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Understanding Italian Opera
Ever since its invention in Florence around 1600, opera has exerted a peculiar fascination for creative artists and audiences alike. A "Western" genre with a global reach, it is often regarded as the pinnacle of high art, where music and drama come together in unique ways, supported by stellar singers and spectacular staging. Yet it is also patently absurd-why should anyone sing on the stage?-and shrouded in mystique. In this engaging and entertaining guide, renowned music scholar Tim Carter unravels its many layers to offer a thorough introduction to Italian opera from the seventeenth to the early-twentieth century.
Eschewing the technical music detail that all too often dominates writing on opera, Carter begins instead where the composers themselves did: with the text. Walking readers through the relationship between music and words that lies at the heart of any opera, Carter then offers explorations of five of the most enduring, emblematic, and often performed Italian operas: Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppaea; Handel's Julius Caesar in Egypt; Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro; Verdi's Rigoletto; and Pucini's La Bohème. Shedding light on the creative collusions and collisions involved in bringing opera to the stage, the various, and varying, demands of its text and music, and the nature of its musical drama, Carter shows how Italian opera has developed over the course of music history. Complete with synopses, cast lists, and suggested further reading for each opera discussed, Understanding Italian Opera is a must-read for anyone with an interest in and love for opera.
Eschewing the technical music detail that all too often dominates writing on opera, Carter begins instead where the composers themselves did: with the text. Walking readers through the relationship between music and words that lies at the heart of any opera, Carter then offers explorations of five of the most enduring, emblematic, and often performed Italian operas: Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppaea; Handel's Julius Caesar in Egypt; Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro; Verdi's Rigoletto; and Pucini's La Bohème. Shedding light on the creative collusions and collisions involved in bringing opera to the stage, the various, and varying, demands of its text and music, and the nature of its musical drama, Carter shows how Italian opera has developed over the course of music history. Complete with synopses, cast lists, and suggested further reading for each opera discussed, Understanding Italian Opera is a must-read for anyone with an interest in and love for opera.
- GenresMusic
264 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 23, 2015
Opera, "an exotic and irrational entertainment", was born in Italy, and grew up and died there. The author takes a microscope to Italian opera in this book, which is really for serious students of the art form.
What is the art form? It is verse and music made by a team, a librettist and a composer, used to create either musical drama or musical comedy for the stage. All the arts of stage entertainment are used to create the emotion that is opera: music, staging, costumes, choreography, singers, lyrics.
Fascinatingly, the author points out that early opera was an attempt to recreate the entertainments of Ancient Greece during a Humanist revival era in Florence, Italy. The Ancient Greeks combined recitation and music on stage, so the earliest operas were recited verse delivered by actors accompanied by music.
The author covers a history that spans Monteverdi's Orfeo (1607) to Puccini's La Boheme (1896). These are the chapters of the book:
1 What is Opera
2 Giovanni Francesco Busenello and Claudio Monteverdi
3 Nicola Francesco Haym and George Frideric Handel
4 Lorenzo da Ponte and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
5 Francesco maria Piave and Giuseppe Verdi
6 Giuseppe Giacosa, Luigi Illica and Giacomo Puccini
Operatic love stories, with their seriously flawed characters and exotic settings were high poetical drama set to music. While the music changed over time from early Baroque declamation to late Romantic lyricism, the words were Italian poetry. The librettist was always a poet, using meter, rhyme and form, because the words in opera are poetical, not prose.
The standard subjects were historical, mythological, pastoral, sacred lives of saints, buffa domestic comedy, or based on popular plays. The author offers a close reading of five operas. (The Italian texts are translated for the reader, but a fluency in the language of music would be helpful.)
2 Baroque operas:
Incoronazione di Poppea by Busenello and Monteverdi 1643
Giulio Cesare in Egitto 1724 by Haym and Handel
1 Classical opera:
Le Nozze di Figaro 1786 by da Ponte and Mozart
2 Romantic operas
Rigoletto 1851 by Piave and Verdi
La Boheme 1896 by Giacosa and Puccini
The dissection of the operas are done to discover the basic workings of opera, such as the subjects, how to stage then, and to learn to look at opera as drama. The author looks at the cast, the history, a summary of the plot, early performances, and the lyrics for each.
Meter, rhyme, and form are studied in detail for various examples from the operas, including folksongs, prayer songs, toasts, and intro songs (I-songs for the protagonist to introduce him/herself to the audience).
