changing of the guard and the cigarette girls in Carmen and the Inn at Amiens were the townspeople chatter and gossip waiting for Guillot and De Bretigny to arrive. The music here is boisterous festive and self-referential. Both composers here are concerned with evincing extended local colors and flavors, hardly a Wagnerian concern.

In the first act, we already see Bizet employing the limited use of motive that in 1874 already got tarred as Wagnerism. The use of Carmen's fate theme, which is one of the devices that allows Bizet to connect his opera between the individual "numbers" is much in the same vein that Massenet uses his themes. It's true that in Bizet these themes are not employed as subtly as in Manon but a decade separates these works and innovation and aesthetic temperament grow and change.

Both these operas concern themselves with a heroine too morally ambivalent to serve as a Wagnerian philosophical prop. The story of their journeys from the desire to defiance to death is firmly in the traditional school of operatic stories and despite hysterical criticism that the orchestras in each of these operas dominated the singers (!) these works show no great leap from that last international opera composed for Paris, Verdi's Don Carlos in 1867.


That Wagner's influence is tremendous is obvious. I have not even gone through the changes he made in the theater such as the hidden pit and the completely unlit performance hall. It is hard to believe that before him orchestra pits were public affairs and those operatic spectacles were viewed with the house lights on. This does not mention his advocacy for chromatic horns, the invention of the Wagner horns, and the standardization of the orchestra as we know it nor his role in the primacy of the conductor. His idiom is still the idiom of popular classical music to this day, in television, films and video games, the scores are composed with Wagner in mind. To have to deal with that influence, particularly at its first great plateau must have been an enormous preoccupation. The terror that Brahms and Schubert had of Beethoven even pales in comparison. For classical music, particularly opera, this age was the birth of the anxiety of influence, and the French composers of that time must have realized that they would not live long enough to see themselves understood or appreciated for their personal contributions.



Tuesday, August 29, 2017

CHINESE OPERA

Beijing opera, more commonly known as Peking opera to westerners, is deemed the national opera of China. The accompanying music, singing and costumes are all fascinating and artistic. Full of Chinese cultural facts, the opera presents to the audience an encyclopedia of Chinese culture as well as unfolding stories, beautiful paintings, exquisite costumes, graceful gestures and acrobatic fighting. Since it enjoys a higher reputation than other local operas, almost every province of China has more than one Beijing Opera troupe, who is called "piaoyou" in Chinese. This kind of opera is so popular among Chinese people, especially seniors, that even a "Beijing Opera Month" has been declared.

Ópera de Beijing - China, Mar2012
Beijing Opera - Photo  by  Ana Paula Hirama 

It has existed for over 200 years. It is widely regarded as the highest expression of the Chinese culture. It is known as one of the three main theatrical systems in the world. Artistically, Beijing Opera is perhaps the most refined form of opera in the world. It has deeply influenced the hearts of the Chinese people. Although it is called Beijing Opera, its origins are not in Beijing but in the Chinese provinces of Anhui and Hubei. Beijing Opera got its two main melodies, Xi_Pi and Er_Huang, from Anhui and Hubei operas. It then absorbed music and arias from other operas and musical arts in China.

In the ancient times, Beijing Opera was performed mostly on open-air stages in markets, streets, teahouses or temple courtyards. The orchestra had to play loudly and the performers had to develop a piercing style of singing, in order to be heard over the crowds. The Beijing opera band mainly consists of orchestra band and percussion band. The former frequently accompanies peaceful scenes while the later often follows scenes of war and fighting. The commonly used percussion instruments include castanets, drums, bells and cymbals. One person usually plays the castanets and the drum simultaneously, which are the conductor of the whole band.



It is said that the facial painting art derived from the Chinese opera has different origins. But no matter what its origin is, the facial painting is worth appreciating for its artistic value. The paintings are presentations of the roles of the characters. For example, a red face usually depicts the role's bravery, uprightness and loyalty; a white face symbolizes a sinister role's treachery and guile; a green face describes surly stubbornness, impetuosity and lack of self-restraint. In addition, the pattern of the facial painting reveals the role's information too. In a word, the unique makeup in the opera allows the characters on the stage to reveal them voicelessly.

Liyuan Theater inside Qianmen Hotel in Beijing is an ideal place for you to enjoy some Beijing Opera.



Thursday, April 6, 2017

A Life Of LORENZO DA PONTE: Talent Flies; Practical Reason Walks

Portrait (engraving) of Lorenzo da Ponte (1749...
 Lorenzo da Ponte (1749-1838)
 (Photo credit: 
Wikipedia)
Among the world’s favorite operas, we find three of them with a libretto penned by Lorenzo Da Ponte and music by none other than the astonishingly delightful Viennese ear-confectioner Mozart. The list is a delight in itself: The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovann, and Così Fan Tutte.

We learn in the new book, The Librettist of Venice, by Rodney Bolt, that Da Ponte grew so close with the unequalled Mozart – both of whom, we learn, were not only talented but vain, insecure and ambitious – that while writing Don Giovanni, they worked in adjoining lodges and shouted to each other through their windows.

Da Ponte even dared to contend with Mozart, who believed the text should be subservient to the music, while Da Ponte was certain that the words should be primary, in fact, that without his poetry even Mighty Mo’s music would be nothing.

Yet how Da Ponte tumbled from the heights. Hard as it may be to imagine, he wound up in New York, running, at one time, a grocery store on the Bowery.

Brilliant as an artist, he was apparently, in his personal life, a managerial moron. Or, said another way, while talent flies, practical reason just plods along, like a relative moron.

Da Ponte, born Jewish, was, as a result of his father’s having decided the family should become Catholic for the easement of a life of trade, ordained a priest. But his real vocation was married women. His exploits, we learn, rivaled Casanova, who became his pal and, if we believe such a thing is possible in the category at hand, his mentor.

Da Ponte himself admitted a shortcoming in comparison with his rival for insincere relationships: he didn’t have Casanova’s purported talent for fleecing the women he falsely wooed. In fact, Da Ponte claims he actually loved the ones he made out with.

He also considered himself adroit politically, but his moves were disastrous. He upset the successors of Joseph II so much he was exiled from Vienna.

Now,still technically a priest he was married to a younger but more wisely practical woman named Nancy Grahl, but even she was unable to keep the man out of bankruptcy in London and again in America, where they moved in 1805, because her family had settled here.

He attempted to establish Italian opera companies when English-speaking audiences had little interest in them. To add onions to opera, the grocery business failed.

He finally became a teacher, bookseller and wannabe impresario.



On the positive side, New York turned out to be the most agreeable spot for him. It was relatively liberal, and Da Ponte found himself a favorite of the cultural elite.

He became the first professor of Italian at Columbia University. While the position was pretty much ceremonial, Da Ponte has the double distinction of having been the first Jew and first priest on the school’s faculty.

He lived on into his 80’s, revered but regarded as eccentric.

He was charming man who made a profession of being European when such a state was still considered novel.

Yet when one compares his everyday doings with his winged collaboration with Mozart, one can only shake his head with the recognition of how quicksilver brilliant the remarkable syntheses of talent are, way up in mental processes we can only hope will drop answers into our expectant consciousness, compared to the "first we do this and then we do that" plodding of the practical but still invaluable mind.