The World of Opera

III. 19th century

French opera, at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century, responded to the cataclysmic social and political changes taking place in that country. The Opera (Academie royale de musique, descended from Perrin’s academy), previously supported by royal and aristocratic patronage, was largely neglected, while opera comique increased in importance. At the same time opera comique changed significantly in character; lightheartedness and naive charm were replaced by moral earnestness and explorations of the darker sides of human personality. Rescue opera came into vogue at this time. Characteristic examples are Jean-Franijois Le Sueur’s La caverne (1793; heroine rescued from bandits in a cave) and Cherubini’s Les deuxjournees (1800; hero saved from unjust arrest). During Napoleon’s reign, the Opera resumed an important role, producing heroic and grandiose works such as Gaspare Spontini’s La vestale (1807) and Fernand Cortez (1809). At this time Paris could boast three major active opera houses, one producing grand opera (the Opera), one opera comique (the Opera-comique), and one Italian opera (the Theatre italien).
 

Grand opera, as it developed in the second and third quarters of the 19th century, produced significant works in its own right and influenced the course of Italian and German opera as well. Initiated by Rossini’s Le siege de Corinthe (1826) and Guillaume Tell (1829) and Daniel-Frangois-Esprit Auber’s La muette de Portici (1828), grand opera reached its apex in the collaborations of Meyerbeer and the librettist Eugene Scribe—Robert le diable (1831), Les Huguenots (1836), Le prophete (1849), and L’africaine (1865). These works derive their energy from large-scale conflicts—not just of individuals but of whole national or religious groups—that are frozen at climactic moments into striking, massed tableaux in which all possible aural and visual forces—soloists, chorus, orchestra, ballet, costumes, scenery—contribute to achieve a maximum effect.
 

Somewhere between the Opera and Opera-comique, and a rival to both, was the Theatre lyrique, which, in the 21 or so years between its founding and its failure in 1870, produced such works as Gounod’s Faust (1859) and Romeo et Juliette (1867), Bizet’s Les pecheurs de perles (1863) and La jolie fille de Perth (1867), and a portion of Berlioz’s Les troyens (1863). The term lyric opera, though frequently used, does not indicate a distinct genre, though the works given at the Theatre lyrique (despite the example of Les troyens) were generally smaller in scale and more intimate in style than grand opera.
 

The dominating figure in Italian opera at the beginning of the 19th century was Rossini—the “Napoleon of music.” Rossini’s best-known works are the comic opera II barbiere di Siviglia (Rome, 1816) and the grand opera Guillaume Tell (Paris, 1829). Although he retired from operatic production early (in 1829, at the age of 36), he remained the model for a succeeding generation of composers, and his works formed the prototype by which theirs were judged. Rossini was influential in matters of orchestration—use of woodwinds, on-stage bands, repetitive orchestral figures— and in the construction of formal designs for solos, duets, and ensembles. The most important composers of Italian opera of the 1830s were Bellini (La sonnambula, 1830; Norma, 1831) and Donizetti (L'elisir d’amore, 1832; Lucia di Lammermoor, 1836). In the works of Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini, several significant trends emerge. One is the development of a new set of character stereotypes based on vocal types. The heroic voice became the tenor (rather than the alto or soprano as it had been in 18th-century opera seria)\ the baritone became the rival in love, the villain, or sometimes a father or older adviser. Another trend is the increasing sombemess of plots. Tragic endings replaced happy ones in serious operas; comic operas represented the smaller share of Rossini’s output and were composed less and less frequently after the first third of the century. Furthermore, the aria, with introductory scena, became longer, incorporating more and more action; a leading character was likely to have no more than one aria in an act.
 

After 1840, Italian opera was dominated by the work of Verdi. From the start of his career, Verdi’s operas were associated in the public’s mind with hopes for the unification and independence of Italy—an association that Verdi fostered with stirring settings of librettos dealing with the struggle against personal or national oppression. Verdi’s early operas are notable for their directness of expression, their rhythmic vitality, and their tendency to favor confrontational duets (rather than arias) at dramatic high points. Vital to this new conception was the emergence of the Verdian baritone, a voice type often set against the hero (tenor) or heroine (soprano). Rigoletto (1851), Il trovatore (1853), and La traviata (1853) mark Verdi’s full maturity and assured his lasting international reputation. Later works such as Don Carlos (1867) and Aida (1871) show the important influence of grand opera. The last operas, Otello (1887) and FaIstaff (1893), often singled out for their musico-dramatic continuity, have a chromatically expanded harmonic palette and a new subtlety of scoring, but nevertheless remain essentially true to the Italian tradition.
 

Among the composers of operas on German texts at the beginning of the 19th century were Beethoven, Spohr, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Weber, and Heinrich August Marschner. On the whole, they preferred a form that alternated spoken dialogue with set numbers, that is, Singspiel. A solution to the problem of writing convincing recitative to a German text largely evaded composers until Wagner, who, with characteristic boldness, restructured both the texts and the music. The librettos of the operas of this period show Romantic features such as an interest in folk elements, an emphasis on nature as it impinges on man or anthro-pomorphically reflects his state of mind, and the intrusion of the supernatural upon the everyday world. Examples are Hoffmann’s Undine (1816), Spohr’s Faust (1816), Weber’s Der Freischutz (1821), and Marschner’s Der Vampyr (1828).
 

Although Wagner, especially in his early years, was very much an eclectic, borrowing ideas, themes, and visual impressions wherever he found them, his operas nevertheless represent a new era. The musical changes that Wagner’s style underwent in the course of his career were fundamental and radical, leaving no element—rhythm, melody, harmony, counterpoint, tone color, form—unaltered. One category of changes worked in the direction of avoiding small musical units; ends of phrases were obscured by eschewing conventional cadences, and arias and ensembles were merged into the flow of action or replaced by expressive arioso. With Der fliegende Hollander (1843) and Das Rheingold (1869), Wagner experimented with merging the acts into one continuous unit, the opera; with Der Ring des Nibelungen (first performed complete in 1876), he suggested that even the single opera was too small a unit, the complete work being no less than a cycle of four operas. As a means of organizing his new structures, Wagner developed the very flexible use of the Leitmotif.
 

Wagner’s mature works may be divided into Romantic operas—Der fliegende Hollander, Tannhauser (1845, revised 1861 and 1865), Lohengrin (1850)—and music dramas—Das Rheingold, Die Walkiire, Siegfried, Gotterddmmerung, Tristan und Isolde (1865), Die Meistersinger (1868), and Parsifal (1882). In these works, Wagner recognized that the apposite subject matter for his operas was legend and myth, subjects that simultaneously emphasized the national (German and Nordic) in their settings and the universal in their issues.
 

One result of 19th-century nationalism was the appearance of operas using a broader range of languages and musical idioms, particularly in eastern Europe. Most notable among Polish operas was Stanislaw Moniuszko’s Halka (revised version, 1858); popular Hungarian works were Ferenc Erkel’s Hunyadi Laszlo (1844) and Bank ban (1861). A more significant 19th-century school of opera developed in Czechoslovakia with the works of Smetana (The Bartered Bride, 1866; Dalibor, 1868) and Dvorak (Rusalka, 1901).

Even more important was the development of opera in Russia. The first of the Russian operatic composers to achieve resounding fame in Russia (and international recognition as well) was Mikhail Glinka. He composed only two operas, A Life for the Tsar (1836) and Ruslan and Lyudmila (1842), but with these two he explored the wellsprings of Russian nationalist opera: patriotic subjects drawn from earlier Russian history and Russian myth, and legend or fairy tale, particularly as told by the great poet Pushkin. A concern for apt Russian declamation was the overriding musical concern of Glinka’s younger contemporary Alexander Dargomizhsky, and perhaps for that very reason, his last opera, The Stone Guest (first performed posthumously in 1872), based on a story by Pushkin, is of more theoretical than musical interest.
 

In the second half of the 19th century, Russian opera followed two courses. The self-proclaimed nationalistic manner was pursued by Borodin, Musorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov. Of this group, only Rimsky-Korsakov was a professional musician, and it was he who completed, revised, and reorchestrated the works of the other two. He composed more than a dozen operas, of which The Golden Cockerel (1909) is perhaps the best known. The Russian opera that has achieved the most enduring international fame is Musorgsky’s Boris Godunov (1874). The operas of Tchaikovsky were not so overtly nationalistic, although some, such as Eugen Onegin (1879) and The Queen of Spades (1890), made use of texts by Pushkin.