There may be a bit more than most readers would want to know in this book. I found that the dissection of the operas destroyed something, as dissection always does. You come to understand the operas technically which can lessen the emotional impact of the beauty of the performance.
This is a book for aficionados, and would-be librettist and composers, and for serious students of the art form. At times it read like a talk to a university class or an opera club. There is an extensive Further Reading section for those who wish to continue their study of opera.
For the full and illustrated review please visit Italophile Book Reviews. I received a review-copy of the book, and this is my honest review.
http://italophilebookreviews.blogspot...
What is the art form? It is verse and music made by a team, a librettist and a composer, used to create either musical drama or musical comedy for the stage. All the arts of stage entertainment are used to create the emotion that is opera: music, staging, costumes, choreography, singers, lyrics.
Fascinatingly, the author points out that early opera was an attempt to recreate the entertainments of Ancient Greece during a Humanist revival era in Florence, Italy. The Ancient Greeks combined recitation and music on stage, so the earliest operas were recited verse delivered by actors accompanied by music.
The author covers a history that spans Monteverdi's Orfeo (1607) to Puccini's La Boheme (1896). These are the chapters of the book:
1 What is Opera
2 Giovanni Francesco Busenello and Claudio Monteverdi
3 Nicola Francesco Haym and George Frideric Handel
4 Lorenzo da Ponte and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
5 Francesco maria Piave and Giuseppe Verdi
6 Giuseppe Giacosa, Luigi Illica and Giacomo Puccini
Operatic love stories, with their seriously flawed characters and exotic settings were high poetical drama set to music. While the music changed over time from early Baroque declamation to late Romantic lyricism, the words were Italian poetry. The librettist was always a poet, using meter, rhyme and form, because the words in opera are poetical, not prose.
The standard subjects were historical, mythological, pastoral, sacred lives of saints, buffa domestic comedy, or based on popular plays. The author offers a close reading of five operas. (The Italian texts are translated for the reader, but a fluency in the language of music would be helpful.)
2 Baroque operas:
Incoronazione di Poppea by Busenello and Monteverdi 1643
Giulio Cesare in Egitto 1724 by Haym and Handel
1 Classical opera:
Le Nozze di Figaro 1786 by da Ponte and Mozart
2 Romantic operas
Rigoletto 1851 by Piave and Verdi
La Boheme 1896 by Giacosa and Puccini
The dissection of the operas are done to discover the basic workings of opera, such as the subjects, how to stage then, and to learn to look at opera as drama. The author looks at the cast, the history, a summary of the plot, early performances, and the lyrics for each.
Meter, rhyme, and form are studied in detail for various examples from the operas, including folksongs, prayer songs, toasts, and intro songs (I-songs for the protagonist to introduce him/herself to the audience).
There may be a bit more than most readers would want to know in this book. I found that the dissection of the operas destroyed something, as dissection always does. You come to understand the operas technically which can lessen the emotional impact of the beauty of the performance.
This is a book for aficionados, and would-be librettist and composers, and for serious students of the art form. At times it read like a talk to a university class or an opera club. There is an extensive Further Reading section for those who wish to continue their study of opera.
For the full and illustrated review please visit Italophile Book Reviews. I received a review-copy of the book, and this is my honest review.
http://italophilebookreviews.blogspot...
September 6, 2015
(this review is based on an ARC)
Learned and thorough without being too technical, Understanding Italian Opera analyzes five popular operas from the Baroque to the Romantic period (but discusses many more works along the way).
The book focuses on the interplay of words and music - and therefore on the relationship between librettists and composers, and the effects of word and music on the listener.
The language and structure of opera is considered as a form of poetry - the different phrasing influencing and often commanding certain musical choices.
The book will certainly surprise opera enthusiasts, and might be an unusual but effective introduction to the art form for those that have so far been put off by opera.
Greatly enjoyable, and highly recommended.
Reading with a recording of the operas in the background might be a good idea.
Learned and thorough without being too technical, Understanding Italian Opera analyzes five popular operas from the Baroque to the Romantic period (but discusses many more works along the way).
The book focuses on the interplay of words and music - and therefore on the relationship between librettists and composers, and the effects of word and music on the listener.
The language and structure of opera is considered as a form of poetry - the different phrasing influencing and often commanding certain musical choices.
The book will certainly surprise opera enthusiasts, and might be an unusual but effective introduction to the art form for those that have so far been put off by opera.
Greatly enjoyable, and highly recommended.
Reading with a recording of the operas in the background might be a good idea.
January 25, 2016
This came out in October 2015, so it’s the newest entry to the “Opera 4 Dummies” type of book, which is usually all you get in the local bookstore for opera history reading. This is a slightly more academic (and slightly more expensive) option than others, sort of a cross-over academic/popular level book. It would be a good text for a lower-level undergrad class. Now what sets this book apart from other older options is two key things:
One, this book represents a much more up-to-date approach to the modern global Italian opera scene, which has greatly expanded from the previous dark ages (like ...the 90s) when Italian opera was considered to have properly started with Mozart and neatly ended with Puccini; to now include two whole pre-Classical operas out of five total. 40% of the operas in a popular-level book is an unprecedented level of coverage, and speaks to Early and Baroque opera’s amazing recovery from obscurity. (To be specific the book covers one opera each for Monteverdi, Handel, Mozart, Verdi, and Puccini.)
Two, the book is almost entirely focused on poetry, and only discusses music to show how it fits and reflects the poetry, which is pretty wild, and I have not seen that outside of deep dark academic books on opera. It’s a somewhat novel but entirely historic approach, which pays respect to the understanding of Italian opera as it was consumed in its “natural” lifetime.
The poetry content is extremely solid, rhyme structures are well explained, poetry is provided in original and English translation, and I totally got schooled on Italian poetry. It also, on a simpler level, just reminds people librettists EXISTED, and why we should give an opera with the names of its librettist+composer and not just the composer, even though we customarily do not.
The social and musical history content was certainly acceptable but not incredible, in particular I thought the castrati history was kinda bad, however, considering past castrati coverage in intro-level opera books, wherein the author usually decides it’s best to keep opera respectable for the new converts by not mentioning this bit of awkwardness (easy enough if you skip the Baroque period entirely), really it’s much better than it has been. At this point we’re just happy to be invited to the party at all.
I wouldn’t recommend this as a beginning opera history book though, since it’s quite dry and doesn’t convey a scrap of the “fun factor” around modern opera and opera history - and opera is very fun! People had and continue to have fun at the opera. But as a 3rd or 4th opera history book for an advanced-casual opera reader, quite solid reading.
My copy of this book was free from the publisher for the purposes of review, via Netgalley.
One, this book represents a much more up-to-date approach to the modern global Italian opera scene, which has greatly expanded from the previous dark ages (like ...the 90s) when Italian opera was considered to have properly started with Mozart and neatly ended with Puccini; to now include two whole pre-Classical operas out of five total. 40% of the operas in a popular-level book is an unprecedented level of coverage, and speaks to Early and Baroque opera’s amazing recovery from obscurity. (To be specific the book covers one opera each for Monteverdi, Handel, Mozart, Verdi, and Puccini.)
Two, the book is almost entirely focused on poetry, and only discusses music to show how it fits and reflects the poetry, which is pretty wild, and I have not seen that outside of deep dark academic books on opera. It’s a somewhat novel but entirely historic approach, which pays respect to the understanding of Italian opera as it was consumed in its “natural” lifetime.
The poetry content is extremely solid, rhyme structures are well explained, poetry is provided in original and English translation, and I totally got schooled on Italian poetry. It also, on a simpler level, just reminds people librettists EXISTED, and why we should give an opera with the names of its librettist+composer and not just the composer, even though we customarily do not.
The social and musical history content was certainly acceptable but not incredible, in particular I thought the castrati history was kinda bad, however, considering past castrati coverage in intro-level opera books, wherein the author usually decides it’s best to keep opera respectable for the new converts by not mentioning this bit of awkwardness (easy enough if you skip the Baroque period entirely), really it’s much better than it has been. At this point we’re just happy to be invited to the party at all.
I wouldn’t recommend this as a beginning opera history book though, since it’s quite dry and doesn’t convey a scrap of the “fun factor” around modern opera and opera history - and opera is very fun! People had and continue to have fun at the opera. But as a 3rd or 4th opera history book for an advanced-casual opera reader, quite solid reading.
My copy of this book was free from the publisher for the purposes of review, via Netgalley.
August 4, 2016
The cast lists and over views of the featured operas were nice, but the rest of the book was just the author's opinion (critique) of these operas, not a guide to understanding opera, as the title suggests. Casual opera listeners would be left scratching their heads. I was approved for this eARC via Netgalley in return for an honest review.
April 29, 2018
So dry. Not my favorite resource for understanding opera.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews