PRESENTS

Hansel and Gretel Teacher Study Guide Metropolitan Opera Guild Education Department 70 Lincoln Center Plaza New York, NY ingalex.de

Hansel and Gretel Production Information Music:

Engelbert Humperdinck

Libretto:

Adelheid Wette

Cast:

Hansel: Gretel: The Witch: Mother (Gertrude): Father (Peter):

Alice Coote Christine Schäfer Philip Langridge Rosalind Plowright Alan Held

Conductor: Production: Set Designer: Costume Designer: Lighting Designer: Choreographer:

Vladimir Jurowski Richard Jones John Macfarlane John Macfarlane Jennifer Tipton Linda Dobell

Special Thanks: Lou Barrella, William C. Bassell, Jonathan Dzik, Zeke Hecker, Mike Minard Created by: Elise Figa and Allison Kieckhefer ()

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TABLE OF CONTENTS CONTENTS Production Information

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What is Opera, Anyway? A Not-so-brief History of Opera Music and Production Who Does What at The Met: The Basics of Opera Production



The Composer: Engelbert Humperdinck

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Background Legends and Fairytales Wagner’s Influence The Making of Hansel and Gretel

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Meet the Characters

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The Story of Hansel and Gretel



The Music of Hansel and Gretel



The Production Process at The Metropolitan Opera Rehearsal Etiquette Who to Watch When to Watch

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Activities To Introduce Students to Opera To Introduce Students to Hansel and Gretel To Introduce Students to the Production Process Research Ideas

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Resources Using Hansel and Gretel to Teach Humanities by Zeke Hecker Using Hansel and Gretel to Teach Music by Jonathan Dzik OPERA NEWS Article: “Too Grimm for Words” by Steven R. Cerf, December Metropolitan Opera Facts Glossary and Definitions



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WHAT IS OPERA ANYWAY?

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A NOTNOT-SOSO-BRIEF HISTORY OF OPERA AND ITS PRODUCTION Opera, unlike almost all other art forms, was invented. It all started around , when a group of men in Florence decided to revive the ancient Greek tradition of performing plays by singing every word. The culprits were the Florentine Camerata. In , the word of the day was polyphony: popular composers mastered difficult, mathematical rules that allowed them to layer many melodic lines on top of each other, producing new and increasingly striking harmonies. Then, suddenly, Camerata composers like Peri, Corsi, Caccini and Monteverdi starting writing music that was just the opposite– one singer singing one melody with minimal instrumental support— monody. Instead of using many overlapping voices to explain moments of extreme emotion, Camerata composers displayed all that feeling with only one voice– the aria was born. But monody was useful for a second, more radical purpose: to connect the arias, by having singers sing speech-like rhythms to move the plot along or convey dialogue. When they combined this new discovery, recitative with the arias Front Page of Le they already invented, opera was ready to roll. Nuove Musiche, the first book to introduce monody

Man is the measure of all things The invention of opera was the perfect capstone to the musical Renaissance period. During this time, many musicians reading Greek texts for inspiration focused on Plato’s doctrine of ethos– the idea that music does not merely depict emotions but can arouse them. According to this doctrine, music had the potential to be more than just a tribute to God – the right music could alter men’s feelings and actions. Some people worried that the doctrine of ethos only worked when the music was perfectly aligned with the words. Therefore, a madrigal, in which active polyphony meant that the words could not easily be distinguished, did not have the same potential to change someone’s emotions. Many of these critics were members of the Florentine Camerata, and they believed that monody was the answer. Monody not only allowed the music to transform the listener, but it also asserted the humanist values of the day– that one voice alone has the power to make real change. Many early opera writers underscored this point by choosing the myth of Orpheus, both showing and telling the audience the power of the solo voice.

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The late Baroque gets serious Many of the world’s first operas were part of a genre called opera seria: starring gods and heroes dressed in elaborate costumes singing in front of state-of-the-art backdrops painted to look like 3D landscapes (trompe l’oeil). Although opera seria echoes Greek drama in its subject matter, setting, and unity of time and place, opera seria writers were innovators too, frequently insisting on the importance of Christian justice and forgiveness. In fact, many opera serias conclude with a happy ending. These distinctly Baroque adaptations were made for the aristocratic A Baroque opera house in Switzerland audiences, who took the moral lessons in opera very seriously. In Italian opera seria, these orderly endings had to be achieved by the human characters, without the intervention of gods– providing an idealized model for rulers to follow. A spoonful of sugar made the medicine go down: these operas were an entertaining way to remind oneself of the responsibility of leadership. The attempts at tidiness in the libretto, as well as the often formulaic nature of the music, caused many later opera writers to disregard opera seria as outmoded or inflexible. It’s a hit! Opera boomed in popularity– 35 opera houses were built in the twenty years after its invention– and the production teams didn’t have time to (or care to) keep up. Creating an “ideal world” is expensive– trompe l’oiel sets with multiple-point perspective, lavish costumes, complex stage machinery and even blocking were reused from production to production. An opera set in ancient Rome would look exactly the same as an opera set in England. The music was also interchangeable! Singers were allowed to substitute arias from other operas at any point so long as the central emotion remained the same.

An example of Baroque costume

Opera seria is less frequently performed today not only because it is regarded as stiff and overly formal but because the music itself requires specialized singers. Male opera seria heroes sing what is for us unusually high. In their day, these roles were sung by castrati: men who had been castrated before puberty in order to preserve their high voices. Castrati were the best-trained and most popular singers in the opera seria world. Castrati became the first opera stars– commanding astronomical fees and enticing throngs of female admirers.

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Pretension Police! Classical composers develop opera for the people By the end of the 18th century, things weren’t looking good for European aristocrats. Revolutionary rumblings were spreading through the French middle class, and England already felt the blow of the American Revolution. Forwardthinking Enlightenment composers changed with the times, writing operas for the increasingly literate middle class. Some, like composer C.W. Gluck and his librettist Calzabigi, tried to do so by stripping away the excess of opera seria to form a more direct, personal message: reform opera. Other composers championed an existing alternative to opera seria: opera buffa, or comic opera. Some librettists, like da Ponte, used dramas A portrait of Christoph Gluck with revolutionary political messages to create their opera buffa libretti, like the anti-aristocratic Le Nozze di Figaro. To make opera more accessible, composers sometimes wrote opera in the country’s vernacular or included spoken dialogue in a singspiel or opera comique (German or French operas, respectively, which include spoken dialogue). Some writers turned opera into something new altogether– the ballad opera– a comic play with musical interludes set to popular tunes sung by the actors themselves, the predecessor of American musical theatre. Out with the old, in with the new The same reforms which brought opera seria down to size influenced production: gods no longer needed to be hoisted in with cranes, and heroes did not need to don expensive-looking armor. Audiences wanted a show to be realistic. Many sets portrayed the insides of houses and the outdoors, while costumes began to draw from contemporary as well as historical dress. Even French opera houses, the last stronghold of frilly aristocratic opera, began to strip down their style when Gluck’s reform operas became popular in France. Bel Canto sets off vocal fireworks Even though the composition of opera seria waned after , composers in the Romantic period were still interested in ornate, beautiful singing– sometimes at the expense of dramatic plots. Italian composers like Donizetti, Bellini, and Rossini invented a new elaborate, lyric style called bel canto. Like opera seria arias, bel canto arias usually followed a predictable formula- a smooth, sustained cantabile section followed by a bravura section where the singer got a chance to show off. The Romantic era put a premium on personal artistic expression– singers were allowed and even expected to improvise ornaments onstage.

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Under pressure Each bel canto opera may seem as if it took forever to write, but many bel canto operas were actually written in less than a month. Each Italian city-state supported several opera houses, and each wanted to outdo its neighboring provinces. Every season, an opera house would employ a resident composer, who was expected to rapidly write operas custom tailored to the demands of both the house’s impresario and the individual singers. Sometimes, composers were forced to change huge aspects of their work with very little notice. When the impresario of the Teatro Argentino in Rome told Rossini that he did not like the original overture to Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Rossini simply swapped in another overture that he had already written– which has become some of the most beloved music of the entire opera. Viva VERDI! Composer Giuseppe Verdi wrote highly inventive, impressively tuneful, and intensely dramatic operas which are some of the most frequently performed today. But even Verdi didn’t come out of nowhere– many of the themes expressed in his operas are great examples of late Romantic ideology. His works explore the deep tension between individual needs and duty to society, perhaps the most important conflict for artists in the 19th century. His involvement in the Italian Risorgimento– the unification of individual city-states into one nation– reflects a resurgence of nationalism all over Europe. During the Romantic period, Russian, Czech, Hungarian, and many other nations’ musical styles really came into their own when composers like Mussorgsky, Janacek and Dvorak wrote operas culling from the rich folk musical traditions of their respective countries. Lions and Tigers and Bears: On stage? Verdi often wrote in a style called grand opera, a term which has as much to do with how opera looks as how it sounds. Grand opera came from France, where opera productions were the Hollywood blockbusters of their day. Opera-goers craved novelty, seeking increasingly heart-wrenching plotlines, complex stage illusions and inventive orchestration. Productions worked with huge budgets and attracted massive crowds. The “super-sizing” of opera’s production demanded some re-organization backstage. The previously subordinate role of the stage director (then called the metteur en scene) took on much more importance, as they had to control the vast numbers of singers with small parts, A production of Aida chorus members, supernumeraries, and animals who flooded the stage; to ensure that performers knew how to respond correctly to special effects; and to see that principals were not lost in the huge new sets.

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It’s not over until the fat lady sings Richard Wagner changed everything. Though he was Verdi’s exact contemporary during the late Romantic period— both composing from about — they wrote in very different styles. Wagner wrote operas with continuously shifting music– no distinctions between aria and recitative– where the voice is just one thread in the complex musical fabric. Like many German Romantic composers, Wagner made full use of the expanded orchestra to create a complex chromatic atmosphere full of strange and unexpected chords– sometimes beautiful and sometimes upsetting. In order to keep listeners from getting lost during his extremely long operas, Wagner associated short musical fragments with characters or ideas, and strung these pieces together to help tell the story. This invention– the leitmotif– changed opera forever. Gesamtkunst-what? Wagner isn’t just famous for his epic operas; he introduced a theory called gesamtkunstwerk, or “total art work.” He wanted people who saw his operas to enter a fully realized artistic dream world– and he did it all himself. It started when Wagner traveled to Bayreuth, Bavaria to look at a possible opera house in which to perform his famous Ring Cycle. Dissatisfied with the existing options, he made plans for a completely new opera house for Bayreuth, The orchestra plays in a covered pit at the Festpeilhaus the Festspeilhaus, which continues to produce his work to this day. Wagner wrote all his own libretti and supervised the construction of his sets and costumes. He even designed his own curtain which could be pulled back instead of up, to further invite the audience to enter his magical world. As if that wasn’t enough, Wagner invented his own tuba to play notes that no instrument in the orchestra could reach. Torchbearers: Strauss & Puccini The works of Wagner and Verdi are sometimes celebrated as the most supreme accomplishments of composition possible in opera – how could anyone attempt to write opera after such titans? Yet two bold, inspired composers of the late 19th century decided to see what else could be done with the art form. Richard Strauss followed Wagner in the celebrated German tradition, creating operas that featured huge orchestras, adventurous harmonies, and libretti that were scandalous or intellectual—or both. In Italy, Giacomo Puccini picked up where Verdi left off, composing operas that featured gorgeous melodies, strong characterizations, and crowd-pleasing, action-packed plots. True dat: Verismo! In the s, an operatic style called verismo arose from a growing trend towards stark realism in French painting and literature. Artists became increasingly interested in the strenuous lives of the middle or lower-class, attempting to recreate their struggles accurately and objectively. The Italians 9

caught on, writing plays depicting the local customs and dialect of unsophisticated characters without sentimentality. Soon, composers began to use these literary models as material for new verismo operas– the first being Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. The music of verismo opera is as forthright as the libretto: direct and dramatic, uninterested in showoff-y arias. Puccini often wouldn’t write overtures, because he felt that they were an unnatural ornament. Thinking outside the box In the early twentieth century, opera’s production was the subject of visual art’s trend toward abstraction. Recoiling from the realism of war and the colossal death count it wrought upon Europe, many operas chose minimal sets to evoke rather than connote settings. Booming post-modern literary theory encouraged designers to treat operas as ahistorical works, often updating or removing elements which fixed a production to a previous time or specific place. You can teach an old dog new tricks Through the second half of the twentieth century, opera proved that it could stretch to encompass rapidly shifting cultural values and expanding definitions of music itself. Schöenberg and Berg adapted their twelve-tone compositional rules to opera with surprisingly popular results; Berg’s Wozzeck is a staple of the modern canon. The multiculturalism which has become a hallmark of twentieth-century life has had its stamp on opera– notably with Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, bringing popular and pervasive jazz and blues sounds to the opera stage. Tan Dun’s The First Emperor, which premiered at the Met in December , was a muchanticipated union of conventional Chinese opera and folk song and the Western operatic tradition. Who knows what the rest of the twenty-first century will bring!

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WHO DOES WHAT AT THE METROPOLITAN OPERA Far more goes into an opera than what you see on stage during a performance. Hundreds of singers, musicians, dancers, actors, designers, stagehands and many other Met employees work incredibly hard to prepare for an opera– sometimes, many years in advance. One of the exciting things about attending a Director’s Rehearsal is that you can see all of the people that are usually behind-the-scenes doing their jobs right in front of your eyes.

The conductor The conductor is the music director of an opera; he or she has the last word on all musical decisions. One of the biggest decisions is the speed of the music, or tempo, which he or she conveys to the orchestra by keeping time with a baton or hand (though the baton tells the orchestra other things, too). The conductor also determines the balance of the music– which parts to emphasize and bring out. No matter what musical interpretations the conductor makes, he or she must be sure to keep the orchestra and singers together and to ensure that the singers can be heard above the orchestra. According to James Levine, the true job of the conductor is to “get the music’s character right. You never hear of composers complaining about inadequate technical execution, or that the horns were cracking or the wind chords weren’t together. What you hear composers complaining about is falsification of what they’ve written, a misunderstanding of the point, the spirit, the… substance of the piece, of what it is all about.”

The stage director The stage director is sometimes called the producer in opera, but they are more like the director of a play or movie than a theatrical producer. Just as the conductor makes musical decisions, the stage director has the final word on all theatrical choices. First, the stage director decides the over-all concept for a production. Then he or she works with a design team of the set designer, costume designer, choreographer, and lighting designer to create images and moods that convey their interpretation of the opera to the audience visually. He or she also collaborates with the conductor to make sure that the music and the staged show complement each other and create a unified performance. The director helps singers develop their characters and express them in keeping with the spirit of the production. Since one director cannot assist many characters at once and because rehearsal time is very short, the stage director is aided by several assistant stage directors, who stand on stage and literally walk characters through their movements in rehearsals.

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The technical director The designers, who are all hired to work on a single production, answer to a permanent member of The Met’s staff– the technical director, currently Joseph Clark. The technical director oversees the physical side of design. He or she makes sure that the designs that artists submit are brought into reality– that the sets are compact enough to be stored, light in weight enough to be changed quickly, and strong enough to support themselves. Once the technical director gives approval, The Met’s resident, unionized carpenters, painters, set and prop makers, costume shop staff, and wigmakers construct everything that goes onstage in a given production. New productions at The Met are designed to last for twenty years… the technical director makes sure that they will.

Principal singers An opera singer’s work begins long before he or she is hired by The Met. For their voices to be able to fill enormous spaces without amplification, opera singers must train for many years. This is partly because they are trying to isolate and train their vocal cords: a mechanism about the size of your little finger nail. This is made doubly hard by the fact that unlike other musicians, singers can’t see their instrument, so all of their learning has to be by sensation. Unlike almost every other type of performer, opera singers must memorize their entire part before rehearsals even begin. Fortunately for most singers, they are not singing a new role every single time; they often refresh roles that they have sung before. An opera singer has a repertoire of hundreds of hours of music that they can sing professionally after a very short period of preparation. Singers also have to be able to pronounce and understand the many languages in which operas are written– Italian, German, French, Russian; even Czech! Opera singers also have to be convincing actors, taking on some of the most complex characters in literature. They sing and act while onstage under hot lights, performing blocking that can be awkward or difficult. Opera singers have to be able to sing running, jumping, dancing and even lying down! Period costumes like hoop skirts, cloaks and corsets can also be hot and uncomfortable. Opera aficionados have good reason to obsess over their favorite opera stars!

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A QUICK GUIDE TO VOICE PARTS Soprano: Sopranos have the highest voices. They usually play the heroines of an opera. This means they often have lots of show-off arias to sing, and get to fall in love and / or die more often than other female voice types. Mezzo-soprano, or mezzo: This is the middle female voice, and has a darker, warmer sound than the soprano. Mezzos spend a lot of their time playing mothers and villainesses, although sometimes they get to play seductive heroines. Mezzos also play young men on occasion – these are called trouser roles. Contralto, or alto: The lowest female voice. Contralto is a rare voice type. Altos usually portray older females or character parts like witches and old gypsies. Countertenor: Also known as alto, this is the highest male voice, and another vocal rarity. Countertenors sing with about the same range as a contralto. Countertenor roles are most common in baroque opera, but some more modern composers write parts for countertenors too. Tenor: If there are no countertenors on stage, then the highest male voice in opera is the tenor. Tenors are usually the heroes who get the girl or die horribly in the attempt. Baritone: The middle male voice. In comic opera, the baritone is often the ringleader of whatever naughtiness is going on, but in tragic opera, he’s more likely to play the villain. Bass: The lowest male voice. Low voices usually suggest age and wisdom in serious opera, and basses usually play Kings, fathers, and grandfathers. In comic opera basses often portray old characters that are foolish or laughable.

Vocal coaches Fortunately, singers get help. The Met has voice coaches who help singers pronounce words, make sure that their singing style is in keeping with the style of the production and smooth out any rough spots. But the coaches don’t teach singers technique! To get to the Met, a singer must already be very accomplished.

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The prompter The best coaches are asked to be prompters. Prompters stand in a hooded box at the foot of the stage and help give singers cues, keep them in time with the orchestra, and remind them of any blocking or music they may have forgotten. Most importantly, the prompter must know the particular singers and be able to anticipate their problems before they arise. Because they must memorize all the music, words and blocking in an opera, the prompter is one of the hardest jobs at the opera house.

The orchestra The orchestra plays the music of the opera. You can see them in the pit, below the foot of the stage. The Met has a regular orchestra with 92 members, as well as 44 associates who are scheduled as needed. Often opera orchestras include special effects specific to the opera being performed. Sometimes you can see unusual instruments in the pit. Some previously used at The Met include airplane propellers, type writers, and guillotines!

A QUICK GUIDE TO THE FAMILIES OF THE ORCHESTRA Strings: violins, violas, cellos, double bass Woodwind: piccolos, flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons Brass: trumpets, trombones, French horns, baritones and tubas Percussion: bass drums, kettle drums, timpani, xylophones, piano, bells, gongs, cymbals, chimes

The chorus The chorus at the Met isn’t a consolation prize; it’s an intense, full-time job. Unlike the principals, the 82 member chorus (sometimes bigger for operas like Aida and Boris Godunov) must have perfect ensemble– anything less than immaculate attacks and cut-offs would detract from the production. The Met chorus has to learn large chunks of music for each opera, spend hours in rehearsals and sometimes perform in several different operas a week! In each opera, chorus members have to remember just as much as the soloists – the only difference is that they sing together rather than on their own.

The dance corps The Met has a regular corps of sixteen dancers. The Met can also call on more than sixty associate dancers based on the style of dance required by each opera, such as classical ballet, flamenco, or modern dance.

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The stage manager In order to keep all of the elements of opera under control, the stage manager must be highly skilled in many different areas. This makes being an opera stage manager a much tougher position than a theatrical stage manager. He or she must follow the score throughout the opera to give all the technical cues, as well as be an expert in stage craft, making sure that the lights, costumes, sets, stage machinery and choreography work on stage. A stage manager must also be able to cope with the enormous pressure of keeping such a complicated operation running smoothly. There are usually assistant stage managers as well, who not only assist the stage manager in cueing lights, special effects and scene changes but make sure that artists, props, furniture, and costumes are backstage when needed.

The crews Many people assist the artistic designers in making their designs look great. Stagehands set up the stage, while flymen raise and lower sets fixed to the grid, or “fly” above the stage. Costumers, make-up artists and wig staff make the principals look stage-ready.

But that’s not all! In many respects, The Metropolitan Opera is a business just like any other. It needs many administrators, publicity representatives, a technology support staff, development advisors, and even security personnel. But because it is the Met, there are some employees that you would never find at your average business– like the archivists, Met Titles writers and the many people that work together to make the weekly radio broadcasts happen. 1, people work for the Met every season… no wonder it is considered one of the greatest opera houses in the world!

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THE COMPOSER Engelbert Humperdinck Engelbert Humperdinck was born in the small town of Siegburn, Germany, near Bonn, on September 1, He began his musical studies with piano lessons at the age of seven. Despite his father’s wishes for him to study architecture, Humperdinck studied music at the Cologne Conservatory. It was here that he received many awards including the Frankfurt Mozart Prize in and the Mendelssohn Prize of Berlin in He traveled to Munich in where he studied with composer Richard Wagner. By , Humperdinck was working with Wagner as his musical assistant for the first performance of Parsifal. Wagner even allowed him to compose a short section of music to cover a scene change in that first performance. Later in his career, Humperdinck was employed as a conservatory teacher, critic, adviser to a music publisher, and of course, composer. His compositions were nearly all vocal or theatrical, with his most famous work being Hansel and Gretel. This one work, which is now firmly established in the operatic repertoire, made Humperdinck’s reputation. His sister, Adelheid Wette, wrote the libretto with the intention of providing her children with a musical play. Instead it became an opera which premiered in Weimar on December 23, Humperdinck was a German nationalist who wrote several works praising the fatherland and the Kaiser or “Emperor.” Hansel and Gretel, based on a folk tale by the Brothers Grimm, fits his nationalistic ideals. When the opera premiered at the Weimar Theatre, Richard Strauss, the assistant conductor of this performance, hailed the music as “original, new, and authentically German.” He continued to write operas, many of which were fairy tale operas or comic operas. Despite the popularity and success of Hansel and Gretel, none of Humperdinck’s later works were met with such enthusiasm. Thus, Humperdinck continued to teach in Berlin until He died at the age of 67 in Neustrelitz, a town north of Berlin, on September 27,

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BACKGROUND Legends and Fairy tales Engelbert Humperdinck was not the first composer to use a fairy tale plot to create an opera! Because German literature is rich in folklore and legends, many German composers felt strongly about exploring these traditional stories through their music. Before Humperdinck, composer Carl Maria von Weber wrote an opera entitled Der Freischütz or “The Marksman.” This opera, first performed in Berlin in , could be considered the first opera of the German Romantic Era as it used stylistic characteristics as a template that future German composers adapted and ultimately became a tradition. There are several characteristics that are representative of German Romantic opera. First, the characters of this type of opera are usually simple people who get tangled up in the webs of the supernatural (like fairies and witches!). Forests are largely significant in German folklore. Many stories emphasize the vastness and impenetrable nature of forests, and the supernatural characters are frequently found in the depths of the mysterious wilderness. Hansel and Gretel is a folk tale that the Grimm Brothers collected for their collaborative publication Grimm’s Fairy Tales. The story, following along with traditional characteristic of the German Romantic era, is set mainly in the forest. The characters are simple people who also happen to be poor, and the supernatural occurrences (the Dew Fairy, the Sandman, and the Witch) happen in the dark and ominous forest.

Wagner’s influence When Humperdinck met up with Richard Wagner in , he was invited to come to Bayreuth (By-royt) the next year to help Wagner on his production of Parsifal. Humperdinck’s friends voiced their fears that by studying with Wagner, Humperdinck’s own creativity might be inhibited. Despite those concerns, Humperdinck said that he would give up ‘originality’ in order to study with Wagner and perhaps learn to write choruses like those in Wagner’s Parsifal. Many composers adopted Wagner’s style into their own compositions. It is clear that Wagner’s compositional style had a great effect on Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel as he uses “Wagnerian” musical trademarks throughout the opera. Loud musical climaxes, leitmotifs, and thick chromaticisms are found alongside expressive and tuneful 17

melodies. Despite having all the right ingredients for a traditional German opera, this children’s fairy tale is an unlikely story for such a Wagnerian approach; however, Humperdinck uses great discretion with his Wagnerian scoring in memorable pieces such as “Evening Prayer” (sung by Hansel and Gretel), and “I Come With Golden Sunshine” (sung by the Dew Fairy) by pairing his large orchestral interludes with such simple, singable melodies!

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THE MAKING OF

Hansel and Gretel A Family Endeavour Hansel and Gretel was written as a collaborative project between brother and sister Engelbert Humperdinck and Adelheid Wette. In , Adelheid adapted the text from folk songs found in The Grimm Brothers’ original version of the story. Then, she asked her brother Engelbert to write some music so that her children could sing them. From there, Humperdinck decided to compose the full fledged opera! In , she collaborated with her brother once more on another Grimm fairy tale called Die sieben Geislein, or, The Seven Baby Goats. Why is Hansel played by a girl? Throughout operatic history, composers have used women to portray boy characters on stage. The part of Hansel is meant to be played by a woman and has been composed for a mezzosoprano’s singing range. Although the opera is full of simple folk melodies, the music is difficult and would be too challenging for a child to sing. Also, a young child would not be capable of singing over a full orchestra and be heard in a huge opera house like the Met! Older men have lower voices that would be unsuitable for playing a child. Just think – it would sound odd for a young boy to have such low sounds coming from his mouth! Young boys have a vocal range that is similar to that of a grown up mezzo-soprano so, although Hansel is indeed a boy, a light mezzo or soprano voice can communicate this youthful sound successfully. For a woman to sing the part of a young boy is a very common practice in opera, and has its own name – “Pants Role” or “Trouser Role.” Beyond the Gingerbread The first thoughts of Hansel and Gretel spark pictures in our minds of a Gingerbread house and candy windows. This production, however, portrays a much darker side of this beloved fairy tale. Director Richard Jones wants to exemplify the children’s greatest fears and greatest fantasies. Their fear is being lost and alone in the forest, but hunger is also a driving force in their lives. The scenery and set display the vast difference between the absence or abundance of food. When they are home, the sense of hunger is very real. Their family is poor, and they misbehave – perhaps a common reaction from troubled children. The reaction of their mother is to send them away from the house and into the woods. Mr. Jones stated in an interview, “Hansel and Gretel is a feast for 19

children because they transgress, they’re naughty…But then they get to eat a lot of food – they get to gorge themselves on sweets. It engages with their fears and their fantasies.” That is the key ingredient for the staging and design of this production. The Set According to director Richard Jones, the opera will be set in three distinct kitchen settings because food is a focus of this opera. The first kitchen will be a realistic setting in the children’s home. As the story progresses, the kitchens get more elaborate and more ridiculous. The next kitchen scene is described as being designed in the “German Expressionist” style. The third kitchen is the Witch’s kitchen which is described as being designed with “Theater of the Absurd” in mind. “Theater of the Absurd” is the most nonrealistic of the bunch. Traditionally, the scenery in “Theater of the Absurd” is hardly recognizable and the plot gets more twisted and the characters act in wild and nonsensical ways. The Curtains Beyond the progression of the kitchen settings, the sense of food and gluttony is also brought to life by large curtains or scrims with paintings of plates. To greater exemplify the theme of food, some plates are bare, and one is even broken. These curtains are interjected throughout the performance, bringing again, a dark undertone to the entirety of this classic tale. For More Information You may watch a video interview with director Richard Jones to hear more about his visions for this production and see examples of the kitchen sets and plateinspired curtains. Visit the Met’s Website: ingalex.de

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MEET THE THE CHARACTERS CHARACTERS Hansel (mezzo-soprano; trouser role) – A young boy who lives with his sister and parents in a cottage in the woods. He cleverly figures out how to escape from the witch. Gretel (soprano) – Hansel’s sister. She follows Hansel’s advice to free them both from the evil witch. The Witch (tenor) – An evil old woman who lives deep in the forest. She captures Hansel and Gretel, puts a spell on them, and intends to bake them in her magic oven. Mother (Gertrude) (soprano) – Hansel and Gretel’s mother. She sends them out of the forest to collect berries for dinner, and is frantic when she realizes that they might be lost. Father (Peter) (baritone) – Hansel and Gretel’s father, a maker and seller of brooms. He is distraught when he learns that his wife sent the children off alone into the strange forest. Sandman (soprano; trouser role) – A mysterious old man who sprinkles Hansel and Gretel with a magic dust, making them sleepy. Dew Fairy (soprano) – She sprinkles the children with dew to wake them after a night of refreshing sleep.

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THE STORY OF

Hansel and Gretel Children at Play

Act I Hansel and Gretel have been left at home alone by their parents. When Hansel complains to his sister that he is hungry, Gretel shows him some milk that a neighbor has given them for the family’s supper. To entertain them, she begins to teach her brother how to dance. Mother Spoils the Fun Suddenly their mother returns. She scolds the children for playing and wants to know why they have gotten so little work done. When she accidentally spills the milk, she angrily chases the children out into the woods to pick strawberries. Danger Lurking in the Woods Hansel and Gretel’s father returns home drunk. He is pleased because he was able to make a considerable amount of money that day. He brings out the food he has bought and asks his wife where the children have gone. She explains that she has sent them into the woods. Horrified, he tells her that the children are in danger because of the witch who lives there. They rush off into the woods to look for them. Alone in the Forest

Act II

Gretel sings while Hansel picks strawberries. When they hear a cuckoo calling, they imitate the bird’s call, eating strawberries all the while, and soon there are none left. In the sudden silence of the woods, the children realize that they have lost their way and grow frightened. The Sandman comes to bring them sleep by sprinkling sand on their eyes. Hansel and Gretel say their evening prayer. In a dream, they see fourteen angels protecting them.

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Rise and Shine The Dew Fairy appears to awaken the children. Gretel wakes Hansel, and the two find themselves in front of a gingerbread house. They do not notice the Witch, who decides to fatten Hansel up so she can eat him. She immobilizes him with a spell. Hocus Pocus The oven is hot, and the Witch is overjoyed at the thought of her banquet. Gretel has overheard the witch’s plan, and she breaks the spell on Hansel. When the Witch asks her to look in the oven, Gretel pretends she doesn’t know how: the Witch must show her. When she does, peering into the oven, the children shove her inside and shut the door. A Happy Ending The oven explodes, and the many gingerbread children the Witch had enchanted come back to life. Hansel and Gretel’s parents appear and find their children. All express gratitude for their salvation. .

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THE MUSIC OF

Hansel and Gretel The beginning of German opera - Singspiel In the 17th century, when Italian opera was prevalent in opera houses across the world, some cities in Germany supported opera companies that performed works by native German composers. The German version of opera was called Singspiel (zing-shpeel) and literally means “sing play.” These operas combined singing and spoken dialogue, instead of using recitative (sung dialogue) that was typical of Italian operas of the time. Nationalism in German Music Like Wagner, Humperdinck was an intensely patriotic German. In this vein, he chose to call the opening to Hansel and Gretel a Prelude, not “Overture,” the French term. Composers also felt very strongly about building up national pride by writing music for their country that were written in the style of traditional folk songs, or that represented their nation in a patriotic way. Humperdinck’s use of folk song melodies in Hansel and Gretel helped his opera to be viewed as “original, new and authentically German.” Folksong Using the libretto adapted by his sister, Adelheid Wette, Humperdinck first composed folksongs and created a Singspiel. After more consideration, Humperdinck decided to turn the speaking parts into singing as well, thus creating the full opera. These folk songs do not necessarily advance the plot of the opera and are not part of the dialogue, but are songs that the children sing – usually about nature or imaginary people. • “Suse, liebe Suse/Susie, dear Suzie” Listen for the opening melody being played in the introduction by different instruments – first the clarinets then the flutes. Also, can you tell where the folk song ends and the dialogue starts? Listen for the bassoons repeat the ending melody 3 times, and then a slight pause before Hansel sings “Ah, how I wish mother would come home!” Here is where Hansel and Gretel begin to talk about being poor and having nothing to eat. • “Ein Männlein steht im Walde/A Little Man in the Woods” Gretel begins the song without accompaniment from the orchestra! Then, when the orchestra comes in, it is still very simple. This sparse accompaniment keeps the song very innocent and peaceful. After Gretel sings her second verse, the French horns come in with the tune in a rustic harmony. French horns are 24

commonly used in this way to depict a forest setting. Listen to the clarinet’s ornamented solo. What could this be representing in the forest? A bird? A falling leaf? Decide for yourself! Leitmotif A leitmotif (light-moteef), or “leading motive,” is a recurring musical theme usually associated within a piece of music with a specific person, place, thing, or idea within the story. This motive could be a melodic line, a chord or chord progression, or even a rhythmic pattern. It is usually found in the orchestra, and as the story progresses, the leitmotif can gain significance or indicate connections between the characters or objects they represent. Leitmotifs in Hansel and Gretel Humperdinck uses leitmotifs in many ways in Hansel and Gretel. The most frequent use of the leitmotivs is to foreshadow upcoming characters and to tie together a common theme that runs throughout the work.

Recognizing the Witch After Father comes home to find that Mother sent his children out into the eerie woods of Ilenstein, he sings a cryptic song illustrating the Witch’s evilness and plans to capture and eat children. •

“Die Hex’, steinalt/The Witch, old as stone” In this piece, the percussion and strings have staccato rhythms that indicate the Witch’s sneaky personality. Contrastingly, the woodwinds have long, legato and chromatic lines that represent the looping flight of the Witch on her broomstick.

• “Der Hexenritt/The Witch’s Ride” Listen for Father’s melody from the previous track repeated in the low strings and low brass. Then, the melody is taken into the woodwinds – listen as the mood lightens. Although we have not seen the Witch on stage yet, it is clear by the musical examples in the orchestra that she is near.

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A Witchy Cackle! We hear the witch’s laugh many times! To represent her highpitched laugh, Humperdinck uses the highest pitched instruments like piccolos, flutes and violins. Listen to each of these tracks and hear the Witch give her menacing cackle! Listen! • “Knusper, knusper, Knäuschen/Munchy, Munchy, Mousey” • “Ich bin Rosina Leckermaul/I am Rosina Dainty Mouth” • “Nun, Gretel, sei vernünftig und nett!/Now, Gretel, it is reasonable and nice!” In this song, listen particularly for a cackle in the orchestra as well as a cackle from the Witch herself!

I am Rosina Dainty Mouth! The children finally meet the Witch near her house, and to lure them into her magic spell, she slyly sings her aria saying how nice she is to little children. Listen to the opening melody from this aria, as well as her menacing laugh, is often repeated throughout the rest of the opera to remind the audience about the Witch’s presence. Listen! • “Ich bin Rosina Leckermaul/I am Rosina Dainty Mouth” • “Nun, Gretel, sei vernünftig und nett/Now Gretel, it is reasonable and nice”

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Evening Prayers There are slight religious tones sprinkled throughout the entirety of this opera.

• “Abends, will ich schlafen geh’n/Evening, I want to go to sleep” First, listen to the lullaby duet. Hear how the orchestra plays very quietly to give a dream-like feel. While Hansel and Gretel sing, the orchestra has a thin quality that allows the voices to really ring out. This is one of the most famous melodies in the opera. • “Vorspiel/Prelude” Now, hear the very beginning of the opera. Do you recognize the “Evening Prayer” melody? It is in a different key, but the low brass ring out and give a very majestic feeling to this tune. Then, the strings take over, and the whole orchestra plays together with that full, “Wagnerian” sound!

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THE PRODUCTION PROCESS

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REHEARSAL ETIQUETTE POINTERS


Absolutely NO talking or whispering during rehearsals! The Met has nearly perfect acoustics– which means that the singers onstage can hear you as well as you can hear them. The Met has no right angles anywhere in the house, allowing all the curves to bounce the sound back into the atmosphere. All of the wooden veneer in the auditorium came from a single African rosewood tree, thus the sound resonates at exactly the same frequency. It’s as if the auditorium itself is a huge musical instrument!




No snacks, gum, or drinks inside the auditorium.




Turn off electronic devices (No iPods, cell phones or beeping watches, etc.)




No feet on seats or railings.

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WHO TO WATCH… Biographies of the Cast Cast and Crew Crew Alice Coote (Mezzo-Soprano) – Hansel – Alice Coote was born in London, England. She studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, the Royal Northern College of Music, and the National Opera Studio. Her highly varied concert repertoire ranges from Bach and Handel Oratorios to compositions by Mahler, Debussy and Britten. Her operatic roles include Poppea, Dorabella, Cherubino and Lucretia with many opera companies including Covent Garden, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Opera North, Seattle Opera and many others. At the BBC Proms, Ms. Coote, with Julius Drake, premiered Judith Weir’s song cycle ‘The Voice of Desire’. The cycle was composed specifically for them. They also regularly appear at London’s Wigmore Hall, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam and at New York’s Lincoln Centre. Ms. Coote has recently become an EMI Classics Artist due to the success of her recital recording of Schumann and Mahler works. Other recordings include Walton’s Gloria (Chandos), The Choice of Hercules (Hyperion), Orfeo (Virgin Classics). Alan Held (Bass-Baritone) – Father (Peter) – A native of Washburn, Illinois, Alan Held is known as one of America’s leading opera singers. He received his vocal training from Millikin University and Wichita State University. He has performed major roles in many of the world’s most famous opera houses including The Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Lyrics Opera of Chicago, Covent Garden, Teatro Alla Scala, and Munich State Opera. His many roles include Wotan in Wagner’s Ring Cycle, Leporello in Don Giovanni, Jochanaan in Salome, Don Pizzaro in Fidelio, Orestes in Elektra, Balstrode in Peter Grimes, and the title role in Wozzeck. Mr. Held has received numerous awards and honors including the Birgit Nilsson Prize. He is also a noted clinician had has regularly given masterclasses at Millikin University and Yale University. 30

Philip Langridge (Tenor) – The Witch – Philip Langridge is a British tenor born in Hawkhurst, Kent, England on December 6, He studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Langridge performs on operatic and concert stages world-wide and is a singer in great demand in Europe, the United States and Japan. He sings a wide range of repertoire from Monteverdi to contemporary works. He performs regularly at La Scala in Milan and Covent Garden. Langridge’s recordings have given him great success, and he has won two Grammy Awards (Moses und Aron and Peter Grimes), a Gramophone Award (War Requiem), and the Classic CD Award (The Turn of the Screw). In concert, he has performed under the baton of many of the world’s leading conductors such as Bychkov, Davis, Harnoncourt, Levine, Previn, Rattle and Solti. Mr. Langridge is best known for his Britten interpretations. He is considered a leading performer of English opera and oratorio, and regularly performs the sacred works of Bach and Handel. Rosalind Plowright (Mezzo-Soprano) – Mother (Gertrude) – The British Mezzo-Soprano Rosalind Plowright was born on May 21, She studied in Manchester and at the London Opera Center. She made her debut in as the Page in Salome with the England National Opera, her United States debut with San Diego and in , she made her La Scala debut. She is also a screen actress, and has appeared in the BBC series House of Elliott and on the theatrical stage in a new musical comedy titled Two’s A Crowd. She has performed in Aida with Luciano Pavarotti at Covent Garden, and will return in the / season for The Ring cycles. She has also performed with “The Three Tenors.” Ms. Plowright performed Il Trovatore with Plácido Domingo at Covent Garden and received the Deutsche Grammophon award.

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Christine Schäfer (Soprano) – Gretel – This German soprano was born in Frankfurt. She began her vocal studies at the Berlin Hochschule der Künste (Academy of Arts) with Ingrid Figur. In , she performed in several masterclasses with Arleen Augér who has played a large role in her training. She has also studied with Deitrich Fischer-Dieskau and Sena Jurinac. She is known for her diverse repertoire ranging from Baroque music to Mozart arias to works by contemporary composers. One composer in particular has had a great influence on her career – Aribert Reimann. It was his course on contemporary song at Berlin Hochschule that she was able to cultivate in depth her love for the music of our time, and Reimann has also composed several songs specifically for her. In she made her first record with songs composed by Reimann. Vladimir Jurowski – Conductor – A Russian conductor, Vladimir Jurowski was born in Moscow on April 4, He studied music at the Music College of the Moscow Conservatory. In , he moved with his family to Germany where he studied conducting with Rolf Reuter. Despite his young age, this is not his Metropolitan Opera conducting debut! In , he held the baton at the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades with Plácido Domingo. He has also conducted operas at the Welsh National Opera, the Opera National de Paris, and last season, he made his La Scala debut. In September of this year, he will become the Principal Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Richard Jones – Director – This is Richard Jones’ Metropolitan Opera debut! He was born in London and studied at the University of Hull and the University of London. In , he directed the world premiere of Judith Weir’s A Night at the Chinese Opera for Kent Opera, and a production of Mignon at the Wexford Festival. Mr. Jones has also directed Hansel and Gretel in the UK. John Macfarlane – Set and Costume Designer – This production of Hansel and Gretel is Mr. Macfarlane’s Metropolitan Opera debut, but he is no stranger to opera design. Born in Glasgow, Scotland in , he received his training at the Glasgow School of Art. He is recognized as one of the world’s leading designers for opera and ballet, and has worked with many famous companies

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including the San Francisco Ballet, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Netherlands Dans Theater, and the Scottish Opera. Jennifer Tipton – Lighting Designer – Jennifer Tipton is an award-winning lighting designer, having lit the stage for many ballets, plays and musicals. She won a Tony Award for Best Lighting Design for Jerome Robbins' Broadway and The Cherry Orchard. She designed the lighting for Baryshnikov’s production of The Nutcracker both for the stage and for television.

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WHEN TO WATCH… An Avera Average verage Production Production Timeline Timeline years in advance

General manager chooses operas for the season; designers, singers and conductors are scheduled for each production.

years in advance

Stage rehearsal schedule drafted.

years in advance

Design team submits sketches and/or models for a new production to the technical director.

1 year in advance

Tech rehearsals begin for a new production.

weeks in advance

New productions begin rehearsing in practice rooms.

About 2 weeks in advance

New productions begin rehearsing on the main stage with piano. During piano rehearsals, singers wear street clothes and work mainly with the stage director. The chorus begins to learn their blocking.

About 1 week in advance

New productions begin rehearsing with the orchestra. By this time, the lights and sets are ready, and costumes are usually worn. During the orchestra rehearsals, the conductor makes most of the changes, while artistic designers put the finishing touches on the production.

2 nights before opening

Final dress rehearsal– a full run-through with full costumes, sets, orchestration, and blocking. Changes rarely need to be made at this point.

OPENING NIGHT

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ACTIVITIES • TO INTRODUCE YOUR STUDENTS TO OPERA Brainstorm Peter Brook Opera Game

• TO INTRODUCE YOUR STUDENTS TO Hansel and Gretel The Story Storytelling What Drives the Characters? Another Side The Music Saturation Music What the Music Tells Us Discuss and Create: Leitmotifs Folksongs and Culture Context Create an In-house Study Guide The World of the Opera Possible Research Topics Themes & Issues Coffee Talk Two Thumbs Up!

• TO INTRODUCE YOUR STUDENTS TO THE PRODUCTION PROCESS Adaptation Lingo Ch-ch-ch-changes The Price Is Right Style Points! So, How Did the Met Do?

• RESEARCH IDEAS

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ACTIVITIES TO INTRODUCE YOUR STUDENTS TO OPERA Objective: Students become familiar with opera as an art form—its conventions, its history, and its continuing potential to touch lives

Brainstorm! Time required: at least 10 minutes Resources required: 5 or 6 large sheets of paper and markers Purpose: To explode opera myths! If opera is a new experience for your class, brainstorming can be a nice way to introduce them to it. Split your class into 5 or 6 groups, with a large sheet of paper per group. In their groups, have them write all the words that they can think of associated with the word opera for 5 minutes – or as long as the group needs (i.e. screamy singing, fat ladies, Viking helmets, shattering glass, grandparents, etc.). When the time is up, have students walk around the room and look at what other groups have written or select a group representative to share with the class. Extensions of this activity: • If you sing in daily life, when and where do you sing? (While you’re getting ready in the morning? When you’re happy?) • Discuss how opera singers’ voices are not amplified and how they must project. • Introduce students to opera vocabulary.

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Peter Brook Opera Game Time required: 15+ minutes Resources required: none Purpose: To discover what it feels like to be an opera singer English director, Peter Brook, famous for his theatre and opera productions worldwide, developed this game to help actors and young singers understand the many tasks opera singers must perform at once. • •

• •

Pick four students: one opera singer and three assistants (A, B and C) The opera singer and A should face each other. A will make a series of simple movements, which the opera singer should mimic as closely as possible, being A’s mirror B is responsible for asking the opera singer simple mathematical equations. The opera singer must answer these, while still mirroring A C is responsible for asking the opera singer a series of personal questions (what’s your favorite place, favorite color, etc). The opera singer must answer questions from B and C, whilst being A’s mirror

This game gives students a taste of what it’s like for opera singers to follow blocking (physical movement), sing music (math) and make artistic and emotional decisions (personal questions) all at the same time. Things to watch out for: • B and C have a tendency to become very polite, alternating questions. Have them try different ways of asking the questions. They should repeat them if they are not receiving answers! • The opera singer will find it easier to follow A if looking directly into A’s eyes, allowing the movements to be in their peripheral vision. • A’s movements should be smooth and slow – the aim is to allow the opera singer to follow, not to make them mess up!

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ACTIVITIES TO INTRODUCE YOUR STUDENTS TO

Hansel and Gretel Objectives: • • •

Students immerse themselves in the story and music of the focus opera. Students put the focus opera in historical context and learn about its social and/or musicological significance. Students identify the themes and issues at the heart of the opera.

THE STORY Storytelling Resources required: “Meet the Characters” and “The Story of Hansel and Gretel” from this guide. Purpose: To help students identify with the characters and their dilemmas; to become familiar with story construction. • •

•

• •

Introduce the main characters Have the students to whom you have assigned characters sit or stand in accordance with their characters’ relationships; have the students themselves guess what relationships exist between the characters based on what they already know. Ask the class what they think will happen when these characters meet. How will one character’s wishes affect the fate of another? (This could be a discussion, or you could ask them to write down what they think will happen in the story). Use the students’ ideas to introduce the full synopsis. Stop at crucial turning points in the plot and ask the students what they think will happen to the characters next.

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What drives the characters? Resources required: none Purpose: To help the students identify with the characters and their dilemmas; To develop critical thinking skills through character analysis Hansel and Gretel • Why are Hansel and Gretel so obedient to their mother’s command to go into the woods to pick strawberries? • How do you think Hansel and Gretel changed throughout the course of the opera? • How do you think life will be different for Hansel and Gretel now that they’ve gone through this experience? Witch • Why does the Witch choose Hansel to be fattened up, and not Gretel? • What might the Witch have done with Gretel, ultimately? • How would the story change if the witch lived? • Why does she live in the forest? Father • What would he have done to the children if here were home when they spilled the milk? • What were his thoughts when he learned his children were in the forest? • What would he have done, or said, to the witch? • What does he think of his life and family at the end of the opera?

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Another Side Resources required: Optional costume ideas, optional art supplies for set making Purpose: To improve written language skills; To develop critical thinking skills; To develop creative writing skills Hansel and Gretel was written from a 3rd person perspective. This is the author’s way of telling the story from the outside instead of knowing the thoughts of a single character. Working in groups, choose one character to be the narrator, and rewrite the story from their perspective. Brainstorm: • Background information about that character’s life that we might not otherwise know • Feelings this character might have towards the characters he/she encounters • Inner thoughts the character might have as the story plays out Extensions of this activity: • In your groups, create a skit to perform for the class o Assign roles o Design costumes o Make a set o Practice your creation • Incorporate Music to enhance your performance • Write a story collaboratively as a class, or turn this activity into an individual creative writing assignment.

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The Music Saturation Music Resources required: CD of the opera Purpose: To familiarize your students with the music From an activity by Lou Barella, Brooklyn High School for Arts and Music

Some time before you begin preparing your students to see Hansel and Gretel, play the music of the overture as often as you can: in the background while students are entering the classroom, while they are leaving class, etc. Refuse to answer questions about the music. Instead, pique the students’ interest by asking them to guess what the music might be depicting. Later, when you introduce the music, they will already recognize it.

What the music tells us Resources required: Blackboard / whiteboard, recording of the opera Purpose: To help students identify with the characters and their dilemmas by responding creatively to the opera; To develop critical listening skills Based on an activity by Mike Minnard, A MacArthur Barr Middle School

Before introducing the story of the opera to your students, pose this question on the board, If this piece of music were a person, what would the person be like? Then play the overture to Hansel and Gretel for the class. While your students are listening to the excerpt, they should write every adjective that comes to mind that describes the music and personifies the sound. The words are then offered by the class and written on the board. Use the students’ descriptions to introduce the premise of the opera and the characters.

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Extensions of this activity: Play the excerpt for your students again. What do they think is the setting? What’s the story? Ask them to justify their guesses. Use the students’ guesses to introduce the story of Hansel and Gretel. Then, listen to the music a final time, following along with the translations provided in the back of the book.

Discuss and Create: Leitmotifs Resources required: Optional musical instruments Purpose: To become familiar with story and dramatic construction; To respond imaginatively to the opera’s expressive qualities Leitmotifs are used in Hansel and Gretel to give the audience a connection with certain characters or ideas. In this opera, we recognize key players in the opera by their musical leitmotif; however, leitmotifs are not found only in Wagnerian-style German operas! Discuss leitmotifs found in contemporary media. (Examples include: Darth Vader from Star Wars and the theme from Jaws) Create your own personal leitmotif! Using a few notes, rhythms or other sounds (patterns are useful), have each student create and perform their own ‘leitmotif’ for the class. Have students think about their daily habits. Perhaps they have something they say frequently. Maybe they have an expressive laugh. Think about your own culture or background musically. These characteristics can be incorporated into their leitmotif. Let it be personal, and let it be fun!

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Folksongs and Culture Resources Required: Internet Purpose: To develop research skills and make connections to another culture; To develop critical thinking and research skills If you were rewriting Hansel and Gretel to become a fairy tale opera from your own culture, what songs might you use as folk tunes to incorporate into the libretto? Research the music from your heritage. Pick one or two that you particularly enjoy! If the music is in another language, see if you can find a translation, so that the class knows what you are singing about. Choose one song to present to the class. Get into detail about its musical characteristics. Things to discuss: • • • •

•

Instrumentation – How many instruments? What are they? Do any of the instruments exist in the United States? Melodic line – Is it easy to sing? Tempo and Style – Is the song upbeat or peaceful? Could you dance to it, or might it be a lullaby? Text – What is the subject matter of this song? Why might it have been written? Is it sung by a man or a woman, or could it be sung by either one? Are there many versions of this song on recording? Have any famous people recorded it? If possible, bring in a recording to share with the class!

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Context Create an in-house study guide Purpose: To understand the story and background of the opera; to develop research and essay writing skills Based on an activity by Anthony Marshall, Baldwin Senior High School

Create your own “in-house” study guide for Hansel and Gretel as a class. Each student will write one article on an aspect of the story, characters, composer or background. Decide as a class what you will need to cover to provide a balanced insight into the opera. When students have completed their articles, collect them in a book and distribute copies to the whole class.

The world of the opera Resources required: Take a look in the Activities Section for research ideas. Purpose: To develop research skills and make connections to another historical era Have students imagine they live in the locale of the opera at the time of its occurrence. How would they 1) travel, 2) contact a friend, 3) find out about daily events, 4) entertain themselves, 5) eat, sleep, and keep warm? etc. This could be the basis for a classroom discussion or a research project.

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THEMES AND ISSUES Coffee talk Resources required: None Purpose: To help students identify with the characters and their dilemmas by responding creatively to the opera; To develop critical thinking skills; To develop essay writing skills. Discuss the themes of the operas and have students write stories based on their own lives connected to these themes. Have they ever felt lonely, sad, or hungry? What do they do to cheer themselves up? Have they ever had to solve a problem on their own, without the help of a grownup?

Two thumbs up! Resources Required: Optional—video camera. Purpose: To help students think critically about the central themes and issues of an opera • • •

Divide students into small groups and encourage them to discuss the central themes of the opera. Students should then script a distillation of this conflict as a movie trailer or commercial and rehearse the skit. If possible, make a video. Groups then present and discuss their interpretations with the class.

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ACTIVITIES TO INTRODUCE YOUR STUDENTS TO THE PRODUCTION PROCESS Objectives: • Students learn to recognize and discuss the choices made by directors, designers, conductors, and singers. • Students will discuss why choices are made by identifying the vision at a production’s core and critiquing the effectiveness of its translation onstage. • Students discuss how production decisions like schedule, cast and budget influence artistic choices. • Students will be able to make and justify their own artistic choices.

Adaptation Resources: Movies, books, scripts, CD’s, etc… Purpose: To show students a range of interpretive possibilities. Show students any set of three interpretations of any one central work. You could discuss treatments of the same subject in different media: Text of Death in Venice Selection from Britten’s Death in Venice Film version—Love and Death on Long Island; Venice, Venice; Death in Venice Text of Macbeth Selection from Verdi’s Macbeth Film version—Scotland, PA; Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood; Polanski’s Tragedy of Macbeth The text of Romeo and Juliet A clip from a film version—Luhrmann or Zeffirelli A selection from Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette Text of Hamlet A clip from The Lion King A film version of Hamlet—take your pick. Text of Taming of the Shrew A selection from Kiss Me, Kate A clip from Ten Things I Hate About You

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You could also compare treatments of the same subject in opera: Gounod’s Faust Boito’s Mephistopheles Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust Monteverdi’s Orpheus Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice Peri’s Euridice

Discuss the differences and similarities between the interpretations. Is it possible to change the form of a work and maintain the central message? Does the audience approach different media in different ways? Are some more difficult than others? Do some fit the subject matter better than others? This could also be a written assignment or the focus of small-group discussions.

Lingo! Resources: Multiple recordings of the opera. Purpose: To recognize artistic choices; To develop critical listening, viewing, and speaking skills. As it takes many times listening to a piece of music to fully familiarize oneself, this activity is best as a written assignment. •

•

•

Students should familiarize themselves with a five-minute (or so) excerpt from Hansel and Gretel, listening to it many times until they have it memorized. Following a score is preferable, but if not possible, students should diagram what they perceive to be the form of the selection. Next, listen to two other recordings. What is different in each of the recordings? Consider tempo, dynamics, balance, instrumentation, articulation, etc. What are choices that each group has made? What are the inflexible aspects of the composition? Discuss the relative merits of each recording. Which are most in keeping with the expectations of the period? What works in each interpretation? What doesn’t work? The focus should be on concise, objective statements about each group’s interpretation.

Extensions of this activity: If possible, watch a DVD. How have the director and composer interpreted the libretto and the music? What are they trying to emphasize? What are they trying to downplay? Does the production’s vision correspond to your conception of the central themes and images of the work?

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Ch-ch-ch-changes Resources: Gallery of previous production images in the Resources section Purpose: To recognize and critique an artistic vision Display images from previous productions for your students, or play scenes from DVDs. • •

•

•

Have your students discuss or write down the choices that they think that designers have made. Have students characterize the feel of a production using a set of adjectives. Is the production dark? Symbolic? Exaggerated? Frivolous? Colorful? Encourage students to try to figure out why designers may have created a production with that feel. What might the designers think is at the core of this work? (e.g. Is the production angular and sparse to show that it is a story for all ages, not a dated Romantic work? Is it angular and sparse so that external landscapes are as distorted as the internal landscapes of the extreme characters?) There are no wrong answers, but there are educated guesses. Discuss whether the production is making a bold statement or not. Is the vision unified, or do some choices still seem random?

The price is right! Resources: None Purpose: To learn about the complexity of getting an opera onstage If a production of Hansel and Gretel were to be sponsored by a product or company, what or who would it be and why? Write a proposal to the president of the company you have chosen explaining why you think it would be a good idea for them to give funding to a production of Hansel and Gretel. Note: students must point out what the company would gain by sponsoring the opera, not what the production itself would gain from sponsorship.

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Style Points Time Required: 30 minutes Resources Required: The story of Hansel and Gretel Purpose: For students to make and justify their own artistic ideas One of the most exciting aspects of opera directing is putting a new spin on classic stories. A director’s choices about setting, blocking and design concept can greatly influence the meaning of a work. Have your students create a production of Hansel and Gretel using their own ideas. Your students should concentrate on ways they can provide a deeper understanding of the characters and central themes of the opera through their choices. •

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Ask your class to identify central themes in Hansel and Gretel (for example: family feud, battle of the sexes, young vs. old, etc.) As they brainstorm, write their responses on the board. Have your class split into small groups. Each group should choose one theme to concentrate on. Alternatively, students could do this individually for a more long-term project. When they have chosen a theme, ask students to brainstorm adjectives that describe how their theme makes them feel (for example: bold, angry, forlorn, on edge, daring, adventurous, powerless, etc.) Have your students create a unified design concept inspired by their theme-derived adjectives. Consider: shapes, colors, building materials, angles, locations, abstract vs. realistic, quality of light, large space vs. small, rake, easy or hard to navigate, etc. For instance, a “bold” production might feature bright colors, sharp angles and smooth surfaces. An “angry” production might feature dark colors and worn furniture. Ask your students to create set, costume and lighting designs for the production using their unified design concept and production plan. (Example setting: modern day Manhattan; skyscrapers, parks, trendy clothes, etc.) Each member of the group can be assigned a designing task, or they can work collaboratively on them. Students may describe their production verbally, in writing, or draw design sketches. Optional: Discuss what the acting will be like in this visual world (stylized, realistic, etc.).

After • • •

seeing the opera: How did Richard Jones’ Met staging differ from yours? Were there any similarities between your staging and Richard Jones’? Was there anything Richard Jones did that you didn’t agree with? What and why? • Why do you think he made the choices he did? What was he trying to emphasize?

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So, How Did The Met Do? Resources Required: Significant understanding of the historical context, characters, plot, and music of the opera. Purpose: To respond creatively to the opera; To develop creative writing skills; To make and justify their own artistic ideas. Writing a review is not easy. It takes a great amount of creativity and thought. In this lesson, students will take information learned prior to attending the opera and apply it to what they witnessed while at The Met. Students should be encouraged to write in an editorial style. They should combine knowledge gained from previous lessons and about the opera with their own creative ideas and artistic opinions. What did they really think and why? •

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Within a few days of The Met performance of Hansel and Gretel on December 24, , you can find the New York Times review—either in the newspaper or at ingalex.de Share it with your students. Write your own review of The Met. Music criticism relies on extreme knowledge of the opera. Below are certain points you might want to consider: 1) Does a particular artist have an individual sound or distinctive style/character that you liked/disliked? 2) Does an artist “wow” you with his/her dynamic range? 3) Does the person playing the role look the way you had imagined? 6) Were there any big mistakes? 7) What did you think of the sets, costumes, lights props, make-up, and other technical aspects of the production? What would you have changed or kept the same?

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Be sure to include things you particularly enjoyed about the performance. If there were things you did not enjoy, explain why and how you might do things differently. Share various reviews with the class and discuss. How do they compare with the New York Times’ review? Do they address similar ideas?

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RESEARCH IDEAS The following list is a suggestion of topics for further study research. Research into one or more of these areas could form the basis of a project. Leitmotifs • Wagner’s use of leitmotifs in other operas o Der fliegende Holländer o Tristan und Isolde o Parsifal • Finding leitmotifs in today’s media Fairy • • • •

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Tales Other versions of Hansel and Gretel Similar stories from other cultures The Brothers Grimm Other fairy tale operas o Cendrillon (Cinderella) – Massenet o Die Zauberflote – Mozart o Turandot - Puccini Witches from other fairy tales

Germany: • Other 19th century German composers o Carl Maria von Weber, Richard Wagner, Robert Schumann • German Opera/Singspiel • German Lieder (Art song) o Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Hugo Wolf • German literature, poetry, art o Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Heinrich Heine, Caspar David Friedrich Going Further: • What was going on in the New York City region (or your region) in the late 19th century (the time of the opera’s composition)? How was life different from life in Germany? • Research what was going on around the world in the late 19th century Additional Information on this Production: For a video interview with producer Richard Jones: ingalex.de For a review of the original performance by the Welsh National Opera: ingalex.de For a review of the performance by the Lyric Opera of Chicago: ingalex.de

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RESOURCES • USING Hansel and Gretel TO TEACH THE HUMANITIES • USING Hansel and Gretel TO TEACH MUSIC • OPERA NEWS ARTICLE: ARTICLE: “Too Grimm for Words” • METROPOLITAN OPERA FACTS • GLOSSARY

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Using Hansel and Gretel to Teach the Humanities by Zeke Hecker A. SETTING THE STAGE Close to a large forest there lived a woodcutter with his wife and his two children. The boy was called Hansel and the girl Gretel. They were always very poor and had very little to live on. And at one time when there was famine in the land, he could no longer procure daily bread. One night when he lay in bed worrying over his troubles, he sighed and said to wife, "What is to become of us? How are we to feed our poor children when we have nothing for ourselves?" "I’ll tell you what, husband," answered the woman. "Tomorrow morning we will take the children out quite early into the thickest part of the forest. We will light a fire and give each of them a piece of bread. Then we will go to our work and leave them alone. They won’t be able to find their way back, and so we shall be rid of them." "Nay, wife," said the man, ‘we won’t do that. I could never find it in my heart to leave my children alone in the forest. The wild animals would soon tear them to pieces." "What a fool you are!" she said. "Then we must all four die of hunger. You may as well plane the boards for our coffins at once." She gave him no peace till he consented. "But I grieve over the poor children all the same," said the man. The two children could not go to sleep for hunger either, and they heard what their stepmother said to their father. Gretel wept bitterly and said, "All is over with us now." "Be quiet, Gretel," said Hansel. "Don’t cry! I will find some way out of it." (The Brothers Grimm) Even the Wagnerian Humperdinck - stuffed full of the defamation of all things commercial by the Bayreuth founders - made the Brothers Grimm commercially viable, in that the parents of Hansel and Gretel no longer cast the children out as in the fairy tale, since respect for the devoted father in the late nineteenth century must not be any means be further affronted. Such examples demonstrate how deeply opera as a consumer product - in this sense related to film - is entangled in calculations regarding the public. 53

(Theodor W. Adorno) This charming setting of a simple nursery tale was originally intended to be only an unpretentious work for home presentation. The composer’s sister wished a little singspiel for the use of her children and thus began the writing of the text. Humperdinck was asked to supply the music. He composed the work, using as his thematic material a number of the well-known German folksongs. As he worked, his enthusiasm and interest grew and soon the determination was reached to make the work an opera. The influence of Wagner was strong on the composer and, while the musical setting he has supplied is perhaps disproportionately elaborate and complex for so simple a story as is this nursery tale, the beauty of the music itself and the irresistible appeal of the book have made the opera a recognized masterpiece throughout the world. (The American History and Encyclopedia of Music, ) there is another inner and more precarious contrast - between the plot and its musical treatment. It is a false contrast, a conflict of style. Humperdinck could not have been unaware that the simple fairy-tale offered him not only a novel, promising theme but also a strong obstacle. Simplicity was the attraction but also the hazard. He who knows Hansel and Gretel in Grimm’s Fairy Tales can imagine only a children’s theatre for its dramatization, a theatre not only playing for children but also played by children. It is said that Mrs. Adelheid Wette, nee Humperdinck, the author of Hansel and Gretel, never thought of it as an opera But this was not enough for Humperdinck. With his little children he wanted to get hold of the big children, and not at home but in the opera house. He would not have gone far with simple childish music and naively plain settings. Our opera public would have become bored after the first two scenes and demanded more seasoned stuff. Thus: a children’s fairytale with brilliant adornments, a large orchestra, and the most modern music, preferably Wagnerian. No sooner said than done. The composer set to work and solved his task ably and successfully. He has attained his goal - whether with acceptable artistic means or not is disputable. The naiveté of the fairy-tale resists, in my opinion, the contrived Wagnerian style; there is an inner conflict between the subject and the manner of its presentation about which none can be in doubt, not even the composer, who asked for the contradiction and even needed it for his success. But Humperdinck has added another ending which we relate only with hesitation, since it is utter nonsense. In front of the witch’s house we see a long row of life-sized marshmallow statues representing "children turned to marshmallow" by the witch and now redeemed by Hansel and Gretel. With a 54

Wagner apostle, there is no way of escaping a "redemption." This gingerbread redemption sounds like a parody on redemption. Why does the witch catch children? In order to turn them into gingerbread? No, in order to fry and eat them. This we hear continually from the stage and see it prepared before our eyes. That the witch does not eat the children but turns them into marshmallow statues and puts them as a fence round her house gives the lie to all the foregoing and overthrows the whole fairy-tale. And this nonsense, which disfigures the whole work, was only committed for a superficial and unbeautiful theatrical effect. The audience, enjoying itself from beginning to end, did not, of course, object to this contradiction. It broke into applause the like of which has rarely been heard in the opera house. There are two musical inventors in Hansel and Gretel: first, those unknown, unsung mothers and nurses with whom the nursery rhymes originated and, second, Richard Wagner Humperdinck has chosen the nursery rhymes, which appear either in an original or slightly altered form, with great skill; they constitute the irresistible charm of the whole work. What he offers from his own means as an inventor of melodies is insignificant and cheaply sentimental. None of Humperdinck’s own melodies struck me as beautiful or genuine And then there is young Siegfried Wagner’s statement that Hansel and Gretel is the most important opera since Parsifal. In other words, the best in full twelve years? An irritating pronouncement, and the worst of it is - that it is true. (Eduard Hanslick) Humperdinck is often thought to have derived most of his skill and ideas from folk-song and Wagner. he is steeped in older tradition. Weber and Mendelssohn are just as often present as Wagner in the feeling of fairies, woods, and forest hobgoblins that suffuse the piece - and perhaps Marschner in the homespun quality of the domestic scenes. It was Humperdinck’s gift to bring them all together in his unique and succinct score (Alan Blyth) Opera first tries to recover from Wagner by composing a prologue to him, a fable whose innocence knows nothing as yet of Wagnerian lust and longing. This is Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel (), recognized by Wagner’s son Siegfried as the most important opera since Parsifal. Humperdinck had actually written some of Parsifal himself, supplying a few extra bars (later cut) to cover one of the scene changes at Bayreuth; and he set the Grimm story to a medley of quotations from Wagner. The domestic chores of the children are introduced by the Meistersinger overture: Hansel is making a broom and Gretel is knitting, both at home in Hans Sachs’s world of handicrafts. The witch is an unhinged cackling Brunnhilde, riding a broomstick not a winged horse, and 55

dawn comes to the forest with a reminiscence of the Norns from Goetterdaemmerung. In Parsifal a dove descends in blessing; Hansel and Gretel are protected at night by fourteen angels in a charmed circle. Humperdinck weds the various Wagnerian mythologies - the singing artisans of Meistersinger, the elemental nature of the Ring, the religious revelations of Parsifal - and from them makes a fairy tale, where the gods are gruff parents and the monsters infantile bogeys. He has made Wagner fit for children, and writing about their games can pretend he exists before rather than after Wagner; the child is the father of the man. (Peter Conrad) Perhaps the most charming product of an opera composer’s veneration of Wagner is Humperdinck’s Hansel und Gretel. The young Humperdinck was a repetiteur at Bayreuth and gained there the immense distinction of being cocomposer of Parsifal. The stage-manager had demanded a few bars more of music in which to effect the transformation scene. Wagner refused to add a note. But, during a sultry break in rehearsal, Humperdinck produced seven bars which satisfied composer and stage-manager and which, though now no longer required, remain in the score. Humperdinck remembered Parsifal in writing his music for the angel guardians of his wood children, and Die Walkure in his witches’ ride. The composer makes, too, one connection between Wagner and Richard Strauss. The lament of the shepherd at the close of Humperdinck’s Koenigskinder (King’s Children) prepares in a nicely Wagnerian manner for the melody and the orchestral tone of the final exulting duet of Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos. (Hamish F.G. Swanston) B. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND WRITING 1. Many of the writers cited above think that the music of Humperdinck’s opera is too elaborate and inflated for its fairy tale subject. What do you think? 2. The excerpt from the beginning of Grimms’ version of the fairy tale, Adorno’s comment, and Hanslick’s condemnation of the opera’s ending reveal the extent to which the librettist "softened" the story. Would the opera have been better if it had kept the harshness of the original? 3. Opera composers frequently use "found" musical material, as Humperdinck did here with the several traditional nursery tunes that Hansel and Gretel sing. What are the artistic advantages of using such material, with which the audience may already be familiar? What are the dangers? In this opera, do the former outweigh the latter? 4. Hanslick says that Humperdinck is trying to have it both ways: a children’s 56

opera that will appeal to adults. Does he succeed with both audiences? Think of other entertainments that attempt the same breadth of appeal, such as the musical cartoon films of Walt Disney Studios. Does it work? 5. Recent studies of fairy tales, notably Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment, emphasize the "subtext" and the ways in which they address the psychological needs, desires, and fears of children. What does the Hansel and Gretel story tell children that they need to hear? Does the "softened" tone of the opera interfere with those messages, improve them, or not affect them at all? 6. The writers quoted above devote much of their commentary to the influence of Wagner on Humperdinck’s musical language. Some accuse him of lack of originality. After getting to know the opera, consider whether it matters. Is the opera less good because it sounds Wagnerian? 7. Are fairy tales and otherwise "unrealistic" subjects better suited to operatic treatment than realistic ones? C. PROJECTS AND FURTHER STUDY 1. Read The Uses of Enchantment, especially the sections devoted to Hansel and Gretel, and evaluate Bettelheim’s interpretation of the story. 2. Humperdinck had one other major success in his lifetime, though it is now a rarity: Koenigskinder (mentioned by Swanston above). It, too, is a fairy tale opera based on a story by the brothers Grimm. Listen to a recording and compare it to Hansel and Gretel. 3. Other Grimms’ fairy tales that have been made into operas include Cinderella (twice, by Rossini as Cenerentola and by Massenet as Cendrillon, though both versions rely more on the French version of the tale) and Little Red Riding Hood by the American Seymour Barab. The Rossini opera is in the Met repertory, though not this season. Find recordings and videos and compare these approaches to such material with Humperdinck’s. 4. For a Bettelheim-influenced treatment of fairy tales in a stage work, see Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, available on CD, video, and many stagings from professional to high school. Hansel and Gretel is not among the many stories woven together here, but the contrast to Humperdinck’s tone will be readily apparent. Also, read Transformations, a book of poems by Ann Sexton based on the original Grimm tales with a modern psychoanalytic approach. Finally, Conrad Susa made an opera out of the Sexton poems, which was broadcast and telecast; though not issued commercially, recordings may be available. 5. Two other fairy tale operas on this season’s broadcasts are the Strauss57

Hofmannsthal Die Frau Ohne Schatten and the Ravel-Colette L’Enfant et les Sortileges (part of the French triple bill Parade). Both of these are based on "new," not "traditional" fairy tales (as is Mozart’s The Magic Flute - see last season’s study guide) and offer an interesting comparison to Hansel and Gretel. 6. Many other fairy tale operas, including Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snow Maiden and Stravinsky’s The Nightingale, are based on the stories of Hans Christian Andersen, much different in feeling from the Grimms’ tales. Worth exploring 7. as are the many Broadway musicals, Hollywood films, and other adaptations of fairy tales both traditional and modern. 8. As for Humperdinck, listen to those excerpts from the works of Wagner that Conrad cites as influences on specific moments in Hansel and Gretel, and see if you agree. Also, listen to music by the earlier composers cited by Blyth (especially the Midsummer Night’s Dream music of Mendelssohn), and decide if he is right. 9. Design sets and costumes for a production of Hansel and Gretel. Try several approaches: realistic, or sentimental, or abstract, or expressionistic By judicious cutting, you can stage a satisfying production of this opera yourself with a pianist and a few singers. The vocal parts are not technically difficult. Do it.

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Using Hansel and Gretel to Teach Music by Jonathan Dzik

Motivation/Role Play Exercises (Note: Hansel und Gretel is a particularly effective opera to present to youngsters of an elementary school age.) Present the following situations to your classes for discussion: ingalex.de you and your brother (sister) went into a forest and got lost and it got dark and you couldn't find your way out, what are some of the dangers you might face? What are some of the things you might do to try to remain safe? How could you finally get out? (This is clearly what happens in Act I, scene ii in the opera.) 2. If you and your sister (brother) were captured or taken hostage by an evil person and you know (s)he was preparing to do bad things to you, how could you help each other to prevent this from happening? Devise a way to escape. (Act II, in the opera.) (Note to teacher: Since the Hansel und Gretel duets which are about to be described are based on simple folk tunes, try to get a copy of the score and teach the students to sing the main themes which are about to be presented. Or use the enclosed musical examples. Then when they hear them on a recording and perhaps see the performance in the opera house, those musical moments will be recognizable and much more meaningful.

Brother and Sister There is hardly a moment where the siblings in this famous adaptation of the Grimm story are not together on stage. Humperdinck wrote some delightful and beautiful duets for the two siblings. It should be noted, that even though Hansel is a boy, his role is sung by a woman, a mezzo-soprano. This is a fairly common practice in opera, where a young or adolescent boy is portrayed by a female. These roles are known as "trouser roles." 1."Suse, liebe Suse, was raschelt im Stroh?" ("Susie, little Susie what is that noise in the straw?") (Ex. #1).

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This is the opening music in the opera after the overture. Hansel and Gretel, son and daughter of Peter (a broommaker) and Gertrude, are alone and very hungry. But nevertheless they work (he binds brooms and Gretel sews), play and quarrel in the best of sibling spirit. They sing an old German folk song about Suzy and her geese. (The melody has a close resemblance to a famous German folk song, "Ach du lieber Augustin" which is usually sung in English to the words, "Did you ever see a Lassie.") It is lightly scored for strings and woodwinds. Gretel has the first verse (Hansel chimes in with a short phrase near the end) and Hansel (with Gretel doing the same) sings the second verse. Toward the middle of the song, there is a hint of the "Evening Prayer" about which more will be said shortly. 2. This leads into a second duet--"Bruderchen, komm tanz' mit mir," ("Brother come and dance with me") (Ex. #2).

It is a simple folksong in 2/4 time. Gretel starts in the key of F major, and Hansel, being a lower voiced character, sings a 3rd lower in D minor. Gretel is teaching her brother a cute folk dance, "Mit den Fusschen tapp tapp tapp", ("With your foot you tap, tap, tap, ") Ex. #3.

They get carried away and after a while their voices overlap. The duet becomes very spirited until their mother interrupts them and castigates them for fooling around. 3. In the second scene, Hansel and Gretel are already in the forest. Their mother has sent them there to pick berries after their horseplay caused a pitcher of milk to topple and spill. Gretel sings a simple little folk song in which she likens a mushroom to a little man, "Ein Mannlein steht im Walde ganz still und stumm,"("A little man stands in the forest quiet and still") (Ex. #4). 60

It is almost a cappella, accompanied only by quiet plucked strings. This is meant to create a sense of being alone in the forest. It is not yet nightfall, so everything is peaceful and calm. The second verse adds a flute obbligato for embellishment as well as oboe and French horn interludes. 4. When night falls and they discover they can't find their way out of the forest, they kneel down and pray the famous "Evening Prayer", (Ex. #5).

This is the most famous theme in the opera. The overture opens and closes with this theme and eventually the opera ends with a short but full-scale choral treatment of this music. The melody rises in thirds as the two children harmonize with each other. Occasionally passing dissonances add to the poignancy of the music as it soars ever higher, ending one octave higher than where it started. The children fall asleep at the end of this prayer as 14 angels descend to keep watch over them. ingalex.de the second act, when Hansel and Gretel see the gingerbread house for the first time, they sing a harmonious duet in thirds, the most consonant harmony of all. They are beside themselves with the possibilities of having such a delectable treat to eat --"O herrlich Schlosschen, wie bist du schmuck und fein" ("O magic castle, how nice you'd be to eat.") (Ex. #6.)

6. In the final scene, after Hansel and Gretel have succeeded in turning the tables on the witch by pushing her into the oven, they sing a joyous duet, mostly in thirds, as they joyously waltz around the house--"Juchhei! Nun ist die Hexetot, mausetot, und aus die Not!" ("Hurrah, now sing the witch is dead, really dead, no more to dread! Hurrah!") (Ex. #7.) 61

The Supernatural: The first half of Hansel and Gretel deals essentially with real people--a mother and father who are destitute and two happy-go-lucky siblings who try to make the best of it. Even when they first run into the forest at their mother's bidding to pick berries, everything happens as a natural course of events. The first hint of the supernatural occurs when Peter, their father comes home to find out they went into the dangerous forest known as Ilsenstein where, according to a legend, a witch entices children with delectable goodies but eventually casts a wicked spell over them. We hear the ominous pounding of the timpani to the rhythm that will soon represent "The Witch's Ride", the interlude which separates the two main scenes of the first act. As the two parents run out into the forest after their children, the orchestra peals out with this theme (Ex. #8). Ominous trills, grace notes and a sinister rattle on the castanets all add to the eerie depiction.

To aid the children in going to sleep, the Sandman's sprinkles them with dust. Sung by a soprano, this scene features the legato descending melody which will make up the essence of the "Dream Pantomime" which shortly follows. Here, 14 angels descend and hover over them to protect them from all danger (Ex. #9).

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In a reversal of melodic direction, the Dew Fairy awakens them with a lyrical ascending melody--"Ich komm' mit gold'nem Sonnenschein" ("I come with golden sunshine") (Ex. #10).

The witch herself has various musical personalities, from her first vocal appearance from within her house as the children are nibbling on its delicious walls--"Knusper, knusper Knauschen, wer knuspert mir am Hauschen?" ("Nibble, nibble, mousie, who's nibbling at my housie?") (Ex. #11).

She later casts a spell on the children, temporarily paralyzing them--"Hocus pokus Hexenschuss" ("Hocus pocus witches' charm") (Ex. #12).

As she contemplates having Hansel for dinner she seizes a broomstick and begins to ride upon it--"Hurr hopp hopp hopp, Galopp lopp lopp" (Ex. #13). The witch usually sings with a nasal tone, depicting her macabre character.

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The final supernatural event occurs near the end after the witch has been pushed into the oven and Hansel and Gretel are free. With a wave of the magic wand, Hansel touches the life-size figures of children who look like gingerbread and had fallen under the evil witch's spell long ago. With this magic gesture, the children come to life and sing a joyous chorus of celebration (again in consonant thirds), whose music had been previewed earlier in the overture-"Die Hexerei ist nun vorbei" ("The spell is broken and we are free") (Ex. #14). As their parents Peter and Gertrude enter upon the scene, everyone joins in with the famous "Evening Prayer," music in praise of God's beneficence.

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Too Grimm for Words Taming Hänsel und Gretel for opera

by Steven R. Cerf

One major literary achievement of the nineteenth century was the discovery of the child. Prior to the rise of Romanticism, childhood had been seen as some prehuman stage that had to be exorcised before reaching maturity; now it was increasingly understood as a deep, enduring basis of the adult personality. As William Wordsworth put it, "The child is father of the man." In Germany, this discovery dovetailed with a quest to understand the growth stages by which German culture itself had reached maturity from its earlier, more primitive origins in medieval and folk literature. The Grimm Brothers, sophisticated scholars, went into Germany's hinterland to collect traditional fairy tales, issuing them as Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales); at the same time, poets Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim amassed folk lyrics for their anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn). Both compilations appeared within a decade, between and , and in both, the child emerged as a full-fledged human being. To some extent, the Grimms were ahead of their time. Twentieth-century psychologists fully comprehend the uncensored pre-moral fears and cravings of infancy that are acted out with such bloodthirsty relish in these traditional tales. "Hänsel und Gretel" is typical of the collection in being a Freudian chamber of horrors, giving voice to blind hatreds smoldering within the nuclear family. Mother (transformed into stepmother) is so eager to get rid of her children that she makes two attempts to lose them. Stranded in a dangerous forest, they fall into the hands of another destructive mother figure, the cannibalistic Witch. Such subject matter scarcely seems suitable for family opera, and it is not surprising that Engelbert Humperdinck and his sister, Adelheid Wette, altered it when adapting the story, first as an intimate home entertainment, then as a populist

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post-Wagnerian music drama.

WOULD WILHELM AND JACOB GRIMM HAVE RECOGNIZED THEIR HANSEL AND GRETEL ONCE ENGELBERT HUMPERDINCK (RIGHT) FINISHED SWEETENING IT?

To be sure, the opera's structure parallels that of the Grimm Märchen. In both, three different settings are crucial -- the impoverished broommaker's home, the gloomy forest, the Witch's gingerbread house. The moral of cooperation between brother and sister -- reflecting the actual relationship between composer and librettist -- remains the same. Hänsel comforts his sister in the forest, Gretel carries out the preparations for the Witch's demise. Their ever-present duets underscore the lesson that mutual assistance is their only key to survival. Furthermore, as in the fairy tale, the children's names are privileged. Although Humperdinck's score refers to the parents as Peter and Gertrud, and the Witch calls herself Rosina Daintymouth, only Hänsel and Gretel refer to each other by name. But how, in an opera intended to be gentle, somewhat spiritual and comically fantastical, were composer and librettist going to dispose of the tale's grislier aspects? In fact, they found their solution ready-made. Many of the Märchen in Grimm had already been efficiently bowdlerized by one Ludwig Bechstein (), much revered in mid-nineteenth-century Germany, whose collections of fairy tales outsold those of the Grimms for many decades and were the preferred domestic version when Humperdinck was a child. While the Grimms presented the tales as German families actually told them, Bechstein issued them as he thought families ought to tell them. A pharmacist turned ducal librarian, a devout soul, naturalist, Freemason and father of six, Bechstein sought to spiritualize the stories, both by softening the grislier portions and by adding episodes of prayer and allusions to divine benevolence. Effusively likening the fairytale tradition to a "floating bird of paradise," he saw it as a "sacred," "everlasting" and "unalloyed" source of "popular moral philosophy." Born illegitimate, Bechstein had known only hardship as a child and therefore inevitably had an idealized view of fairy tales, regarding them not as Gothic horror stories but as uplifting lessons that would bring hope to children. "I know the golden morning of childhood only from the description of poets," he wrote. "The first eight years of my life are like a bad dream I had no father, and my mother left me with paid caretakers." Only at the age of nine, when he was taken in by an uncle, did he begin to enjoy a normal domestic atmosphere with his supportive foster family. Bechstein's "Snow White" does not conclude with the evil Queen being forced to dance herself to death in shoes filled with red-hot coals. She perishes instead because of the "worm of envy" gnawing at her heart, although Snow White tries to forgive her. His "Little Red Riding Hood" ends simply with the death of the Big Bad Wolf, unlike the Grimm version, whose epilogue depicts a second wolf being lured to his death. Moreover, countless executions gorily described in the Grimm tales are simply excised in Bechstein.

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Bechstein conceived his "Hänsel und Gretel" in this gentler vein as well. The wicked stepmother is replaced by an overworked but conscience-stricken biological parent; the Witch, unlike the wholly terrifying creature of the Grimm collection, has a comic dimension; and the children repeatedly find consolation in prayer. Bechstein, as a foster child, was all too eager to turn the mother of his "Hänsel und Gretel" into a biological mother, for the poor man seriously worried about political correctness toward stepmothers. "Among the thousands of children who get their hands on books of fairy tales," he warned, "there must be the so-called stepchildren. When such a child -- after reading many a fairy tale in which stepmothers appear [the stepmothers are uniformly evil] -- feels that it has been somehow injured or insulted by its own stepmother, then that young person makes comparisons and develops a strong aversion to his guardian which disturbs the peace and happiness of an entire family." The Grimms' stepmother is delighted when Hänsel and Gretel disappear, but Bechstein's mother is conflicted and contrite, "not sure whether to scold or rejoice" after the children's first return from the woods. This relatively humane portrait clearly affected Humperdinck and Wette as they created Gertrud's brief but poignant Act I lament. The stepmother in Grimm is motivated by meanness as she tries to alienate her husband from his own children. In Bechstein, the parents, driven by dire poverty, take joint responsibility as they reluctantly send away the children they cannot properly support. (In the opera it is tamer still, with Gertrud sending them off to look for food.) As in Bechstein, the mother in the opera participates in the joyful final reunion, while in the Grimm version, the evil stepmother dies along with her surrogate, the Witch.

The Grimms' witch is a red-eyed pagan sorceress with a feral ability to smell her victims from afar.

Bechstein's witch, with her "big, big nose" and "grass-green eyes," is quasi-amusing, and the list of goodies she offers to the children ("biscuits and marzipan, sugar and milk, apples and nuts and delicate cakes") makes her quite appealing, temporarily, to young readers. Very different is the Grimms' red-eyed pagan sorceress, whose feral ability to smell victims from afar is described in detail. (Humperdinck and Wette go even further than Bechstein by eliminating the cannibalism: their witch's oven magically transforms children into edible morsels of gingerbread, and when it explodes, with her in it, the children are returned whole to the living.) Bechstein stresses that the witch's death is a proper reward for all of her misdeeds; needless to say, no such moralizing appears in the Grimm. The most startling divergence is Bechstein's emphasis on the children's religious faith. In Grimm, a forest is a forest -- a frightening place in which the children's worst fears are realized. In 67

Bechstein, it is rather a place ordained by God for contemplation and prayer, where the children find a peace denied them in their poverty-ravaged home. The first time they are lost, Hänsel comforts Gretel with the words "Dear God is at our side"; the second time, he states, "Dear God knows every path and will surely show us the right one." Clearly, the opera is imbued with Bechstein's form of piety. Indeed, its only consistent musical motif is the Evening Prayer (Abendsegen), heard as the first notes of the opera's overture, a piece Humperdinck called The Children's Life. This theme reappears in the luxuriant central finale when Hänsel and Gretel pray for fourteen angels to protect them in the forest, and it is woven into the quadruple counterpoint of the opera's conclusion when children and parents are reunited. The prayer's text, absent from both Grimm and Bechstein, is another piece of traditional Germanica. It first appeared on a tombstone dated and was included in the Des Knaben Wunderhorn collection.

HANSEL (RISË STEVENS) AND GERTRUDE (CLARAMAE TURNER) IN MET PRODUCTION

In order to establish a comfortable, familyfriendly tone, Humperdinck launches each of the opera's three scenes with a folk or folklike tune associated with well-known popular verses. "Suzy, little Suzy, now listen with care" (Scene 1) comes from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. "Now once upon a time in the wood alone" (Scene 2) is borrowed from the highly popular mid-nineteenth-century minstrel poet Hoffmann von Fallersleben (author of "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles"), and a familiar folk tune played by French horn begins the prelude to the final act. All three create a warmhearted atmosphere at odds with Grimm. One early listener who questioned this tone, curiously, was Gustav Ferdinand Humperdinck, father of the composer and librettist. Fearing that the opera failed to "ennoble" and "refine" the fairy tale sufficiently, he observed, "Perhaps the libretto should not have followed Bechstein so closely -- I find the Grimm version preferable." In the second half of the twentieth century, the senior Humperdinck's thesis has at last been tested. The composer Conrad Susa harrowingly dramatized "Hänsel und Gretel" and other Grimm tales in his first opera, Transformations (), based on a poetry cycle by Anne Sexton, who sets the stories in a Boston mental institution. Subtitled "Mother Love and Cannibalism," Susa's "Hansel and Gretel" episode reveals the witch and the stepmother to be the same devouring person. Here, the pathological horror inherent in Grimm comes to the fore, with subtext transformed into psychologically universal meta-text. We are a long way from

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Humperdinck's sylvan repose, so deeply imbued with German Romanticism's Waldeinsamkeit (forest solitude). Yet one suspects that Humperdinck, despite his father's misgivings, was wise to reject unalloyed Grimm. Had Humperdinck provided grimmer music, one doubts that the opera would have achieved the same artistic and popular success. In capturing what the critic Jack Zipes termed Bechstein's "overt 'folksy' bourgeois appeal," Humperdinck's exuberant melos -- lovable, accessible, brimming over with psychological health -- provides its own justification.

PROF. CERF is Skolfield Professor of German at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine.

OPERA NEWS, December 28, Copyright © The Metropolitan Opera Guild, Inc.

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SOME FACTS ABOUT THE METROPOLITAN OPERA Wallace K. Harrison, architect Cyril Harris, acoustical consultant This opera house is the 2nd home of the Metropolitan Opera. The 1st was located at Broadway and 39th St. The Met’s new home at Lincoln Center cost $49 million to build and construction took 4 years. The Met is the 2nd-deepest building in Manhattan. It consists of 10 floors: stage level, six floors above and three below, cushioned with anti-vibration pads for sound-proofing. The opera season generally runs from September to April, during which time the opera company puts on 7 performances a week (two on Saturdays) from a repertoire of different operas. The auditorium can seat 3, people on five tiers, and there is standing room space for people on various levels. There are no 90° angles anywhere in the auditorium, and the boxes have irregular, shell-patterned decorations. This design distributes sound evenly throughout the auditorium and prevents it from being “swallowed.” A single African rosewood tree was used to panel the walls. The tree, brought from London, was almost ft. long and about 6 feet in diameter. The ceiling rises 72 feet above the orchestra floor and is covered with over 1 million 2-½-inch-square sheets of nearly transparent carat gold leaf. Not only does the gold add to the glamour of the interior, but it is supposed to eliminate the need for maintenance and repainting. You’ll notice that the ceiling in the outer lobbies has a greenish color. These ceilings are covered with a Dutch alloy which contains copper and turns green when it tarnishes.

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There are two house curtains in the auditorium: • •

Guillotine curtain - Made of gold velour, this curtain rises and descends vertically. Wagner curtain - This design was conceived by Richard Wagner and first used in in Bayreuth, Germany. It is a motorized tableau drape with adjustable speed. The existing curtain, woven of 1, yards of goldpatterned Scalamandre silk, was installed at the Met in and is the biggest Wagner curtain in the world.

The chandeliers are a gift from the Austrian government. The one central chandelier is 17ft. in diameter and is surrounded by 8 starbursts of varying sizes. The 12 satellite clusters can be raised to avoid blocking the stage. Altogether, the chandeliers contain over 3, light bulbs. Does your seat feel a little tighter than last time? Not all the chairs at the Met are the same size; they vary in width from 19 to 23 inches. This staggered seating arrangement provides the best possible sight lines. The conductor’s podium is motorized so that it can be adjusted to any height. It is equipped with cue lights that indicate when the curtain is ready to rise and a telephone line that connects to the stage manager’s post and the prompter’s box.

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GLOSSARY Musical Terms and Definitions Definitions adagio

Indication that the music is to be performed at a slow, relaxed pace. A movement for a piece of music with this marking.

allegro

Indicates a fairly fast tempo.

aria

A song for solo voice in an opera, with a clear, formal structure.

arioso

An operatic passage for solo voice, melodic but with no clearly defined form.

baritone

Man’s voice, with a range between that of bass and tenor.

bel canto

Refers to the style cultivated in the 18th and 19th centuries in Italian opera. This demanded precise intonation, clarity of tone and enunciation, and a virtuoso mastery of the most flori passages.

cabaletta

The final short, fast section of a type of aria in 19th-century Italian opera.

cadenza

A passage in which the solo instrument or voice performs without the orchestra, usually of an improvisatory nature.

chorus

A body of singers who sing and act as a group, either in unison or in harmony; any musical number written for such a group.

coloratura

An elaborate and highly ornamented part for soprano voice, usually written for the upper notes of the voice. The term is also applied to those singers who specialize in the demanding technique required for such parts.

conductor

The director of a musical performance for any sizable body of performers.

contralto

Low-pitched woman’s voice.

crescendo

Means “growing”, used as a musical direction to indicate that the music is to get gradually louder.

ensemble

From the French word for “together”, this term is used when discussing the degree of effective teamwork among a body of performers; in opera, a set piece for a group of soloists. 72

finale

The final number of an act, when sung by an ensemble

fortissimo (ff)

Very loud.

forte (f)

Italian for “strong” or “loud”. An indication to perform at a loud volume.

harmony

A simultaneous sounding of notes that usually serves to support a melody.

intermezzo

A piece of music played between the acts of an opera.

intermission

A break between the acts of an opera. The lights go on and the audience is free to move around.

legato

A direction for smooth performance without detached notes.

leitmotif

Melodic element used by Richard Wagner in his operas to musically represent characters, events, ideas, or emotions in the plot.

libretto

The text of an opera.

maestro

Literally ‘master’; used as a courtesy title for the conductor, whether a man or woman.

melody

A succession of musical tones (i.e., notes not sounded at the same time); the horizontal quality of music, often prominent and singable.

mezzo-soprano Female voice with a range between that of soprano and contralto

opera buffa

An Italian form in which the spoken word is also used, usually on a comedy theme. The French term “opera bouffe” describes a similar type, although it may have an explicitly satirical intent.

opera seria

Italian for “serious opera”. Used to signify Italian opera on a heroic or dramatic theme during the 18th and early 19th centuries.

operetta

A light opera, whether full-length or not, often using spoken dialogue. The plots are romantic and improbable, even farcical, and the music tuneful and undemanding.

overture

A piece of music preceding an opera.

pentatonic scale Typical of Japanese, Chinese, and other Far Eastern music, the pentatonic scale divides the octave into five tones and may be played on the piano by striking only the black keys.

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pianissimo (pp) Very softly.

piano (p)

Meaning “flat”, or “low”. Softly, or quietly.

pitch

The location of a musical sound in the tonal scale; the quality that makes “A” different from “D”.

prima donna

The leading woman singer in an operatic cast or company.

prelude

A piece of music that precedes another.

recitative

A style of sung declamation used in opera. It may be either accompanied or unaccompanied except for punctuating chords from the harpsichord.

reprise

A direct repetition of an earlier section in a piece of music, or the repeat of a song.

score

The written or printed book containing all the parts of a piece of music.

serenade

A song by a lover at the window of his mistress.

solo

A part for unaccompanied instrument or for an instrument or voice with the dominant role in a work.

soprano

The high female voice; the high, often highest, member of a family of instruments.

tempo

The pace of a piece of music; how fast or how slow it is played.

tenor

A high male voice.

theme

The main idea of a piece of music; analogous to the topic of a written paper, subject to exploration and changes.

trill

Musical ornament consisting of the rapid alternation between the note and the note above it.

trio

A sustained musical passage for three voices.

verismo

A type of “realism” in Italian opera during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in which the plot was on a contemporary, often violent, theme.

volume

A description of how loud or soft a sound is.

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MEMBERSHIP STANDARDS THE MET STAGES MEMBERSHIP PROGRAM REQUIRES THAT ALL STUDENTS WHO ATTEND REHEARSALS AT THE MET:

1. Are familiar with the opera’s story, and can relate its themes and situations to their own lives; 2. Are familiar with the opera’s music or musical style; 3. Learn to recognize and discuss the choices made by the directors, designers, conductors, and singer; 4. Will be able to make and justify their own artistic choices; 5. Are aware of Opera House etiquette and understand how to be good audience members.

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The evolution of Richard Wagner's operatic tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) was a long and tortuous process, and the precise sequence of events which led the composer to embark upon such a vast undertaking is still unclear. The composition of the text took place between and , when all four libretti were privately printed; but the closing scene of the final opera, Götterdämmerung, was revised a number of times between and The names of the last two Ring operas, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, were probably not definitively settled until

Conception of the Ring[edit]

The Wagner memorial in the Liebethaler Grundnear Dresden. Wagner probably conceived Siegfried's Todduring long walks in this picturesque valley.

According to the composer's own account – as related in his autobiography Mein Leben – it was after the February Revolution that he began to sketch a play on the life of the HohenstaufenHoly Roman EmperorFriedrich Barbarossa. While researching this work, he came to see Friedrich as "a historical rebirth of the old, pagan Siegfried".^[1] Then, in the summer of , he wrote the essay Die Wibelungen: Weltgeschichte aus der Saga (The Wibelungs: World History as Told in Saga), in which he noted some historical links (spurious, as it happens) between the Hohenstaufens and the legendary Nibelungs.^[2] This led him to consider Siegfried as a possible subject for a new opera, and by October the entire Ring cycle had been conceived.^[3]

This rather straightforward account of the Ring's origins, however, has been disputed by a number of authorities, who accuse Wagner of deliberately distorting the facts so as to bring them into harmony with his own private version of history. The actual sequence of events, it seems, was not nearly as clear-cut as he would have us believe. It was in October – some sixteen months before the February Revolution – that he first drew up a plan for a five-act drama based on the life of Friedrich Barbarossa. He may even have considered writing an opera on Siegfried as early as , when he read Jacob Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie (German Mythology), or possibly in , when he borrowed several works on the Nibelungs from the Royal Library in Dresden. As for Die Wibelungen, it would appear that he only started work on this essay in December at the earliest, finishing it sometime before 22 February , when he read it to his friend Eduard Devrient.^[4]

Whatever the truth, Wagner was certainly contemplating an opera on Siegfried by 1 April , when he informed Devrient of his plans.^[5]

Wagner was probably encouraged in these endeavours by a number of German intellectuals who believed that contemporary artists should seek inspiration in the pages of the Nibelungenlied, a 12th-century epic poem in Middle High German which, since its rediscovery in , had been hailed by the German Romantics as their country's "national epic". In the philosopher Friedrich Theodor Vischer suggested that the Nibelungenlied would make a suitable subject for German opera;^[6] and in and Louise Otto-Peters and Franz Brendel penned a series of articles in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik inviting composers to write a "national opera" based on the epic. Otto-Peters even wrote a libretto for such an opera.

Wagner, as it happened, was already familiar with the Nibelungenlied. He had even drawn upon it for one of the scenes in an earlier opera, Lohengrin, the text of which was written between July and November Act II, Scene 4, in which Ortrud interrupts the procession to the minster and confronts Elsa, is based on Chapter 14 of the Nibelungenlied, "How the Queens Railed at Each Other"; in the corresponding scene of Götterdämmerung (also Act II, Scene 4), it is Brünnhilde who interrupts a stately procession and provokes a quarrel.

Wagner the writer[edit]

Wagner's libretti, which he invariably wrote himself, usually passed through four stages; with one or two minor qualifications, the libretti of the four Ring operas were no different. These stages are as follows:^[7]

• Prose Sketch (Prosaskizze) – a brief outline of the dramatic action. Typically these sketches consisted of no more than a few paragraphs of prose, though Wagner sometimes added to them or modified them before proceeding to the next stage. This was the case with the sketches for the first three parts of the tetralogy. Exceptionally, however, Wagner (for reasons which will be explained later) never drafted a prose sketch for Götterdämmerung (or Siegfried's Tod, as it was originally called). The prose sketch for Act III of Die Walküre has disappeared.
• Prose Draft (Prosaentwurf) – an elaborate prose treatment of the opera, describing the action in great detail. These drafts were usually ten or more pages in length. They included a considerable amount of dialogue. Prose drafts survive for all four Ring operas.
• Verse Draft (Erstschrift des Textbuches) – a first draft of the final libretto, written in an archaic form of German alliterative verse known as Stabreim. Wagner created his verse drafts by versifying the dialogue already contained in his prose drafts – turning prose into poetry – or by creating new verse to replace those sections of the prose drafts for which he had not yet sketched any dialogue. He also added new elements not present in the prose drafts. For instance, the symbolic use of Wotan's spear and its engraved runes to embody the rule of law is not present in the prose draft of Das Rheingold: this idea only came to Wagner while he was working on the verse draft of Die Walküre. It was also while developing the latter that he first thought of making Loge a god of fire: in the prose draft of Das Rheingold he is merely a trickster and teller of unwelcome truths. While writing his verse drafts, Wagner also greatly expanded his stage directions (which, of course, were always in prose).
• Fair Copy (Reinschrift des Textbuches) – a clean, carefully written verse libretto (or Dichtung, "poem", as Wagner liked to call his finished libretti), usually free of corrections and alterations. Punctuation and capitalization were regularized at this stage. The fair copies generally incorporated the final version of any passage of the corresponding verse draft for which Wagner had sketched two or more competing versions; in a few cases the fair copy has an entirely new variant. The fair copies, however, were not necessarily the final versions of the libretti, as Wagner frequently made slight – but sometimes telling – alterations to the text during the composition of the music. Furthermore, he sometimes made two, three, or even four fair copies, incorporating revisions as he did so, in which case the fair copies are called respectively Zweitschrift (des Textbuches), Drittschrift, Viertschrift, and Fünftschrift.

Siegfried's Tod[edit]

The opening page of the Nibelungenlied

As part of his preparations for the projected opera on Siegfried, Wagner first drafted a preliminary study of the relevant German and Nordic myths, Die Nibelungensage (Mythus) (The Nibelung Saga (Myth)). This lengthy prose scenario, which was completed by 4 October , contains an outline of the entire Ring cycle from start to finish, though there is no evidence that Wagner was contemplating anything more at this point than a single opera on the death of Siegfried. When he made a fair copy of this text on 8 October, he renamed it Die Sage von den Nibelungen (The Saga of the Nibelungs). In the collected edition of his works (Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen) it is entitled Der Nibelungen-Mythus: als Entwurf zu einem Drama (The Nibelung Myth: as Sketch for a Drama).

In drafting this prose scenario, Wagner drew upon numerous works of German and Scandinavian mythology, both primary texts (usually in contemporary German translations, though Wagner had some knowledge of Old Norse and Middle German) and commentaries on them. The most important of the former were the Völsunga Saga, the Poetic Edda, the Prose Edda, the Nibelungenlied and Thidriks saga af Bern, while the most important of the latter were Jacob Grimm's German Mythology and Wilhelm Grimm's The German Hero-Saga. In addition to these, however, Wagner picked up various details from at least twenty-two other sources, including a number of key philosophical texts that informed the symbolism of the Ring. Wagner contradicts his sources on various points – necessarily so as the sources don’t always agree with one another – conflates disparate stories into continuous narratives, creates some new, memorable characters by combining minor characters from different sources, etc. The final scenario is as much a unique recreation of the original myths as the Nibelungenlied was in its day.

Because Die Sage von den Nibelungen already contained a detailed account of the dramatic action of the proposed opera, Wagner neglected to make any prose sketches according to his usual practice. Instead, he immediately wrote a prose draft of the new work, which was to be called Siegfried's Tod (Siegfried's Death), complete with "English" apostrophe. This apostrophe, incidentally, appears in all the textual manuscripts of the work and in the private imprint of , but was dropped from the title in the Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen of –^[8]

On 28 October , Wagner read the prose draft of Siegfried's Tod to Eduard Devrient, and following some critical comments by the latter on the obscurity of the subject, he drafted a two-scene prologue which filled in some of the background story.^[9] This new prose draft was cast almost entirely in dialogue, much of it already very close to the final verse form it would take. By 12 November the revised draft of Siegfried's Tod was completed, and by 28 November it had been turned into alliterative verse, becoming in the process a fully fledged libretto for a three-act opera with a two-scene prologue. The following month (presumably) Wagner prepared the first fair copy (Zweitschrift des Textbuches), but almost immediately the work was extensively revised and a second fair copy (Drittschrift des Textbuches) was drawn up to reflect these revisions. It was at this stage that the episode known as "Hagen's Watch" (the final section of Act I Scene 2) made its first appearance.

With its two-scene prologue and three-act structure, Siegfried's Tod was to all intents and purposes a draft text for what would eventually be the final part of the tetralogy, Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods).

At this point, however, Wagner, it seems, began to doubt the wisdom of writing an opera on such an obscure subject. Even in Germany the Nibelungenlied was not very well known, and several of the other sources that he consulted were even more recondite. Whatever the reason, the fact of the matter is that having completed the libretto of Siegfried's Tod, Wagner then put the work aside and turned his attention to other matters. Between December and March , he wrote several influential essays, some of them quite lengthy. He also spent much of this time working out detailed scenarios for several other operas on a variety of historical and mythical figures: Jesus Christ, Achilles, Friedrich Barbarossa and Wieland der Schmied. None of these operas ever saw the light of day, though one musical sketch survives for Jesus von Nazareth.^[10]

Politics[edit]

It was also around this time that Wagner was most actively engaged in German politics. Dresden had long been known as a cultural centre for liberals and democrats; the anarchist newspaper Dresdner Zeitung was partly edited by the music director August Röckel, and contained articles by Mikhail Bakunin, who came to Dresden in March Röckel also published the popular democratic newspaper Volksblätter. The activities of these radicals culminated in the May Uprising of Wagner, who had been inspired with the revolutionary spirit since , cultivated Röckel's friendship and through him became acquainted with Bakunin. He wrote passionate articles in the Volksblätter inciting the people to revolt, and when the fighting broke out he played a small though significant role in it, possibly ordering hand grenades and certainly standing as a look out at the top of the Kreuzkirche.

The revolution was quickly crushed by Saxon and Prussian troops, and warrants were issued for the arrest of the leading revolutionaries, including Wagner. Röckel and Bakunin were captured and sentenced to lengthy terms of imprisonment. Wagner, however, made good his escape, and with the help of Franz Liszt he fled to Switzerland, from where he eventually made his way to Paris. In July he returned to Switzerland and settled in Zürich, which was to be his home for the greater part of the next nine years.^[11]

There, in May , he once again took up Siegfried's Tod. He prepared a third fair copy of the libretto (Viertschrift des Textbuches) for publication, which, however, did not take place,^[12] and by July he had even begun to compose music for the prologue. Of this music a sheet of preliminary sketches survives and a more detailed composition draft, which extends about one quarter of the way into the duet between Brünnhilde and Siegfried. Having reached this point, however, Wagner abandoned the work.

Trilogy[edit]

The earliest mention we have of a festival theatre being specially constructed for a performance of Siegfried's Tod is in a letter to the artist Ernst Benedikt Kietz, dated 14 September A week later in a letter to his friend Theodor Uhlig, dated 22 September, Wagner elaborated on this idea: now he was hoping to stage three performances of Siegfried's Tod in a specially constructed festival theatre, after which both the theatre and the score were to be destroyed: "If everything is arranged satisfactorily, I will allow three performances of Siegfried [i.e. Siegfried's Tod] to be given in one week under these circumstances: after the third performance the theatre is to be torn down and my score burned"

Gradually the notion of a trilogy of operas culminating with Siegfried's Tod was beginning to form in Wagner's mind. The idea was not a new one. In he had read and been deeply impressed by Aeschylus's Greek trilogy the Oresteia in a German translation by Johann Gustav Droysen; and in , after his flight from Dresden, he had read Droysen's reconstruction of the same playwright's trilogy the Prometheia, which includes the well-known tragedy Prometheus Bound.^[13] It seemed only right that a similar trilogy of German tragedies, written by a latter-day Aeschylus, should be performed in its own dedicated theatre and as part of a "specially-appointed festival".^[14]

The idea of expanding Siegfried's Tod into a series of two or more operas would have been particularly appealing to Wagner, as he had now come to realize that it would be impossible to say all that he wanted to in a single opera without an inordinate number of digressions. The political events of the past few years and his recent discovery of the philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach had greatly enlarged the scope of ideas which he hoped to explore in his new opera. He also wished to incorporate various ideas that he had been mulling over in the works on Jesus, Frederick, Achilles and Wieland (all four of which had been effectively abandoned by now). These ideas ranged over the politics of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin and the philosophy of Hegel and the Young Hegelians.

In the winter of –, while he was working on Opera and Drama, Wagner toyed with the idea of writing a comic opera based on a well-known folk-tale, Vor einem, der auszug, das Fürchten zu lernen (The Boy Who Set Out to Learn Fear), which he had come across in Grimms' Fairy Tales. "Imagine my surprise," he later wrote to his friend the violinist Theodor Uhlig, "when I suddenly realized that this youth was none other than young Siegfried!"

Within a week, in May , he had drawn up some fragmentary prose sketches for a prequel, or "comic counterpart", to Siegfried's Tod, which he called Jung-Siegfried (Young Siegfried), later altering the title to Der junge Siegfried (The Young Siegfried).^[15] A more extensive prose draft was completed by 1 June, and by 24 June this had been transformed into a verse draft. By August the fair copy of this verse libretto was finished and Wagner had even begun to set it to music.^[16] These efforts, however, never amounted to anything more than a handful of sketches, which were later used in the composition of Siegfried.

The earliest mention we have of a festival of three operas based on the Nibelungenlied is in the autobiographical work Eine Mittheilung an meine Freunde (A Communication to My Friends), which Wagner originally wrote in August "I propose to produce my myth in three complete dramas"^[17]

Der junge Siegfried and Siegfried's Tod were now clearly envisaged as the second and third dramas of a trilogy. By October, however, Wagner had decided that this trilogy required a prelude – was he thinking again of Aeschylus and the ancient Greeks, whose trilogies were usually accompanied by a satyr play?^[18] – and the text of Eine Mittheilung was duly altered to reflect the change. To the sentence quoted above he added the words, "which will be preceded by a great prelude". Nevertheless, Wagner always referred to the Ring as a trilogy rather than a tetralogy. He envisaged it being performed as part of a three-day festival preceded by a preliminary evening. Thanks to Aeschylus and his contemporaries, the term trilogy had a certain cachet for Wagner which the term tetralogy never acquired.

In October Wagner drafted a short prose sketch for the preliminary opera which would precede the trilogy proper. He vacillated over the title of the work, trying out in turn, Der Raub: Vorspiel (The Theft: Prelude), Der Raub des Rheingoldes (The Theft of the Rhinegold) and Das Rheingold (Vorspiel) (The Rhinegold (Prelude)). The following month he drafted some prose sketches for the first of the three main dramas, Siegmund und Sieglinde: der Walküre Bestrafung (Siegmund and Sieglinde: the Valkyrie's Punishment). Between March and November he elaborated these short sketches after his usual practice, developing prose drafts from them, which he then proceeded to turn into verse drafts. By that time he had renamed the operas Das Rheingold and Die Walküre respectively.

Whereas the prose draft of Das Rheingold was written before that of Die Walküre, the verse draft of Die Walküre preceded that of Das Rheingold. So while there is some truth to the oft-quoted remark that the Ring cycle was conceived backwards, it is not completely accurate.^[19]

The original prose sketch for Das Rheingold consisted of just three paragraphs, each prefaced by a Roman numeral. It would appear from this that Wagner originally conceived it as a three-act opera in its own right, and this is confirmed by a letter he wrote in October to his friend Theodor Uhlig: "Great plans for Siegfried: three dramas, with a three-act prelude.". By , however, Das Rheingold had become a one-act opera in four scenes. Nevertheless, there are good reasons for regarding the opening scene of the opera as a prologue ("The Theft of the Gold") to the main part of the drama ("Valhalla"). Thus, both Das Rheingold and Götterdämmerung share the same prologue-plus-trilogy structure which characterises the Ring cycle as a whole.^[20]

As for Die Walküre, the first act of this opera probably gave Wagner more trouble than any other act in the entire tetralogy. In his two prose sketches for it Wotan enters Hunding's house in his guise as Der Wanderer ("The Wanderer") and thrusts the sword into the ash tree, which Siegmund then withdraws only minutes later; the fully worked-out prose draft also brings Wotan onto the stage. It was only at a later stage in the evolution of the text that Wagner banished the Wanderer and his sword to the backstory which Sieglinde narrates to Siegmund. Now the sword is already embedded in the tree as the curtain goes up on Act 1 and Siegmund's withdrawal of it becomes a climactic piece of dramaturgy.^[21]

Opera and Drama[edit]

The title page of Oper und Drama

Parallel to these renewed efforts on The Ring was Wagner's work on a lengthy essay entitled Oper und Drama ("Opera and Drama"), which musicologist Deryck Cooke () has described as, "essentially a blueprint [for the Ring]". Wagner's principal theoretical work, Oper und Drama grew out of a draft of an essay on Das Wesen der Oper ("The Essence of Opera"), which, preparatory to the composition of Siegfried's Tod, he wrote in an attempt "to tidy up a whole life that now lay behind me, to articulate each half-formed intuition on a conscious level".^[22] First mentioned in a letter to Theodor Uhlig on 20 September , the work was begun by 9 October. Wagner, it seems, anticipated that it would be no longer than the other essays he had recently completed; but over the winter of –, it grew into a book of some considerable size. Completed by 20 January , just four months after Wagner conceived it, it was first published in by J. J. Weber of Leipzig. It was in the pages of Opera and Drama that Wagner's nebulous or half-conscious ideas on artistic method and the relationship between music and drama were first given concrete expression.^[23]

The title page of Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft

Appreciation of The Ring, and of the ideas which inform it, is assisted by placing it in the context of Wagner's wider literary and political endeavours of the period. Four of his prose works, the so-called "Zürich Manifestos", which helped to establish Wagner's reputation as a controversial writer) are particularly relevant:

Der Ring des Nibelungen[edit]

It was in that Wagner finally settled upon the name Der Ring des Nibelungen for the complete cycle. Other titles that were considered and rejected included: Das Gold des Nibelungen (The Gold of the Nibelung), which appeared on the title page of the verse draft of Die Walküre; and Der Reif des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), which was mentioned in a letter to August Röckel, dated 12 September On 14 October , however, Wagner informed Theodor Uhlig that he had finally decided that the title of the entire cycle would be Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung, or The Nibelung's Ring).

In November and December , Wagner made extensive revisions to the libretti of Der junge Siegfried and Siegfried's Tod. This was partly to accommodate the expansion of the cycle and the growing significance of Wotan, the protagonist of the first two parts of the tetralogy, and partly to reflect Wagner's reading of the philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach (see below).^[24] The changes to Der junge Siegfried were entered into the first fair copy (Reinschrift des Textbuches), while those to Siegfried's Tod were entered into the third fair copy (Viertschrift des Textbuches). In each case several pages of the fair copy were replaced with newly written ones. The principal changes to Siegfried's Tod involved the opening scene of the prologue (the Norns scene), Brünnhilde's scene with Waltraute (which had originally included all nine Valkyries), and Brünnhilde's closing speech at the end of the opera.

Fair copies of Das Rheingold and Die Walküre and a fourth fair copy of Siegfried's Tod (Fünftschrift des Textbuches) were completed by 15 December and the entire text was privately published in February ^[25] Fifty copies were printed, most of which were given to Wagner’ friends. Over the course of four evenings (16–19 February ) Wagner gave a public reading of the complete text in Zürich's Hôtel Baur au Lac. This text, however, did not represent the final version, as Wagner often made changes to his libretti while he was setting them to music. In the case of the Ring such changes were duly entered into Wagner's personal copy of the printing; but not all of these emendations were incorporated in either the public printing of or the version in the Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen of , a situation which has caused unending problems for scholars, translators and performers alike.

Furthermore, it was probably not until that Wagner definitively changed the titles of the third and fourth parts of the Ring to Siegfried and Götterdämmerung respectively.^[26] In the texts of all four Ring operas were published for the first time under their present titles.^[27]

The end of the Ring[edit]

The final scene of the Ring probably caused Wagner more trouble than any other. He rewrote the text for it several times and his final thoughts were never made absolutely clear. Six or seven different versions exist or can be reconstructed from Wagner's drafts:

• Original Ending (early December ) – Wagner's first ending for the cycle was optimistic and confident. The ring is returned to the Rhine; Alberich and the Nibelungs, who were enslaved by the power of the ring, are liberated. In her closing speech, Brünnhilde declares that Wotan is all-powerful and everlasting; she gives up her own life and leads Siegfried to Valhalla, where he is reconciled with Wotan and order is restored. Siegfried and Brünnhilde are depicted rising above Siegfried's funeral pyre to Valhalla to cleanse Wotan of his crime and redeem the gods, rather as The Dutchman and Senta ascend above the clouds at the end of Der fliegende Holländer. A major difference between this draft and subsequent revisions is that there is no suggestion here that the Gods are destroyed. Brünnhilde's final oration stresses the cleansing effect of Siegfried's death:

"Hear then, you mighty Gods. Your guilt is abolished: the hero takes it upon himself. The Nibelungs’ slavery is at an end, and Alberich shall again be free. This Ring I give to you, wise sisters of the watery deeps. Melt it down and keep it free from harm."

• First Revision (before 18 December ) – the second fair copy of the libretto for Siegfried's Tod (Drittschrift des Textbuches) was made almost immediately after the first. It incorporates several revisions, most of which are quite minor, and none of which affects the ending. The only major change, as noted above, was the addition of the Hagen's Watch episode to Act I. After completing this fair copy, however, Wagner made two marginal alterations to Brünnhilde's closing speech. In the first of these she declares that the gods have now atoned for their misrule of the world, and she urges them to accept Siegfried as a new member of the Norse pantheon. This was clearly an attempt by Wagner to restore Siegfried's role as Christlike redeemer of the gods, taking their guilt upon himself and by his death atoning for their sins. The second alteration, added later, is quite different. Brünnhilde now admonishes the gods to "depart powerless", leaving the world to mankind;

"Fade away in bliss before the deed of Man: the hero you created. I proclaim to you freedom from fear, through blessed redemption in death."

• May Revision – in May Wagner made a third fair copy of the text (Viertschrift des Textbuches) in the hopes of having it published. Unfortunately this manuscript, which is presently in the Bayreuth Archives, is fragmentary, some of its pages having been discarded during the next revision, for which it was the source-text. Among the missing pages are the final few, so it is impossible to tell whether either of the marginal verses added to the final page of the second fair copy was incorporated into Brünnhilde's closing speech.
• Feuerbach Ending (November and December ) – by the time Wagner had completed the libretti for Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, he had come to realize that the cycle must end with the destruction by fire of both Valhalla and the gods. This necessitated further and far-reaching revisions of both Der junge Siegfried and Siegfried's Tod. The new ending of the latter was influenced by Wagner's reading of Ludwig Feuerbach, whose writing suggested that Gods were the construction of human minds, and that love had primacy over all other human endeavours. In this Feuerbach ending Brünnhilde proclaims the destruction of the Gods and their replacement with a human society ruled by love:

"The holiest hoard of my wisdom I bequeath to the world. Not wealth, not gold, nor godly splendour; not house, not court, nor overbearing pomp; not troubled treaties’ deceiving union, nor the dissembling custom of harsh law: Rapture in joy and sorrow comes from love alone."

This ending was added by Wagner to the third fair copy (Viertschrift des Textbuches) of the work.^{[citation needed]} Although the Feuerbachian lines were eventually dropped, the other significant change to the ending (viz. the substitution of the gods’ destruction for the liberation of the Nibelungs) was retained in all subsequent versions.

• Schopenhauer Ending () – following his discovery of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his growing interest in Buddhist philosophy,^[28] Wagner once again changed the ending of the Ring.^[29] The Schopenhauer ending stressed self-overcoming, resignation and the illusory nature of human existence, in keeping with the notion of negation of the Will. Brünnhilde sees herself redeemed from the endless cycle of birth, suffering, death and rebirth; enlightened by love, she achieves the state of non-being, or Nirvana. Wagner wrote out a prose sketch of this new ending in (WWV 86D Text VIIIb), but he did not set it to verse until or , adding the text and its fair copy to his personal copy of the printing of the Ring libretti. Brünnhilde's new verses (which were intended to precede the passage beginning, "Grane, mein Ross") close with the words:

"Were I no more to fare to Valhalla's fortress, do you know whither I fare? I depart from the home of desire, I flee forever the home of delusion; the open gates of eternal becoming I close behind me now: To the holiest chosen land, free from desire and delusion, the goal of the world's migration, redeemed from incarnation, the enlightened woman now goes. The blessed end of all things eternal, do you know how I attained it? Grieving love's profoundest suffering opened my eyes for me: I saw the world end."^[30]

• Final Ending () – when Wagner finally came to set the ending to music in , he reverted to the revision, but shorn of its closing Feuerbachian lines. Although Wagner never set either the Schopenhauerian or the Feuerbachian lines, he did include them as footnotes in the final printed edition of the text, together with a note to the effect that while he preferred the Schopenhauerian lines, he declined to set them because their meaning was better expressed by the music alone. In other words, the ending he finally set to music is Schopenhauerian in its intention even though this is never stated explicitly in the libretto.^[31]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

Notes[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

• Burbidge, Peter (). Sutton, Richard (ed.). The Wagner Companion. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN&#;.
• Cooke, Deryck (). I Saw the World End. London: Clarendon Press. ISBN&#;.
• Dahlhaus, Carl (). Über den Schluss der Götterdämmerung. Regensburg.
• Darcy, Warren (). Wagner's Das Rheingold. Oxford University Press. ISBN&#;.
• Deathridge, John (). "Cataloguing Wagner". The Richard Wagner Centenary in Australia. Adelaide. pp.&#;–
• Deathridge, John (). Geck, Martin; Voss, Egon (eds.). Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke Richard Wagners und ihrer Quellen. Mainz: Schott. ISBN&#;.
• Deathridge, John (). The Ring: An Introduction. Program notes to Siegfried, performed by the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, conductor James Levine (Deutsche Grammophon CD ).
• Donington, Robert (). Wagner's Ring and Its Symbols: The Music and the Myth. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN&#;.
• Magee, Elizabeth (). Richard Wagner and the Nibelungs. London: Clarendon Press. ISBN&#;.
• May, Thomas (). Decoding Wagner. Milwaukee: Amadeus Press. ISBN&#;.
• McCreless, Patrick (). Wagner's Siegfried: Its Drama, History and Music. Michigan: Ann Arbor. ISBN&#;.
• Millington, Barry, ed. (). The Wagner Compendium: A Guide to Wagner's Life and Music. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN&#;.
• Newman, Ernest (). Wagner Nights. London: Putnam. ASIN BCHKMY.
• Newman, Ernest (). The Life of Richard Wagner, Vol. II: –. London: Cambridge University Press. ISBN&#;.
• Porges, Heinrich (). Wagner Rehearsing the Ring. Jacobs, Robert L. (trans.). New York: Cambridge. ISBN&#;.
• Sadie, Stanley, ed. (). The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. London: Macmillan. ISBN&#;.
• Strobel, Otto, ed. (). Richard Wagner: Skizzen und Entwürfe zur Ring-Dichtung. Munich.
• Wagner, Richard (). My Life. Gray, Andrew L.; Whittall, Mary (Eng trans.). New York: Cambridge. ISBN&#;.

External links[edit]

Note:  This is a machine-based translation.

José Cura uses language with precision and purpose;  the computer does not.  

We offer it only a a general guide to the conversation and the ideas exchanged but the following should not be considered definitive.

José Cura "I am a Renaissance artist"

This giant of Argentine origin is revolutionizing the world of opera not only with his voice but with his daring way of performing.  After an unusual multimedia version of La traviata, he also triumphed in the classical music record market.

BYN

Susana Gavína

August

 Dark and penetrating look, jet-black hair, half a beard that sets boundaries to his marked features, all crowning his generous six feet in height.  One hundred and eighty centimetres imprisoned by a body worthy of a gladiator, worked for years on martial arts.  This is the first impression when José Cura makes an appearance in one of the rooms of the Teatro Real in Madrid, where the interview will take place. But when the distance becomes shorter, and his eyes fall on those of his interlocutor, one realizes the tremendous magnetism of this 37 years old tenor and conductor, born in Rosario (Argentina).

Less than a year ago, José Cura appeared in Otello at Madrid's Teatro Real, where he will return next season with Il trovatore, also by Verdi.  This is a composer very present in Cura’s career, as evidenced by his latest projects, among which are an album that will soon be released that includes arias by the Italian composer, and the television broadcast of a very particular version of La traviata.  In a multimedia show format, this opera, inspired by the novel The Lady of the Camellias by Alexander Dumas, was performed in various natural settings in Paris and broadcast live on television in more than countries last June. The Argentinean tenor was accompanied by the conductor Zubin Mehta and the soprano Eteri Gvazava. And as testimony in sound of this work, a recording of it is already in sale in stores.

BYN:  What moved you to participate in this multimedia Traviata?

JC: When the producer of  La traviata decided to make this film, he called me and I was interested in the project, although getting involved in the cliché that people had of Alfredo's character was another matter. However, Roberto Zaccaria, the stage director, wanted to create a different Alfredo, darker as a character, with more temperament, that would justify in some way that a woman like Traviata, who had everything and who lived maintained by the members of high society, would leave everything to move in with a nobody.  That Alfredo should have, at least, a very special magnetism. And based on that we build the character.  Right or wrong?  I don’t know.  I don't want to say that we have pontificated and that now Alfredo should be like that. This is the version that goes with my personality, with the color of my voice

Roles with meat

BYN: This justifies approaching a character like this, since you moves best in meaty roles

JC: It is not difficult for me to adopt the personality of the characters, but what I cannot fight against is the dramatic connotations of my voice. I can't sing like a light lyrical tenor, because I'm not one. Taking into account that limitation, what I did was to give the character some stronger nuances, which during the "toast" so well known to all, went beyond that popular music, stopping at the words that Alfredo says are very daring, scandalous, even with a double Freudian meaning.

BYN: I imagine there will be purists who have accused this work of being something of a "pseudo-opera," a multimedia show lacking a true operatic line.

JC:  And what is opera really? Everything can be a "pseudo-opera" if viewed from a rigorous point of view. I just did a version of Otello set in in Munich. This would also be a "pseudo-opera," because Otello did not happen at that time. What determines this cataloging? I am in favor of every activity of the human being that means a search, an attempt to do things differently from what we have learned, and which, depending on the results, are repeated or not.

BYN: You are a man of your time, who is hooked on the advancement of new technology.

JC:  It’s a normal thing. It was the same for those men who stood out in their time.  In the transition from the harpsichord to the traditional piano, for example, composers had to adapt to the new capabilities of the instruments being built. All the men who have participated and wanted to be protagonists and witnesses of the evolution have adapted, making mistakes and also successes, like the world. Now we live in a time that is like that.  You can continue doing things as before—why not?—but also try the new. I consider myself a Renaissance artist.

In Verdi's light

BYN: This season you debuted in Madrid, in this same theater, with Otello, and next time you will return to it with Il trovatore, both by Verdi. At the end of this month the international launch of an album with arias by the Italian composer will take place, and that will arrive in Spain in mid-September. What is Verdi's role in your career?

JC:  The other day I was asked the following question: "Are you a Verdian tenor?"  To which I replied, "And what is the Verdian voice?"  I don't think anyone knows what this is, and I express that in the liner notes for my CD.   For me, the search for a Verdian voice is like the search for the Holy Grail. They say it exists, but for now, it is part of men's fantasy.

BYN: You are an expert in doing multiple things at once. You have proven himself to be a versatile artist: tenor, conductor, composer

JC:  Maybe it's because I have a Renaissance vision of my career. I’m an holistic artist who does not have a recalcitrant specialty in which I’m fixed without looking beyond. This is how I manage my career as a conductor, as a composer, as a singer Also, for the last few years, I have dedicated myself to photography, which I have always been passionate about. Very soon, as soon as they are edited, I will release my first books.

BYN: Why this interest in photography?

JC: When you work with cameras or lights, with images, you have no choice but, sooner or later, to be passionate about visual art. Many actors paint or draw. I like photography and understanding how light, shadows, angles, lenses work You better understand how to remain in front of the public. Everything enriches. Dedicating yourself to one facet does not mean that you don’t have time to do other things, or that you are mediocre in others areas.

BYN:  You are also very committed to acting as an actor, as a singer. Is it essential that the singer knows how to act now in opera?

JC:  I don't know if it is essential. You are talking to me about a very definite term: "singer." It may not be essential for a singer, but for the opera performer, yes. If you take opera only as a singing phenomenon and nothing else, then it is not essential as it has been that way for many years. The singer would stand in the proscenium and sing. But if you refer to the artist then as a whole you must know how to act, where and how to stand, how to adapt their gestures to the character. It is not the same to be the king as it is the vassal, a bohemian hero rather than a politician If you are Otello or if you are Samson. The capital letter Opera, because it is a sum of theater, lights, music, staging, is almost the most complete art form. If you consider yourself a complete artist, then opera takes on another meaning, at least for me.

BYN:  In the beginning, you did everything, even swept the stage.

JC: I first went on stage when I was twelve or thirteen, a quarter of a century ago. I've had the good fortune to go through all the stages, from placing the chairs and the lecterns and sweeping the stage, to what I am now: a solid artist. I have gone through all the colors and nuances of a stage. Strength does not come only from a determined technical training, it is also provided by life experience. After twenty-five years in the theater, one feels comfortable about it. It is like an extension of oneself, you do not feel the terror of crossing the boundaries of the stage, as if it were a sacred hymen.

BYN: This means that you are no longer afraid when you have to act?

JC: One thing is the tension of responsibility, which one never loses; on the contrary, it increases with popularity because people come to the theater not only for the opera, but also for you. And another thing is terror on stage. I enjoy and have fun on it. If you don't have a good time, neither does the audience because they notice it.  When you are sick, you notice how the audience is sitting on the edge of their seats suffering for you.

Placido Domingo

BYN: The comparison with Plácido Domingo is a constant in your career.  Does it flatter, offend, amuse you?

JC:  All the comparisons with the greats are still a compliment. It is a kind of obligatory initiation rite that all young people of any discipline go through. If you are a new model, they will compare you to the latest top model; if you are a car racer, with Fitipaldi; or a footballer, with Maradona The public creates associations with the beloved [established] artist and the young artist that he likes. Then, over time, things begin to separate and they recognize you for who you are. It is a right that must be earned. In the first years of my career, these comparisons with Plácido Domingo were often made. However, now they are hardly heard anymore. Now there is talk of José Cura.

BYN: It's like becoming independent from parents

JC: Yes, it can be understood like this, to become independent, but in a positive sense. What is clear to me is that an artist does not repeat anyone.

BYN: Another of the topics that recur when José Cura is mentioned is your status as a "sex symbol."

JC: Yes, too. Something I find horrible.  One of the nicest things that has happened to me now in Germany, where I had given a concert but had never done an opera, is that I have always been sold as the "handsome boy" or the "sex symbol," something very dangerous when it comes to offering a classical music product, because people create a very superficial image of the artist. I was flattered that the reviews echoed such comments but did not interfere with the evaluation of me as an artist.

BYN: Do you cultivate or pay special attention to your physical appearance?

JC: My past as an athlete gives me a certain look. Having a very large body, very bulky, makes it difficult to move gracefully or elegantly on stage. What has helped me a lot in sport, especially martial arts, is in learning to walk, to gesticulate in a certain way, to walk a stage without looking like an elephant. I weigh a hundred kilos, and moving them elegantly is not the same as moving seventy kilos.

Word and Music Studies Selected Essays on Opera by Ulrich Weisstein

WORD AND MUSIC STUDIES 8 Series Editors

Walter Bernhart Michael Halliwell Lawrence Kramer Suzanne M. Lodato Steven Paul Scher†Werner Wolf

The book series WORD AND MUSIC STUDIES (WMS) is the central organ of the International Association for Word and Music Studies (WMA), an association founded in to promote transdisciplinary scholarly inquiry devoted to the relations between literature/verbal texts/language and music. WMA aims to provide an international forum for musicologists and literary scholars with an interest in interart/intermedial studies and in crossing cultural as well as disciplinary boundaries. WORD AND MUSIC STUDIES will publish, generally on an annual basis, theme-oriented volumes, documenting and critically assessing the scope, theory, methodology, and the disciplinary and institutional dimensions and prospects of the ďŹ eld on an international scale: conference proceedings, collections of scholarly essays, and, occasionally, monographs on pertinent individual topics as well as research reports and bibliographical and lexicographical work.

Word and Music Studies Selected Essays on Opera by Ulrich Weisstein

Edited by

Walter Bernhart

Amsterdam - New York, NY

The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO , Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. ISBN X ISBN ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY Printed in The Netherlands

Contents Preface vii

Selected Essays on Opera by Ulrich Weisstein The Libretto as Literature () 3 Cocteau, Stravinsky, Brecht, and the Birth of Epic Opera () 17 Introduction to The Essence of Opera () 33 Reflections on a Golden Style: W. H. Auden’s Theory of Opera () 43 “Per porle in lista”: Da Ponte/Leporello’s Amorous Inventory and its Literary and Operatic Antecedents from Tirso de Molina to Giovanni Bertati () 65 Educating Siegfried () 91 (Pariser) Farce oder wienerische Maskerade? Die französischen Quellen des Rosenkavalier () The Little Word und: Tristan und Isolde as Verbal Construct () Benedetto Marcellos Il Teatro alla moda: Scherz, Satire, Parodie oder tiefere Bedeutung? ()

Von Ballhorn ins Bockshorn gejagt: Unwillkürliche Parodie und unfreiwillige Komik in Ambroise Thomas’ Mignon () “Die letzte Häutung”. Two German Künstleropern of the Twentieth Century: Hans Pfitzner’s Palestrina and Paul Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler () Between Progress and Regression: The Text of Stravinsky’s Opera The Rake’s Progress in the Light of its Evolution () What is Romantic Opera? Toward a Musico-Literary Definition () Böse Menschen singen keine Arien: Prolegomena zu einer ungeschriebenen Geschichte der Opernzensur ()

Sources Acknowledgments Register of Persons and Operas Mentioned in the Text

Preface Ulrich Weisstein, well-known as an international authority in the fields of comparative literature and comparative arts, is one of those scholars of worldwide distinction who have paved the way for the now flourishing field of intermedia studies. His most extensive intermedial concerns have always been with the relations of literature to the visual arts and to music. Already his dissertation was devoted to opera, which is a form that has become his life-time obsession. It is in the operatic field that Professor Weisstein has most significantly contributed to the area of Word and Music Studies, which sufficiently explains why his work on opera is now naturally finding its way into the book series of that name. What is here presented is a collection of essays which reflect fifty years of Ulrich Weisstein’s involvement with opera and which represent thirty-five years of his publishing activity in the field. The necessarily restrictive selection of essays from his impressively large output on opera is primarily governed by the wish to present to an interested scholarly readership texts that are representative of their author’s work and, at the same time, are unlikely to be readily available through other channels. Further selection considerations, concerning limits of space and the avoidance of occasional thematic duplications, have led to the sequence of fourteen essays collected in this volume, which are arranged in chronological order and – following the publisher’s policy – are predominantly written in English. Only four – of a substantial number in that language – are in German, but the volume would have been sadly diminished without them as they address essential and particularly suggestive issues. The title of the first essay here reprinted, “The Libretto as Literature”, has the character of a motto for much of what follows, as it points to a central concern of Weisstein’s work on opera. He introduced the serious study of libretti in their own right and, thus, can be seen as an early initiator of librettology as an independent branch of

viii

Preface

literary and intermedial studies. His keenest interest is in the genesis of dramaturgically successful operas, tracing adaptive processes from textual sources to final products and investigating the collaborative efforts of writers and composers in creating effective operas. A further innovative focus is on the social ambience of operas as, for example, reflected in Marcelloâ€&#x;s Il Teatro alla moda with its brilliant satire on operatic activities in early-eighteenth-century Italy, or in the surprisingly widespread practices of opera censorship, on which the most recent essay included in this selection throws a strong first light. Generally, the essays show a tendency to discuss works which are not necessarily the most popular and most frequently studied ones, which results in a welcome widening of perspective and offers opportunities for unexpected discoveries, such as a number of so-called artist operas, which reflect Ulrich Weissteinâ€&#x;s most personal interests as an indefatigable art-lover. His wide range of experience allows for a birdâ€&#x;s-eye overview of the various types of opera that have emerged over the centuries, an overview that he has given in his seminal earlier volume, The Essence of Opera, and which led to his attempts at defining the specific properties of such forms as the romantic opera or the epic opera, to be found in this selection. It is to be hoped that the essays here collected, written as they are in an accessible, essentially non-technical language, make not only a profitable reading, but a pleasurable one as well. Thanks are due to Professor Weisstein himself for his untiring commitment and enthusiasm in collaborating on letting this book see the light of day, and to Ingrid Hable, who has once again been a most conscientious help in bringing a volume of Word and Music Studies into the printable shape as required by current publishing standards. All essays have been reset, but bibliographical documentation has not been unified and basically follows the principles of the original publications. Yet it has been carefully checked and, where necessary, made consistent and occasionally corrected. The sources of the essays and the acknowledgments of permissions for reprint are found at the end of the volume. Graz, June

Walter Bernhart

Selected Essays on Opera by Ulrich Weisstein

The Libretto as Literature () Considering the wealth of operatic material hidden in the world’s libraries, a disproportionately small amount of scholarship has, so far, gone into its critical evaluation. It seems especially desirable that the ‘ancillary’ genre of the libretto should receive fairer treatment both with regard to its dramatic and its poetic qualities, for the serious critical attempts to deal with this stepchild of literature are few and far between. All the greater is the challenge posed for the literary critic of the libretto. By some sort of tacit agreement, the dramatic aspect of opera is generally considered to be the domain of musicologists, the more catholic of whom (Edgar Istel, Edward J. Dent, and a few others) have honestly striven to restore the dignity of the music drama. Most of their colleagues, however, incline to overemphasize the role of the composer, a sin exemplified by Kerman’s statement, “For the composer, I should like to believe that the essential problem is to clarify the central dramatic idea, to refine the vision. This cannot be left to the librettist; the dramatist is the composer.”1 (Italics mine). This opinion is shared by many composers who, without directly denouncing the libretto, claim sole authority for judging its ‘operatic’ qualities. Richard Strauss expresses the conviction that “except for the person who wants to set it to music, nobody is able to judge a serious and poetically accomplished libretto before having heard it performed together with its music”.2 And Giancarlo Menotti asserts that “to read and judge a libretto without its musical setting is unfair both to the librettist and the composer”.3 1

Joseph Kerman. Opera as Drama (New York. Knopf. ), p.

2 Letter to Hugo von Hofmannsthal of May 3, See their Briefwechsel (Zürich. Atlantis. ), p. The translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. 3

“Opera Isn’t Dead”. Etüde, Vol. LXVIII, No. 2, February,

4

The Libretto as Literature

There have indeed been literary critics with an interest in the nonmusical aspects of opera (I think of Bulthaupt’s Dramaturgie der Oper and the Tristan chapter in Francis Fergusson’s Idea of a Theater); but their influence has hardly been such as to eflect an appreciable change in critical opinion. On the whole, then, we are still faced with the situation described by Dent: “The libretto, as a thing in itself, has never received the systematic analytical study which is its due.”4 This is all the more perplexing since, in a number of notable instances, the collaboration between composer and librettist has been exhaustively documented in their published correspondence (Verdi-Boito and Strauss-Hofmannsthal5). When asked to furnish the names of the most prominent librettists in operatic history, even the most enthusiastic opera fan will find his knowledge restricted to Metastasio, Da Ponte, Scribe, Boito, Hofmannsthal and perhaps W. H. Auden. Rare is the operaphile who could cite Quinault, Calsabigi, Zeno, Helmine von Chezy, Ghislanzoni and Ramuz. Operatic audiences do not think of these individuals as authors in their own right, although Auden’s poetry, Scribe’s plays and Hofmannsthal’s demanding œuvre enjoy a certain popularity among the intelligentsia of their native countries. Their librettos are offered for sale in the lobby of the Metropolitan, in Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, and wherever there is an operatic stagione; but who bothers to read them from beginning to end? Most of the operas in the standard repertory have been heard so often that almost everybody knows their plots. Even such plays as Pelléas and Salome, which have been composed integrally, seem to have lost their status as literature, the musical versions having, in a manner of speaking, superseded their literary antecedents. Such is the triumph of music in opera – a triumph which luckily has not as yet extended to Büchner’s Wozzeck, Kafka’s Trial 4

“Un Ballo in Maschere”. Music and Letters, April,

5 The Verdi-Boito correspondence was published by Alessandro Luzio in Carteggi Verdiani (Rome. Reale Accademia d’Italia. ), Vol. II, p. 95ff.

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(with music by Gottfried von Einem) and other works melodramatized by composers of the Expressionistic and post-Expressionistic generation. Viewing these facts, how can one expect the average listener to challenge the truth of Kerman’s statement? Even in the mid-twentieth century it requires courage to come to the rescue of that much maligned and self-effacing individual, the librettist. Kerman’s point of view is certainly justified with regard to operas in which the music has overcome the obstacles presented by the underlying text. Beethoven’s Fidelio and Mozart’s Magie Flute offer examples of the transcendence of textual shortcomings, Verdi’s Il Trovatore of the defeat of structural absurdities. The first two works reveal a loftiness not only of purpose (for such was certainly present in the plays of Bouilly and Schikaneder) but also of expression (masking the triteness of the poetry). In the quatrain assigned to the three Knaben in Act I of The Magie Flute, the banality of the verses is transcended by Mozart’s sovereign treatment of the metrical pattern.6 Similar instances abound in the songs of Schubert and Schumann. Another abuse of the librettist’s privilege consists in the practice, common in Handelian times, of inserting irrelevant arias borrowed from other works, adding bravura pieces (such as Constanze’s “Martern aller Arten” in The Abduction from the Seraglio) at the request of prima donnas and castrati, and distributing arias in deference to the artist’s reputation and salary. The following passage from a letter by Giuseppe Riva partly explains the dramatic failure of Handel’s operas: For this year and for the following there must be two equal parts in the operas for Cuzzoni and Faustina. Senesino is the chief male character, and his part must be heroic; the other three male parts must proceed by degrees with three arias each, one in each act. The duet should be at the end of the second act, and between the

6 “Dies kund zu tun, steht uns nicht an;/ Sei standhaft, duldsam und verschwiegen./ Bedenke dies; kurz, sei ein Mann,/ Dann, Jüngling, wirst du männlich siegen.”

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The Libretto as Literature

two ladies. If the subject has in it three ladies, it can serve because there is a third singer here.7

It is this curious practice, as well as many others indulged in by the makers of late Baroque operas, which Benedetto Marcello scorns in Il teatro alla moda8. But even in our own age operatic arias are often detached from their context for the sake of recordings, recitals, and concerts. It is well to remind the denunciators of the libretto that the spoken drama itself is based on a number of highly artificial conventions, few of which, to be sure, are as far removed from ‘lived’ reality as are their operatic counterparts. Every drama is a Gesamtkunstwerk whose printed text resembles a musical score in that it merely suggests the theatrical possibilities which are inherent in it. Soliloquy, aside, and chorus – which are a thorn in the flesh of the Naturalistic playwrights – still remain within the realm of language, the difference between them and ordinary discourse being quantitatively determined (at least by common consent, since it is wholly a matter of definition where to place the exact point at which the qualitative leap begins). The use of different meters to indicate different levels of consciousness is a more strictly musical device, however. It is illustrated by T. S. Eliot’s The Family Reunion, where the progression from seven-stress to two-stress lines corresponds to the operatic sequence: dialogue-recitative-aria/ensemble. But what are the specific conventions, at first strictly observed but later modified in the direction of greater realism, employed in the preclassical-classical-Romantic type of opera? The convention most likely to shock the naive observer derives from the principle of simultaneity which, negatively applied in the spoken drama, forbids the use of several individualized speakers at the same time – the chorus con-

7 Letter to Muratori of September 7, See Alexander Streatfeild’s article “Handel, Rolli and Italian Opera”. Musical Quarterly, July, 8 Published in an English version by Reinhard G. Pauly in Musical Quarterly, XXXIV (), p. ff.

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sisting of persons expressing themselves collectively. In opera, contrasting moods may be rendered simultaneously with an entirely pleasurable effect upon the listener. Stendhal effectively counters the objections of the “poor frigid souls [who] say [that] it is silly for five or six persons to sing at the same time” by pointing out that “experience completely ruins their argument”9. This rationalistic approach is exemplified by Calvin S. Brown’s interpretation of “the famous quartet from Rigoletto, with two persons inside a shack thinking they are alone, two outside spying on them, and all four singing full blast in sickly [sic] contrived harmony” For a very practical, but nonetheless superficial, reason this observation holds true with regard to the literary side of opera; for one cannot read several lines of poetry at once. Hence the awkwardness in the arrangement of the text in the printed versions of most librettos. Opera also employs a different concept of time, the horizontally progressing dramatic time (which is conceived in analogy with actual time) being replaced by a ‘timeless’ moment of reflection and introspection. Beginning with Mozart, however, the great melodramaturgists have intuitively modified this procedure by combining action and reflection in their ensembles, something Gluck had not yet dared to do. This reemergence of dramatic time is especially noticeable in Verdi’s maturest operas, where lyrical epiphanies (in the Joycean sense) go hand in hand with actions in which the scenic word (la parola scenica) rules. Like the reiterated shifting of levels of consciousness, the musical momentum required for increasing and decreasing emotional tensions seriously affects the structure of the lyrical drama. It corresponds to the phenomenon of crystallization which Stendhal analyzes in De l’amour.

9

Vie de Rossini (Paris. Le Divan. [n. d.]), Vol. I, p.

10 Music and Literature (Athens. University of Georgia Press. ), p.

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The Libretto as Literature

While affecting the listener much more directly than the spoken word (hence the empathic mode of reception presupposed in preExpressionistic operas), music is somewhat slower than language in reflecting the evolution of a feeling whose breadth is audibly manifested. Composed of arbitrary signs and primarily intended as a vehicle for thoughts and ideas, language denotes specific objects rather than picturing or reproducing them. It also has the advantage of knowing how to indicate rapid shifts of opinion and quick changes in attitude. But its very wealth points to its basic deficiency. Condemning music “because it cannot narrate”11, however, is just as foolish as chastising language for its failure to convey the rhythm of the emotions. Music, according to Schopenhauer, does not express the phenomenon itself but only the inner nature of all phenomena (not joy, sorrow, horror and pain themselves but their rhythmic substratum) Language, however, names the emotions. The merger of music and words, the temporal and the spatial, the general and the particular, should theoretically result in a more satisfactory image of the mental universe than is furnished by either in isolation. But, alas, so great are the difficulties to be overcome in the process of unification that the desired effect is rarely achieved. Returning to the musical momentum and its exigencies, we should take note of the fact that whereas in the spoken drama mood is usually the means to an end (the end being action), operatic action is commonly regarded as a point of departure, a hard core around which emotions may crystallize. The pyramidal scheme presented by Gustav Freytag in his Technik des Dramas has no place in pre-Expressionistic melodramaturgy. Instead of stressing the progression from scene to scene and from act to act (with the necessary retardations), the makers of opera concentrate on the act itself as their basic unit. Hence the need for intermissions at the conclusion of each act. Within this larger

11 Boileau in the preface to his fragmentary “Prologue d’opéra”. 12 See Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, II, 3, p.

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unit a fluctuation of moods between lyric and dramatic is often discernible. Similar to the symphonic development, where a theme may be shifted from major to minor and otherwise played upon, the operatic action moves in a wavelike rhythm that is peculiar to the lyrical drama. This symphonic structure is outlined by Hofmannsthal in the following résumé of his method of composition: The most difficult and at the same time most challenging task consists in balancing the spiritual motives, and in determining the inner relation between the characters and among the parts of the whole; in short: in designing the exact scheme of inner motives which must be in the poet’s – just as in the symphonist’s – mind. [] This spiritual web is the very essence [of opera]

Since music lacks the speed and verbal dexterity of language, fewer words are needed in opera than would be required in a play of comparable length. Librettos are usually shorter than the texts of ordinary dramas, and often to the point of embarrassing the listener or reader Repetitions are frequently called for if the librettist has failed to leave sufficient space for the music. This drastic reduction in the quantity of text, in conjunction with the highly sensual nature of music, necessitates a simplification of both action and characters, the emotions expressed in the closed musical numbers occupying a large segment of the time normally reserved for the dramatic events. The poet in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s dialogue “Poet and Composer” justly complains: It is the incredible brevity you demand of us. All our attempts to conceive or portray this or that passion, in weighty language are in vain; for everything has to be settled in a few lines which, in addition, have to lend themselves to the ruthless treatment which you inflict upon them

Opera seems often absurd because its characters are poorly motivated Character is defined succinctly and forthrightly and must be 13 Letter to Strauss of May 28, 14 “It is frightening to see how short is the libretto of Tristan, and how long the opera.” Hofmannsthal to Strauss in a letter of June 3, 15 The dialogue forms part of the sequence of stories entitled Die Serapionsbrüder. 16 To make matters worse, it is often hard to understand the singers. Strauss’s assertion that “in an opera, one third of the text is always wasted” is partly explained by the poor enunciation of the soloists and partly by the rich orchestral palette preferred by many modern composers.

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accepted at face value. Passion being the operatic coin of the realm, everything is seen in relation to it, even to the point where it becomes impossible sensually to distinguish between good and evil characters. Kierkegaard asserts that music is ethically indifferent and W. H. Auden maintains that, in opera, “feelings of joy, tenderness and nobility are not confined to ‘noble’ characters but are experienced by everybody, by the most conventional, most stupid, most depraved” In the closed number, mood seems to lead an existence apart from character. But in spite of this transformation of individuals into mouthpieces of generalized emotions (types), every surge of passion appears to be fresh and personal. As far as their feelings are concerned, operatic figures are individuals because the listener identifies himself with the emotions they radiate. They revert into types in the very moment in which their action falls short of the expectations aroused by these emotions (Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni). Taken by itself or in the melodramaturgical context, music is hard pressed when urged to represent falsehood, irony, or ambiguity. It was this deficiency which provided Hofmannsthal with a cogent explanation for the dramatic failure of Così fan tutte Nor is music capable of being humorous, at least not in the usual meaning of the word. Since humor results from the awareness of incongruity (it is a form of mental detachment), it cannot be rendered by music except indirectly. It is, after all, an intellectual rather than an emotional category. Perhaps the most ingenious way of expressing that incongruity in opera consists in the introduction of unmusical characters such as Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger. The aesthetic principles so far discussed largely apply to the socalled Nummernoper which, in Wagner’s time, began to give way to the durchkomponierte Oper (the opera composed integrally from beginning to end), whose structure shows a much greater conformity 17 “Some Reflections on Music and Opera”. Partisan Review, January/February, , p. 10ff. 18 See his letter to Strauss of August 13,

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with the spoken drama. At its worst, the music of the durchkomponierte Oper will endeavor to illustrate even the minutest variations in speech and action. By thus trying to operate on too narrow a basis it will often defeat its own musical purpose. This threat to musical integrity induced Wagner to use the pseudo-literary device of the leitmotif, which must not be confused with Berlioz’s idée fixe, a truly musical, because melodic and rhythmical, device. In the leitmotif, at least in its Wagnerian usage, the important musical category of repetition is turned into a literary cliché. Used more discreetly, the music of the durchkomponierte Oper will seek to refine upon that which the spoken word expresses unsatisfactorily; but in contrast with the Nummernoper it will do so contemporaneously with language rather than biding its time until an occasion for crystallization arises. Adding a new dimension to speech, it brings to the surface what the characters cannot or will not utter. It is a mirror of the unconscious In Tristan, life is presented as a stratified temporal process, the drama showing the surface, and the music the depth, of existence. If Tristan, intended for composition, is also a piece of literature, the same can be said with even greater veracity of the librettos fabricated by the Symbolists. Taking their clue from Verlaine’s plea for “de la musique avant toute chose”20, these writers were less concerned with the words themselves than with the mood evoked by them, i. e., with the latent music of their poetry If the music is thus regarded as being prefigured in the libretto, the question arises as to whether a musician is at all needed to spell it out, since ‘to spell out’, in the lan-

19 Busoni considers this to be the main function of music in opera. See his Entwurf einer neuen Aesthetik der Tonkunst of 20 In his poem “Art poétique”. 21 Hofmannsthal begged Strauss to credit him not “with the words themselves as they appear in the libretto but with that which lies unspoken between them” (letter of January 20, ).

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guage of the Symbolists, means to destroy the vagueness (l’indécis) essential to poetry. What would happen if some composer were to apply his art to Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard or Sea Gull, whose beauty is textural rather than structural? Shakespeare’s Othello, too, comes so close to being a lyrical drama that Stanislavsky conceived of it altogether in musical terms Hofmannsthal’s evaluation of his librettos recalls the favorite Romantic image for the relationship between poetry and music: the riverbed into which the composer pours the enlivening water of his melodies. Goethe, who idolized Mozart and Cherubini, enjoined his librettist “to follow the poetry just as a brook follows the interstices, juttings and declivities of the rocks” But whereas Hofmannsthal’s theory of opera centers in the claim that poetry comes ever so close to being itself music, Goethe ‘Romantically’ believes in the subordination of the poetry. For him, as for Mozart, “the word is to be the obedient servant of the music” Another concept of melodramaturgy evolved with a view toward granting drama equal status within the Gesamtkunstwerk (a term sometimes inappropriately used in this connection) prevails among the Expressionists. In their epic operas, the constituent parts are meant to live a life of their own, each being asked to comment upon the other. In Stravinsky’s Histoire du soldat, the orchestra is placed on the stage in full view of the audience – another example of Expressionistic alienation Neither Brecht’s Dreigroschenoper nor Histoire is intended for empathic reception on the part of the audience. And although Brecht’s drama can be enjoyed as literature, Weill’s music 22 See especially p. of Stanislavsky Produces Othello, Helen Novak, tr. (London. Geoffrey Bles. ). 23 From his letter to Philipp Christoph Kayser of June 20, 24 From a letter written by Mozart to his father. 25 See Stravinsky: An Autobiography (New York. Simon & Schuster. ), p. ff.

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adds a new dimension, though hardly the one which Brecht envisaged. Indeed, now that the novelty of the work has faded, many of Weill’s tunes are found to be ingratiating. Such is the fate of many experimental works that have since become classics. A similar fallacy persisting in the short but varied history of opera underlies Gluck’s melodramaturgy (his theory but fortunately not his practice). An ardent champion of the music drama, Gluck “sought to restrain music to its true function, namely that of serving poetry by means of the expression, without interrupting the action or spoiling its effect by useless and superfluous arguments” As Berlioz observed, the catch lies in the word “expression”; for any serious attempt by a great composer to fortify the language of a drama inevitably works in favor of the music It takes considerable effort and self-denial on the part of the composer to create the kind of musical arabesque which Verdi uses in his Falstaff and Strauss in his conversational operas An interesting sidelight on the classicistic approach to opera is shed by the eighteenth-century notion of counter-sense, which Rousseau defines as a “vice indulged in by the composer when he renders a thought other than that which he ought to render” Such misuse may refer to single words and phrases as well as to entire scenes or situations (depending on whether the composer is stimulated by language, character, or action). A Romantic perversion of this concept occurs in Stendhal’s book on Rossini when he praises the composer for having overcome certain difficulties inherent in the libretto of one of his op-

26 Preface to Alceste in a dedicatory letter to Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany (). 27 See his essay “L’Alceste d’Euripide, celles de Quinault, et de Calsabigi, les partitions de Gluck, de Schweizer, de Guglielmi et de Handel sur ce sujet”. A Travers Chants (Paris. ), p. ff. 28 See Strauss’s letter to Stefan Zweig of December 19, , in their Briefwechsel, Willi Schuh, ed. (Frankfurt. S. Fischer. ). 29 Article “Contresens” in his Dictionnaire de musique. According to Rousseau, it was d’Alembert who claimed that “music being merely a translation of words into song, it is obvious that one can fall into countersense”.

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eras Here the counter-sense is understood to have originated in the literary substratum of opera, this being a parodistic view of the libretto as literature. Two further observations may help to clarify the Romantic point of view with regard to the libretto. One would normally expect the libretto to form the basis of an opera, i. e., prima le parole e poi la musica But theatrically-minded composers have occasionally reverted to the unorthodox practice of demanding words for a piece of music already completed. Mozart, discussing The Abduction from the Seraglio, informs his father: “I have explained to Stephanie [the librettist] the words I require for this aria – indeed I had finished composing most of it before Stephanie knew anything whatever about it.”32 Stendhal manifests his contempt for the librettos of the operas he heard at La Scala when informing his readers: “I take the situation envisaged by the librettist and ask for a single word, not more than one, to qualify the emotion which underlies it. Nobody should be so imprudent as to read the entire libretto.”33 And Auden says as much when stating: The verses which the librettist writes are not addressed to the public but are really a private letter to the composer. They have their moment of glory, the moment in which they suggest to him a certain melody; when that is over, they are as expendable as infantry is to a Chinese general; they must efface themselves and cease to care what happens to them

Abandoning himself to his musical fancy, Berlioz epitomizes the Romantic attitude when defending his choice of Hungary as the setting for the initial scene of Faust’s Damnation: Why did the composer cause his protagonist to go to Hungary? Because he wished to introduce a piece of instrumental music whose theme is Hungarian. [] 30 Vie de Rossini, I, p. 31 This is an inversion of the title of a one-act opera by Salieri (with a libretto by the Abbé de Casti) to which Strauss refers in the motto of his opera Capriccio. 32 Letter of September 26, See The Letters of Mozart and His Family, Emily Anderson, tr. (London. Macmillan. ). 33 Vie de Rossini, I, p. 34 “Some Reflections on Music and Opera”.

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15

He would have sent him anywhere if he had found the slightest musical [Italics mine] reason for doing so

This much for the historical side of a critique of the libretto as literature. To those who object to this approach because it violates the spirit in which many librettos were conceived (i. e., their subordination to music) I can only answer that by the same token we would deprive ourselves of the pleasure of studying the sketches for a painting, the bozzetto of a sculpture, the plans for a building, or a film script. It may well be that in the case of the libretto the percentage of literary failures is exceptionally high and that much time would be required to separate the grain from the chaff. But why be discouraged by such a prospect? Chances are that the student of the libretto as literature will get a fair return for his investment in time and effort.

35 From his preface to the opera-oratorio.

Cocteau, Stravinsky, Brecht, and the Birth of Epic Opera () As its title indicates, this paper is not intended to be a comprehensive survey of anti-Romantic and anti-Wagnerian tendencies in modern opera, but merely an attempt to evaluate certain affinities among Jean Cocteau’s Le Coq et l’Arlequin, a collection of brilliant aperçus about music and the theater, Stravinsky-Ramuz’ Histoire du Soldat, BrechtWeill’s Dreigroschenoper, and the series of Anmerkungen which Brecht appended to the latter work. An historical outline of the epic trends on the musical stage of our day would necessarily entail consideration of such other key works as Erik Satie’s Parade, Milhaud’s Le Boeuf sur le Toît, Cocteau’s Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel, Milhaud’s La Création du Monde, Sitwell-Walton’s Façade, and ClaudelMilhaud’s Christophe Colomb, whose authors, instead of wishing to place the audience at once in a “narcotic atmosphere”, “wanted to show how the soul gradually reaches music”1. Taking the programmatic Le Coq et l’Arlequin as our point of departure, we note that Cocteau finished this manifesto toward the end of World War I, dedicating it to Georges Auric on March 19, , exactly six days before Debussy’s death. Le Coq furnishes a convenient summary of the artistic aims pursued by the group of French composers known as Les Six and consisting of Honegger, Milhaud (who joined the group after his return from South America), Poulenc, Auric, Georges Durey, and Germaine Tailleferre. Les Six had grown out of a nucleus of musicians whom Erik Satie, their patron saint, had dubbed Les Nouveaux Jeunes and who had made their first collective appearance in January, The name Les Six was attached to them by the music critic Henri Collet, whose article “Un livre de Rimsky et un 1

Paul Claudel, “Modern Drama and Music”. Yale Review, XX (), p. 94ff.

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Cocteau, Stravinsky, Brecht, and the Birth of Epic Opera

livre de Cocteau – les cinq Russes et les six Français” had appeared in the January 16 and 23, , issues of the magazine Comoedia. Collet defined the aims of the French artists in analogy to those spelled out by the Russian composers Balakirev, Moussorgsky, Borodin, RimskyKorsakov, and César Cui, popularly known as “The Five”. Both schools were largely concerned with writing music conceived along national lines, freed, wherever possible, of foreign influence. Cocteau, who is not a professionally trained musician but is known to possess an uncanny talent for grasping the aesthetic significance of musical phenomena, was ideally suited to become the spokesman of Les Six.2 For him, to pretend that “one cannot talk music if one does not know its algebra” was tantamount to declaring “that one cannot enjoy good food without knowing how to cook, that one cannot cook without knowing chemistry, etc.” (Revue de Genève, No. 21, March, ). As for the aesthetic of the group, it was a direct outgrowth of their anti-Romanticism, of their rebellion against Wagner (including his followers and the Impressionists), and of the Germanophobia which swept France at the outbreak of the global conflict. To Wagner and Debussy they opposed Erik Satie (much of whose laconic writing has entered into Le Coq et l’Arlequin), to Romantic murkiness a classical sense of form, proportion, and clarity, and to German music an art of decidedly Gallic persuasion. Viewing the group’s classicist bent, it seems odd that Jean Cocteau should have acted as their self-appointed Musagete, for the author-to-be of La Machine Infernale and future champion of Surrealism would seem to have been ill-disposed for such a role. Indeed, as early as , in Carte Blanche, he com-

2 “Jean Cocteau aura été un des très rares – je crois bien que, sans abus, on peut bien dire même le seul – qui ait toujours été en contact direct avec la musique; à l’avoir fréquentée pour elle-même, comme une chose en soi, en tant qu’élément essentiel; bien plus, à avoir su la regarder vivre et, partant d’une connaissance fort bien eclairée des époques ayant précédés la nôtre, partant d’une compréhension de l’enchâinement des faits musicaux, à avoir su l’aider à vivre, à accomplir son destin à une époque donnée.” Claude Rostand in the special Cocteau issue of La Table Ronde (No. 94, October, ), p.

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pletely reversed his opinion when asserting that “the creative nations” – France prominently among them – “have always been the scene of salutary disorders” and accusing the Germans of indulging in “order, propriety and a clinical discipline”3. But in it was the Frenchman Cocteau who came to the rescue of Classicism, as in his own way the German-Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni had done ten years earlier in his Entwurf einer neuen Aesthetik der Tonkunst. Seen with a view toward the evolution of musical taste in the last three centuries, Cocteau’s Poetics marks the culmination of a rebellion against the Gesamtkunstwerk, the theatrical synthesis of the arts, with its empathic mode of being (according to Cocteau it “forces us to listen with our skin”, [I, 36]) and its endless melody. Cocteau sided with Nietzsche who, cured of Wagnerism, had in Der Fall Wagner and Nietzsche contra Wagner used Georges Bizet as a whipping boy against the sorcerer of Bayreuth4. He rejected Romantic music and painting because they involved the emotions rather than the intellect, because he thought them to be eclectic, and because, in his opinion, they sacrificed form to content5. Romantic music is music created by dreamers; but the dreamer “est toujours mauvais poète”6. It is music as motley as the costume of the Harlequin which, as in Wagner’s Tristan, does not like to be roused from its reveries. What Cocteau and Les Six prescribed as an antidote was a type of linear music based on melody 3 Œuvres Complètes (Paris, ), I, Future reference to this work will be noted in the text by volume and page number. 4 In Der Fall Wagner, Nietzsche speaks of Wagner as a “Polyp in der Musik”, a phrase which Cocteau borrowed when calling Wagner and Stravinsky “des pieuvres qu’il faut fuir ou qui vous mangent”. 5 In Le Coq, Cocteau opposes Bach and – in an appendix – Mozart to Beethoven and Wagner. Beethoven is “fastidieux lorsqu’il développe [] parce qu’il fait du développement du forme”, whereas Bach “fait du développement de l’idée”. Cocteau, of course, was never afraid of contradicting himself. 6 In , Cocteau stated: “I do not have on my conscience many works written while awake, except the books which preceded Le Potomak, when I began to go to sleep; but I have some. How much would I give not to have them exist.” Opium, tr. M. Crosland and S. Road (New York, ), p. Was Le Coq one of the books he regretted having written?

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but “sans la caresse des cordes”, a music that, being simple, has also “l’air facile”7, a music of “tous les jours” which ironically defeats the emotions, a music, above all, which is based on the principle of renunciation (I, 31). The anti-Wagnerism of Les Six was most poignantly expressed in their feelings about the theater. Once again it was Nietzsche who set the tone for the group’s violent reaction against traditional operatic modes of creation: “Aber Wagner macht mich krank. Was geht mich das Theater an? Was die Krämpfe seiner sittlichen Ekstasen, an denen das Volk – und wer ist nicht Volk? – seine Genugtuung hat? was der ganze Gebärden-Hokuspokus des Schauspielers?”8 What Nietzsche especially disliked in the Wagnerian conception of the theater was its cultic, pseudo-religious nature manifested by every performance in the Festspielhaus, at whose opening in the Zarathustrian “said quietly farewell to Wagner”. In Le Coq, Cocteau voiced his antipathy by calling the theater corrupt and corrupting because it forced the audience to “listen with their faces buried in their hands” (I, 39). It was for similar reasons that subsequently Brecht encouraged the male members of his audience to take out their cigars and smoke them, so as to gain distance from the events portrayed on stage9. Stravinsky, too, whom Cocteau accused of having succumbed to theatrical mysticism in his Sacre, was soon to develop a dislike to music to which one must listen as if in a trance. It was this shutting out of the world, this act of concentration and forced identification which Cocteau signified by the phrase quoted at the beginning of this paragraph. Exactly what did the proponents of the new aesthetic seek to substitute for the “Einopern” of opera in the theater? They resolutely turned to the music hall, to popular music, jazz, the café-concert – 7 Nietzsche, in Der Fall Wagner, asserts: “Das Gute ist leicht, alles Göttliche läuft auf zarten Füssen.” 8

Nietzsche, Werke (Stuttgart, ), I. Abtheilung, VIII,

9

Schriften zum Theater (Frankfurt, ), p.

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where Satie himself had performed – and the circus These forms of light musical entertainment recommended themselves to the reformers because of the variety of tunes played in the course of a single evening and the necessary brevity of each piece. And just as Schönberg was to be disconcerted by the aphoristic quality of his first atonal compositions, Cocteau admitted that brevity was not in itself a virtue, but that it constituted an appropriate reaction against “l’interminable” Erik Satie, in whose name the war against the Wagnerian tribe was waged, has sometimes been called the Ingres of music. Such an analogy indeed suggests itself when one ponders the recently discovered brouillon for his Socrate to the effect that “the melody is the idea, the contour, just as much as it is the form and content of a work” One of the fiercest attacks launched by Satie was directed at the concept of program music, especially at Debussy’s use of precious, descriptive titles in his short piano pieces. Instead of simply omitting such designations from his own compositions, Satie furnished many of his scores with titles totally unrelated to or, at best, ironically reflecting upon the music. It was in consequence of this abuse that some of his contemporaries regarded him as a practical joker or crank and as the typical product “of this exhausted civilization which jeers in order not to

10 “Le music-hall, le cirque, les orchestres americains de nègres, tout cela féconde un artiste au même titre que la vie. Se servir des émotions que de tels spectacles éveillent ne revient pas à faire de l’art après l’art. Ces spectacles ne sont pas de l’art. Ils excitent comme les machines, les animaux, les paysages, le danger.” Cocteau, Œuvres Complètes, I, 11 See Schönberg’s lecture “Composition with Twelve Tones” in his book Style and Idea (New York, ), p. ff. In Carte Blanche (Œuvres, I, ) Cocteau speaks approvingly of an essay by a certain Marnold “lorsqu’il reproche aux œuvres la brièveté [] Mais la réaction centre l’interminable se faisait sentir, et toute réaction pèche par excès.” 12 This brouillon is quoted in Roger Shattuck’s The Banquet Years (New York, ), p. Satie’s life and art have been described and analyzed by Shattuck as well as by R. Templier and Rollo S. Myers (Erik Satie, London, ). Cocteau (Œuvres, 1, 25) affirms: “En musique la ligne c’est la mélodie. Le retour au dessin entraînera nécessairement un retour à la mélodie.”

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look death in the face” Satie’s loyal followers, however, saw in the master’s irony a decisive step in the direction of the coveted new classicism. Cocteau had met Satie in , when he was in the process of adapting Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the circus. The plan miscarried; but Satie and Cocteau became inseparable. During a brief furlough from the army in , the poet conceived the idea for the Cubist ballet Parade, whose production in Rome in is a cause celèbre in the history of contemporary art, and which may be regarded as a live manifesto of the movement that had inscribed the words simplicity, brevity, and irony on its banners. Parade, whose music is “deliberately divested of subjective emotion, though a disturbing emotional experience results from the manner in which apparently banal fragments of melody and the simplest harmonies are deprived of their conventional associations and re-created in unexpected but logical patterns”14, is far from being a prototype of epic opera. But the spirit of revolt which it breathes, and the reaction provoked by the adverse criticism which was levelled against it, strongly contributed to the rapid evolution of that genre in the hands of Igor Stravinsky. A final glance at Le Coq et l’Arlequin may help to explain the paradoxical attitude which Les Six adopted toward Debussy and Stravinsky. The latter, though not actually Debussy’s pupil (he had studied with Rimsky-Korsakov), was nevertheless strongly influenced by his music. Les Six found the composer of Pelléas et Mélisande laboring under the spell of Wagner and Moussorgsky. “Impressionism”, their spokesman stated, “is a repercussion of Wagner, the last rumblings of the thunder” (I, 38). When gauging Debussy’s accomplishments and comparing them with those of the neo-classicists, however, one does well to keep in mind that it was more in his practice than in his theory that the former differed from the latter. Musically speaking, 13 R. D. Chennevière in Musical Quarterly, V (), p. 14 Grove’s Musical Dictionary, fifth ed., VI, See also Georges Auric’s comments on Parade in the Nouvelle Revue Française, XVI (), p. ff.

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Pelléas may well deserve to be called the Impressionistic Tristan. But when writing his opera, Debussy had long abandoned Wagner and turned toward a characteristically French manner of composing In this as well as in other respects he actually anticipated Satie’s musical nationalism and the polemical use which Cocteau was to make of it. Yet it is an indisputable fact that he, to whom, according to Léon Vallas, the theater was “a false and inferior type of art”16, wrote his Pelléas with the intention not of breaking up the Wagnerian synthesis of the arts, but of heightening its effect by giving it more psychological and musical continuity than Wagner had provided (see especially Debussy’s letter concerning Pelléas to the Secretary General of the Paris Opéra Comique, as reproduced on p. f. of Vallas’ book). Nevertheless, Cocteau, Satie, and Les Six manifestly wronged the composer who, belated Wagnerian though he was without fully realizing it, clearly foreshadowed some of the tendencies that were to crystallize almost immediately after his death. He, too, after all, was a master of the arabesque (his name for the linear element in music) who regretted that “the French forget too easily the qualities of clearness and elegance peculiar to them and allow themselves to be influenced by the tedious and ponderous Teuton”. Returning to Stravinsky, we observe that Cocteau, who, by the way, had only recently ceased to admire the Impressionists, in Le Coq denounced what he called that master’s “musique française russe”. Although in some ways he lumped the young Russian’s music together with that of Wagner and the Impressionists, he left no doubt that he saw a marked difference in the way in which Wagner and Stra15 Debussy had been an ardent Wagnerian in his Prix-de-Rome days but had revolted as early as when he attended a performance of Tristan in Bayreuth. Edward Lockspeiser (Debussy [London, ], p. 72) quotes Tchaikovsky’s patroness Nadeshda von Meck, in whose household the young Debussy served as an accompanist, as stating that already in the composer did not care for the Germans and maintained: “Ils ne sont pas de nôtre tempérament, ils sont si lourds, pas clairs.” 16 Léon Vallas, The Theories of Claude Debussy, tr. M. O’Brien (London, ), p.

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vinsky sought to affect their audiences. What Wagner achieved by means of empathy, the author of Le Sacre, that “Georgics of Prehistory”, accomplished through shock effect: “Wagner treats us to an extended meal. Stravinsky does not give us time to say ‘ouf’. But both act on our nerves” (I, 39). However, when learning about L’Histoire, Cocteau quickly changed his mind and in a footnote appended to Le Coq apologized for having spoken ill of the composer as one who was not yet “de la race des architectes”. In the appendix of he even went so far as to call Stravinsky a musical surgeon, “un homme dur auquel l’opinion amoureuse demande ‘Brutalise-moi, frappe-moi encore,’ et qui lui offre des dentelles” Judging by the evolution of Cocteau’s views on music, one can see why, at a crucial point in his career, he denounced the Russian’s sumptuous ballet scores of the ante-bellum period, notably that of the Firebird. Stravinsky, after all, had grown up with a decided penchant for rich orchestral palettes suffused with local color. However, his friendship with Debussy, beginning about , was not to survive the premiere of Le Sacre, a work which the older man praised cautiously for having “enlarged the boundaries of the permissible in the empire of sound” Stravinsky later claimed that, all along, he suspected Debussy of duplicity and, at least in retrospect, showed annoyance at the latter’s “incapacity to digest the music of the Sacre when the younger generation enthusiastically voted for it” That Stravinsky was generally considered to have turned anti-Debussyite by is shown by a letter in which Jacques Rivière, the

17 Œuvres, I, By , Stravinsky had become sufficiently inured to neoclassicism to think of writing his opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex on a Latin text. It was no other than Cocteau whom he commissioned to write the original French version of the libretto. 18 Quoted in Conversations with Stravinsky, ed. R. Craft (New York, ), p. 19 Conversations with Stravinsky, p. Cocteau, in his Journals, claims to have seen Debussy “sick at orchestra rehearsals of Le Sacre du Printemps. He was discovering the beauty of that music. The form he had given to his soul suffered from another form which did not match it.”

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newly appointed editor of the Nouvelle Revue Française, requested his services for the magazine, the attention of whose readers he wanted to direct to the “anti-impressionist, anti-symbolist, and anti-Debussy movements that are becoming more and more precise and threaten to take the form and force of a vast new current” (Conversations, p. 63). But exactly when was it that Stravinsky began to shake off the tyranny of Romanticism-Impressionism? Around the Russian composer went to Bayreuth at the invitation of Diaghilev. He came away from a performance of Parsifal as a declared foe of Wagner. The overall impression he had received was one of sense-numbing boredom which made it impossible for him to concentrate on the music. He was equally appalled by the ritual and suprasensible element introjected into the operatic production. Trained primarily as a composer of music for the ballet, he subsequently embarked on a reform of the musical theater considered as a visual medium. As the composer and music critic Nikolas Nabokov put it in an essay entitled “Stravinsky and the Drama”: Ballet had a meagre and sporadic tradition. This gave the modern composer a free, comparatively easy field for experiment and invention. It relieved him of the obligation to follow a poetic text and by its very nature worked against the principle of the mixture of the genres. Instead, it directed the composer toward the harmonious fitting together of the three arts, each one complete in itself

It was in his second opera, Reynard, that Stravinsky began to destroy the much detested synthesis of the arts21; but only in the subsequent Histoire did his reformatory zeal lead to a systematic application of the epic principle. In his autobiography the composer stresses the advantage of having the instrumentalists in evidence during the entire performance of a stage work; for “the sight of the gestures and movements of the various parts of the body producing the music is funda-

20 Stravinsky in the Theatre, ed. M. Ledermann (New York, ), p. 21 Stravinsky prescribed that Reynard be played “by clowns, dancers or acrobats, preferably on a trestle stage with the orchestra placed behind. If produced in a theatre, it should be played in front of the curtain. The players do not leave the stage.” Quoted by E. W. White on p. 65 of his book Stravinsky: A Critical Survey (London, ).

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mentally necessary if it is to be grasped in all its fulness. All music created or composed demands some exteriorization for the perception of the listener.”22 In Switzerland, where he lived after , Stravinsky became acquainted with the writer C. F. Ramuz, who collaborated with him in a number of ventures but made no original contribution until the spring of when, Stravinsky being in straitened financial circumstances, they “got hold of the idea of a sort of little traveling theater, easy to transport from place to place and to show in even small localities” The first epic opera thus did not result from purely aesthetic considerations but was partly conditioned by economic exigencies. Yet, whatever the role of the external circumstances involved in its creation, it can hardly be called coincidence that the genre which L’Histoire represents is so perfectly in keeping with the aesthetic developed by Les Six. For Cocteau and his friends were also to give battle in the name of simplicity, which was the mot d’ordre in the making of Stravinsky’s chamber opera. Histoire was to be a story presented in a threefold manner, namely read, played, and danced. Ramuz, who was not a man of the theater, had proposed to write a dramatic narrative to show “that the theater can be conceived in a much wider sense than is usually attributed to it” Making the most of Ramuz’ deficiency, Stravinsky decided that in the work in progress “the three elements [music, narrative, and action] should sometimes take turns as soloists and sometimes combine as an ensemble” (Autobiography, p. 73). L’Histoire, in short, was to perpetuate alienation through constant shifts in emphasis and the deliberate avoidance of extended parallelisms. 22 Igor Stravinsky: An Autobiography (New York, ), p. 23 For the whole question of the collaboration between Ramuz and Stravinsky see pp. 71ff. of the composer’s autobiography as well as Ramuz’ “Souvenirs sur Igor Stravinsky” (especially pp. in Vol. XIV of his Œuvres Complètes [Lausanne, ]) and his Lettres (Lausanne, ) with Ernest Ansermet’s account of “La Naissance de 1’Histoire du Soldat”. 24 Ramuz, Œuvres Complètes, XIV,

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Let us briefly explain the manner in which the principal ingredients of L’Histoire are treated both by themselves and in relation to each other. In an attempt to reduce the size of the orchestra, Stravinsky selected a group of seven instruments including “the most representative types, in treble and bass, of the instrumental families”. He was beginning to realize the advantages to be gained by renunciation which, in many of his neo-classical works, became the cornerstone of his aesthetic As for the music of L’Histoire, its complexity is such that veritable virtuosi are needed to perform it – a serious obstacle in the way of the simplicity for which composer and librettist were striving. The instrumental parts, moreover, are not consistently integrated throughout the opera; but each solo instrument is encouraged to develop an independent linear existence. For Stravinsky it was also a foregone conclusion that his music should be so far detached from the underlying action that it could be performed as an orchestral suite. A few words, finally, about the astounding variety of ways in which Ramuz designed each part of the action to operate both by itself and in conjunction with, or contrast to, the others. The dramatis personae of L’Histoire, for instance, lists four characters: the reader, the soldier, the devil, and the princess. But five performers are needed to fill their roles, since that of the devil is split up into a dancing and an acting part. The matter is further complicated by the fact that the reader is not restricted to narrating and interpreting the action, but frequently takes it upon himself to voice the soldier’s innermost thoughts and feelings. In short, the unity of character is persistently denied to the major figures. Scenically, effects of alienation in L’Histoire are achieved by the alternation of mute scenes with dialogic ones, of scenes played on center stage with others enacted in front of the curtain, and of dramatic action with ‘epic’ commentary. Another instance of neutralization is found in Stravinsky’s use of non-Russian music to accompany this 25 See the very interesting footnote on p. 97 of T. W. Adorno’s Philosophie der neuen Musik (Tübingen, ).

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Russian folktale The introduction of Jazz into the score offers perhaps the most striking instance of this deliberate rejection of local color. The plot upon which Ramuz and Stravinsky fastened was well suited to their non-Aristotelian dramaturgy since, in the course of its unfolding, the unity of the space-time continuum is disrupted and time treated in terms of spatial progression. Having been lured into extratemporal territory, the soldier, upon his return to the real world, finds himself regarded as a revenant. He finally manages to outwit the devil and to win the princess whom, with the help of his recovered instrument, he has cured of melancholy. But the devil strikes promptly back when the soldier, crossing the border in order to enter his native country, finds himself deprived of the protection offered to him by the timeless realm. His punishment is deserved; for II ne faut pas vouloir ajouter à ce qu’on a ce qu’on avait, on ne peut pas être à la fois qui on est et qui on était. On n’a pas le droit de tout avoir: c’est défendu. Un bonheur est tout le bonheur; deux c’est comme s’ils n’existaient plus.

Rather than pursue Stravinsky’s operatic career beyond L’Histoire, we turn now to the artist who deserves credit for having brought the epic opera to its perfection both in practice and theory. Bertolt Brecht needs no special introduction as a writer. Yet it is relatively little known that he was also a practicing musician and that, in the early stages of his career, he composed the music for his own Balladen. Some of these songs made their appearance in his plays as well as in the Hauspostille, in which certain of the tunes are also reprinted. In his early plays, the young playwright, by his own confession, used music in the conventional manner by providing dramatic occasions for it It was only beginning with Kurt Weill’s contributions to Mann ist Mann 26 “Restait à trouver le sujet: rien de plus facile. J’étais Russe: le sujet serait russe; Strawinsky était Vaudois (en ce temps-là): la musique serait vaudoise.” Ramuz in Œuvres Complètes, XIV, 27 “In den ersten paar Stücken wurde Musik in ziemlich landläufiger Form verwendet; es handelte sich um Lieder oder Märsche, und es fehlte kaum je eine naturalistische Motivierung dieser Musikstücke [] Diese Musik schrieb ich noch selbst.” (Schriften zum Theater, p. )

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that the music achieved that Kunstcharakter or Selbstwert without which there can be no epic opera. Epic opera, however, as Ernst Schumacher points out in his book on Brecht, is the epitome of the epic theater, “since the musical elements serve as an epic, i. e. retarding factor” As with Cocteau and his friends, Brecht’s break with musical Aristotelianism was largely due to his rejection of Wagner. In Wagner’s music dramas Brecht saw an incarnation of the emotional and unconscious elements. But actually his critique was aimed less at Wagner himself and his own Weltanschauung than at the modern Wagnerians “who are satisfied with remembering that the original Wagnerians had ascribed a meaning to Wagner’s opera” Brecht defied the so-called reforms of the musical theater under way in the twenties and aimed at modifying the outward form of opera without changing its apparatus. Desirous to change the apparatus itself, he pleaded for a Literarisierung of the theater, a process which he defined, in an untranslatable phrase, as “das Durchsetzen des ‘Gestalteten’ mit ‘Formuliertem’”. Brecht’s first venture into the musical theater, and his first collaboration with Weill, had taken place in when the original version of Mahagonny was written for performance at the Baden-Baden music festival. The plan for the most popular of Brecht’s contributions to the genre materialized, in the following year, during a perusal of Gay’s Beggar’s Opera. In his analysis of the Dreigroschenoper, Schumacher underscores the similarity of the circumstances which led to the creation of Gay’s satire and Brecht’s parody. Artistically, the Beggar’s Opera must be regarded as a protest against the totally unrealistic 28 Die dramatischen Versuche Bertolt Brechts (Berlin, ), p. John Willett, The Theatre of Bertolt Brecht (London, ), p. ff., also deals with the problem of epic opera. 29 “Die heutigen Wagnerianer begnügen sich mit der Erinnerung, dass die ursprünglichen Wagnerianer einen Sinn festgestellt und also gewusst hatten. Bei den von Wagner abhängigen Produzierenden wird sogar die Haltung des Weltanschauenden noch stur beibehalten. Eine Weltanschauung, die, zu sonst nichts mehr nütze, nur noch als Genussmittel verschleudert wird.” (Schriften zum Theater, p. 24)

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style of Handel’s late baroque operas. Analogously, the Dreigroschenoper mocks the Handelian Renaissance in post-war Germany, which the generation of Neue Sachlichkeit and the Bauhaus came to view as a sign that the bourgeoisie was beginning to reconstitute itself, for the rise of opera had long been associated with the emergence of that class. Generically, the Dreigroschenoper stands halfway between the Singspiel and the Jazz Revue, traditional forms being consistently used with ironic overtones. The Wagnerian orchestra is replaced by a small jazzband, the set form of the aria by Moritat and Song Like Stravinsky, Brecht wants the musicians to be visible during the whole performance of the work On the whole, however, the German writer is more consistent in his use of alienating devices, which he deploys programmatically. Where Stravinsky totally eliminates the singers, Brecht retains them, but insists on neatly separating the various levels of verbal expression. In the Dreigroschenoper, there are to be no smooth transitions between spoken dialogue, recitative and singing; for “nothing is more detestable than for the actor to pretend that he does not notice the transition from speech to singing” (Schriften zum Theater, p. 32). Nor is the sequence of levels regarded as signifying an increase in emotional intensity. In order to forestall any such interpretation, Brecht uses titles and signs as “primitive attempts at making the theater literary” (p. 30), and as a means of training the audience in the art of “complex seeing”.

30 For Brecht’s defense of Jazz Revue and Singspiel see the essay “Über die Verwendung von Musik für ein episches Theater” (Schriften zum Theater, p. ff.), especially the paragraph culminating in the assertion: “Die sogenannte billige Musik ist besonders in Kabarett und Operette schon seit geraumer Zeit eine Art gestischer Musik; die ernste Musik hingegen hält immer noch am Lyrismus fest und pflegt den individuellen Ausdruck.” 31 Schriften zum Theater, p. With regard to the size of the orchestra to be used in the Dreigroschenoper Brecht states: “Die grosse Menge der Handwerker in den Opernorchestern ermöglicht nur assoziierende Musik” and demands a “Verkleinerung des Orchesterapparates auf allerhöchstens 30 Spezialisten” (see fn. 9).

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Whereas in Stravinsky’s opera the innovations came about for a variety of reasons not necessarily related to the final product, Brecht’s revolution in aestheticis is the well-defined and carefully shaped byproduct of a larger issue. In L’Histoire, for instance, the plot itself is treated quite seriously. Music and action, though not always running a parallel course, never clash or look at each other ironically. The fable of the Dreigroschenoper, on the other hand, is treated parodistically; and instead of leading up to a clearly defined moral, the action concludes with a literary cliché. Throughout Brecht’s work, music is used as a tool of alienation, especially in the sense that conventional tunes are applied to unconventional contexts: “By acting emotionally and rejecting none of the customary narcotic charms, it helped to unmask bourgeois ideology” (p. ). From the musician’s point of view, Kurt Weill arrived at a similar conclusion: “I found myself confronted with a realistic action, to which I had to oppose my music, since I consider music incapable of being realistic.”32 In the Dreigroschenoper, accordingly, traditional musical forms such as arias, duets, and chorales are used in contrast with the dramatic situations which give rise to them. This does not preclude the use of strictly musical parody in the form of dissonance, such as appears in the famous “Kanonensong”. Further increasing the distance between words (or action) and music, Brecht advised the actors occasionally to speak against the music, an ironic perversion of the use which Schönberg and Alban Berg had made of Sprechstimme The limitation of scope and subject matter self-imposed upon the present paper renders impossible a discussion of the subsequent evolution of Brecht’s ideas about the musical theater: his collaboration with 32 From an article in the Monatsschrift für moderne Musik, cited by Schumacher, Die dramatischen Versuche Bertolt Brechts , p. 33 “Was die Melodie betrifft, so folge er [the actor] ihr nicht blindlings: es gibt ein Gegen-die-Musik-Sprechen, welches grosse Wirkungen haben kann, die von einer hartnäckigen, von Musik und Rhythmus unabhängigen und unbestechlichen Nüchternheit ausgehen.” (Schriften zum Theater, p. ; see fn. 9)

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Weill on the expanded Mahagonny, his interest in the Schuloper, and his later theoretical writings. Suffice it to say that the Anmerkungen to Mahagonny offer a formal poetics of the epic opera with its total and permanent separation of ingredients, and that the Little Organon postulates a half-hearted return to art as ‘culinary’ entertainment, music having the task of “establishing itself in many ways and quite independently by expressing its attitude toward the subject” or merely that of “adding variety to the entertainment” (Schriften zum Theater, p. ). This is a far cry from the relentless pursuit of alienation which characterized the author of the Dreigroschenoper.

Introduction to The Essence of Opera () The editor of a collection like the present one, which aims at acquainting the reader with as wide as possible a variety of views on opera broached by composers, librettists, and aestheticians during the last three hundred and fifty years, cannot possibly hope to unite all the important statements bearing on that subject in a single volume. It will rather be his task to proffer the most significant samples of each of the four basic approaches to opera which evolve in the course of the history of the form. The undertaking seems doubly justified by the fact that it has no precedent and that a considerable portion of the material appears for the first time in translations from the German, French, and Italian. The omission of relevant utterances by such eminent librettists as Quinault1, Apostolo Zeno2, Marmontel3, Goldoni4, Eugène Scribe5, 1 Concerning this principal librettist for Jean Baptiste Lully see Etienne Gros’ Philippe Quinault (Paris: Champion, ). 2 Zeno, the predecessor of Metastasio and da Ponte, lived from to He wrote innumerable librettos for composers like Bononcini, Galuppi, Hasse, Porpora, and the Scarlattis. His letters in six volumes were published in (Venice: Sansoni). 3 Marmontel, the chief French author of librettos for comic operas in the second half of the eighteenth century (he wrote ten for Grétry and five for Piccinni), lived from to He is also known for his Essai sur la révolution de la musique française of 4 Goldoni’s Memoirs, trans. by J. Black, edited by W. A. Drake (New York: Knopf, ), contains many interesting details and anecdotes about his experiences with managers and composers, especially with Baldassare Galuppi. 5 Scribe, the most prolific librettist of them all, not only wrote thirty-eight texts for Auber but provided the librettos for Verdi’s Vêpres siciliennes, Boieldieu’s Dame blanche, Meyerbeer’s Huguenots, Robert le diable, and Le Prophète, and Halévy’s La Juive. Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera, Bellini’s Sonnambula, and Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur also derive from plays he wrote. Scribe’s contribution is discussed by Neil C. Arvin in his book Eugène Scribe and the French Theatre (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ).

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and Gabriele d’Annunzio6 is regrettable. But a line had to be drawn at some point and repetition would have been unavoidable. The number of first-rate and second-rate composers slighted in our anthology is naturally legion. Some of those whose works are still in the repertory (Donizetti, Bellini, Smetana, etc.) or formerly had a prominent place in it (from Cimarosa and Païsiello to Cherubini, Spontini, Meyerbeer, Gounod, and Auber) either found no occasion to verbalize their feelings about the art they practiced or merely echoed what their predecessors and contemporaries had to offer by way of comment, although some interesting material could have been drawn from the formal or informal writings of most of them. Evidence from the pen or mouth of older masters (Purcell, Hasse, Telemann, Alessandro Scarlatti) either does not exist or is extremely hard to come by. Nor did it seem desirable to burden the collection with views on comic opera. On the whole it is evident that unless they are conscious innovators or reformers, the makers of operatic music are not overly inclined to theorize about their art, except spontaneously during the creative process. Of the great masters in the field who are still acknowledged as such, Handel is the only one not directly quoted in the anthology, since his letters shed little light on his conception of opera as an art form. Haydn’s annotations to his own works for the musical stage and Weber’s communications with Helmina von Chézy are, unfortunately, unavailable. One cannot help but notice that this anthology is largely composed of programmatic and quasi-programmatic statements, even though some of the selections appear to be of a strictly descriptive nature. In spite of the many disparities between intention and execution, no attempt has been made – except briefly as part of the introductory matter – to evaluate the material critically, i. e., to match an artist’s theory with his practice. The reader who wishes to pursue that aspect should consult the books and articles listed in the succinct bibliographies 6 D’Annunzio wrote the Mystère de Saint Sebastien, for which Debussy supplied incidental music. Their correspondence, edited by G. Tosi, was published in

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appended to each introduction. An excellent analysis of the relationship between music and drama and its effect on operatic history, theory, and criticism is made by Joseph Kerman in his stimulating though one-sided book Opera as Drama. In his judgment of works for the musical stage Kerman is guided by the belief that “in opera, the composer is the dramatist and [] the clarification of the dramatic idea and the refinement of the vision cannot be left to the librettist,” a view that flatly contradicts the neoclassical concept of opera. So far nobody has written a history of the libretto, a task we consider to be a prerequisite for that history of melo-dramaturgy for which our anthology might serve as a tentative basis and for that poetics of opera which Beaumarchais envisaged in his preface to Tarare and which a latter-day Algarotti should perhaps be encouraged to create. The pieces assembled on the following pages are extremely diverse. Some constitute private, some semi-private documents, while others were intended for publication. Letters exchanged between individuals engaged in creating a symbiosis of music and drama are especially valuable insofar as their content directly reflects the creative process and acquaints us with the actual intentions of librettists and composers. Monteverdi’s letters to Striggio, Goethe’s to Christoph Philipp Kayser, Mozart’s to his father, Verdi’s to his numerous collaborators, and Puccini’s to Giuseppe Adami belong to this category, which is nowhere better represented than in the extensive correspondence exchanged between Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Other epistles, such as St. Evremond’s letter to the Duke of Buckingham, Gluck’s to de la Harpe and the Mercure de France, and Debussy’s to the Secretary General of the Opéra Comique in Paris, are much less spontaneous. The same applies to Rossini’s conversations with his biographer Zanolini and to Lorenzo da Ponte’s patently apologetic memoirs. Prefaces to, and dedications of, specific works represent a rather formal type of communication between an artist and his patrons or his audience. Gluck used his dedication of Alceste to Grand Duke Leo-

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pold of Tuscany as an excuse for writing a manifesto. Corneille’s Examen of Andromède; Dryden’s preface to Albion and Albanius, Beaumarchais’ to Tarare, Berlioz’ to La Damnation de Faust, Hofmannsthal’s to Die ägyptische Helena, Strauss’ to Intermezzo; Berg’s observations about Wozzeck; and Brecht’s “Anmerkungen zur Dreigroschenoper” fall under this heading. Examples of treatises on the genre are found in Voltaire’s Dissertation sur la tragédie ancienne et moderne, Diderot’s Le Neveu de Rameau, Wieland’s essay on the Singspiel (his term for opera seria), E. T. A. Hoffmann’s dialogue between poet and composer, Wagner’s Oper und Drama, Nietzsche’s proWagnerian and anti-Wagnerian polemics, Busoni’s Versuch einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst, Cocteau’s aphoristic Le Coq et l’Arlequin, and Claudel’s dissertation on “Modern Drama and Music”. Stendhal’s Vie de Rossini is a Romantic poetics of opera in disguise, Marcello’s satire Il Teatro alla moda a melo-dramaturgy in reverse. Dictionary entries, like Rousseau’s articles on opera and counter-sense from his Dictionnaire de musique and Voltaire’s definition in his Connaissance des beautés et des défauts de la poésie et de l’eloquence dans la langue française, lay claim to greater objectivity but are by no means free of polemic overtones. Several contributions consist of reviews of specific operas (Grillparzer on Weber’s Freischütz, Weber on E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Undine) and books (Shaw on Noufflard’s Richard Wagner d’après lui-même) or, as in Addison’s sarcastic Spectator essays, are journalistic attacks on contemporary operatic abuses. Aesthetics proper is represented in writings by Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard; and the volume concludes with a symposium on the present state of opera conducted by some of today’s leading melodramatists. Although it is quite impossible (and perhaps undesirable) to reduce the manifold views on opera to a set of clearly delimited, mutually exclusive categories, four basic approaches to melo-dramaturgy suggest themselves, with numerous intermediary positions completing the spectrum. A fifth approach – that which posits the absurdity of the

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genre “since music is unable to tell a story” (Boileau) – cannot be taken seriously by anyone concerned with enriching the repertory. The first approach, which is essentially that embraced by the classicists and neoclassicists of all nations and ages, rests on the assumption that in opera music must always remain a modest handmaiden. At its inception in the days of the Florentine camerata, opera was earmarked as the modern equivalent of ancient tragedy (of whose musical qualities we have only a faint idea based on, among other things, the notation of a few lines in Euripides’ Orestes). Rinuccini, Caccini, Peri and their contemporaries agreed that the musical ingredient should underscore, perhaps enhance, but never overshadow the spoken word. From Corneille to Beaumarchais this was the position held, with a few notable exceptions, by one generation of French critics after another. Rousseau and the Encyclopedists never ceased to think of music – or, at any rate, of song – as a kind of language; and the venerable Pietro Metastasio, reminding us of the fact that Aristotle listed music as the fifth of the six constituent parts of drama, proudly reported that his dramas – the famous Didone abbandonata among them – were more frequently seen as plays than as operas. By far the staunchest defender of the neoclassical view was Christoph Willibald Gluck, who thought it his mission to “reduce music to its true function”, that of “serving the poetry by means of the expression”. Luckily for us, the great reformer was much too inspired a musician to let his genius be quenched, although he too cherished the notion that music “even in the most terrible situations, must never offend the ear, but must please the hearer, or, in other words, must never cease to be music” (Mozart) – a view that was subsequently challenged by Diderot and Berlioz and refuted in toto by the Expressionists. Philosophically, the neoclassical theory of opera finds support in the writings of Kant, for whom reason is the supreme guide in human affairs and who, judging the arts according to the degree in which reason partakes in their execution and reception, finds fault with music on account of its sensuousness.

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The Romantic theory of opera, radically opposed to its classical antecedents, celebrates the triumph of music over drama. Stepping out of the role assigned to it by the classically minded aestheticians, music now regards literature as its slave. Mozart, although a born melodramaturgist, nevertheless demands that “the poetry must be altogether the obedient daughter of the music”, Stendhal wants the operatic audience to dispense (or nearly dispense) with the libretto, Berlioz shows sovereign contempt for dramatic values by dispatching his Faust to the plains of Hungary, and W. H. Auden offends his muse by asserting that “the verses which the librettist writes are not addressed to the public but are really a private letter to the composer”. Romantically inclined composers – but, understandably, not only those – are at times so carried away by their inspiration that they compose the music for numbers whose text has not as yet been written. This paradox, bearing out the contention Prima la musica e poi le parole (the title of an opera by Salieri), is mentioned in the letters of Mozart, Verdi, Strauss, and Puccini. The philosophical blessing upon Romantic melodramaturgy was bestowed by none other than Schopenhauer who, revolting against the Kantian rationalism, glorified Rossini’s music as one that speaks “its own language so distinctly and purely that it requires no words and produces its full effect when rendered by instruments alone”. The two radical positions just outlined are duly complemented by two others, which hinge on the conviction that the two principal ingredients of opera are equally valuable and that neither of them should be exalted at the expense of the other. Wagner proclaimed the union of music and drama in terms of a perfect marriage contracted and consummated between male and female, whose copulation renders the Gesamtkunstwerk possible, whereas, breaking away from the Wagnerian style, the founders of Epic Opera were determined to provide equal but separate facilities for music and drama. Both elements are thus assured their independence. Stravinsky, Brecht, and to a certain extent Claudel are fond of alienation, whereas Alban Berg, in his

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Wozzeck, alienates music from drama sub rosa while emphasizing the expressive quality of his music. Chronologically, the neoclassical view predominated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (except when opera gave itself frankly as a baroque spectacle), whereas the Romantic concept prevailed in the first half, and the Wagnerian in the second half, of the following centennium. Twentieth-century melo-dramaturgy, when it avoids the charge of being conservative or reactionary, centers in the fourth approach. However, at times the rebellion against Wagner took so violent a turn that an exodus of opera from the theater to the concert hall (opera-oratorio) or music hall (Satie’s Parade) was deemed advisable. Thus a period of operatic history is brought to a close under circumstances that bear a striking resemblance to those which led to the demise of Handelian opera under the impact of John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera. Apart from the basic, and hence constantly repeated, question concerning the true nature of the relationship between music and drama (or poetry), a limited number of topics of a more specialized nature are intermittently discussed in our anthology. Those who affirm the role of opera as an important ingredient of the aesthetic universe are naturally eager to explain what makes it a form sui generis. What can opera do, they ask, that the exclusively literary or musical genres find themselves barred from achieving? Those who want to undermine the foundations of opera, on the other hand, seek to prove that it can never rid itself of its inherent flaws. The champions of opera are only too quick to point out that what the spoken drama lacks most of all is the ability to handle several strands of action or emotion simultaneously. In the musical drama, however, simultaneity comes naturally and, as Stendhal explains, “experience completely ruins the arguments” of those “poor frigid souls [who] claim [that] it is silly for five or six persons to sing at the same time”. Nor do the participants in an ensemble (Weber calls it a “Janus head”) have to share identical feelings, a fact most beautifully illus-

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trated in the quartet from Otello to which Boito refers in his letter to Verdi. What is more, considerable depth is gained in opera by the interplay between the singers and the orchestra, since the latter may be advantageously used to comment upon the action on stage, just as it can serve to reveal the subconscious motives and urges of the protagonists. Wagner even wants it to perform the role of historian and prophet. Music being a mood-building art, its presence often adds a totally new dimension to the drama: the sensuousness which language, that arbitrary system of counters, lacks. In the spoken drama, mood can only be expressed negatively, for instance by means of significant pauses. In the lyrical plays of Hofmannsthal, Chekhov, and Maeterlinck, what is said often matters less than what remains unspoken, whereas Shakespeare’s Othello – joined, perhaps, by the second part of Goethe’s Faust – is the rare example of a play that is lyrical in the sense of aspiring to be music. Stanislavsky, I think, was right when treating it symphonically. A further advantage enjoyed by opera, and repeatedly touched upon in our anthology, derives from the use of several levels of expression, and hence consciousness, which that art form renders feasible. The operatic composer commands a variety of means of expression – from the conversational to the symphonic, from ordinary speech via Sprechstimme, melodrama (of the type encountered in Fidelio), recitativo secco and accompagnato to full-fledged arias, ensembles, and purely instrumental music – that is unparalleled in regular drama. At best this wealth can be approximated in a poetic play like T. S. Eliot’s Cocktail Party, where the number of stresses per line indicates the appropriate level of consciousness. This stratification, however, also has its disadvantages: for how is the composer to proceed from one level of discourse to another without breaking the continuity? Wagner fiercely attacked the fragmentation he noticed in operatic practice, a fragmentation defended by, among others, Alfred de Musset in his maiden speech at the Académie Française. Wagner in-

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sisted on writing through-composed operas, in which the levels imperceptibly merge in a continuous stream of musical progression. Today operatic abuses of the kind Wagner attacked are out of fashion and composers are no longer forced to bow to the wishes of prima donnas (as Mozart did in Die Entführung aus dem Serail and Die Zauberflöte) or the spoiled taste of a public set in its ways. To us even Puccini’s striving for effect seems out of place. What the critics of opera most violently object to in the genre is the artificiality of the conventions which gave rise to it and which make its existence possible. People don’t sing in real life, these critics say; why should they do so in the theater? But, as Wieland points out astutely, the conventions of the spoken drama and of art in general, are hardly less constraining, and the difference is, at best, one of degree. Many champions of opera, anticipating this common objection, sought to assign to it a realm sufficiently remote from ordinary life to make these conventions tolerable. The musical theater, in their opinion, should never engage in realistic modes but should restrict itself to the presentation of mythological, pastoral, or otherwise ‘marvelous’ scenes and actions. Dryden, Wieland, Busoni, Hofmannsthal and, in part, Beaumarchais share this view; and Schiller, in a letter to Goethe of December 29, , goes so far as to express the hope that a rejuvenation of drama might be effected by way of opera. Other weighty objections consistently raised by the foes, and difficulties encompassed by the executants, of opera, include the undue brevity of the libretto (Hofmannsthal was frightened to see “how short is the libretto of Tristan and how long the opera”), the amount of repetition allowed and often required by music, music’s inability to convey deception, contradiction, and even humor (Hamlet makes a very poor operatic subject; and perhaps the best way of being humorous in an opera consists in introducing unmusical characters such as Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger and the male protagonist of Strauss and Zweig’s Die schweigsame Frau), and the often painfully noticeable unintelligibility of the singers (Richard Strauss claimed that one third

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of each operatic text is a total loss). These factors surely contribute to the failure of many a music drama and help to account for the excruciatingly small number of operatic masterpieces. All the more reason for us to ponder these questions anew and to sharpen our awareness of the hurdles any team of composer and librettist has to clear before it can proceed to the finish.

Reflections on a Golden Style: W. H. Auden’s Theory of Opera () For several decades now, W. H. Auden has been regarded as the most representative English writer (or, at least, the most representative British poet) of the generation following that of T. S. Eliot. In recent years, literary historians and critics have begun to scrutinize his works; and even his criticism – much of it conveniently gathered in the volume, The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays1 – has attracted attention in the world of scholarship. Its growth and scope have been surveyed in essays by Edward Callan and Cleanth Brooks2. As a playwright, too, Auden has found himself in the critical limelight, notably regarding his contributions to the repertory of the British Group Theatre in the thirties (The Dog Beneath the Skin and The Ascent of F 6, both written in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood). What literary scholars, with few exceptions, have thus far failed to realize is that, because of his close and intimate contact with music, Auden’s theatrical interests have gradually shifted from the spoken verse drama to the music drama, which he now regards as one of the only two contemporary vehicles of the Golden and High Style required by a public art – the other being the ballet. As a sheer artifice, that is to say, opera is not ashamed of the rhetoric from which the modern playwright shies away. Whereas Joseph Warren Beach refuses to treat Auden’s librettos “with critical solemnity” since they “have been one means of eking out a poet’s slender income” and “represent

1

New York: Random House, Subsequently referred to as DH.

2 E. Callan, “The Development of W. H. Auden’s Critical Theory”. Twentieth Century Literature, IV (), ; Cleanth Brooks, “W. H. Auden’s Literary Criticism”. Kenyon Review, XXVI (),

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[] the hobbies of a highly gifted poet”3, Monroe K. Spears is aware of the fact that “opera libretti [] have been Auden’s only long works [] in recent years”4, and John G. Blair admits that “in the opera [Auden] seems to have found a set of conventions that is most congenial to his poetic and dramatic talents”5. In our study of that author’s poetics of opera, we shall proceed from this assumption. Auden’s collaboration with Benjamin Britten in a number of musical ventures – beginning with the “Symphonic Cycle for Soprano and Orchestra”, The Hunting Fathers (), and ending in with the chamber opera (or operetta) Paul Bunyan6 – need not detain us here, although it should be noted, if only for curiosity’s sake, that the pair did not subsequently follow the example of Strauss and Hofmannsthal. Auden’s profound and lasting interest in opera was apparently not aroused until after he had come of age, as he reports in an essay entitled “A Public Art”: I was brought up to believe that opera was a bastard art-form. The great Mozart operas might just do because Mozart was Mozart, but Wagner in one way and Verdi in another were considered vulgar; as for Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti, they were simply beyond the pale. (Judging by some articles I have read, this prejudice still survives in certain English quarters.) In addition, we were put off, not entirely without justification, by the kind of public which did ‘go to the op-

3 The Making of the Auden Canon (Minneapolis, ), Beach nevertheless devotes a whole chapter () to Auden’s librettos, focusing almost entirely on Britten’s Op. 14, the Ballad of Heroes, which is partly based on the poem “Danse Macabre”. 4 The Poetry of W. H. Auden: The Disenchanted Island (New York, ), The opening section of the fourth chapter of Spears’s book () deals exclusively with Auden’s operatic contributions. 5 The Poetic Art of W. H. Auden (Princeton, ), Blair analyzes the libretto of The Rake’s Progress at some length (), as does Joseph Kerman in his fine book, Opera as Drama (New York, ), 6 The work remains unpublished, since the authors withdrew it after the premiere staged in May in Columbia University’s Brander Matthews Theatre. Spears discusses it on the basis of information furnished by Daniel G. Hoffman. Auden’s remarks concerning “Opera on an American Legend: Problems of Putting the Story of Paul Bunyan on the Stage” (New York Times, May 4, , section 9, 7) constitute a first sketch of his theory of opera in-the-making.

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era’; many of them seemed more interested in appearing at the appropriate social event for the London Season than in listening to music.7

The revelation must have occurred around for, as Auden puts it in his inaugural Oxford lecture, “I am eternally grateful [] to the musical fashion of my youth which prevented me from listening to Italian opera until I was over thirty, by which age I was capable of really appreciating a world so beautiful and so challenging to my own cultural heritage” (DH, 40). Similarly, it was Nietzsche’s polemic tract, Der Fall Wagner, “which first taught [him] to listen to Wagner, about whom [he] had previously held silly preconceived notions” (DH, 48). Auden’s poetic and musical views about opera began to crystallize in the late forties, largely in connection with his work on the libretto for The Rake’s Progress, which Igor Stravinsky had commissioned from him at the suggestion of Aldous Huxley8. Since then, operatic problems have occupied him as intensely as they did Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Austrian, European and Master Librettist”, to whose memory the three makers of Elegy for Young Lovers were later to dedicate their work9. This incontrovertible fact explains why it is virtually impossible to do justice to Auden’s mature art – both in theory and practice – without reference to music in general and melodrama in particular. Those literary critics who presume to do so act in ignorance and demonstrate, once again, the dire consequences which an arbitrary fragmentation of the arts entails. In the following discussion, it will be our principal aim to furnish some guidelines for an understanding of Auden’s poetic theory and to

7

Opera (London), XII (),

8 Concerning the genesis of The Rake’s Progress see the composer’s report, Auden’s letter, and the first scenario, as included in Stravinsky’s book, Memories and Commentaries (Garden City, NY, ), 9 The hero of this opera – perhaps a caricature of the beloved model – is an “artistgenius [] morally bound [] to exploit others whenever such exploitation will benefit his work and to sacrifice them whenever their existence is a hindrance to his production”. Elegy for Young Lovers (Mainz, ),

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state, as succinctly as possible, the reasons for his choice of opera and the dance as the preferred artistic media of our age. (We hardly need apologize for the omission of some particulars and details which – the standard fare of melo-dramaturgy – would only clutter up the pages.) As will shortly be seen, it was in Kierkegaard – more specifically in the section of Either/Or which deals with music in its sensuous and erotic aspects – that Auden encountered the most congenial treatment of this burning question. He candidly acknowledged his debt when, in a review of the first complete English translation of this treatise, he stated that “Kierkegaard’s essay on music is the only illuminating suggestion for a musical esthetic that I have seen” In keeping with our announced purpose, we do not intend to analyze any of the original librettos Auden wrote jointly with Chester Kallman11, except where the nature or evolution of such texts has a bearing on the subject of operatic theory, which constitutes the focus of our essay. Nor shall we explicitly concern ourselves with their translations of Die Zauberflöte, Don Giovanni, and Brecht’s Die sieben Todsünden der Kleinbürger12, especially since we have given an extended critique of the transmogrified Magic Flute in another context Auden himself has admitted his skepticism with regard to the translatability of librettos. In , for instance, he put himself on record as believing:

10 “Preface to Kierkegaard”. The New Republic, May 15, , 11 Disregarding the “corporate personality” (DH, ) at work in these librettos – which also include Delia or A Masque of Night (Botteghe Oscure, XII, , ) – most critics annex them to the work of Auden. In the case of The Rake’s Progress, the exact nature of the collaboration has been disclosed by Stravinsky (Memories and Commentaries, footnote) and Auden’s former secretary, Alan Ansen (The Hudson Review, IX, , ). Spears was informed by Auden that seventy-five per cent of the text of Elegy for Young Lovers must be credited to Kallman. 12 The Magic Flute (New York, ); Don Giovanni (New York, ); Seven Deadly Sins in Tulane Drama Review, VI (Sept. ), 13 “Sarastro’s Brave New World or Die Zauberflöte Transmogrified”. Your Musical Cue (Bloomington), II (Dec., / Jan., ),

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It is precisely because I believe that, in listening to song (as distinct from chant), we hear, not words, but syllables, that I am violently hostile to the performances of opera in translation. Wagner in Italian or Verdi in English sounds intolerable, and would still sound so if the poetic merits of the translation were greater than those of the original, because the new syllables have no apt relation to the pitch and tempo of the notes with which they are associated. The poetic value of the notes may provoke a composer’s imagination, but it is their syllabic values which determine the kind of vocal line he writes. In song, poetry is expendable, syllables are not

If within a few years following this pronouncement Auden had embarked on doing exactly what, in theory, he did not regard as being worth the trouble, this can be explained in a very pragmatic manner. For as the poet himself candidly admits: “The big broadcasting companies are willing to pay handsomely for translations and we saw no reason why, if a translation was going to be made, we shouldn’t get the money.”15 Yet there is reason to assume that Auden and Kallman became intrigued by the problems involved in transposing an operatic text from one tongue into another. A note of hope and despair, triumph and defeat is sounded – by way of a captatio benevolentiae – in the preface to the Englished Zauberflöte: Translation is a dubious business at best and we are inclined to agree with those who believe that operas should always be given in their native tongue. However, if audiences demand them in their own, they must accept the consequences. Obviously, the texture and weight of the original words set by the composer are an element in his orchestration and any change of the words is therefore an alternation of the music itself. Yet the goal of the translator, however unattainable, must be to make audiences believe that the words they are hearing are the words the composer actually set, which means that a too-literal translation of the original text may sometimes prove a falsification

14 “Some Reflections on Music and Opera,” Partisan Review, XIX, (), The passage was not contained in an earlier version of the “Reflections” published in the British periodical Tempo, No. 20 (Summer, ), They form part of Auden’s reply to a critique of his views on opera offered by Ronald Duncan in Opera, III (), , and were later incorporated in the revised notes. Readers are alerted to the excisions, additions, and emendations found in the various versions of the “Reflections”. 15 “Translating Opera Libretti” (co-authored by Kallman), DH, 16 The Magic Flute, XIV-XV. Under his own name, Auden presented similar views in a short essay entitled “Putting it in English: A Translator Discusses the Problems of Changing an Opera’s Language”. New York Times, January 8, , section 2, 9. The

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As we turn to the central topic of our discussion, we wish to emphasize that in order fully to savor the meaning of Auden’s views on opera for the poet’s esthetic orientation we must see them in relation to his attitudes toward the other art forms. Taken as a whole, these attitudes form a frame of reference in which all artistic media occupy their assigned stations and are judged according to a carefully drawnup scheme of values. That Auden was relatively slow in arriving at this grand conception of a harmonia artium and that, nevertheless, this development was a natural one, is proved by the notions – however tentative – which the young author of the Group Theatre harbored. These notions (which must have found a sympathetic ear in T. S. Eliot, the author of the Agon, Sweeney Agonistes) in some ways clearly foreshadow the final epiphany. In a paradigmatic utterance published in a program of the communal enterprise, Auden sought to establish the superiority of the poetic drama over any branch of dramatic realism. He wished to see all vestiges of “brute” reality transferred to the art of cinematography: “The development of the film has deprived drama of any excuse for being documentary. It is not in its nature to provide an ignorant and passive spectator with exciting news.”17 While the documentary elements of drama are thus relegated to the movies, character portrayal is handed over to the novel: “Similarly the drama is not suited to the analysis of character, which is the province of the novel. Dramatic speech, like dramatic movement, should possess a self-confessed, significant and undocumentary character.” Only one step further, and the realization that opera was the perfect embodiment of this dream would have dawned upon the poet who, already at this early point, states unequivocally that “drama, in fact, deals with the general and

article “On The Magic Flute”. Center: A Review of the Performing Arts, I (), was, unfortunately, unavailable. 17 From “What I Want the Theatre to Be”, as quoted by Ashley Dukes in Theatre Arts, XIX (),

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universal [= the mythical], not with the particular and local.” But Auden was not quite ready to take this step. The expected development took place gradually in the course of the next decade, with the first crystallization – to use Stendhal’s pet term – occurring in conjunction with the writing of Paul Bunyan, which deals precisely with a mythical subject; myths being, in Auden’s view, “collective creations” which “cease to appear when a society has become sufficiently differentiated for its individual members to have individual conceptions of their own tasks” The opera, therefore, begins with a prologue “in which America is still a virgin forest and Paul Bunyan has not yet been born” and ends “with a Christmas party at which he bids farewell to his men because now he is no longer needed”; for “a collective mythical figure is no use, because the requirements of each relation are unique. Faith is essentially invisible.” Like Hofmannsthal who – for slightly different reasons – regarded mythological operas as the truest of all art forms19, Auden, ever since he became involved in the creation of works for the lyrical stage, has persistently sought to embrace subjects expressing the universal and the general. Whereas in The Rake’s Progress he fell somewhat short of the goal because this was a commissioned work and he was tied to the essentially didactic subject suggested by the composer, the Elegy for Young Lovers is concerned with the artist genius who, in the librettist’s opinion, constitutes “not only a nineteenth and early twentieth century myth, but also a European myth”20, while his latest libretto,

18 New York Times, May 4, , section 9, 7. Spears discusses Paul Bunyan on pp. of his study. 19 The operas that come to mind forge a link between the ‘realistic’ librettos for Der Rosenkavalier () and Arabella (). They are Ariadne auf Naxos (), Die Frau ohne Schatten (), and Die ägyptische Helena (). It is in the preface to the latter work that Hofmannsthal enters his plea: “For if this age of ours is anything, it is mythical – I know of no other expression for an existence which unfolds in the face of such vast horizons.” 20 Elegy for Young Lovers,

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Die Bassariden, is a revamping of Euripides’ Bacchae and treats a myth which, though it may have been considered moribund in the nineteenth century, has taken on new meaning in the present one; for “today we know only too well that it is as possible for whole communities to become demonically possessed as it is for individuals to go off their heads” Here, then, is the core of Auden’s poetics of opera as far as its subject matter is concerned, which must clearly belong to that “secondary world” which creates an ambience of its own while at the same time giving depth to the primary world inhabited by ordinary mortals: At the same time, no secondary world can fully hold our attention unless it has something significant to say [] about our present life. The most successful heroes and heroines in opera are mythical figures. That is to say, whatever their historical or geographical setting, they embody some element of human nature or some aspect of the human condition which is a permanent concern of human beings irrespective of their time and place

Since the theory of any art – whether it be literature, music, painting, sculpture, architecture, the film, or any mixture of these – must inevitably come to grips with form as well as Stoff, we must undertake to reconstruct Auden’s esthetic universe in toto and, on the basis of this model, deduce the general and specific reasons responsible for the exalted place assigned to opera within that harmony of artistic spheres. First of all, we are surprised that a man who tends to emulate what we might call the Romantic view of opera should so brazenly insist on a neat separation of genres, or rather on assigning to each genre its uniquely proper function. Only a neoclassical purist could be expected to vouch that “each of the arts has its special field with which it can deal better than any rival medium can, and its special limitations which it transgresses at its peril” The practical applica-

21 “The Mythical World of Opera”. Times Literary Supplement, November 2,, This is “a somewhat shortened version of the third of Mr. Auden’s T. S. Eliot Memorial Lectures given at the University of Kent”. 22 Ibid. 23 Vogue, July , p.

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tion of this view was suggested in a document published three years later: Every artistic medium reflects some area of human experience. Those areas often overlap but never coincide, for if two media could do the same thing equally well one would be unnecessary. When someone, like myself, after years of working in one medium, essays another for the first time, he should always, I believe, try to discover its proper principles before starting work. Otherwise he is in danger of carrying over assumptions and habits of mind which have become second nature to him in a field where, as a matter of fact, they do not and cannot apply

In light of this cautionary note, we justly expect Auden to strive for a systematic exploration of the arts in terms of their interrelationship. Although, for reasons which will soon become apparent, he pays relatively little attention to the plastic arts, he does not, on the whole, disappoint us in this respect. His discontent with the visual arts stems primarily from his awareness of their stationary and hence essentially passive character. Whereas “the possibility of making music [] depends primarily, not upon man’s possession of an auditory organ, the ear, but upon his possession of a sound-producing instrument, the vocal chords”, in the case of painting, sculpture, etc. “it is a visual organ, the eye, which is primary, for without it, the experience which stimulates the hand into becoming an expressive instrument could not exist” Auden seems to regard the plastic arts as being mimetic and representational – a rather old-fashioned view regarding the predominance of abstract painting in the first half of the twentieth century. What really irks him, however, is the circumstance that, lacking the temporal dimension, painted characters are unable to choose or assert their wills in any recognizable way. They thus invariably appear to be products of their environment or victims of fate. This was the chief handicap with which Auden and Kallman found themselves saddled

24 Tempo, No. 20 (), 6. This section is missing in subsequent versions of the “Reflections”. 25 Partisan Review, XXIX (), 13f.

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when Stravinsky proposed an operatic subject based on Hogarth’s series of engravings: A character in opera can never appear the victim of circumstances; however unfortunate, he or she is bound to seem the architect of fate. When we look at a picture of a couple embracing, we know for certain that they are interested in each other, but are told very little about what each is feeling; when we listen to a love duet on the opera stage, it is just the other way round; we are certain that each is in love, but the cause of that love will seem to lie in each as subject not as an object

Kierkegaard certainly would have given his placet, for what mattered to him in his search for the most perfect expression of sensuous-erotic genius was the suitability of a given artistic medium for that purpose: The most abstract idea conceivable is sensuous genius. But in what medium is this idea expressible? Solely in music. It cannot be expressed in sculpture, for it is a sort of inner qualification of inwardness, nor in painting, for it cannot be apprehended in precise outlines; it is an energy, a storm, a passion, and so on, in all their lyrical quality, yet so that it does not exist in one moment but in a succession of moments, for if it existed in a single moment it could be modeled or painted

As we move with Auden from painting to cinematography, we find some satisfaction in entering an ambit of temporal progression in a visual art. Yet in spite of the desired “immediacy” – a key term in Auden’s and Kierkegaard’s poetics – we are still on that side of the esthetic ledger which records the passive or negative assets. For the characters on the screen, while theoretically free to act and portrayed as acting, still remain subject to “the necessities of nature or the necessities of the social order” This view is broached in Auden’s essay on Veristic opera, where he denounces Naturalism as an art which precludes choice on the part of the individual and which therefore fails to rise even to the level of ethics – not to mention the level of esthetics which constitutes the desired secondary world Auden would apply 26 “The Rake’s Progress,” Harper’s Bazaar, February , 27 Either/Or, tr. D. F. and L. M. Swenson, rev. by H. A. Johnson (Garden City, NY, ), I, 28 “Cav and Pag”. DH, The essay originally appeared as an introduction to an RCA Victor recording of Cavalleria rusticana and I Pagliacci. 29 Auden interprets verismo very broadly as including Bizet’s Carmen as well as Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.

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this stricture – although less stringently – to fiction and epic poetry as well. The foregoing argument by no means exhausts the objections which Auden feels urged to raise against cinematography; for in addition to disqualifying the film artistically on the grounds of its ‘documentary’ nature, he also resents its didactic and magical properties. By the latter he means the “means for inducing desirable emotions and repelling undesirable emotions in oneself and others” More important still, the film – he argues – renders abortive any attempt on the artist’s part to transcend nature by means of the spirit, whereas in opera the spirit decidedly triumphs over nature. Auden seeks to prove his contention by comparing Wagner’s Tristan with Cocteau’s L’Eternel Retour in the following manner: On the other hand, its pure artifice renders opera the ideal medium for a tragic myth. I once went in the same week to a performance of Tristan und Isolde and a showing of L’Eternel Retour [] During the former two souls, weighing over two hundred pounds a piece, were transfigured by a transcendent power, in the latter a handsome boy met a beautiful girl and they had an affair. This loss of value was due not to any lack of skill on Cocteau’s part but to the nature of the cinema as a medium. Had he used a fat middle-aged couple, the effect would have been ridiculous because the snatches of language which are all the movie permits have not sufficient power to transcend their physical appearance. Yet if the lovers are young and beautiful, the cause of their love looks ‘natural’, a consequence of their beauty, and the whole meaning of the Myth is gone

Moving to the level of literature, we can confine ourselves, with Auden, to a brief consideration of the drama which, unlike epic poetry or fiction, retains little of the material dross – the documentary values and environmental factors – which weighs so heavily on the visual arts. (As for the nature of the relationship between lyrical poetry and music – chant and song – Auden discusses it at some length in his introduction to An Elizabethan Song Book)

30 “Squares and Oblongs”. Poets at Work, ed. C. D. Abbott (New York, ), 31 Partisan Review, XIX (), Elsewhere Auden calls Tristan and Isolde “two mountains of corseted flesh”. 32 Garden City, NY,

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Auden finds literature to be superior to painting because it is, first and foremost, a temporal art. However, in the more extended fictional forms it suffers – in his opinion – from leaving too much room for reflection, thereby allowing the other temporal dimensions to intervene: the past in the form of memories and regrets, and the future in the form of hopes, doubts, and anticipations. The gain – to use Kierkegaard’s terminology – is to be credited to ethics, the loss, however, to esthetics. Moreover, the metaphorical nature of language encourages an implicit spatialization through imagery; and this in turn impairs and at times destroys that immediacy of feeling and directness of movement which is the hallmark of the esthetic constructs admired by Kierkegaard and Auden: A verbal statement and a musical phrase are both temporal successions of sounds that take time to say or play, but words, unlike notes, have denotative meanings. Consequently in most verbal statements there is little or no relation between the temporal expression of the words and the thought which they express. When we speak, that is to say, we are usually stopping to think, but music is always going on to ‘become’

Among the kinds of literature it is drama which comes closest to meeting the demands for an art of pure becoming in which every moment is felt in its immediacy while at the same time there is a contiguous sweeping movement, each choice leading to an action and each action compelling those involved in, or affected by, it to choose anew. In other words, drama is the only form of literature based on the premise that what really counts is the individual will and its assertion in thought (choice) or deed (action); the only disadvantage being that, as a verbal art, it is still ethically determined. The ethical, however, lacks immediacy; it is “sentimental” while the esthetic is “naïve”. Drama, in Auden’s view, is based on the Mistake (i. e., the wrong choice unwittingly made) or on the deliberate choice of good or evil. Both choices entail some degree of responsibility on the part of their agents. That hubris (the tragic outgrowth of responsibility) is essential to drama is shown in Auden’s essay “Cav and Pag” through an analy33 Times Literary Supplement, November 2, ,

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sis of Naturalistic drama, in which suffering replaces choice, insofar as the blame is placed on the circumstances rather than the individual. While a playwright who believes “that the most interesting and significant characteristic of man is his power to choose between right and wrong, his responsibility for his actions” will select “situations in which the temptation to choose wrong is at the greatest and the actual consequences incurred by the choice are most serious”, the writer “committed to a naturalist doctrine” is driven “to find a substitute for the tragic situation in the pathetic [] and a substitute for the morally responsible hero in the pathological case” The final and irrevocable parting of ways occurs precisely at the point of transition from drama to opera – or, more generally but also more vaguely speaking, from literature to music; for the ethical is chained to the primary world by means of realism and psychology, whereas the esthetic belongs, ideally, to the domain of pure spirit which constitutes a world of artifice where ethical categories are no longer applicable. As a mimetic art, drama is more natural than opera (and the ballet) in many ways – and quite pragmatically so; for while “in any village twenty people could get together and give a performance of Hamlet which, however imperfect, would convey enough of the play’s greatness to be worth attending”, if the same people attempted “a similar performance of Don Giovanni, they would soon discover that there was no question of a good or a bad performance because they could not sing the notes at all” In other words, both opera and ballet are virtuoso arts since “without an exceptional physical endowment, vocal chords or a body, granted to very few human beings, no amount of intelligence, taste and training can make a great singer or dancer”

34 DH, , Auden objects to La Bohème precisely because Mimi is too passive a character. 35 Partisan Review, XIX (), 36 “A Public Art”. Opera, XII (),

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Expounding Kierkegaard – as early as – Auden surveyed the dialectic triangular relationship between Art, Morality, and Religion and concluded: In treating [] theft as an individual act of will which cannot be judged in abstraction from the concrete temporal situation in which it occurs, the Religious sides with the Esthetic against the Ethical in upholding the unique importance of the individual will. But in asserting that the good act – not stealing – is always and only the product of good will, and the bad act – stealing – always the product of an evil will, it sides with the Ethical against the Esthetic belief that to will is valuable in itself. Lastly, it disagrees with both in blessing an act neither for its manifestly interesting appearance nor for its demonstrably good result, but for its hidden subjective intention. To the Esthetic, as the Ethical, any suffering involved in an act is accidental and without significance in itself, but to the Religious it is precisely in the suffering that the significance lies

With Auden, as with Kierkegaard, the greatness and perfection of a work of art depends entirely on the extent to which it succeeds in attracting the spirit of sensuous genius and repelling the moral elements from its territory. In the case of Mozart, for example, Don Giovanni succeeds where Die Zauberflöte fails, mainly because of the “ethical” nature of its subject. While the esthetic, according to the body of opinions under discussion, insists on choice without tolerating any change in the character engaged in choosing, the ethical presupposes a change in consequence of the individual’s choice. It is precisely this which makes an ethically determined story interesting: It is rare for the story of a successful opera to be interesting in itself. Even Don Juan, a character of profound extramusical significance, cannot be said to have a story since, by definition, he cannot or will not change himself; he can only be shown as triumphant and invulnerable (the Duke in Rigoletto), or in his fall (Don Giovanni) [] The characters in Die Zauberflöte, on the other hand, have a real history in which what happens next always depends upon what they choose now

This view is foreshadowed by the Danish philosopher who, while introducing Papageno as a prototype of the second stage of the musical-erotic, severely criticizes Mozart’s German opera: 37 The New Republic, May 15, , 38 The Magic Flute, viii. Compare Auden’s remarks on Tristan, Don Giovanni, and Falstaff in his essay, “The Prince’s Dog”. DH, f.

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It might not be without interest to run through the whole opera in order to show that its subject matter, considered as operatic material, profoundly fails of its purpose. Nor would we lack occasion to illuminate the erotic from a new side, as we noticed how the endeavor to invest it with a deeper ethical view [] is an adventure which has ventured quite beyond the range of music, so that it was impossible for even a Mozart to lend it any deeper interest. This opera definitely tends toward the unmusical, and therefore it is, in spite of individually perfect concert numbers and deeply moving, pathetic utterances, by no means a classic opera

Opera, then, must be ethically indifferent so that, in effect, every choice made by an operatic character is automatically a good – or, at any rate, the right – one. Moreover, since it is inevitably the wilful assertion of an emotion – supplying, as it does, an “illusion of absolute certainty out of the individual passions of [a character’s] immediate moods”40 – it is, by its very nature, pleasurable as well. Following Aristotle’s precept to the effect that “objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with fidelity” Auden validates the paradox by asserting “that emotions and situations which in real life would be sad or painful are on the stage a source of pleasure” In the operatic medium, he surmises, anomaly is heightened (an innocent bystander might say: to the point of absurdity), for the singer may be playing the role of a deserted bride who is about to kill herself, but we feel quite certain as we listen that not only we but also she is having a wonderful time. In a sense, there can be no tragic opera because whatever errors the characters make and whatever they suffer, they are doing exactly what they wish

Conversely, “feelings of joy, tenderness and nobility are not confined to ‘noble’ characters but are experienced by everybody, by the most conventional, most stupid, most depraved” In Auden’s opinion (which Mozart would certainly have shared), Alban Berg’s Wozzeck is 39 Either/Or, I, 77f. 40 The New Republic, May 15, , 41 Poetics, chapter IV. 42 Partisan Review, XIX (), 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid.,

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a failure because “in any satisfactory opera the voices must make as beautiful noises as the orchestra” Choice, in the melo-dramatic world of Auden’s making, is essentially “out of character”, since the emotions projected are universal rather than being tied to any particular time, place, person, or situation. The proof of the pudding, he contends, lies in listening “to a recording of an opera sung in a language that one does not know”; for in spite of this barrier of communication “one can generally tell what is the particular emotional state – love, rage, grief, joy or so forth – which the singer is expressing at a given time, but one cannot tell whether the singer is a duchess, a chambermaid, a prince or a policeman”, as “all social distinctions and all differences in age are abolished by song. In the case of some operas like Rosenkavalier and Arabella one cannot even tell the sex.”46 This observation calls to mind a passage in Stendhal’s book on Rossini, where we are told that, at Vicenza, “on the first night, it was customary to skim through [the libretto] just sufficiently to gain some notion of the plot, glancing, as each new episode opened, at the first line, just so as to appreciate the emotion or the shade of emotion which the music was supposed to suggest” At least insofar as the text of arias, duets, and ensembles is concerned, Auden prefers to regard the libretto as a “private letter to the composer”. In his eyes, “the verses which the librettist writes are not addressed to the public [] They have their moment of glory, the moment in which they suggest to him a certain melody; once that is over, they are as expendable as infantry to a Chinese general; they must efface themselves and cease to care what happens to them.”48 This is a condition which, as Auden rather sadly remarks, Hofmanns-

45 “A Public Art”. Opera, XII (), 46 Times Literary Supplement, November 2, , 47 Quoted in The Essence of Opera, ed. U. Weisstein (New York, ), 48 Partisan Review, XIX (),

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thal’s Rosenkavalier does not meet The translator of a libretto, accordingly, is free to alter the text of the vocal pieces as he sees fit, as long as the general mood is retained, no counter-sense produced, and the syllabic values are preserved. A literal translation is needed only in the recitatives – secco and accompagnato – and the prose dialogue, whose function it is to propel the action after it has been suspended in the closed numbers. The process of musical ‘depersonalization’ just referred to also affects the personal interrelationships of the characters; one might go so far as to say, with Auden, that it renders communication as a social phenomenon impossible: “In verbal speech, I can say: ‘I love you.’ Music can, I believe, express the equivalent of ‘I love’ but it is incapable of saying who or what I love – you, God, or the decimal system. Music, one might say, is always intransitive, and in the first person.”50 Hence Auden’s aversion to contemporary subjects like Menotti’s The Consul, where the situation is “too actual, that is, too clearly a situation some people are in and others, including the audience, are not in, for the latter to forget this and see it as a symbol of, say, man’s existential estrangement” The most pronounced assertion of wilful feelings (in opera as in real life) is the gratuitous act of the kind envisaged by Gide’s Lafcadio. In the present context we are not so much concerned with the existential nature of this act – which Auden adumbrates in his essay “Squares and Oblongs” as well as in the introduction to his Kierkegaard anthology52 – as with their role within the esthetic universe of opera. That the “free act” has always been what amounts to an obsession in Auden’s work could be demonstrated in a number of ways. One need only think of the opening line of Prospero’s address to Ariel 49 Ibid., The passage is deleted in DH. 50 Times Literary Supplement, November 2, , 51 Partisan Review, XIX (), 52 The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard, presented by W. H. Auden (New York, ), esp.

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in The Sea and the Mirror, the poet’s “Commentary on Shakespeare’s The Tempest”. More relevant to our discussion is Auden’s dramaturgical use of the concept in The Rake’s Progress, where Nick Shadow, the Mephistophelian tempter, persuades the hero to marry Baba the Turk by arguing: Why? Because they are not free. Why? Because the giddy multitude are driven by the unpredictable Must of their pleasures and the sober few are bound by the inflexible Ought of their duty, between which slaveries there is nothing to choose. Would you be happy? Then learn to act freely. Would you act freely? Then learn to ignore those twin tyrants of appetite and conscience

For Auden the gratuitous act, being unattached to ethics, religion, psychology, and the world of social taboos and biological urges, is the very epitome of esthetic behavior. Its archenemy is verisimilitude in its various guises: the sensible, the credible, the plausible, and the probable. The precise semantic implications of these terms have been the subject of an exchange of views between Auden and his fellow librettist Ronald Duncan However, even Auden’s latest pronouncement on this topic reaffirms his conviction “that a good opera plot is one that provides as many and as varied situations in which it seems plausible that the characters should sing. This means that no opera plot can be sensible; for in sensible situations people do not sing. An opera plot must be, in both senses of the word, a melodrama.”55 In terms of the context of operatic history, to which we now turn our attention in concluding, Auden’s theory of opera finds its paragons exclusively in the Golden Age of opera which, in his opinion, extends from Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice () to Verdi’s Otello (), with a center of gravity constituted by the works of Bellini and Donizetti. Puccini and Strauss foreshadow the decline of the High or Golden Style, which is complete in modern opera. On the whole, modern composers are suspect to Auden since they tend to write “a 53 The Rake’s Progress (New York, ), 54 “An Answer to Auden,” Opera, II (), , and “Auden Replies,” ibid., III (), 55 Times Literary Supplement, November 2, ,

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static kind of music in which there is no marked difference between its beginning, its middle and its end, a music which sounds remarkably like primitive proto-music” The views on opera we have traced here clash head-on with the neoclassical theory illustrated by Gluck’s famous dictum: “[In Alceste] I sought to restrict music to its true function, namely to serve the poetry by means of the expression – and the situations which make up the plot – without interrupting the action or diminishing its interest by useless and superfluous ornament.”57 Auden comes much closer to agreeing with Mozart that “in an opera the poetry must be altogether the obedient daughter of the music” However, one suspects that he feels somewhat uneasy about Mozart’s dramaturgical skill and finds greater satisfaction in the pure bel canto of Norma and Lucia di Lammermoor Chronological considerations apart, it is, therefore, fully appropriate that he teamed up with Stravinsky at a time when the latter wished to indulge in musical eclecticism, rather than during a phase of experimentation with Epic Opera (Histoire du Soldat) or ascetic neoclassicism (Oedipus Rex). As for Wagner, Auden (much as he likes Tristan and Die Walküre) would hardly subscribe to the master’s carefully elaborated theory of the total Gesamtkunstwerk in which the orchestra functions as an “agent which constantly completes the unity of expression and which, wherever the vocal expression of the dramatic characters lowers itself in order to define the dramatic situation more clearly [] balances the

56 DH, This passage is not found in the earlier versions of the “Reflections.” 57 From Gluck’s letter of dedication to Grand-Duke Leopold of Tuscany, as quoted in The Essence of Opera, 58 Mozart, speaking about Die Entführung aus dem Serail, in a letter to his father dated October 13, 59 See Auden’s list, “My Favorite Records”, in Saturday Review of Literature, November 27, , 48, where the only complete opera recordings referred to are Lucia di Lammermoor, Don Pasquale, Così fan tutte, and Un Ballo in Maschera. This is not necessarily a list of Auden’s favorite operas, however.

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abated expression of the dramatic characters” Both share a strong aversion to instrumental music, since – in Wagner’s words – “the work of the composer of absolute music must be regarded as one altogether lacking in poetic intent; for although feelings may well be aroused by purely musical means, they cannot by such means be fixed as to their actual nature” Kierkegaard, too, questioned the alleged esthetic superiority of music over language by calling the common view that music is a more perfect medium “one of those sentimental misunderstandings which originate only in empty heads”. He was out of sympathy “with that sublime music which believes that it can dispense with words” Auden would seem to be even less tolerant than Kierkegaard, who regarded the overture to Don Giovanni as a masterpiece rising high above the usual “labyrinthine hodgepodge of associated ideas” As he puts it in his “Reflections on Music and Opera”, [i]n opera, the orchestra is addressed to the singers, not to the audience. An operalover will put up with and even enjoy an orchestral interlude on condition that he knows the singers cannot sing just now because they are tired or the scene-shifters are at work, but any use of the orchestra by itself which is not filling in time is, for him, wasting it. Leonora III is a fine piece to listen to in the concert hall, but in the opera house, where it is played between scenes one and two of the second act of Fidelio it becomes twelve minutes of acute boredom

Exactly twenty years ago Auden publicly stated that, as a rule, the opera addict will be a conservative “who does not welcome new opera” because he has staged a “daydream repertoire of seldom performed operas by, say, Bellini or Rossini or Weber or Meyerbeer or Gounod or the young Verdi, which he longs to hear and fears he never will” Even for the author of The Age of Anxiety, opera (and art in general) was, and is, a “fait accompli” which “presents/ Already 60 From Opera and Drama () as quoted in The Essence of Opera, 61 Ibid., 62 Either/Or, I, 63 Ibid., 64 Partisan Review, XIX (), 65 Vogue, July ,

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lived experience/ Through a convention that creates/ Autonomous completed states”, and an “abstract model of events/ Derived from dead experiments” For us who like the living experiments conducted on the lyrical stage in our day, such a view seems overly cautious if not downright reactionary.

66 “New Year Letter” (), The Collected Poetry of W. H. Auden (New York, ),

“Per porle in lista” Da Ponte/Leporello’s Amorous Inventory and its Literary and Operatic Antecedents from Tirso de Molina to Giovanni Bertati () In his Memorie, written when the author, then Professor of Italian at Columbia College in New York, was in his seventies, Lorenzo Da Ponte, one-time poet-in-residence of the Imperial Theatres in Vienna, relates an episode that must have taken place around , i. e., approximately a lustrum after the world premiere of Don Giovanni in Prague (October 29, ) and roughly four years after that opera’s first performance in the Austrian capital (May 7, ). His account, patently biased, must be read with several grains of salt and a pinch of pepper: II nuovo poeta del teatro [Giovanni Bertati] era sovra tutti ansiosissimo di sapere s’io intendea partir da Vienna o rifermarmivi. lo conosceva le sue opere, ma non lui. Egli n’aveva scritto un numero infinite, e, a forza di scriverne, aveva imparato un poco 1’arte di produr l’effetto teatrale. Ma, per sua disgrazia, non era nato poeta e non sapeva 1’italiano. Per conseguenza l’opere sue si potevano piuttosto soffrir sulla scena che leggerle. Mi saltò il capriccio in testa di conoscerlo. Andai da lui baldanzosamente. [] Mi domandò il mio nome, gli dissi ch’io aveva avuto 1’onore d’essere stato il suo antecessore e che il mio nome era Da Ponte. Parve colpito da un fulmine. Mi domandò in un’aria molto imbarazzata e confusa in che cosa potea servirmi, ma sempre fermandosi sulla porta. Quando gli dissi ch’avea qualchecosa da comunicargli, trovossi obbligato di farmi entrar nella stanza, il che fece però con qualche renitenza. Mi offri una sedia nel mezzo della camera: io m’assisi senza alcuna malizia, presso alla tavola, dove giudicai dall’apparenze ch’ei fosse solito a scrivere. Vedendo me assiso, s’assise anch’egli sul seggiolone e si mise destramente a chiudere una quantità di scartafacci e di libri, che ingombravano quella tavola. Ebbi tuttavia 1’agio di vedere in gran parte che libri erano. Un tomo di commedie francesi, un dizionario, un rimario e la grammatica del Corticelli stavano tutti alla destra del signer poeta; quelli che aveva alla sinistra, non ho potuto vedere che cosa fossero. Credei allora d’intendere la ragione per cui gli dispiaceva di lasciarmi entrare1. 1

Lorenzo Da Ponte, Memorie, libretti mozartiani, Milan (Garzanti) , p. f.

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Written three decades after the fact, this scathing indictment, culminating in the charge of verbal incompetence and poetic failure, mirrors, not unexpectedly, an attitude characterized by professional rivalry and envy. The report also strikes one as an act of bad faith, an implicit attempt to hide a bitter truth from posterity: for, sadly to say, the libretto of Mozart’s next-to-the-last Italian opera is not original in conception and plot but has its very tangible model in a text authored by the object of Da Ponte’s scorn in the passage cited above. More precisely, Bertati had recently collaborated with the composer Giuseppe Gazzaniga in the creation of a work for the musical stage entitled Don Giovanni o sia Il Convitato di pietra. That piece was successfully mounted during the Carnival season (on February 5, , to be precise) at the Teatro Giustiniani di S. Moisé in Venice – only eight-and-one-half months, that is to say, before the maestro di capella Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart raised his baton to conduct the overture of his new work at the National- und Ständetheater of the Bohemian metropolis. What a coincidence; or, surely, more than a coincidence! For Don Juan operas were the rage just then, at least in northern Italy, where more than half a dozen, some concurrently, ran in the decade from to (Mozart’s masterpiece, climaxing this trend so fashionable in the waning years of the Enlightenment, which produced a Cagliostro and Casanova as well as the Encyclopédie, demonstrated its melo-dramat(urg)ic superiority over its predecessors by putting a stop to all further attempts to exploit the theme operatically.) And while there is no reason to think that the collaborative effort of Bertati and Gazzaniga was then, or ever, staged in Vienna, the facts, speaking for themselves, demonstrate that Da Ponte was intimately acquainted with

2 For an account and an analysis of these works see Stefan Kunze, Don Giovanni vor Mozart: Die Tradition der Don Giovanni-Opern im italienischen Buffa-Theater des Jahrhunderts, Munich (Fink)

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the libretto, as Mozart seems to have been familiar with the music of their joint product3. As a seasoned Dramaturg, fresh from the triumph of Le nozze di Figaro, the Abbate, looking for a subject capable of providing a full evening’s entertainment, must have been dissatisfied with what he saw: the text of a one-act opera buffa which, in performance, was usually preceded by a curtain raiser, the same team’s Capriccio drammatico4, in which, both literally and metaphorically, the stage was set for the principal fare of the night at the opera5. Da Ponte, shrewdly realizing the potential of the piece, ingeniously solved the problem. By splitting Bertati’s action in half (Scenes 1 to 18 and 19 to 25 respectively), he had the beginning (Act I, Scenes 1 to 10) and end (Act II, Scenes 12 to 18) of his dramma per musica cut out for himself6. All he needed to do, borrowing freely from Molière’s Dom Juan ou Le Festin de Pierre and other sources7, and adding plot material of his own, was to furnish the middle section constituted by Act I, Scenes 11 to 21, and Act II, Scenes 1 to 11, of the opera Don Giovanni as we know it. This ‘labor of love’ he accomplished – if we are to trust the

3 The text of the libretto of that one-act opera was first published by Friedrich Chrysander in the Vierteljahrsschrift für Musikwissenschaft 4 (), pp. It is reprinted in Kunze, pp. 4 The full text of the capriccio is found in Kunze, pp. Chrysander offers only an abridged version. 5 In operatic history, the genre is represented by works like Mozart’s Der Schauspieldirektor, Salieri’s Prima la musica e poi le parole and, last but not least, Richard Strauss’ Capriccio. 6 Throughout the essay, Da Ponte’s text is quoted from the Memorie, libretti mozartiani, where Don Giovanni appears on pp. 7 As the impresario Policastro puts it in Scene 11 of the Capriccio drammatico (Kunze, p. ): Ma la nostra Commedia Ridotta com’ell è fra la Spagnuola Di Tirso de Molina, Tra quella di Molière, E quella delli nostri Commedianti, Qualunque sia, non fu veduta avanti.

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memoirs, where his crib is at no point mentioned – in the space of sixty-three days, in which he also claims to have written the entire text for Padre Vincenzo Martini’s Arbore di Diana and part of the libretto for Salieri’s Tarare8. Outwardly adhering to the conventional structure of the opera buffa (two acts with one intermission) but aiming – one suspects, at Mozart’s urging – at the more stately pattern of opera seria9, he laid the foundation for Il dissoluto punito ossia il Don Giovanni, a dramma giocoso partaking of two conflicting traditions and forcing the unfortunate stage director to mount a four-act opera in two acts 8 Da Ponte’s account, as found in Memorie, p. f., offers the following information (here condensed): Me ne presentarono 1’occasione i tre prelodati maestri, Martini, Mozzart e Salieri, che vennero tutti tre in una volta a chiedermi un dramma. [] Pensai se non fosse possibile di contentarli tutti tre e di far tre opere a un tratto. Salieri non mi domandava un dramma originale. Aveva scritto a Parigi la musica all’opera del Tarar, volea ridurla al carattere di dramma e musica italiana, e me ne domandava quindi una libera traduzione. Mozzart e Salieri lasciavano a me interamente la scelta. Scelsi per lui il Don Giovanni, soggetto che infinitamente gli piacque, e L’arbore di Diana pel Martini. [] Io seguitai a studiar dodici ore ogni giorno, con brevi intermissioni, per due mesi continui. [] La prima giornata [] ho scritte le due prime scene del Don Giovanni, altre due dell’Arbore di Diana e più di metà del primo atto del Tarar [] e in sessantatré giorni le due prime opere erano finite del tutto, e quasi due terzi dell’ultima. 9 In her biography of Da Ponte – The Libertine Librettist, New York (Abelard– Schuman) , p. –, April Fitzlyon quotes an American acquaintance of Da Ponte as having been told: Mozart determined to cast the opera exclusively as serious and had well advanced in his work. Daponte assured me that he remonstrated and urged the expediency on the great composer of the introduction of the vis comica, in order to accomplish a greater success, and I prepared the role with Batti, batti: La ci darem etc. Although the account may well be apocryphal, it underlines a tendency corroborated by the fact that for the Viennese production of the opera Da Ponte supplied (on his own?) a number of additional scenes comical in nature and enhancing the scope of the Leporello/Zerlina/Masetto subplot. See Christoph Bitter’s essay “Don Giovanni in Wien ” in the Mozart-Jahrbuch , Salzburg, , pp. The scenes in question, which dropped out very quickly and are not included in the standard editions of the work, are found in the Reclam text (Universal-Bibliothek, # ) edited by Wilhelm Zentner. 10 For a treatment of this problem, see especially Emilio Carapezza’s book Figaro e Don Giovanni: Due folli giornate, Palermo (Flaccovio) , p.

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In the present essay, I am not so much interested in Da Ponte, the dramaturgist, as in Da Ponte, the poet and verbal artificer. In this, the linguistic, realm, too, Mozart’s librettist owes a debt of gratitude to Bertati, whose text provides, in many instances, the basis on which his emulator’s verbal structures rest. However, given the fact that Bertati’s handling of language is often crude and lacks elegance, Da Ponte’s assessment (“He was not a born poet and did not know Italian”) seems fully justified. Indeed, Da Ponte’s stylistic superiority is such that a major publishing house – Garzanti in Milan – felt the need for including his Memorie e libretti mozartiani (but only those!) in a series of grandi libri not only of Italian vintage (Ariosto, Goldoni, Leopardi) but of world literature (Shakespeare, Goethe, Balzac) as well. Thus, like Metastasio, the unchallenged librettista laureatus of Italy, Da Ponte may be regarded as a minor classic in T. S. Eliot’s sense – a label hardly applicable to, say, Apostolo Zeno or Verdi’s Antonio Ghislanzoni. It would be both illuminating and instructive to show – as I have tried to do in another paper11 – how deftly Da Ponte handled his mother tongue, not only in the way of phrasing or word choice, but also in the manner in which he wove verbal patterns that are almost entirely lost in most translations. But the task which I have set myself for the present occasion is, at once, more limited and more encompassing; for I intend to show, with reference to a small but significant and characteristic sample, that both Bertati and Da Ponte are links in a chain that originates, like so many features of Don Juan lore, with Tirso de Molina. The snippet I have chosen to focus on is the catalogue exemplified, at its very best, by Leporello’s two-part aria (#4 in the score of Mozart’s opera) beginning with the lines Madamina!/ Il catalogo è questo Delle belle che amò il padron mio.

11 “So machen’s eben nicht alle: Da Ponte/Mozarts Don Giovanni und die vergleichende Erotik”, in: Festschrift für Elisabeth Frenzel zum Geburtstag, Stuttgart (Kröner) , I, pp.

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While the piece itself, a staple of Don Juan plays and operas, has been scrutinized before, mostly from a musicological standpoint12, the tradition of which it forms part has not, to my knowledge, been traced in any detail. It clearly warrants an investigation from the comparative angle. Before embarking on that enterprise – a Cook’s tour, as it were, of catalogue speeches and arias in various literatures –, I would like to reflect a) on the plot function of such a list, b) the place assigned to it in the sequence of events/adventures which make up the story of the seducer, c) the person asked to redact, and charged with delivering, it, and d) the audience to be addressed. The reasons for offering a statistical chart in a work dealing with Don Juan are simple and persuasive: the noble seducer, incarnation of male prowess and endowed with an almost Herculean sexual Potenz, is, after all, a quasi-mythical or legendary figure whose exploits exceed the narrow bounds of verisimilitude. A quality rather than a person (to use Kierkegaardian terminology), he can do the impossible. But insofar as the drama, for which type of literature the theme has a decided Gattungsaffinität, operates in the realm of the actual rather than in that of the possible, the need for limiting the scope of the action by presenting a concrete, though still approximate, number of victims arises. From the human – all too human – perspective, such a figure will still seem hyperbolic, if not fabulous, whereas from the mythical perspective it will seem unnecessarily restrictive and, hence, disenchanting. Whatever the case, it is a compromise – a strictly narrative, or epic, device mediating between the levels of myth and plot. On the level of plot, a further reduction in the number of characters is, obviously, required to achieve manageable proportions and pre-

12 By far the most elaborate treatment was given by Rolf Dammann in his article “Die Register-Arie in Mozarts Don Giovanni”, Archiv fur Musikforschung 23 (), pp. , and 24 (), pp. Pp. are devoted to the text, the rest to its musical setting. Dammann does not proceed historically, nor does he specifically compare Bertati’s catalogue aria with Da Ponte’s.

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serve the clarity of structure. This presents a serious problem, insofar as the fewer women the playwright-librettist introduces, the more representative they must be. Nor must one overlook a weighty pragmatic factor, namely the limited size of the operatic companies, stationary or ambulatory, that were active in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Thus the troupe which performed Bertati/Gazzaniga’s piece consisted of eight singers charged, in this particular case, with embodying a total of ten roles. This necessitated the doubling up of one male (Biagio/Commendatore) and one female (Donna Ximena/ Maturina) member and mandated a juggling of the plot, as these pairs of characters could not jointly appear in any given scene. The whole question enters meaningfully, and amusingly, into the dialogue of the Capriccio drammatico, where the realization of the Impresario’s plan to stage a Don Juan opera in the cultural hinterland of Germany is pinned to his own willingness to take on the role of the servant Pasquariello assigned to a buffo caricato not otherwise present in the company In Prague, the Bondini troupe which premiered Don Giovanni in the fall of was even smaller than the one operating out of the Teatro Giustiniani di S. Moisé, consisting, as it did, of no more than seven singers. Having cut the number of dramatis personae from ten to eight by eliminating the part of the second servant (Lanterna) and distributing that of Donna Ximena among Donna Elvira (primarily) and Zerlina (secondarily), Da Ponte thus still saw 13 The matter is taken up in Scene 2 of the Capriccio (Kunze, p. ): Valerio: Quel che dite sarà; ma il Convitato, O Signor Impresario, Certo non sì può far. Polic.: Per qual ragione? Valerio: Perchè adesso ci manca Un Buffo Caricato. E qual ripiego C’è a questo Signor mio? Polic.: Da Buffo Caricato farò io. The impresario promptly demonstrates his talents as a buffo caricato by singing an aria beginning with the lines In Teatro siamo adesso, Pronta sta la compagnia.

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himself faced with the need for assigning two basso roles (Masetto and the Commendatore) to one artist, Giuseppe Lolli. On the whole, the reduction of Bertati’s quartet of women (Anna, Elvira, Ximena, Maturina) to a tercet (Anna, Elvira, Zerlina) was a clever stroke since Elvira and Ximena were poorly differentiated, to begin with. Concurrently, Da Ponte (at Mozart’s request?) enhanced the significance of Donna Anna. In the model, that luckless lady had vanished for good at the end of the third scene, in order to hide in a cloister until her father’s assassin was identified and the assassination revenged: Finchè il reo non si scopre, e finchè il padre Vendicato non resta, in un Ritiro Voglio passar i giorni; Nè alcun mai vi sarà, che me n’distorni. (Kunze, p. )

In Mozart’s opera, she is with us to the end, a dramatically static but musically dynamic figure bent on keeping the milksop Ottavio – another dramatic non-entity – on the qui vive The tripartite scheme which Da Ponte has adopted ad usum Delphini is most ingenious and, in the terms which I have just laid down, eminently appropriate: for both the social standing of the three women who cross the seducer’s path and their current status in relation to Giovanni are taken into account and ably correlated. To begin with Donna Anna who, being of noble birth, is a perfect match for the impetuous wooer: having the strength of character lacking in Elvira, she resists his rather brutal advances – one is tempted to say: manfully – and subsequently becomes the backbone of the counter-movement fighting for the restoration of order and morality. Judging by her treatment of Ottavio, whom she loves rather primly and, it would seem, impassionately, she appears to lack sensuality, not to speak of erotic fervor. Yet, could not her seeming detachment be a mask, the persona 14 In their analyses of the opera, Hermann Abert and several other critics have underscored this fact and, by implication, suggested that it was Mozart who gave them their present melo-dramatic stature.

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on public display that hides the true, seething Self underneath? Such, certainly, was the view taken by E. T. A. Hoffmann, who maintained that she was hopelessly enthralled with Don Juan and succumbed to him, much against her conscious will, at the critical moment of their nocturnal encounter: Wie, wenn Donna Anna vom Himmel dazu bestimmt gewesen wäre, den Don Juan in der Liebe [] die ihm innewohnende göttliche Natur erkennen zu lassen und ihn der Verzweiflung seines nichtigen Strebens zu entreissen? – Zu spät, zur Zeit des höchsten Frevels, sah er sie, und da konnte ihn nur die teuflische Lust erfüllen, sie zu verderben. – Nicht gerettet wurde sie. Als er hinausfloh, war die Tat geschehen. Das Feuer einer übermenschlichen Sinnlichkeit, Glut aus der Hölle, durchströmte ihr Inneres und machte jeden Widerstand vergeblich

This depth-psychological approach which, forming the basis of a different character portrait, could pose a real challenge for the Regisseur, finds verbal justification in the ambiguity of the language she uses in her account of the traumatic event: Alfino il duol, l’orrore dell’infame attentato accrebbe sì la lena mia, che, a forza di svincolarmi, torcermi, e piegarmi da lui mi sciolsi. (P. )

The last of the three verbs aligned in the infinitive is double-edged: used transitively, piegar means to bend, twist or, militarily, retreat: but used reflexively it means to yield or give way. By comparison, Elvira’s position is more clearly defined and her character less ambiguous. A representative of what might be called the upper middle class, she has fallen in love with, and yielded to, Don Giovanni, who has played his usual trick by vowing to marry her. (In doing so, he has committed blasphemy by mocking what Molière’s Sganarelle calls a “mystère sacré”) Although she has been jilted – Don Giovanni having left her behind in Burgos after spending three days in her company –, she is more than willing to forgive and forget: 15 “Don Juan” in Fantasie- und Nachtstücke, ed. Walter Müller-Seidel, Munich (Winkler) , p. 16 Dom Juan I, 2, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Maurice Rat, Paris (NRF Bibliothèque de la Pleïade), I (), p.

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and, being jilted once again, the abbandonata does her level best to make him repent, wrestling to the very end with his immortal soul while cursing his mortal flesh. In doing so, she attests, more poignantly than words can do, to his lasting appeal and to the undiminished fascination which he exerts. At the center of the feminine trio, she is the hero’s true antagonist, locked in a fierce struggle that reflects their mutual attraction in love and hatred. Zerlina, who complements the two ladies, represents still another social class, the peasantry – corresponding to the shepherdesses and fisher girls in Tirso’s Burlador de Sevilla and their numerous descendents. She is the only true ‘exhibit’ in Da Ponte’s libretto: for Don Giovanni is shown in the very act of seducing her. Cocksure of his success, he flaunts not only his manhood but also his social superiority, in order to bowl her over. And she, in her coquettish naiveté, escapes by the skin of her teeth, awakened to her own sensuality and thus emotionally transcending the level of her clodhopper fiancé. In Da Ponte/Mozart’s dramma giocoso, Anna, Elvira and Zerlina are flanked by three shadowy figures whose names do not appear among the dramatis personae: the bella dama of Act I, Scene 4 (p. ), a relic of Bertati’s Ximena, whom Don Giovanni literally smells out (mi pare sentir odor di femmina) and of whose imminent surrender he is, as usual, convinced: Elvira’s maid, of whom in Act II, Scene 1 (p. ) he says ecstatically: Non (ho) veduto Qualche cosa di bello

and whom, dressed in Leporello’s cloak, he serenades; and the fanciulla/Bella, giovin, galante (Act II, Scene 12; p. ) whom he meets at night on the way to the cemetery and who mistakes him, still disguised, for Leporello, her sweetheart or, who knows, her husband. While doubling the ‘score’, these women – all potential victims – do not significantly broaden the spectrum of representative female characters in the opera. The bella dama adds little variety since she seems to conform, more or less, to Elvira as a prototype, whereas the cameri-

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era and the fanciulla, city cousins of Zerlina, reflect the comic rivalry which, on account of Don Giovanni’s fishing in his servant’s pond, exists between him and Leporello. The full documentation and corroboration of the hero’s omni-potence, then, is left to the index nominum and/or rerum which forms the principal object of this study. As for the placing of the list within the dramaturgical framework, it should be strategic – more so with regard to the audience in the pit and the gallery than in view of the characters on stage to which the catalogue is addressed. Psychologically, its effect will be enhanced, and the Erwartungshorizont more clearly defined, if it is introduced at an early point since, in this manner, it will inform the spectator/listener, from the outset, welch Geistes Kind the hero is. (For cogent reasons, the catalogue records no failures such as the Don, whose luck is about to run out, is suffering before our very eyes.) Its most suitable author is Leporello, the servant who doubles as bard and bookkeeper since his master, like all those active in the seduction trade, has no time or inclination to keep score The factotum greatly enjoys the counting, though not the reporting, which invariably exposes him to the wrath of the irate women from whom he is supposed to shield his master. Regarding the person at whom the recital should be aimed, tradition – which carries its own weight – will have it that it should be a woman ‘after the fall’. Read at the master’s behest, or for the servant’s pleasure, it offers proof that Don Giovanni will have his way with women and that, having had it, he cannot be counted on to assume responsibilities of any kind. Repetition – the lethal enemy of élan vital – is not his style. Thus the shorthand account offers some sort of consolation and ‘reassures’ the betrayed woman that she is in good, though hardly exclusive, company. It cannot well be used as an

17 “Fast möchte man Leporello bedauern, der nicht nur, wie er selber sagt, vor der Tür Wache halten muß, sondern außerdem noch eine so weitläufige Buchführung zu erledigen hat, daß es einem routinierten Expeditionssekretär genug zu schaffen machen würde.” Søren Kierkegaard, Entweder/Oder, tr. H. Diem and W. Rest, Cologne/ Olten (Hegner) , p.

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incentive; for, true to his nature, Don Giovanni tells every woman with aplomb that she is, and will remain, the only one, and proves his point by offering to marry her on the spot, without any further pomp and circumstance. In this, but only in this sense, he is indeed what Pasquariello cynically calls him: il marito universale. Now to the catalogue itself and its history as a symptomatic feature of dramatic versions of the Don Juan story from Tirso de Molina down to Da Ponte/Mozart. The brief overview I shall attempt will not be exhaustive, nor even comprehensive, but will seek to pinpoint the chief varieties of its use in different contexts, and to outline its theatrical (gesture) and literary potential. I begin, ab ovo, with El Burlador de Sevilla, the matrix of all plays and operas on the subject. On reading both the early, shorter play (Tan largo me lo fiáis) and its ampler sequel, one notes that neither offers what could be regarded as a direct ancestor of the item in question. Rather, the place into which the catalogue would fit dramaturgically – following Tisbea’s discovery of Don Juan’s desertion and preceding her “aria” of despair ( ff. of El Burlador)18 – is empty, in contrast to Da Ponte/Mozart’s Don Giovanni, where it appears exactly at this point, namely at the end of Act I, Scene 5 (p. f.) and before Elvira’s recitativo secco “In questa forma dunque/ Mi tradì il scellerato” (p. ). Actually, in the tradition the piece is closely linked with the figure of Elvira, an affinity psycho-sociologically explained by the fact that a compilation of this kind is hardly needed to impress (or: depress) a mere peasant girl, and that it would be inappropriate in the case of the highly placed Donna Anna, whom it would only ‘drag into the mud’. However, the search for the roots of the compilation yields some results within the body of Tirso’s comedia, where the “playboy” –

18 The edition I have used, and from which I am quoting, is El Burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra, ed. Gerald E. Wade, New York (Scribner’s)

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Oscar Mandel’s rendition of burlador19 – upon returning to Seville engages in a curious dialogue with his friend, the Marquis de la Mota. Their exchange, showing Don Juan in the role of Tom Rakewell, concerns the city’s most notorious prostitutes and runs, in part, as follows: Juan: ¿Que hay de Sevilla? Mota: Está ya Toda esta corte mudada. Juan: ¿Mujeres? Mota: Cosa juzgada. Juan: ¿Ines? Mota: A Vejel se va. Juan: Buen lugar para vivir, La que tan dama nació Mota: El tiempo la desterró A Vejel. Juan: Irá a morir. ¿Costanza? Mota: Es lástima vella Lampiña de frente y ceja. Llámala el portugués vieja Y ella imagina qne bella. (ll. )20

19 Oscar Mandel’s translation of the shorter version appears under the title The Playboy of Seville in The Theatre of Don Juan: A Collection of Plays and Views, , ed. Oscar Mandel, Lincoln (University of Nebraska Press) , pp. 20 In the racy but inaccurate rendition by Harry Kemp (The Love Rogue, New York: [Lieber & Lewis] , p. 89ff.) the passage reads: Juan: How goes it in Seville these days? Mota: Great changes, friend, have taken place In a short time. Juan: The women? Mota: They Are well, what can a fellow say? Juan: Inez? Mota: She’s gone to Vejel. Juan: A rare Abiding place if she be there. Mota: Time has retired her to that town. Juan: Time that must bring all beauty down. Constanza? Mota: Ay, but it is sad To see the eyebrows she once had Grown bald now on her thinning hair.

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And so on through Teodora, who cures her French disease by profuse sweating (se escapó del mal francés Por un rió de sudores)

and the application of quicksilver that makes her teeth fall out. In short, the catalogue portion of the conversation is a specimen of low, coarse humor serving entirely satirical ends. The catalogue proper would seem to be an Italian invention linked to the lazzi executed, and largely improvised, by commedia dell’arte figures – in this case, Pulcinella. It makes its debut – or so we surmise – in an early adaptation of Tirso’s play that was staged in Naples and has been preserved in the form of a scenario entitled Il Convitato di pietra Set in the countryside by the sea near Naples, Act I, as epitomized, ends as follows: Tisbea vorrebbe andar con lui; ma Don Giovanni non vuole, dicendo che a lei deve bastare la gloria di essere stato goduta da un cavaliere della sua qualità; e dice a Policinella [= Leporello] che la ponga capolista. Tisbea fa suo lamento e, buttandosi in mare, si annega.

Appropriately, the lista per Policinella finds its place among the props (robbe) enumerated in an appendix to the scenario. In a slightly later version of the play, published under the same title by the prolific Andrea Cicognini, we have a corresponding dialogue between Don Giovanni, his servant Passarino and the seduced girl Rosalba. Responding to the latter’s complaint that she has been jilted, Passarino coolly observes: Si l’attendesse la parola a tutte le donne, al bisognaria ch’al n’havesse sposade quattro milla And when Don Giovanni has left, claiming priority for some other ‘business’, the Zanni (as Passarino, They call her the “old Portuguese trull”; But still she thinks she’s beautiful. 21 “Lo Scenario italiano ‘Il Convitato di pietra’”, published by Giannina Spellanzon in the Rendiconti della Reale Accademia dei Lincei, vol. 5 (), pp. 22 The text is reproduced in G. Gendarme de Bevotte’s edition of Le Festin de Pierre avant Molière: Dorimon, De Villiers, Scénario des Italiens, Cicognini, Paris (Cornely et Cie.) , undertaken on behalf of the Société des Textes Français Modernes. The quotation appears on pp. f.

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showing his true colors, is now called in the stage directions), addressing himself to the audience in broad dialect, throws the catalogue into the pit, exclaiming: “See for yourselves, my friends, if there aren’t several hundred on the list.” Two new features of the catalogue scene make their appearance in this passage, one of them relatively short-lived and basically limited to the commedia dell’arte, the other destined to become a permanent fixture. Taking the latter first: Passarino’s obsession with figures will be shared by his descendants in the next century-and-a-half, with the perplexing result that the total number of victims, while always considerable, varies from a few dozen to a few thousand, with Leporello’s mille ottocento occupying the middle ground. Mimetic rather than verbal, the other feature invites audience participation and provokes audience reaction. Still a mere insinuation in Cicognini, it blossoms into an outright challenge in the Convitato di pietra which in an Italian troupe of comedians displayed in Paris. In the scenario drawn up by one of its members, Biancolelli, the action at this point is described as follows: La pêcheuse [] dit a Don Juan qu’elle compte qu’il lui tiendra la parole qu’il lui a donnée de l’épouser. Il lui répond qu’il ne le peut et que je lui en dirai la raison. Il s’en va et cette fille se désespère. Alors je lui remontre qu’elle n’est pas la centième qu’il a promis d’épouser. ‘Lisez, lui dis-je, voilà la liste de toutes celles qui sont dans le même cas que vous, et je vais y ajouter votre nom’. Je jette alors cette liste roulée au parterre, et j’en retiens un bout, en disant: ‘Voyez, Messieurs, si vous n’y trouverez pas quelqu’une de vos parentes.’23

The Paris stagione of the Locatelli troupe, in whose production Biancolelli took the role of Don Giovanni’s servant, was apparently sensational and had a threefold literary aftermath. Already in the following year () there appeared, in print and on the stage, two tragicomédies entitled Festin de Pierre ou Le Fils criminel, the one authored by M. Dorimon, the other by a certain De Villiers; and six years later (in ) Molière’s Dom Juan ou Le Festin de pierre made its debut. Poquelin’s handling of the situation substantially differs 23 Ibid., p.

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from the solution – prevalent in the long run – embraced by his less talented predecessors. In his comédie, the issue, rather than coming to a head, is diffused and only morsels of the set piece are retained. Thus, in the opening dialogue Sganarelle, the loquacious groom portrayed by the playwright himself, tells his colleague Gusman, inter multa alia: Un mariage ne lui [Dom Juan] coûte rien à contracter; il ne se sert point d’autres pièges pour attraper les belles, et c’est un épouseur à toutes mains. Dame, demoiselle, bourgeoise, paysanne, il ne trouve rien de trop chaud ni de trop froid pour lui; et si je te disais le nom de toutes celles qu’il a épousées en divers lieux, ce serait un chapître à durer jusques au soir. (Pleïade ed., p. )

On the other hand, the scene into which this snatch of information most suitably fits – Act I, Scene 3 of Dom Juan corresponding to Act I, Scene 5 of Don Giovanni – merely proceeds to Sganarelle’s empty chatter (Madame, les conquérants, Alexandre et les autres mondes sont causes de notre départ, p. ), to be followed directly by Elvira’s accusations – here levelled at Dom Juan in person What is new and pacemaking about this abrégé is the division of the unnamed and unnumbered women into four estates (nobility, upper middle class, lower middle class, peasantry), to be refined and elaborated by subsequent authors. In contrast to Molière, whose psychological finesse and overriding concern with motivation caused him to eliminate as many lazzi as possible, Dorimon and De Villiers expanded the catalogue, with the latter even retaining the stunt of shooting “un papier roulé ou il y a beaucoup de noms de femmes écrites”25 into the audience. The lists which their servant figures – Briguelle and Philipin – recite are unsophisticated and largely undifferentiated. Thus Briguelle, speaking to 24 The passage is faithfully copied in Karl von Marinelli’s Dom Juan oder Der steinerne Gast, Lustspiel in vier Aufzügen nach Molière und dem Spanischen des Tirso de Molina el Combidado de piedra, as reprinted in Die romantisch-komischen Volksmärchen, ed. Otto Rommel, series 13d, vol. 2 of the collection Deutsche Literatur in Entwicklungsreihen, Leipzig (Reclam) The catalogue is missing in the majority of German popular and puppet plays on Don Juan. 25 Gendarme de Bevotte (footnote 22 above), p. 95f.

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Amarante, manages, before being interrupted by the arrival of his master, to reel off the names of more than thirty women whom, in his pays natal, Don Juan has either seduced or raped (note the coarsening of the tone!), throwing in an occasional epithet for good measure. Neither he nor the author seems to have noticed – or bothers to mention – the fact that theirs are French, rather than Spanish, names, suggesting various social stations and extending from the stately Dorinde, Angélique and Amarillis to the menial Margot, Janneton and Gillette. Comprising twenty-four lines and offering thirty-four names in all, some of them borrowed from Dorimon, De Villiers’ compilation is more extensive and colorful (la belle Joconde, Dont l’œil sçait embrazer les cœurs de tout le monde [ll. f.])

but equally fragmentary, as its perpetrator freely admits in closing his ‘sermon’: Et si je pouvois bien du tout me souvenir, De quinze jours d’icy je ne pourrois finir (ll. f.)26

With a substantial and richly varied tradition, extending over roughly half a century, behind it, the Don Juan-Stoff entered the world of opera on February 17, , when Filippo Acciajoli’s “dramma per musica” L’Empio punito, with music by Alessandro Melani, premiered at the Palazzo Colonna in Borgo near Rome. It is a highly stylized version of the plot set not in a tangible and identifiable place or country, but in an Arcadian land by the name of Pella; and its dramatis personae are called Acrimante, Atamira and Bibi rather than Don Giovanni, Donna Anna and Leporello/Passarino/Pasquariello or the like. In such a work, aimed at literary connoisseurs rather than the hoi polloi, there is little room for popular entertainment and commedia-style lazzi. Yet, nodding in that direction, the librettist has Bibi most un-Leporello-like tell his master, upon arriving at an idyllic place where shepherdesses are seen fishing (!), to start keeping score:

26 Ibid., p.

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“Per porle in lista”

Allegrezza, padrone, Tien pur lesta la penna; Se non erra la vista, Ecco robba da scriver nella lista –

but that is where the matter rests Generally (and as far as the available texts allow one to judge), the early phase of Don Giovanni’s operatic career is marked by relative indifference, on the part of librettists and composers, toward the by now familiar Register. Thus, as Stefan Kunze reports in his invaluable monograph, the servant Malorco in La pravità castigata, a piece with music by Eustachio Bambini performed in Brno (now Czechoslovakia) in , apes Cicognini’s Passarino by showing the catalogue to Rosalba; but he does not break into song. Nor does, fifty years later, the Pulcinella of Giacomo Tritti’s Il Convitato di pietra (), with text by Giambattista Lorenzi. By and large, however, the aria, well ensconced by , had begun to lose some of its improvisational character, as method began to take the place of humorous madness. Still, the ‘progress’ was by no means unencumbered, and an occasional ‘relapse’ can be noted. Thus, a one-act adaptation of Francesco Gardi’s “dramma tragicomico” Il nuovo convitato di pietra of – a rashly concocted piece that sought to make hay of Bertati/Gazzaniga’s success – made as late as by one Giuseppe Foppa lapses into sheer buffoonery, as the women on the list, numbered with actuarial pedantry, are graced not with their baptismal names but with grotesquely characteristic designations such as Cecca (the blind one), Storta (the deformed one), Tortigliona (the spiral one), Burchiella (canal barge) and Lasagna None of these precedents could have sufficiently interested or impressed Da Ponte for him to wish to emulate or plagiarize it. He was,

27 Quoted from the text as found in Giovanni Macchia, Vita, avventure e morte di Don Giovanni, Bari (Laterza) , p. 28 The full text is given by Kunze (op. cit., p. 86), who also reproduces the words of the aria as sung in the original performance of the opera – a rather innocuous piece which culminates in an Aufforderung zum Tanz.

Da Ponte/Leporello’s Amorous Inventory

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after all, a poet of fairly high literary aspirations, well versed in the Latin and Italian classics, and with a sure sense of how to draw the line between the various levels of style, whether in speech, gesture or action. Thus, even though Marinelli’s recent success made the Don Juan theme a logical choice for the libretto which Mozart asked him to write, he, pressed as he was for time, might never have chosen this particular subject had it not been for a crutch on which he could lean with confidence. It so happened that Bertati’s text for Don Giovanni o sia Il convitato di pietra offered a mould into which he could pour the treasures of his own wit and ingenuity. A comparison of the two matching pieces, entrusted to Pasquariello and Leporello respectively, may help us to qualify the nature of Da Ponte’s inspired plagiarism. Pasquariello’s relatively short piece – a dozen lines of recitative and an aria based on nineteen lines of text – opens with a reference to Don Giovanni as Il Grande Alessandro delle femmine (a parallel inspired by Molière) who, in order to carry out his amorous plans, deflowers country after country. In contrast to Da Ponte’s imitationcum-variation, Bertati’s original ends in a duettino between Elvira and her seducer’s Certified Public Accountant – an unsatisfactory conclusion insofar as, at least by implication, it lowers Elvira in our esteem by bringing her down to Pasquariello’s level. Thematically, the organization of the aria is quite simple. Its first three lines tackle the geographic question by designating Italy, Germany and France as well as, naturally, Spain as the countries that have suffered the greatest damage during Giovanni’s erotic siege. The next three lines deal with social status and convey the notion that the protagonist distributes his favors about equally between upstairs and downstairs: next to countesses (contadine), ladies (madame), middleclass women (cittadine) and craftsmen’s wives (artigiane), he ‘flirts’ with chamber maids (cameriere), cooks (cuoche) and scullery maids (guattere) thereby descending – and condescending – below the level of what Da Ponte would subsequently find to be appropriate, his hero being cut of somewhat finer cloth.

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“Per porle in lista”

On the whole, Bertati’s Don is not particular, giving no hoot whether a wench is ugly or beautiful (Vi dirò che egli ama tutte, Che sian belle o che sian brutte);

but he draws a line where age is concerned, shunning intimate rapport with those tired of the amorous sport (Delle vecchie solamente Non si sente ad infiammar).

Having made this stricture, Pasquariello concludes his ‘sermon’ with the, by now stereotypical, apology that the list actually presented is no more than a symbolic gesture, a pars pro toto necessitated by the size of the catalogue, a full rendition of which would amount to a rhetorical marathon (Vi dirò che si potria Fin domani seguitar)

As for Da Ponte’s catalogue aria, it is verbally – as Mozart’s is musically – the culmination of the series. Justifiably, the author took pride in his accomplishment and, hardly a person to excel in modesty, inserted it, with a partly rewritten recitative, in the adaptation of Bertati’s libretto which, in , he undertook for a London production of 29 Kunze (op. cit., p. 43f.) reproduces the words of two catalogue arias substituted for the standard text at regional performances of Gazzaniga’s opera in and , i. e., after the premiere of Don Giovanni. One of them does not offer a list but deals with the tribulations of love, while the other consists of two parts, the first of which (Sei fra Indiane e del Perù Tre di Gubbio, a forse più Per adesso questo sono Nove belle per mia fe. Niente dico delle Gobbe, Guercie, zoppe, e lacrimose; Belle, brutte, e ancor meschine Serve, Dame e Contadine A diluvio qui ce n’e. Tutta a queste, gioja mia Tutta siete si per me) is a grotesque and scaled-down version of the model, while the second evokes a ballroom scene dominated by Don Giovanni and his girl of the hour dancing to the tune of various instruments.

Da Ponte/Leporello’s Amorous Inventory

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Gazzaniga’s opera. In that recitative, Don Giovanni, still compared to the King of Macedon, is described as a person whose principal aim it is to transform the world of women into a harem: Il mio padrone invece, Che conquistar non vuol paesi, e ville A dieci, a cento, a mille Cerca di conquistar tutte le belle, Onde andiamo girando a quadro, e a tondo Per convertir in un serraglio il mondo

In the dramma giocoso fashioned for Prague’s opera fans, Leporello is given more time to go through his files than is his twin in Bertati/Gazzaniga’s one-acter. While the recitative portion of the piece is slightly shorter than its model – from which it borrows the punchline Ogni villa, ogni borgo, ogni paese e testimon di sue donnesche [in substitution for Bertati’s clichéd amorose] imprese –,

Fukushima Lions Club Christmas Cakes for Children at Kindergartens and Childcare Centers To celebrate Christmas, on December 17, , Fukushima Lions Club members dressed as Santa Claus and gave Christmas cakes to children at three kindergartens and childcare centers in the districts of Yoshioka and Fukushima.

In return for the gift of cakes, the children sangfor our club, making it a fun day for us with these precious children!

After the event, some of our members delivered Christmas cakes to their grandchildren as well.

Fukushima Lions Club Weihnachtliches Gebäck für Kinder in Kindergärten und Kinderkrippen Zu Weihnachten haben sich am 17. Dezember Mitglieder des Fukushima Lions Club als Weihnachtsmänner verkleidet und Kinder in drei Kindergärten und Kinderkrippen in den Distrikten Yoshioka sowie Fukushima mit Weihnachtsgebäck beschenkt.

Als Dank dafür haben die Kinder unserem Club etwas vorgesungen und uns damit einen wunderschönen Tag beschert!

Nach dem Ereignis haben einige unserer Mitglieder auch ihre Enkelkinder mit Weinachtsgebäck beschenkt.

PRESENTS

Hansel and Gretel Teacher Study Guide Metropolitan Opera Guild Education Department 70 Lincoln Center Plaza New York, NY ingalex.de

Hansel and Gretel Production Information Music:

Engelbert Humperdinck

Libretto:

Adelheid Wette

Money Talks Slots Machine Hansel: Gretel: The Witch: Mother (Gertrude): Father (Peter):

Alice Coote Christine Schäfer Philip Langridge Rosalind Plowright Alan Held

Conductor: Production: Set Designer: Costume Designer: Lighting Designer: Choreographer:

Vladimir Jurowski Richard Jones John Macfarlane John Macfarlane Jennifer Tipton Linda Dobell

Special Thanks: Lou Barrella, William Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. Bassell, Jonathan Dzik, Zeke Hecker, Mike Minard Created by: Elise Figa and Allison Kieckhefer ()

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TABLE OF CONTENTS CONTENTS Production Information

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What is Opera, Anyway? A Not-so-brief History of Opera Music and Production Who Does What at The Met: The Basics of Opera Production



The Composer: Engelbert Humperdinck

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Background Legends and Fairytales Wagner’s Influence The Making of Hansel and Gretel

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Meet the Characters

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The Story of Hansel and Gretel



The Music of Hansel and Gretel



The Production Process at The Metropolitan Opera Rehearsal Etiquette Who to Watch When to Watch

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Activities To Introduce Students to Opera To Introduce Students to Hansel and Gretel To Introduce Students to the Production Process Research Ideas

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Resources Using Hansel and Gretel to Teach Humanities by Zeke Hecker Using Hansel and Gretel to Teach Music by Jonathan Dzik OPERA NEWS Article: “Too Grimm for Words” by Steven R. Cerf, December Metropolitan Opera Facts Glossary and Definitions



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WHAT IS OPERA ANYWAY?

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A NOTNOT-SOSO-BRIEF HISTORY OF OPERA AND ITS PRODUCTION Opera, unlike almost all other art forms, was invented. It all started aroundwhen a group of men in Florence decided to revive the ancient Greek tradition of performing plays by singing every word. The culprits were the Florentine Camerata. Inthe word of the slot game online was polyphony: popular composers mastered difficult, mathematical rules that allowed them to layer many melodic lines on top of each other, producing new and increasingly striking harmonies. Then, suddenly, Camerata composers like Peri, Corsi, Caccini and Monteverdi starting writing music that was just the opposite– one singer singing one melody with minimal instrumental support— monody. Instead of using many overlapping voices to explain moments of extreme emotion, Camerata composers displayed all that feeling with only one voice– the aria was born. But monody was useful for a second, more radical purpose: to connect the arias, by having singers sing speech-like rhythms to move the plot along or convey dialogue. When they combined this new discovery, recitative with the arias Front Page of Le they already invented, opera was ready to roll. Nuove Musiche, the first book to introduce monody

Man is the measure of all things The invention of opera was the perfect capstone to the musical Renaissance period. During this time, many musicians reading Greek texts for inspiration focused on Plato’s doctrine of ethos– the idea that music does not merely depict emotions but can arouse them. According to this doctrine, music had the potential to be more than just a tribute to God – the right music could alter men’s feelings and actions. Some people worried that the doctrine of ethos only worked when the music was perfectly aligned with the words. Therefore, a madrigal, in which active polyphony meant that the words could not easily be distinguished, did not have the same potential to change someone’s emotions, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. Many of these critics were members of the Florentine Camerata, and they believed that monody was the answer. Monody not only allowed the music to transform the listener, but it also asserted the humanist values of the day– that one voice alone has the power to make real change. Many Online Slots Features opera writers underscored this point by choosing the myth of Orpheus, both showing and telling the audience the power of the solo voice.

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The late Baroque gets serious Many of the world’s first operas were part of a genre called opera seria: starring gods and heroes dressed in elaborate costumes singing in front of state-of-the-art backdrops painted to look like 3D Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper (trompe l’oeil). Although opera seria echoes Greek drama in its subject matter, setting, and unity of time and place, opera seria writers were innovators too, frequently insisting on the importance of Christian justice and forgiveness. In fact, many opera serias conclude with a happy ending. These distinctly Baroque adaptations were made for the aristocratic A Baroque opera house in Switzerland audiences, who took the moral lessons in opera very seriously. In Italian opera seria, these orderly endings had to be achieved by the human characters, without the intervention of gods– providing an idealized model for rulers to follow. A spoonful of sugar made the medicine go down: these operas were an entertaining way to remind oneself of the responsibility of leadership. The attempts at tidiness in the libretto, as well as the often formulaic nature of the music, caused many later opera writers to disregard opera seria as outmoded or inflexible. It’s a hit! Opera boomed in popularity– 35 opera houses were built in the twenty years after its invention– and the production teams didn’t have time to (or care to) keep up. Creating an “ideal world” is expensive– trompe l’oiel sets with multiple-point perspective, lavish costumes, complex stage machinery and even blocking were reused from production to production. An opera set in ancient Rome would look exactly the same as an opera set in England. The music was also interchangeable! Singers were allowed to substitute arias from other operas at any point so long as the central emotion remained the same.

An example of Baroque costume

Opera seria is less frequently performed today not only because it is regarded as stiff and overly formal but because the music itself requires specialized singers. Male opera seria heroes sing what is for us unusually Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. In their day, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, these roles were sung by castrati: men who had been castrated before puberty in order to preserve their high voices, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. Castrati were the best-trained and most popular singers in the opera seria world. Castrati became the first opera stars– commanding astronomical fees and enticing throngs of female admirers.

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Pretension Police! Classical composers develop opera for the people By the end of the 18th century, things weren’t looking good for European aristocrats. Revolutionary rumblings were spreading through the French middle class, and England already felt the blow of the American Revolution. Forwardthinking Enlightenment composers changed with the times, writing operas for the increasingly literate middle class. Some, like composer C.W. Gluck and his librettist Calzabigi, tried to do so by stripping away the excess of opera seria to form a more direct, personal message: reform opera. Other composers championed an existing alternative to opera seria: opera buffa, or comic opera. Some librettists, like da Ponte, used dramas A portrait of Christoph Gluck with revolutionary political messages to create their opera buffa libretti, like the anti-aristocratic Le Nozze di Figaro. To make opera more accessible, composers sometimes wrote opera in the country’s vernacular or included spoken dialogue in a singspiel or opera comique (German or French operas, respectively, which include spoken dialogue). Some writers turned opera into something new altogether– the ballad opera– a comic play with musical interludes set to popular tunes sung by the actors themselves, the predecessor of American musical theatre. Out with the old, in with the new The same reforms which brought opera seria down to size influenced production: gods no longer Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper to be hoisted in with cranes, and heroes did not need to don expensive-looking armor. Audiences wanted a show to be realistic. Many sets portrayed the insides of houses and the outdoors, while costumes began to draw from contemporary as well as historical dress. Even French opera houses, the Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper stronghold of frilly aristocratic opera, began to strip down their style when Gluck’s reform operas became popular in France. Bel Canto sets off vocal fireworks Even though the composition of opera Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper waned aftercomposers in the Romantic period were still interested in ornate, beautiful singing– sometimes at the expense of dramatic plots. Italian composers like Donizetti, Bellini, and Rossini invented a new elaborate, lyric style called bel canto. Like opera seria arias, bel canto arias usually followed a predictable formula- a smooth, sustained cantabile section followed by a bravura section where the singer got a chance to show off. The Romantic era put a premium on personal artistic expression– singers were allowed and even expected to improvise ornaments onstage.

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Under pressure Each bel canto opera may seem as if it took forever to write, but many bel canto operas were actually written in less than a month. Each Italian city-state supported several opera houses, and each wanted to outdo its neighboring provinces, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. Every season, an opera house would employ a resident composer, who was expected to rapidly write operas custom tailored to the demands of both the house’s impresario and the individual singers. Sometimes, composers were forced to change huge aspects of their work with very little notice. When the impresario of the Teatro Argentino in Rome told Rossini that he did not like the original overture to Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Rossini simply swapped in another overture that he had already written– which has become some of the most beloved music of the entire opera. Viva VERDI! Composer Giuseppe Verdi wrote highly inventive, impressively tuneful, and intensely dramatic operas which are some of the most frequently performed today. But even Verdi didn’t come out of nowhere– many Chomp Casino 10 Free Spins the themes expressed in his operas are great examples of late Romantic ideology. His works explore the deep tension between individual needs and duty to society, perhaps the most important conflict for artists in the 19th century. His involvement in the Italian Risorgimento– the unification of individual city-states into one nation– reflects a resurgence of nationalism all over Europe. During the Romantic period, Russian, Czech, Hungarian, and many other nations’ musical styles really came into their own when composers like Mussorgsky, Janacek and Dvorak wrote operas culling from the rich folk musical traditions of their respective countries. Lions and Tigers and Bears: On stage? Verdi often wrote in a style called grand opera, a term which has as much to do with how opera looks as how it sounds. Grand opera came from France, where opera productions were the Hollywood blockbusters of their day. Opera-goers craved novelty, seeking increasingly heart-wrenching plotlines, complex stage illusions and inventive orchestration. Productions worked with huge budgets and attracted massive crowds, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. The “super-sizing” of opera’s production demanded some re-organization backstage. The previously subordinate role of the stage director (then called the metteur en scene) took on much 20 free no deposit casino UK 2020 importance, as they had to control the vast numbers of singers with small parts, A production of Aida chorus members, supernumeraries, and animals who flooded the stage; to ensure that performers knew how to respond correctly to special effects; and to see that principals were not lost in the huge new sets.

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It’s not over until the fat lady sings Richard Wagner changed everything. Though he was Verdi’s exact contemporary during the late Romantic period— both composing from about — they wrote in very different styles. Wagner wrote operas with continuously shifting music– no distinctions between aria and recitative– where the voice is just one thread in the complex musical fabric. Like many German Romantic composers, Wagner made full use of the expanded orchestra to create a complex chromatic atmosphere full of strange and unexpected chords– sometimes beautiful and sometimes upsetting. In order to keep listeners from getting lost during his extremely long operas, Wagner associated short musical fragments with characters or ideas, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, and strung these pieces together to help tell the story. This invention– the leitmotif– changed opera forever. Gesamtkunst-what? Wagner isn’t just famous for his epic operas; he introduced a theory called gesamtkunstwerk, or “total art work.” He wanted people who saw his operas to enter a fully realized artistic dream world– and he did it all himself. It started when Wagner traveled to Bayreuth, Bavaria to look at a possible opera house in which to perform his famous Ring Cycle. Dissatisfied with the existing options, he made plans for a completely new opera house for Bayreuth, The orchestra plays in a covered pit at the Festpeilhaus the Festspeilhaus, which continues to produce his work to this day. Wagner wrote all his own libretti and supervised the construction of his sets and costumes. He even designed his own curtain which could be pulled back instead of up, to further invite the audience to enter his magical world. As if that wasn’t enough, Wagner invented his own tuba to play notes that no instrument in the orchestra could reach. Torchbearers: Strauss & Puccini The works of Wagner and Verdi are sometimes celebrated as the most supreme accomplishments of composition possible in opera – how could anyone attempt to write opera after such titans? Yet two bold, inspired composers of the late 19th century decided to see what else could be done with the art form. Richard Strauss followed Wagner in the celebrated German tradition, creating operas that featured huge orchestras, adventurous harmonies, and libretti that were scandalous or intellectual—or both. In Italy, Giacomo Puccini picked up where Verdi left off, composing operas that featured gorgeous melodies, strong characterizations, and crowd-pleasing, action-packed plots. True dat: Verismo! In the s, an operatic style called verismo arose from a growing trend towards stark realism in French painting and literature. Artists became increasingly interested in the strenuous lives of the middle or lower-class, attempting to recreate their struggles accurately and objectively. The Italians 9

caught on, writing plays depicting the local customs and dialect of unsophisticated characters without sentimentality. Soon, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, composers began to use these literary models as material for new verismo operas– the first being Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. The music of verismo opera is as forthright as the libretto: direct and dramatic, uninterested in showoff-y arias. Puccini often wouldn’t write overtures, because he felt that they were an unnatural ornament. Thinking outside the box In the early twentieth century, opera’s production was the subject of visual art’s trend toward abstraction. Recoiling from the realism of war and the colossal death count it wrought upon Europe, many operas chose minimal sets to evoke rather than connote settings, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. Booming post-modern literary theory encouraged designers to treat operas as ahistorical works, often updating or removing elements which fixed a production to a previous time or specific place. You can teach an old dog new tricks Through the second half of the twentieth century, opera proved that it could stretch to encompass rapidly shifting cultural values and expanding definitions of music itself. Schöenberg and Berg adapted their twelve-tone compositional rules to opera with surprisingly popular results; Berg’s Wozzeck is a staple of the modern canon. The multiculturalism which has become a hallmark of twentieth-century life has had its stamp on opera– notably with Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, bringing popular and pervasive jazz and blues sounds to the opera stage. Tan Dun’s The First Emperor, which premiered at the Met in Decemberwas a muchanticipated union of conventional Chinese opera and folk song and the Western operatic tradition. Who knows what the rest of the twenty-first century will bring!

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WHO DOES WHAT AT THE METROPOLITAN OPERA Far more goes into an opera than what you see on stage during a performance, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. Hundreds of Tivoli Bonanza Slots, musicians, dancers, actors, designers, stagehands and many other Met employees work incredibly hard to prepare for an opera– sometimes, many years in advance. One of the exciting things about attending a Director’s Rehearsal is that you can see all of the people that are usually behind-the-scenes doing their jobs right in front of your eyes.

The conductor The conductor is the music director of an opera; he or she has the last word on all musical decisions. One of the biggest decisions is the speed of the music, or tempo, which he or she conveys to the orchestra by keeping time with a baton or hand (though the baton tells the orchestra other things, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, too). The conductor also determines the balance of the music– which parts to emphasize and bring out. No matter what musical interpretations the conductor makes, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, he or she must be sure to keep the orchestra and singers together and to ensure that the singers can be heard above the orchestra. According to James Levine, the true job of the conductor is to “get the music’s character right. You never hear of composers complaining about inadequate technical execution, or that the horns were cracking or the wind chords weren’t together. What you hear composers complaining about is falsification of what they’ve written, a misunderstanding of the point, the spirit, the… substance of the piece, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, of what it is all about.”

The stage director The stage director is sometimes called the producer in opera, but they are more like the director of a play or movie than a theatrical producer. Just as the conductor makes musical decisions, the stage director has the final word on all theatrical choices. First, the stage director decides the over-all concept for a production. Then he or she works with a design team of the set designer, costume designer, choreographer, and lighting designer to create images and moods that convey their interpretation of the opera to the audience visually. He or she also collaborates with the conductor to make sure that the music and the staged show complement each other and create a unified performance. The director helps singers develop their characters and express them in keeping with the spirit of the production. Since one director cannot assist many characters at once and because rehearsal time is very short, the stage director is aided by several assistant stage directors, who stand on stage and literally walk characters through their movements in rehearsals.

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The technical director The designers, who are all hired to work on a single production, answer to a permanent member of The Met’s staff– the technical director, currently Joseph Clark. The technical director oversees the physical side of design. He or she makes sure that the designs that artists submit are brought into reality– that the sets are compact enough to be stored, light in weight enough to be changed quickly, and strong enough to support themselves. Once the technical director gives approval, The Met’s resident, unionized carpenters, painters, set and prop makers, costume shop staff, and wigmakers construct everything that goes onstage in a given production. New productions at The Met are designed to last for twenty years… the technical director makes sure that they will.

Principal singers An opera singer’s work begins long before he or she is hired by The Met. For their voices to be able to fill enormous spaces without amplification, opera singers must train for many years. This is partly because they are trying to isolate and train their vocal cords: a mechanism about the size of your little finger nail. This is made doubly hard by the fact that unlike other musicians, singers can’t see their instrument, so all of their learning has to be by sensation. Unlike almost every other type of performer, opera singers must memorize their entire part before rehearsals even begin. Fortunately for most singers, they are not singing a new role every single time; they often refresh roles that they have sung before. An opera singer has a repertoire of hundreds of hours of music that they can sing professionally after a very short period of preparation. Singers also have to be able to pronounce and understand the many languages in which operas are written– Italian, German, French, Russian; even Czech! Opera singers also have to be convincing actors, taking on some of the most complex characters in literature. They sing and act while onstage under hot lights, performing blocking that can be awkward or difficult. Opera singers have to be able to sing running, jumping, dancing and even lying down! Period costumes like hoop skirts, cloaks and corsets can also be hot and uncomfortable. Opera aficionados have good reason to obsess over their favorite opera stars!

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A QUICK GUIDE TO VOICE PARTS Soprano: Sopranos have the highest voices. They usually play the heroines of an opera, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. This means they often have lots of show-off arias to sing, and get to fall in love and / or die more often than other female voice types. Mezzo-soprano, or mezzo: This is the middle female voice, and has a darker, warmer sound than the soprano. Mezzos spend a lot of their time playing mothers and villainesses, although sometimes they get to play seductive heroines. Mezzos also play young men on occasion – these are called trouser roles. Contralto, or alto: The lowest female voice. Contralto is a rare voice type. Altos usually portray older females or character parts like witches and old gypsies. Countertenor: Also known as alto, this is the highest male voice, and another vocal rarity. Countertenors sing with about the same range as a contralto. Countertenor roles are most common in baroque opera, but some more modern composers write parts for countertenors too. Tenor: If there are no countertenors on stage, then the highest male voice in opera is the tenor. Tenors are usually the heroes who get the girl or die horribly in the attempt. Baritone: The middle male voice. In comic opera, the baritone is often the ringleader of whatever naughtiness is going on, but in tragic opera, he’s more likely to play the villain. Bass: The lowest male voice. Low voices usually suggest age and wisdom in serious opera, and basses usually play Kings, fathers, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, and grandfathers. In comic opera basses often portray old characters that are foolish or laughable.

Vocal coaches Fortunately, singers get help. The Met has voice coaches who help singers pronounce words, make sure that their singing style is in keeping with the style of the production and smooth out any rough spots. But the coaches don’t teach singers technique! To get to the Met, a singer must already be very accomplished.

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The prompter The best coaches are asked to be prompters. Prompters stand in a hooded box at the foot of the stage and help give singers cues, keep them in time with the orchestra, and remind them of any Pets War Slots Machine or music they may have forgotten. Most importantly, the prompter must know the particular singers and be able to anticipate their problems before they arise. Because they must memorize all the music, words and blocking in an opera, the prompter is one of the hardest jobs at the opera house.

The orchestra The orchestra plays the music of the opera. You can see them in the pit, below the foot of the stage. The Met has a regular orchestra with 92 members, as well as 44 associates who are scheduled as needed. Often opera orchestras include special effects specific to the opera being performed. Sometimes you can see unusual instruments in the pit. Some previously used at The Met include airplane propellers, type Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, and guillotines!

A QUICK GUIDE TO THE FAMILIES OF THE ORCHESTRA Strings: violins, violas, cellos, double bass Woodwind: piccolos, flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons Brass: trumpets, trombones, French horns, baritones and tubas Percussion: bass drums, kettle drums, timpani, xylophones, piano, bells, gongs, cymbals, chimes

The chorus The chorus at the Met isn’t a consolation prize; it’s an intense, full-time job. Unlike the principals, the 82 member chorus (sometimes bigger for operas like Aida and Boris Godunov) must have perfect ensemble– anything less than immaculate attacks and cut-offs would detract from the production. The Met chorus has to learn large chunks of music Santas Wild Ride Slots Machine each opera, spend hours in rehearsals and sometimes perform in several different operas a week! In each opera, chorus members have to remember just as much as the soloists – the only difference is that they sing together rather than on their own.

The dance corps The Met has a regular corps of sixteen dancers. The Met can also call on more than sixty associate dancers based on the style of dance required by each opera, such as classical ballet, flamenco, or modern dance.

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The stage manager In order to keep all of the elements of opera under control, the stage manager must be highly skilled in many different areas. This makes being an opera stage manager a much tougher position than a theatrical stage manager. He or she must follow the score throughout the opera to give all the technical cues, as well as be an expert in stage craft, making sure that the lights, costumes, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, stage machinery and choreography work on stage. A stage manager must also be able to cope with the enormous pressure of keeping such a complicated operation running smoothly. There are usually assistant stage managers as well, who not only assist the stage manager in cueing lights, special effects and scene changes but make sure that artists, props, furniture, and costumes are backstage when needed.

The crews Many people assist the artistic designers in making their designs look great, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. Stagehands set up the stage, while flymen raise and lower sets fixed to the grid, or “fly” above the stage. Costumers, make-up artists and wig staff make the principals look stage-ready.

But that’s not all! In many respects, The Metropolitan Opera is a business just like any other. It needs many administrators, publicity representatives, a technology support staff, development advisors, and even security personnel. But because it is the Met, there are some employees that Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper would never find at your average business– like the archivists, Met Titles writers and the many people that work together to make the weekly radio broadcasts happen. 1, people work for the Met every season… no wonder it is considered one of the greatest opera houses in the world!

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THE COMPOSER Engelbert Humperdinck Engelbert Humperdinck was born in the small town of Siegburn, Germany, near Bonn, on September 1, He began his musical studies with piano lessons at the age of seven. Despite his father’s wishes for him to study architecture, Humperdinck studied music at the Cologne Conservatory. It was here that he received many awards including the Frankfurt Mozart Prize in and the Mendelssohn Prize of Berlin in He traveled to Munich in where he studied with composer Richard Wagner. ByHumperdinck was working with Wagner as his musical assistant for the first performance of Parsifal. Wagner even allowed him to compose a short section of music to cover a scene change in that first performance. Later in his career, Humperdinck was employed as a conservatory teacher, critic, adviser to a music publisher, and of course, composer. His compositions were nearly all vocal or theatrical, with his most famous work being Hansel and Gretel. This one work, which is now firmly established in the operatic repertoire, made Humperdinck’s reputation. His sister, Adelheid Wette, wrote the libretto with the intention of providing her children with a musical play. Instead it became an opera which premiered in Weimar on December 23, Humperdinck was a German nationalist who wrote several works praising the fatherland and the Kaiser or “Emperor.” Hansel Shamans Magic Slots Machine Gretel, based on a folk tale by the Brothers Grimm, fits his nationalistic ideals. When the opera premiered at the Weimar Theatre, Richard Strauss, the assistant conductor of this performance, hailed the music as “original, new, and authentically German.” He continued to write operas, many of which were fairy tale operas or comic operas. Despite the popularity and success of Hansel and Gretel, none of Humperdinck’s later works were met with such enthusiasm. Thus, Humperdinck continued to teach in Berlin until He died at the age of 67 in Neustrelitz, a town north of Berlin, on September 27,

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BACKGROUND Legends and Fairy tales Engelbert Humperdinck was not the first composer to use a fairy tale plot to create an opera! Because German literature is rich in folklore and legends, many German composers felt strongly about exploring these traditional stories through their music. Before Humperdinck, composer Carl Maria von Weber wrote an opera entitled Der Freischütz or “The Marksman.” This opera, first performed in Berlin incould be considered the first opera of the German Romantic Era as it used stylistic gta 5 diamond casino heist as a template that future German composers adapted and ultimately became a tradition. There are several characteristics that are representative of German Romantic opera. First, the characters of this type of opera are usually simple people who get tangled up in the webs of the supernatural (like fairies and witches!). Forests are largely significant in German folklore. Many stories emphasize the vastness and impenetrable nature of forests, and the supernatural characters are frequently found in the depths of the mysterious wilderness. Hansel and Gretel is a folk tale that the Grimm Brothers collected for their collaborative publication Grimm’s Fairy Tales. The story, following along with traditional characteristic of the German Romantic era, is set mainly in the forest. The characters are simple people who also happen to be poor, and the supernatural occurrences (the Dew Fairy, the Sandman, and the Witch) happen in the dark and ominous forest.

Wagner’s influence When Humperdinck met up with Richard Wagner inhe was invited to come to Bayreuth (By-royt) the next year to help Wagner on his production of Parsifal. Humperdinck’s friends voiced their fears that by studying with Wagner, Humperdinck’s own creativity might be inhibited. Despite those concerns, Humperdinck said that he would give up ‘originality’ in order to study with Wagner and perhaps learn to write choruses like those in Wagner’s Parsifal. Many composers adopted Wagner’s style into their own compositions. It is clear that Wagner’s compositional style had a great effect on Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel as he uses “Wagnerian” musical trademarks throughout the opera, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. Loud musical climaxes, leitmotifs, and thick chromaticisms are found alongside expressive and tuneful 17

melodies. Despite having all the right ingredients for a traditional German opera, this children’s fairy tale is an unlikely story for such a Wagnerian approach; however, Humperdinck uses great discretion with his Wagnerian scoring in memorable pieces such as “Evening Prayer” (sung by Hansel and Gretel), and “I Come With Golden Sunshine” (sung by the Dew Fairy) by Super Duper Cherry GDN Slots Machine his large orchestral interludes with such simple, singable melodies!

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THE MAKING OF

Hansel and Gretel A Family Endeavour Hansel and Gretel was written as a collaborative project between brother and sister Engelbert Humperdinck and Adelheid Wette. InAdelheid adapted the text from folk songs found in The Grimm Brothers’ original version of the Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. Then, she asked her brother Engelbert to write some music so that her children could sing them. From there, Humperdinck decided to compose the full fledged opera! Inshe collaborated with her brother once more on another Grimm fairy tale called Die sieben Geislein, or, The Seven Baby Goats. Why is Hansel played by a girl? Throughout operatic history, composers have used women to portray boy characters on stage. The part of Hansel is meant to be played by a woman and has been composed for a mezzosoprano’s singing range. Although the opera is full of simple folk melodies, the music is difficult and would be too challenging for a child to sing. Also, a young child would not be capable of singing over a full orchestra and be heard in a huge opera house like the Met! Older men have lower voices that would be unsuitable for playing a child. Just think – it would sound odd for a young boy to have such low sounds coming from his mouth! Young boys have a vocal range that is similar to that of a grown up mezzo-soprano so, although Hansel is indeed a boy, a light mezzo or soprano voice can communicate this youthful sound successfully. For a woman to sing the part of a young boy is a very common practice in opera, and has its own name – “Pants Role” or “Trouser Role.” Beyond the Gingerbread The first thoughts of Hansel and Gretel spark pictures in our minds of a Gingerbread house and candy windows, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. This production, however, portrays a much darker side of this beloved fairy tale. Director Richard Jones wants to exemplify the children’s greatest fears and greatest fantasies. Their fear is being lost and alone in the forest, but hunger is also a driving force in their lives. The scenery and set display the vast difference between the absence or abundance of food. When they are home, the sense of hunger is very real. Their family is poor, and they misbehave – perhaps Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper common reaction from troubled children. The reaction of their mother is to send them away from the house and into the woods. Mr. Jones stated in an interview, “Hansel and Gretel is a feast for 19

children because they transgress, they’re naughty…But then they get to eat a lot of food – they get to gorge themselves on sweets. It engages with their fears and their fantasies.” That is Wacky Panda Slots Machine key ingredient for the staging and design of this production. The Set According to director Richard Jones, the opera will be set in three distinct kitchen settings because food is a focus of this opera. The first kitchen will be a realistic setting in the children’s home. As the story progresses, the kitchens get more elaborate and more ridiculous. The next kitchen scene is described as being designed in the “German Expressionist” style. The third kitchen is the Witch’s kitchen which is described as being designed with “Theater of the Absurd” in mind. “Theater of the Absurd” is the most nonrealistic of the bunch. Traditionally, the scenery in “Theater of the Absurd” is hardly recognizable and the plot gets more twisted and the characters act in wild and nonsensical ways. The Curtains Beyond the progression of the kitchen settings, the sense of food and gluttony is also brought to life by large curtains or scrims with paintings of plates. To greater exemplify the theme of food, some plates are bare, and one is even broken. These curtains are interjected throughout the performance, bringing again, a dark undertone to the entirety of this classic tale. For More Information You may watch a video Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper with director Richard Jones to hear more about his visions for this production and see examples of the kitchen sets and plateinspired curtains. Visit the Met’s Website: ingalex.de

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MEET THE THE CHARACTERS CHARACTERS Hansel (mezzo-soprano; trouser role) – A young boy who Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper with his sister and parents in a cottage in the woods. He cleverly figures out how to escape from the witch. Gretel (soprano) – Hansel’s sister. She follows Hansel’s advice to free them both from the evil witch. The Witch (tenor) – An evil old woman who lives deep in the forest. She captures Hansel and Gretel, puts a spell on them, and intends to bake them in her magic oven. Mother (Gertrude) (soprano) – Hansel and Gretel’s mother. She sends them out of the Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper to collect berries for dinner, and is frantic when she realizes that they might be lost. Father (Peter) (baritone) – Hansel and Gretel’s father, a maker and seller of brooms. He is distraught when he learns that his wife sent the children off alone into the strange forest. Sandman (soprano; trouser role) – A mysterious old man who sprinkles Hansel and Gretel with a magic dust, making them sleepy. Dew Fairy Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper – She sprinkles the children with dew to wake them after a night of refreshing sleep.

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THE STORY OF

Hansel and Gretel Children at Play

Act I Hansel and Gretel have been left at home alone by their parents. When Hansel complains to his sister that he is hungry, Gretel shows him some milk that a neighbor has given them for the family’s supper. To entertain them, she begins to teach her brother how to dance. Mother Spoils the Fun Suddenly their mother returns. She scolds the children for playing and wants to know why they have gotten so little work done. When she accidentally spills the milk, she angrily chases the children out into the woods to pick strawberries. Danger Lurking in the Woods Hansel and Gretel’s father returns home drunk. He is pleased because he was able to make a considerable amount of money that day. He brings out the food he has bought and asks his wife where the children have gone. She explains that she has sent Jokers Jewels Slot Machine Review into the woods. Horrified, he tells her that the children are in danger because of the witch who lives there, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. They rush off into the woods to look for them. Alone in the Forest

Act II

Gretel sings while Hansel picks strawberries. When they hear a cuckoo calling, they imitate the bird’s call, eating strawberries all the while, and soon there are none left. In the sudden silence of the woods, the children realize that they have lost their way and grow frightened. The Sandman comes to bring them sleep by sprinkling sand on their eyes. Hansel and Gretel say their evening prayer. In a dream, they see fourteen angels protecting them.

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Rise and Shine The Dew Fairy appears to awaken the children. Gretel wakes Hansel, and the two find themselves in front of a gingerbread house. They do not notice the Witch, who decides to fatten Hansel up so she can eat him. She immobilizes him with a spell. Hocus Pocus The oven is hot, and the Witch is overjoyed at the thought of her banquet. Gretel has overheard the witch’s plan, and she breaks the spell on Hansel. When the Witch asks her to look in the oven, Gretel pretends she doesn’t know how: the Witch must show her. When she does, peering into the oven, the children shove her inside and shut the door. A Happy Ending The oven explodes, and the many gingerbread children the Witch had enchanted come back to life. Hansel and Gretel’s parents appear and find their children. All express gratitude for their salvation. .

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THE MUSIC OF

Hansel and Gretel The beginning of German opera - Singspiel In the 17th century, when Italian opera was prevalent in opera houses across the world, some cities in Germany supported opera companies that performed works by native German composers. The German version of opera was called Singspiel (zing-shpeel) and literally means “sing play.” These operas combined singing and spoken dialogue, instead of using recitative (sung dialogue) that was typical of Italian operas of the time, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. Nationalism in German Music Like Wagner, Humperdinck was an intensely patriotic German. In this vein, he chose to call the opening to Hansel and Gretel a Prelude, not “Overture,” the French term. Composers also felt very strongly about building up national pride by writing music for their country that were written in the style of traditional folk songs, or that represented their nation in a patriotic way. Humperdinck’s use of folk song melodies in Hansel and Gretel helped his opera to be viewed as “original, new and authentically German.” Folksong Using the libretto adapted by his sister, Adelheid Wette, Humperdinck first composed folksongs and created a Singspiel. After more consideration, Humperdinck decided to turn the speaking parts into singing as well, thus creating the full opera. These folk songs do not necessarily advance the plot of the opera and are not part of the dialogue, but are songs that the children Kentucky Online Casinos – usually about Hawaiian Dream Slots Machine or imaginary people. • “Suse, liebe Suse/Susie, dear Suzie” Listen for the opening melody being played in the introduction by different instruments – first the clarinets then the flutes. Also, can you tell where the folk song ends and the dialogue starts? Listen for the bassoons repeat the ending melody 3 Ali Baba Slots Machine, and then a slight pause before Hansel sings “Ah, how I wish mother would come home!” Here is where Hansel and Gretel begin to talk about being poor and having nothing to eat. • “Ein Männlein steht im Walde/A Little Man in the Woods” Gretel begins the song without accompaniment from the orchestra! Then, when the orchestra comes in, it is still very simple. This sparse accompaniment keeps the song very innocent and peaceful. After Gretel sings her second verse, the French horns come in with the tune in a rustic harmony. French horns are 24

commonly used in this way to depict a forest setting. Listen to the clarinet’s ornamented solo. What could this be representing in the forest? A bird? A falling leaf? Decide for yourself! Leitmotif A leitmotif (light-moteef), or “leading motive,” is a recurring musical theme usually associated within a piece of music with a specific person, place, thing, or idea within the story. This motive could be a melodic line, a chord or chord progression, or even a rhythmic pattern. It is usually found in the orchestra, and as the story progresses, the leitmotif can gain significance or indicate connections between the characters or objects they represent. Leitmotifs in Hansel and Gretel Humperdinck uses leitmotifs in many ways in Hansel and Gretel. The most frequent use of the leitmotivs is to foreshadow upcoming characters and to tie together a common theme that runs throughout the work.

Recognizing the Witch After Father comes home to find that Mother sent his children out into the eerie woods of Ilenstein, he sings a cryptic song illustrating the Witch’s evilness and plans to capture and eat children. •

“Die Hex’, steinalt/The Witch, old as stone” In this piece, the percussion and strings have staccato rhythms that indicate the Witch’s sneaky personality. Contrastingly, the woodwinds have long, legato and chromatic lines that represent the looping flight of the Witch on her broomstick.

• “Der Hexenritt/The Witch’s Ride” Listen for Father’s melody from the previous track repeated in the low strings and low brass. Then, the melody is taken into the woodwinds – listen as the mood lightens. Although we have not seen the Witch on stage yet, it is clear by the musical examples in the orchestra that she is near.

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A Witchy Cackle! We hear the witch’s laugh many times! To represent her highpitched laugh, Humperdinck uses the highest pitched instruments like piccolos, flutes and violins. Listen to each of these tracks and hear the Witch give her menacing cackle! Listen! • “Knusper, knusper, Knäuschen/Munchy, Munchy, Mousey” • “Ich bin Rosina Leckermaul/I am Rosina Dainty Mouth” • “Nun, Gretel, sei vernünftig und nett!/Now, Gretel, it is reasonable and nice!” In this song, listen particularly for a cackle in the orchestra as well as a cackle from the Witch herself!

Grease Slot am Rosina Dainty Mouth! The children finally meet the Witch near her house, and to lure them into her magic spell, she slyly sings her aria saying how nice she is to little children. Listen to the opening melody from this aria, as well as her menacing laugh, is often repeated throughout the rest of the opera to remind the audience about the Witch’s presence. Listen! • “Ich bin Rosina Leckermaul/I am Rosina Dainty Mouth” • “Nun, Gretel, sei vernünftig und nett/Now Gretel, it is reasonable and nice”

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Evening Prayers There are slight religious tones sprinkled throughout the entirety of this opera.

• “Abends, will ich schlafen geh’n/Evening, I want to go to sleep” First, listen to the lullaby duet. Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper how the Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper plays very quietly to give a dream-like feel. While Hansel and Gretel sing, the orchestra has a thin quality that allows the voices to really ring out. This is one of the most famous melodies in the opera. • “Vorspiel/Prelude” Now, hear the very beginning of the opera. Do you recognize the “Evening Prayer” melody? It is in a different key, but the low brass ring out and give a very majestic feeling to this tune. Then, the strings take over, and the whole orchestra plays together with that full, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, “Wagnerian” sound!

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THE PRODUCTION PROCESS

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REHEARSAL ETIQUETTE POINTERS


Absolutely NO talking or whispering during rehearsals! The Met has nearly perfect acoustics– which means that the singers onstage can hear you as well as you can hear them. The Met has no right angles anywhere in the house, allowing all the curves to bounce the sound back into the atmosphere. All of the wooden veneer in the auditorium came from a single African rosewood tree, thus the sound resonates at exactly the same frequency. It’s as if the auditorium itself is a huge musical instrument!




No snacks, gum, or drinks inside the auditorium.




Turn off electronic devices (No iPods, cell phones or beeping watches, etc.)




No feet on seats or railings.

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WHO TO WATCH… Biographies of the Cast Cast and Crew Crew Alice Coote (Mezzo-Soprano) – Hansel – Alice Coote was born in London, England. She studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, the Royal Northern College of Music, and the National Opera Studio. Her highly varied concert repertoire ranges from Bach and Handel Oratorios to compositions by Mahler, Debussy and Britten. Her operatic roles include Poppea, Dorabella, Cherubino and Lucretia with many opera companies including Covent Garden, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Opera North, Seattle Opera and many others. At the BBC Proms, Ms. Coote, with Julius Drake, premiered Judith Weir’s song cycle ‘The Voice of Desire’. The cycle was composed specifically for them. They also regularly appear at London’s Wigmore Hall, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam and at New York’s Lincoln Centre. Ms. Coote has recently become an EMI Classics Artist due to the success of her recital recording of Schumann and Mahler works. Other recordings include Walton’s Gloria (Chandos), The Choice of Hercules (Hyperion), Orfeo (Virgin Classics). Alan Held (Bass-Baritone) – Father (Peter) – A native of Washburn, Illinois, Alan Held is known as one of America’s leading opera singers. He received his vocal training from Millikin University and Wichita State University. He has performed major roles in many of the world’s most famous opera houses including The Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Lyrics Opera of Chicago, Covent Garden, Teatro Alla Scala, and Munich State Opera. His many roles include Wotan in Wagner’s Ring Cycle, Leporello in Don Giovanni, Jochanaan in Salome, Don Pizzaro in Fidelio, Orestes in Elektra, Balstrode in Peter Grimes, and the title role in Wozzeck. Mr. Held has received numerous awards and honors including the Birgit Nilsson Prize. He is also a noted clinician had has regularly given masterclasses at Millikin University and Yale University. 30

Philip Langridge (Tenor) – The Witch – Philip Langridge is a British tenor born in Hawkhurst, Kent, England on December 6, He studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Langridge performs on operatic and concert stages world-wide and is a singer in great demand in Europe, the United States and Japan. He sings a wide range of repertoire from Monteverdi to contemporary works. He performs regularly at La Scala in Milan and Covent Garden. Langridge’s recordings have given him great success, and he has won two Grammy Awards (Moses und Aron and Peter Grimes), a Gramophone Award (War Requiem), and the Classic CD Award (The Turn of the Screw). In concert, he has performed under the baton of many of the world’s leading conductors such as Bychkov, Davis, Harnoncourt, Levine, Previn, Rattle and Solti. Mr. Langridge is best known for his Britten interpretations. He is considered a leading performer of English opera and oratorio, and regularly performs the sacred works of Bach and Handel. Rosalind Plowright (Mezzo-Soprano) – Mother (Gertrude) – The British Mezzo-Soprano Rosalind Plowright was born on May 21, She studied in Manchester and at the London Opera Center. She made her debut in as the Page in Salome with the England National Opera, her United States debut with San Diego and inshe made her La Scala debut. She is also a screen actress, and has appeared in the BBC series House of Elliott and on the theatrical stage in a new musical comedy titled Two’s A Crowd. She has performed in Aida with Luciano Pavarotti at Covent Garden, and will return in the / season for The Ring cycles. She has also performed with “The Three Tenors.” Ms. Plowright performed Il Trovatore with Plácido Domingo at Covent Garden and received the Deutsche Grammophon award.

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Christine Schäfer (Soprano) – Gretel – This German soprano was born in Frankfurt. She began her vocal studies at the Berlin Hochschule der Künste (Academy of Arts) with Ingrid Figur. Inshe performed in several masterclasses with Arleen Augér who has played a large role in her training. She has also studied with Deitrich Fischer-Dieskau and Sena Jurinac. She is known for her diverse repertoire ranging from Baroque music to Mozart arias to works by contemporary composers. One composer in particular has had a great influence on her career – Aribert Reimann. It was his course on contemporary song at Berlin Hochschule that she was able to cultivate in depth her love for the music of our time, and Reimann has also composed several songs specifically for her. In she made her first record with songs composed by Reimann. Vladimir Jurowski – Conductor – A Russian conductor, Vladimir Jurowski was born in Moscow on April 4, He studied music at the Music College of the Moscow Conservatory. Inhe moved with his family to Germany where he studied conducting with Rolf Reuter. Despite his young age, this is not his Metropolitan Opera conducting debut! Inhe held the baton at the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades with Plácido Domingo. He has also conducted operas at the Welsh National Opera, the Opera National de Paris, and last season, he made his La Scala debut. In September of this year, he will become the Principal Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Richard Jones – Director – This is Richard Jones’ Metropolitan Opera debut! He was born in London and studied at the University of Hull and the University of London. Inhe directed the world premiere of Judith Weir’s A Night at the Chinese Opera for Kent Opera, and a production of Mignon at the Wexford Festival. Mr. Jones has also directed Hansel and Gretel in the UK. John Macfarlane – Set and Costume Designer – This production of Hansel and Gretel is Mr. Macfarlane’s Metropolitan Opera debut, but he is no stranger to opera design. Born in Glasgow, Scotland inhe received his training at the Glasgow School of Art. He is recognized as one of the world’s leading designers for opera and ballet, and has worked with many famous companies

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including the San Francisco Ballet, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Netherlands Dans Theater, and the Scottish Opera. Jennifer Tipton – Lighting Designer – Jennifer Tipton is an award-winning lighting designer, having lit the stage for many ballets, plays and musicals. She won a Tony Award for Best Lighting Design for Jerome Robbins' Broadway and The Cherry Orchard. She designed the lighting for Baryshnikov’s production of The Nutcracker both for the stage and for television.

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WHEN TO WATCH… An Avera Average verage Production Production Timeline Timeline years in advance

General manager chooses operas for the season; designers, singers and conductors are scheduled for each production.

years in advance

Stage rehearsal schedule drafted.

years in advance

Design team submits sketches and/or models for a new production to the technical director.

1 year in advance

Tech rehearsals begin for a new production.

weeks in advance

New productions begin rehearsing in practice rooms.

About 2 weeks in advance

New productions begin rehearsing on the main stage with piano. During piano rehearsals, singers wear street clothes and work mainly with the stage director. The chorus begins to learn their blocking.

About 1 week in advance

New productions begin rehearsing with the orchestra. By this time, the lights and sets are ready, and costumes are usually worn. During the orchestra rehearsals, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, the conductor makes most of the changes, while artistic designers put the finishing touches on the production.

2 nights before opening

Final dress rehearsal– a full run-through with full costumes, sets, orchestration, and blocking. Changes rarely need to be made at this point.

OPENING NIGHT

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ACTIVITIES • TO INTRODUCE YOUR STUDENTS TO OPERA Brainstorm Peter Brook Opera Game

• TO INTRODUCE YOUR STUDENTS TO Hansel and Gretel The Story Storytelling What Drives the Characters? Another Side The Music Saturation Music What the Music Tells Us Discuss and Create: Leitmotifs Folksongs and Culture Context Create an In-house Study Guide The World of the Opera Possible Research Topics Themes & Issues Coffee Talk Two Thumbs Up!

• TO INTRODUCE YOUR STUDENTS TO THE PRODUCTION PROCESS Adaptation Lingo Ch-ch-ch-changes The Price Is Right Style Points! So, How Did the Met Do?

• RESEARCH IDEAS

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ACTIVITIES TO INTRODUCE YOUR STUDENTS TO OPERA Objective: Students become familiar with opera as an art form—its conventions, its history, and its continuing potential to touch lives

Brainstorm! Time required: at least 10 minutes Resources required: 5 or 6 large sheets of paper and markers Purpose: To explode opera myths! If opera is a new experience for your class, brainstorming can be a nice way to introduce them to it. Split your class into 5 or 6 groups, with a Luxor Slots Machine sheet of paper per group. In their groups, have them write all the words that they can think of associated with the word opera for 5 minutes – or as long as the group needs (i.e. screamy singing, fat ladies, Viking helmets, shattering glass, grandparents, etc.). When the time is up, have students walk around the room and Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper at what other groups have written or select a group representative to share with the class. Extensions of this activity: • If you sing in daily life, when and where do you sing? (While you’re getting ready in the morning? When you’re Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper • Discuss Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper opera singers’ voices are not amplified and how they must project. • Introduce students to opera vocabulary.

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Peter Brook Opera Game Time required: 15+ minutes Resources required: none Purpose: To discover what it feels like to be an opera singer English director, Peter Brook, famous for his theatre and opera productions worldwide, developed this game to help actors and young singers understand the many tasks opera singers must perform at once. • •

• •

Pick four students: one opera singer and three assistants (A, B and C) The opera singer and A should face each other. A will make a series of simple movements, which the opera singer Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper mimic as closely as possible, being A’s mirror B is responsible for asking the opera singer simple mathematical equations, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. The opera singer must answer these, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, while still mirroring A C is responsible for asking the opera singer a series of personal questions (what’s your favorite place, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, favorite color, etc). The opera singer must answer questions from B and C, whilst being A’s mirror

This game gives students a taste of what it’s like for opera singers to follow blocking (physical movement), sing music (math) and make artistic and emotional decisions (personal questions) all Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper the same time. Things to watch out for: • B and C have a tendency to become very polite, alternating questions. Have them try different ways of asking the questions. They should repeat them if they are not receiving answers! • The opera singer will find it easier to follow A if looking directly into A’s eyes, allowing the movements to be in their peripheral vision. • A’s movements should be smooth and slow – the aim is to allow the opera singer to follow, not to make them mess up!

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ACTIVITIES TO INTRODUCE YOUR STUDENTS TO

Hansel and Gretel Objectives: • • •

Students immerse themselves in the story and music of the focus opera. Students put the focus opera in historical context and learn about its social and/or musicological significance. Students identify the themes and issues at the heart of the opera.

THE STORY Storytelling Resources required: “Meet the Characters” and “The Story of Hansel and Gretel” from this guide, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. Purpose: To help students identify with the characters and their dilemmas; to become familiar with story construction. • •

•

• •

Introduce the main characters Have the students to whom you have assigned characters sit or stand in accordance with their characters’ relationships; have the students themselves guess what relationships exist between the characters based on what they already know. Ask the class what they think will happen when these characters meet. How will one character’s wishes affect the fate of another? (This could be a discussion, or you could ask them to write down what they think will happen in the story). Use the students’ ideas to introduce the full synopsis. Stop at crucial turning points in the plot and ask the students what they think will happen to the characters next.

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What drives the characters? Resources required: none Purpose: To help the students Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper with the characters and their dilemmas; To develop critical thinking skills through character analysis Hansel and Gretel • Why are Hansel and Gretel so obedient to their mother’s command to go into the woods to pick strawberries? • How do you think Hansel and Gretel changed throughout the course of the opera? • How do you think life will be different for Hansel and Gretel now that they’ve gone through this experience? Witch • Why does the Witch choose Hansel to be fattened up, and not Gretel? • What might the Witch have done with Gretel, ultimately? • How would the story change if the witch lived? • Why does she live in the forest? Father • What bonos gratis sin deposito casinos españa he have done to the children if here were home when they spilled the milk? • Ultra Hot Slot were his thoughts when he learned his children were in the forest? • What would he have done, or said, to the witch? • What does he think of his life and family at the end of the opera?

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Another Side Resources required: Optional costume ideas, optional art supplies for set making Purpose: To improve written language skills; To develop critical thinking skills; To develop creative writing skills Hansel and Gretel was written from a 3rd person perspective. This is the author’s way of telling the story from the outside instead of knowing the thoughts of a single character. Working in groups, choose one character to be the narrator, and rewrite the story from their perspective. Brainstorm: • Background information about that character’s life that we might not otherwise know Happy Fruits Slot Feelings this character might have towards the characters he/she encounters • Inner thoughts the character might have as the story plays out Extensions of this activity: • In your groups, create a skit to perform for the class o Assign roles o Design costumes o Make a set o Practice your creation • Incorporate Music to enhance your performance • Write a story collaboratively as a class, or turn this activity into an individual creative writing assignment.

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The Music Saturation Music Resources required: CD of the opera Purpose: To familiarize your students with the music From an activity by Lou Barella, Brooklyn High School for Arts and Music

Some time before you begin preparing your students to see Hansel and Gretel, play the music of the overture as often as you can: in the background while students are entering the classroom, while they are leaving class, etc. Refuse to answer questions about the music. Instead, pique the students’ interest by asking them to guess what the music might be depicting. Later, when you introduce the music, they will already recognize it.

What the music tells us Resources required: Blackboard / whiteboard, recording of the opera Purpose: To help students identify with the characters and their dilemmas by responding creatively to the opera; To develop critical listening skills Based on an activity by Mike Minnard, A MacArthur Barr Middle School

Before introducing the story of the opera to your students, pose this question on the board, If this piece of music were a person, what would the person be like? Then play the overture to Hansel and Gretel for the class, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. While your students are listening to the excerpt, they should write every adjective that comes to mind that describes the music and personifies the sound. The words are then offered by the class and written on the board. Use the students’ descriptions to introduce the premise of the opera and the characters.

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Extensions of this activity: Play the excerpt for your students again. What do they think is the setting? What’s the story? Ask them to justify their guesses. Use the students’ guesses to Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper the story of Hansel and Gretel. Then, listen to the music a final time, following along with the translations provided in the back of the book.

Discuss and Create: Leitmotifs Resources required: Optional musical instruments Purpose: To become familiar with story and dramatic construction; To respond imaginatively to the opera’s expressive qualities Leitmotifs are used in Hansel and Gretel to give the audience a connection with certain characters or ideas. In this opera, we Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper key players in the opera by their musical leitmotif; however, leitmotifs are not found only in Wagnerian-style German operas! Discuss leitmotifs found in contemporary media. (Examples include: Darth Vader from Star Wars and the theme from Jaws) Create your own personal leitmotif! Using a few notes, rhythms or other sounds (patterns are useful), have each student create and perform their own ‘leitmotif’ for the class. Have students think about their daily habits. Perhaps they have something they say frequently. Maybe they have an expressive laugh. Think about your own culture or background musically. These characteristics can be incorporated into their leitmotif. Let Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper be personal, and let it be fun!

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Folksongs and Culture Resources Required: Internet Purpose: To develop research skills and make connections to another culture; To develop critical thinking and research skills If you were rewriting Hansel and Gretel to become a fairy tale opera from your own culture, what songs might you use as folk tunes to incorporate into the libretto? Research the music from your heritage. Pick one or two that you particularly enjoy! If the music is in another language, see if you can find a translation, so that the class knows what you are singing about. Choose Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper song to present to the class. Get into detail about its musical characteristics. Things to discuss: • • • •

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Instrumentation – How many instruments? What are they? Do any of the instruments exist in the United States? Melodic line – Is it easy to sing? Tempo and Style Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper Is the song upbeat or peaceful? Could you dance to it, or might it be a lullaby? Text – What is the subject matter of this song? Why might it have been written? Is it sung by a man or a woman, or could it be sung by either one? Are there many versions of this song on recording? Have any famous people recorded it? If possible, bring in a recording to share with the class!

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Context Create an in-house study guide Purpose: To understand the story and background of the opera; to develop research and essay writing skills Based on an activity by Anthony Marshall, Baldwin Senior High School

Create your own “in-house” study guide for Hansel and Gretel as a class. Each student will write Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper article on an aspect of the story, characters, composer or background. Decide as a class what you will need to cover to provide a balanced insight into the opera. When students have completed their articles, collect them in a book and distribute copies to the whole class.

The world of the opera Resources required: Take a look in the Activities Section for research ideas. Purpose: To Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper research skills and make connections to another historical era Have students imagine they live in the locale of the opera at the time of its occurrence. How would they 1) travel, 2) contact a friend, 3) find out about daily events, 4) entertain themselves, 5) eat, sleep, and keep warm? etc. This could be the basis for a classroom discussion or a research project.

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THEMES AND ISSUES Coffee talk Resources required: None Purpose: To help students identify with the characters and their dilemmas by responding creatively to the opera; To develop critical thinking skills; To develop essay writing skills. Discuss the themes of the operas and have students write stories based on their own lives connected to these themes. Have they ever felt lonely, sad, or hungry? What do they do to cheer themselves up? Have they ever had to solve a problem on their own, without the help of a grownup?

Two thumbs up! Resources Required: Optional—video camera. Purpose: To help students think critically about the central themes and issues of an opera • • •

Divide students into small groups and encourage them to discuss the central Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper of the opera. Students should then script a distillation of this conflict as a movie trailer or commercial and rehearse the skit. If possible, make a video. Groups then present and discuss their interpretations with the class.

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ACTIVITIES TO INTRODUCE YOUR STUDENTS TO THE PRODUCTION PROCESS Objectives: • Students learn to recognize and discuss the choices made by directors, designers, conductors, and singers. • Students will discuss why choices are made by identifying the vision at a production’s core and critiquing the effectiveness of its translation onstage. • Students discuss how production decisions like schedule, cast and budget influence artistic choices. • Students will be able to make and justify their own artistic choices.

Adaptation Resources: Movies, books, scripts, CD’s, etc… Purpose: To show students a range of interpretive possibilities. Show students any set of three interpretations of any one central work. You could discuss treatments of the same subject casino di saint vincent different media: Text of Death in Venice Selection from Britten’s Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper in Venice Film version—Love and Death on Long Island; Venice, Venice; Death in Venice Text of Macbeth Selection from Verdi’s Macbeth Film version—Scotland, PA; Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood; Polanski’s Tragedy of Macbeth The text of Romeo and Juliet A clip from a film version—Luhrmann or Zeffirelli A selection from Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette Text of Hamlet A clip from The Cash Blox Slots Machine King A film version of Hamlet—take your pick. Text of Taming of the Shrew A selection from Kiss Me, Kate A clip from Ten Things I Hate About You

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You could also compare treatments of the same subject in opera: Gounod’s Faust Boito’s Mephistopheles Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust Monteverdi’s Orpheus Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice Peri’s Euridice

Discuss the differences and similarities between the interpretations. Is it possible to change the form of a work and maintain the central message? Does the audience approach different media in different ways? Are some Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper difficult than others? Do some fit the subject matter better than others? This could also be a written assignment or the focus of small-group discussions.

Lingo! Resources: Multiple recordings of the opera. Purpose: To recognize artistic choices; To develop critical listening, viewing, and speaking skills. As it takes many times listening to a piece of music to fully familiarize oneself, this activity is best as a written assignment. •

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Students should familiarize themselves with a five-minute (or so) excerpt from Hansel and Gretel, listening to it many times until they have it memorized. Following a score is preferable, but if not possible, students should diagram what they perceive to be the form of the selection. Next, listen to two other recordings. What is different in each of the recordings? Consider tempo, dynamics, balance, instrumentation, articulation, etc, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. What are choices that each group has made? What are the inflexible aspects of the composition? Discuss the relative merits of each recording. Which are most in keeping with the expectations of the period? What works in each interpretation? What doesn’t work? The focus should be on concise, objective statements about each group’s interpretation.

Extensions of this activity: If possible, watch a DVD. How have the director and composer interpreted the libretto and the music? What are they trying to emphasize? What are they trying to downplay? Does the production’s vision correspond to your conception of the central themes and images of the work?

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Ch-ch-ch-changes Resources: Gallery of previous production images in the Resources section Purpose: To recognize and critique an artistic vision Display images from previous productions for your students, or play scenes from DVDs. • •

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Have your students discuss or write down the choices that they think that designers have made. Have students characterize the feel of a production using a set of adjectives. Is the production dark? Symbolic? Exaggerated? Frivolous? Colorful? Encourage students to try to figure out why designers may have created a production with that feel. What might the designers think is at the core of this work? (e.g. Is the production angular and sparse to show that it is a story for all ages, not a dated Romantic work? Is it angular and sparse so that external landscapes are as distorted as the internal landscapes of the extreme characters?) There are no wrong answers, but there are educated guesses. Discuss whether the production is making a bold statement or not, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. Is the vision unified, or do some choices still seem random?

The price is right! Resources: None Purpose: To learn about the complexity of getting an opera onstage If a production of Hansel and Gretel were to be sponsored by a product or company, what or who would it be and why? Write a proposal to the president of the company you have chosen explaining why you think it would be a good idea for them to give funding to a production of Hansel and Gretel. Note: students must point out what the company would gain by sponsoring the opera, not what the production itself would gain from sponsorship.

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Style Points Time Required: 30 minutes Resources Required: The story of Hansel and Gretel Purpose: For students to make and justify their own artistic ideas One of the most exciting aspects of opera directing is putting a new spin on classic stories. A director’s choices about setting, blocking and design concept can greatly influence the meaning of a work. Yukon casino your students create a production of Hansel and Gretel using their own ideas. Your students should concentrate on ways they can provide a deeper understanding of the characters and central themes of the opera through their choices. •

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Ask your class to identify central themes in Hansel and Gretel (for example: family feud, battle of the sexes, young vs. old, etc.) As they brainstorm, write their responses on the board. Have your class split into small groups. Each group should choose one theme to concentrate on. Alternatively, students could do this individually for a more long-term project. When they have chosen a theme, ask students to brainstorm adjectives that describe how their theme makes them feel (for example: bold, angry, forlorn, on edge, daring, adventurous, powerless, etc.) Have your students create a unified design concept inspired by their theme-derived adjectives. Consider: shapes, colors, building materials, angles, locations, abstract vs. realistic, quality of light, large space vs. small, rake, easy or hard to navigate, etc. For instance, a “bold” production might feature bright colors, sharp angles and smooth surfaces. An “angry” production might feature dark colors and worn furniture. Ask your students to create set, costume and lighting designs for the production using their unified design concept and production plan. (Example setting: modern day Manhattan; skyscrapers, parks, trendy clothes, etc.) Each member of the group can be assigned a designing task, or they can work collaboratively on them. Students may describe their production verbally, in writing, or draw design sketches. Optional: Discuss what the acting will be like in this visual world (stylized, realistic, etc.).

After • • •

seeing the opera: How did Richard Jones’ Met staging differ from yours? Were there any similarities between your staging and Richard Jones’? Was there anything Richard Jones did that you didn’t agree with? What and why? • Why do you think he made the choices he did? What was he trying to emphasize?

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So, How Did The Met Do? Resources Required: Significant understanding of the historical context, characters, plot, and music of the opera. Purpose: To respond creatively to the opera; To develop creative writing skills; To make and justify their own artistic ideas. Writing a review is not easy. It takes a great amount of creativity and thought. In this lesson, students will take information learned prior to attending the opera and apply it to what they witnessed while at The Met. Students should be encouraged to write in an editorial style. They should combine knowledge gained from previous lessons Ultra Fresh Slots Machine about the opera with their own creative ideas and artistic opinions, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. What did they really think and why? •

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Within a few days of The Met performance of Hansel and Gretel on December 24,you can find the New York Times review—either in the newspaper or at ingalex.de Share it with your students. Write your own review of The Met. Music criticism relies on extreme knowledge of the opera. Below are certain points you might want to consider: 1) Does a particular artist have an individual sound or distinctive style/character that you liked/disliked? 2) Does an artist “wow” you with his/her dynamic range? 3) Does the person playing the role look the way you had imagined? 6) Were there any big mistakes? 7) What did you think of the sets, costumes, lights props, make-up, and other technical aspects of the production? What would you have changed or kept the same?

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Be sure to include things you particularly enjoyed about the performance. If there were things you did not enjoy, explain why and how you might do things differently. Share various reviews with the class and discuss. How do they compare with the New York Times’ review? Do they address similar ideas?

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RESEARCH IDEAS The following list is a suggestion of topics for further study research. Research into one or more of these areas could form the basis of a project. Leitmotifs • Wagner’s use of leitmotifs in other operas o Der fliegende Holländer o Tristan und Isolde o Parsifal • Finding leitmotifs in today’s media Fairy • • • •

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Tales Other versions of Hansel and Gretel Similar stories from other cultures The Brothers Grimm Other fairy tale operas o Cendrillon (Cinderella) – Massenet o Die Zauberflote – Mozart o Turandot - Puccini Witches from other fairy tales

Germany: • Other 19th century German composers o Carl Maria von Weber, Richard Wagner, Robert Schumann • German Opera/Singspiel • German Lieder (Art song) o Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Hugo Wolf • German literature, poetry, art o Johann Wolfgang Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper Goethe, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Heinrich Heine, Caspar David Friedrich Going Further: • What was going on in the New York City region (or your region) in the late 19th century (the time of the opera’s composition)? How was life different from life in Germany? • Research what was going on around the world in the late 19th century Additional Information on this Production: For a video interview with producer Richard Jones: ingalex.de For a review of the original performance by the Welsh National Opera: ingalex.de For a review of the performance by the Lyric Opera of Chicago: ingalex.de

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RESOURCES • USING Hansel and Gretel TO TEACH THE HUMANITIES • USING Hansel and Gretel TO TEACH MUSIC • OPERA NEWS Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper ARTICLE: “Too Grimm for Words” • METROPOLITAN OPERA FACTS • GLOSSARY

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Using Hansel and Gretel to Teach the Humanities by Zeke Hecker A. SETTING THE STAGE Close to a large forest there lived a woodcutter with his wife and his two children. The boy was called Hansel and the girl Gretel. They were always very poor and had very little to live on. And at one time when there was famine in the land, he could no longer procure daily bread. One night when he lay in bed worrying over his troubles, he sighed and said to wife, "What is to become of us? How are we to feed our poor children when we have nothing for ourselves?" "I’ll tell you what, husband," answered the woman. "Tomorrow morning we will take the children out quite early into the thickest part of the forest. We will light a fire and give each of them a piece of bread. Then we will go to our work and leave them alone. They won’t be able to find their way back, and so we shall be rid of them." "Nay, wife," said the man, ‘we won’t do that. I could never find it in my heart to leave my children alone in the forest. The wild animals would soon tear them to pieces." "What a fool you are!" she said. "Then we must all four die of hunger. You may as well plane the boards for our coffins at once." She gave him no peace till he consented. "But I grieve over the poor children all the same," said the man. The two children could not go to sleep for hunger either, and they heard what their stepmother said to their father. Gretel wept bitterly and said, "All is over with us now." "Be quiet, Gretel," said Hansel. "Don’t cry! I will find some way out of it." (The Brothers Grimm) Even the Wagnerian Humperdinck - stuffed full of the defamation of all things commercial by the Bayreuth founders - made the Brothers Grimm commercially viable, in that the parents of Hansel and Gretel no longer cast the children out as in the fairy tale, since respect for the devoted father in the late nineteenth century must not be any means be further affronted. Such examples demonstrate how deeply opera as a consumer product - in this sense related to film - is entangled in calculations regarding the public. 53

(Theodor W. Adorno) This charming setting of a simple nursery tale was originally intended to be only an unpretentious work for home presentation. The composer’s sister wished a little singspiel for the use of her children and thus began the writing of the text. Humperdinck was asked to supply the music. He composed the work, using as his thematic material a number of the well-known German folksongs. As he worked, his enthusiasm and interest grew and soon the determination was reached to make the work an opera. The influence of Wagner was strong on the composer and, while the musical setting he has supplied is perhaps disproportionately elaborate and complex for so simple a story as is this nursery tale, the beauty of the music itself and the irresistible appeal of the book have made the opera a recognized masterpiece throughout the world. (The American History and Encyclopedia of Music, ) there is another inner and more precarious contrast - between the plot and its musical treatment, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. It is a false contrast, a conflict of style. Humperdinck could not have been unaware that the simple fairy-tale offered him not only a novel, promising theme but also a strong obstacle. Simplicity was the attraction but also the hazard. He who knows Hansel and Gretel in Grimm’s Fairy Tales can imagine only a children’s theatre for its dramatization, a theatre not only playing for children but also played by children. It is said that Mrs. Adelheid Wette, nee Humperdinck, the author of Hansel and Gretel, never thought of it as an opera But this was not enough for Humperdinck. With his little children he wanted to get hold of the big children, and not at home but in the opera house. He would not have gone far with simple childish music and naively plain settings. Our opera public would have become bored after the first two scenes and demanded more seasoned stuff. Thus: a children’s fairytale with brilliant adornments, a large orchestra, and the most modern music, preferably Wagnerian. No sooner said than done. The composer set to work and solved his task ably and successfully. He has attained his goal - whether with acceptable artistic means or not is disputable. The naiveté of the fairy-tale resists, in my opinion, the contrived Wagnerian style; there is an inner conflict between the subject and the manner sands casino bethlehem its presentation about which none can be in doubt, not even the composer, who asked for the contradiction and even needed it for his success. But Humperdinck has added another ending which we relate only with hesitation, since it is utter nonsense. In front of the witch’s house we see a long row of life-sized marshmallow statues representing "children turned to marshmallow" by the witch and now redeemed by Hansel and Gretel. With a 54

Wagner apostle, there is no way of escaping a "redemption." This gingerbread redemption sounds like a parody on redemption. Why does the witch catch children? In order to turn them into gingerbread? No, in order to fry and eat them. This we hear continually from the stage and see it prepared before our eyes. That the witch does not eat the children but turns them into marshmallow statues and puts them as a fence round her house gives the lie to all the foregoing and overthrows the whole fairy-tale. And this nonsense, which disfigures the whole work, was only committed for a superficial and unbeautiful theatrical effect. The audience, enjoying itself from kinder casino to end, did not, of course, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, object to this contradiction. It broke into applause the like of which has rarely been heard in the opera house. There are two musical inventors in Hansel and Gretel: first, those unknown, unsung mothers and nurses with whom the Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper rhymes originated and, second, Richard Wagner Humperdinck has chosen the nursery rhymes, which appear either in an original or slightly altered form, with great skill; they constitute the irresistible charm of the whole work. What he offers from his own means as an inventor of melodies is insignificant and cheaply sentimental. None of Humperdinck’s own melodies struck me as beautiful or genuine And then there is young Siegfried Wagner’s statement that Hansel and Gretel is the most important opera since Parsifal. In other words, the best in full twelve years? An irritating pronouncement, and the worst of it is - that it is true. (Eduard Hanslick) Humperdinck is often thought to have derived most of his skill and ideas from cheat codes for double down casino and Wagner. he is steeped in older tradition. Weber and Mendelssohn are just as often present as Wagner in the feeling of fairies, woods, and forest hobgoblins that suffuse the piece - and perhaps Marschner in the homespun quality of the domestic scenes. It was Humperdinck’s gift to bring them all together in his unique and succinct score (Alan Blyth) Yukon casino first tries to recover from Wagner by composing a prologue to him, a fable whose innocence knows nothing as yet of Wagnerian lust and longing. This is Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel (), recognized by Wagner’s son Siegfried as the most important opera since Parsifal. Humperdinck had actually written some of Parsifal himself, supplying a few extra bars (later cut) to cover one of the scene Flaming Dice Slots at Bayreuth; and he set the Grimm story to a medley of quotations from Wagner. The domestic chores of Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper children are introduced by the Meistersinger overture: Hansel is making a broom and Gretel is knitting, both at home in Hans Sachs’s world of handicrafts. The witch is an unhinged cackling Brunnhilde, riding a broomstick not a winged horse, and 55

dawn comes to the forest with a reminiscence of the Norns from Goetterdaemmerung. In Parsifal a dove descends in blessing; Hansel and Gretel are protected at night by fourteen angels in a charmed circle. Humperdinck weds the various Wagnerian mythologies - the singing artisans of Meistersinger, the elemental nature of the Ring, the religious revelations of Parsifal - and from them makes a fairy tale, where the gods are gruff parents and the monsters infantile bogeys. He has made Wagner fit for children, and writing about their games can pretend he exists before rather than after Wagner; the child is the father of the man. (Peter Conrad) Perhaps the most charming product of an opera composer’s veneration of Wagner is Humperdinck’s Hansel und Gretel. The young Humperdinck was a repetiteur at Bayreuth and gained there the immense distinction of being cocomposer of Parsifal. The stage-manager had demanded a few bars more of music in which to effect the transformation scene, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. Wagner refused to add a note. But, during a sultry break in rehearsal, Humperdinck produced seven bars which satisfied composer and stage-manager and which, though now no longer required, remain in the score. Humperdinck remembered Parsifal in writing his music for the angel guardians of his wood children, and Die Walkure in his witches’ ride. The composer makes, too, one connection between Wagner and Richard Strauss. The lament of the shepherd at the close of Humperdinck’s Koenigskinder (King’s Children) prepares in a nicely Wagnerian manner for the melody and the orchestral tone of the final exulting duet of Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos. (Hamish F.G. Swanston) B. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND WRITING 1. Many of the writers cited above think that the music of Humperdinck’s opera is too elaborate and inflated for its fairy tale subject, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. What do you think? 2. The excerpt from the beginning of Grimms’ version of the fairy tale, Adorno’s comment, and Hanslick’s condemnation of the opera’s ending reveal the extent to which the librettist "softened" the story. Would the opera have been better if it had kept the harshness of the original? 3. Opera composers frequently use "found" musical material, as Humperdinck did here with the several traditional nursery tunes that Hansel and Gretel sing. What are the artistic advantages of using such material, with which the audience may already be familiar? What are the dangers? In this opera, do the former outweigh the latter? 4. Hanslick says that Humperdinck is trying to have it both ways: a children’s 56

opera that will appeal to adults. Does he succeed with both audiences? Think of other entertainments that attempt the same breadth of appeal, such as the musical cartoon films Jackpot Wheel Casino 25 Free Spins Walt Disney Studios. Does it work? 5. Recent studies of fairy tales, notably Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment, emphasize the "subtext" and the ways in which they address the psychological needs, desires, and fears of children. What does the Hansel and Gretel story tell children that they need to hear? Does the "softened" tone of the opera interfere with those messages, improve them, or not affect them at all? 6. The writers quoted above devote much of their commentary to the influence of Wagner on Humperdinck’s musical language. Some accuse him of lack of originality. After getting to know the opera, consider whether it matters, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. Is the opera less good because it sounds Wagnerian? 7. Are fairy tales and otherwise "unrealistic" subjects better suited to operatic treatment than realistic ones? C. PROJECTS AND FURTHER STUDY 1. Read The Uses of Enchantment, especially the sections devoted to Hansel and Gretel, and evaluate Bettelheim’s interpretation of the story. 2. Humperdinck had one other major success in his lifetime, though it is now a rarity: Koenigskinder (mentioned by Swanston above). It, too, is a fairy tale opera based on a story by the brothers Grimm. Listen to a recording and compare it to Hansel and Gretel. 3. Other Grimms’ fairy tales that have been made into operas include Cinderella (twice, by Rossini as Cenerentola and by Massenet as Cendrillon, though both versions rely more on the French version of the tale) and Little Red Riding Hood by the American Seymour Barab. The Rossini opera is in the Met repertory, though not this season. Find recordings and videos and compare these approaches to such material with Humperdinck’s. 4. For a Bettelheim-influenced treatment of fairy tales in a stage work, see Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, available on CD, video, and many stagings from professional to high school. Hansel and Gretel is not among the many stories woven together here, but the contrast to Humperdinck’s tone will be readily apparent. Also, read Transformations, a book of poems by Ann Sexton based on the original Grimm tales with a modern psychoanalytic approach. Finally, Conrad Susa made an opera out of the Sexton poems, which was broadcast and telecast; though not issued commercially, recordings may be available. 5. Two other fairy tale operas on this season’s broadcasts are the Strauss57

Hofmannsthal Die Frau Ohne Schatten and the Ravel-Colette L’Enfant et les Sortileges (part of the French triple bill Parade). Both of these are based on "new," not "traditional" fairy tales (as is Mozart’s The Magic Flute - see last season’s study guide) and offer an interesting comparison to Hansel and Gretel. 6. Many other fairy tale operas, including Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snow Maiden and Stravinsky’s Football Carnival Slot Machine Review Nightingale, are based on the stories of Hans Christian Andersen, much different in feeling from the Grimms’ tales. Worth exploring 7. as are the many Broadway musicals, Hollywood films, and other adaptations of fairy tales both traditional and modern. 8. As for Humperdinck, listen to those excerpts from the works of Wagner Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper Conrad cites as influences on specific moments in Hansel and Gretel, and see if you agree. Also, listen to music by the earlier composers cited by Blyth (especially the Midsummer Night’s Dream music of Mendelssohn), and decide if he is right. 9. Design sets and costumes for a production of Hansel and Gretel. Try several approaches: realistic, or sentimental, or abstract, or expressionistic By judicious cutting, you can stage a satisfying production of this opera yourself with a pianist and a few singers. The vocal parts are not Casino.com Review difficult. Do it.

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Using Hansel and Gretel to Teach Music by Jonathan Dzik

Motivation/Role Play Exercises (Note: Hansel und Gretel is a particularly effective opera to present to youngsters of an elementary school age.) Present the following situations to your classes for discussion: ingalex.de you and your brother (sister) went into a forest and got lost and it got dark and you couldn't find your way out, what are some of the dangers you might face? What are some of the things you might do to try to remain safe? How could you finally get out? (This is clearly what happens in Act I, scene ii in the opera.) 2. If you and your sister (brother) were captured or taken hostage by an evil person and you know (s)he was preparing to do bad things to you, how could you help each other to prevent this from happening? Devise a way to escape. (Act II, in the opera.) (Note to teacher: Since the Hansel und Gretel duets which are about to be described are based on simple folk tunes, try to get a copy of the score and teach the students to sing the main themes which are about to be presented. Or use the enclosed musical examples. Then when they hear them on a recording and perhaps see the performance in the opera house, those musical moments will be recognizable and much more meaningful.

Brother and Sister There is hardly a moment where the siblings in this famous adaptation of the Grimm story are not together on stage. Humperdinck wrote some delightful and beautiful duets for the two siblings. It should be noted, that even though Hansel is a boy, his role is sung by a woman, a mezzo-soprano. This is a fairly common practice in opera, where a young or adolescent boy is portrayed by a female. These roles are known as "trouser roles." 1."Suse, liebe Suse, was raschelt im Stroh?" ("Susie, little Susie what is that noise in the straw?") (Ex. #1).

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This is the opening music in the opera after the overture. Hansel and Gretel, son and daughter of Peter (a broommaker) and Gertrude, are alone and very hungry. But nevertheless they work (he binds brooms and Gretel sews), play and quarrel in the best of sibling spirit. They sing an old German folk song about Suzy and her geese. (The melody has a close resemblance to a famous German folk song, "Ach du lieber Augustin" which is usually sung in English to the words, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, "Did you ever see a Lassie.") It is lightly scored for strings and woodwinds. Gretel has the first verse (Hansel chimes in with a short phrase near the end) and Hansel (with Gretel doing the same) sings the second verse. Toward the middle of the song, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, there is a hint of the "Evening Prayer" about which more will be said shortly. 2. Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper leads into a second duet--"Bruderchen, komm tanz' mit mir," ("Brother come and dance with me") (Ex. #2).

It is a simple folksong in 2/4 time. Gretel starts in the key of F major, and Hansel, being a lower voiced character, sings a 3rd lower in D minor. Gretel is teaching her brother a cute folk dance, "Mit den Fusschen tapp tapp tapp", ("With your foot you tap, tap, tap, ") Ex. #3.

They get carried away and after a while their voices overlap. The duet becomes Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper spirited until their mother interrupts them and castigates them for fooling around. 3. In the second scene, Hansel and Gretel are already in the forest. Their mother has sent them there to pick berries after their horseplay caused a pitcher of milk to topple and spill. Gretel sings a simple little folk song in which she likens a mushroom to a little man, "Ein Mannlein steht im Walde ganz still und stumm,"("A little man stands in the forest quiet and still") (Ex. #4). 60

It is almost a cappella, accompanied only by quiet plucked strings. This is meant to create a sense of being alone in the forest. It is not yet nightfall, so everything is peaceful and calm. The second verse adds a flute obbligato for embellishment as well as oboe and French horn interludes. 4. When night falls and they discover they can't find their way out of the forest, they kneel down and pray the famous "Evening Prayer", (Ex. #5).

This is the most famous theme in the opera. The overture opens and closes with this theme and eventually the opera ends with a short but full-scale choral treatment of this music. The melody rises in thirds as the two children harmonize with each other. Occasionally passing dissonances add to the poignancy of the music as it soars ever higher, ending one octave higher than where it started. The children fall asleep at the end of this prayer as 14 angels descend to keep watch over them. ingalex.de the second act, when Hansel and Gretel see the gingerbread house for the first time, they sing a harmonious duet in thirds, the most consonant harmony of all. They are beside themselves with the possibilities of having such a delectable treat to eat --"O herrlich Schlosschen, wie bist du schmuck und fein" ("O magic castle, how nice you'd be to eat.") (Ex. #6.)

6. In the final scene, after Hansel and Gretel have succeeded in turning the tables on the witch by pushing her into the oven, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, they sing a joyous duet, mostly in thirds, as they joyously waltz around the house--"Juchhei! Nun ist die Hexetot, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, mausetot, und aus die Not!" ("Hurrah, now sing the witch is dead, really dead, no more to dread! Hurrah!") (Ex. #7.) 61

The Supernatural: The first half of Hansel and Gretel deals essentially with real people--a mother and father who are destitute and two happy-go-lucky siblings who try to make the best of it. Even when they first run into the forest at their mother's bidding to pick berries, everything happens as a natural course of events. The first hint of the supernatural occurs when Peter, their father comes home to find out they went into the dangerous forest known as Ilsenstein where, according to a legend, a witch entices children with delectable goodies but eventually casts a wicked spell over them. We hear the ominous pounding of the timpani to the rhythm that will soon represent "The Witch's Ride", the interlude which separates the two main scenes of the first act. As the two parents run out into the forest after their children, the orchestra peals out with this theme (Ex. #8). Ominous trills, grace notes and a sinister rattle on the castanets all add to the eerie depiction.

To aid the children in going to sleep, the Sandman's sprinkles them with dust. Sung by a soprano, this scene Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper the legato descending melody which will make up the essence of the "Dream Pantomime" which shortly follows. Here, 14 angels descend and hover over them to protect them from all danger (Ex. #9).

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In a reversal of melodic direction, the Dew Fairy awakens them with a lyrical ascending melody--"Ich komm' mit gold'nem Sonnenschein" ("I come with golden sunshine") (Ex, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. #10).

The witch herself has various musical personalities, from her first vocal appearance from within her house as the children are nibbling on its delicious walls--"Knusper, knusper Knauschen, wer knuspert mir am Hauschen?" ("Nibble, nibble, mousie, who's nibbling at my housie?") (Ex. #11).

She later casts a spell on the children, temporarily paralyzing them--"Hocus pokus Hexenschuss" ("Hocus pocus witches' charm") (Ex. #12).

As she contemplates having Hansel for dinner she seizes a broomstick and begins to ride upon it--"Hurr hopp hopp hopp, Galopp lopp lopp" (Ex. #13). The witch usually sings with a nasal tone, depicting her macabre character.

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The final supernatural event occurs near the end after the witch has been pushed into the oven and Hansel and Gretel are free. With a wave of the magic wand, Hansel Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper the life-size figures of children who look like gingerbread and had fallen under the evil witch's spell long ago. With this magic gesture, the children come to life and sing a joyous chorus of celebration (again in consonant thirds), whose music had been previewed earlier in the overture-"Die Hexerei ist nun vorbei" ("The spell is broken and we are free") (Ex. #14). As their parents Peter and Gertrude enter upon the scene, everyone joins in with the famous "Evening Prayer," music in praise of God's beneficence.

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Too Grimm for Words Taming Hänsel und Gretel for opera

by Steven R. Cerf

One major literary achievement of the nineteenth century was the discovery of the child. Prior to the rise of Romanticism, childhood had been seen as some prehuman stage that had to be exorcised before reaching maturity; now it was increasingly understood as a deep, enduring basis of the adult personality. As William Wordsworth put it, "The child is father of the man." In Germany, this discovery dovetailed with a quest to understand the growth stages by which Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper culture itself had reached Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper from its earlier, more primitive origins in medieval and folk literature. The Grimm Brothers, sophisticated scholars, went into Germany's hinterland to collect traditional fairy tales, issuing them as Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales); at the same time, poets Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim amassed folk lyrics for their anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn). Both compilations appeared within a decade, between andand in both, the child emerged as a full-fledged human being. To some extent, the Grimms were ahead of their time. Twentieth-century psychologists fully comprehend the uncensored pre-moral fears and cravings of infancy that are acted out with such bloodthirsty relish in these traditional tales. "Hänsel und Gretel" is typical of the collection in being a Freudian chamber of horrors, giving voice to blind hatreds smoldering within the nuclear family. Mother (transformed into stepmother) is so eager to get rid of her children that she makes two attempts to lose them. Stranded in a dangerous forest, they fall into the hands of another destructive mother figure, the cannibalistic Witch. Such subject matter scarcely seems suitable for family opera, and it is not surprising that Engelbert Humperdinck and his sister, Adelheid Wette, altered it when adapting the story, first as an intimate home entertainment, then as a populist

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post-Wagnerian music drama.

WOULD WILHELM AND JACOB GRIMM HAVE RECOGNIZED THEIR HANSEL AND GRETEL ONCE ENGELBERT HUMPERDINCK (RIGHT) FINISHED SWEETENING IT?

To be sure, the opera's structure parallels that SatoshiSlot + Slots Machine the Grimm Märchen. In both, three different settings are crucial -- the impoverished broommaker's home, the gloomy forest, the Witch's gingerbread house. The moral of cooperation between brother and sister -- reflecting the actual relationship between composer and librettist -- remains the same. Hänsel comforts his sister in the forest, Gretel carries out the preparations for the Witch's demise. Their ever-present duets underscore the lesson Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper mutual assistance is their only key to survival. Furthermore, as in the fairy tale, the children's names are privileged. Although Humperdinck's score refers to the parents as Peter and Gertrud, and the Witch calls herself Rosina Daintymouth, only Hänsel and Gretel refer to each other by name. But how, in an opera intended to be gentle, somewhat spiritual and comically fantastical, were composer and librettist going to dispose of the tale's grislier aspects? In fact, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, they found their solution ready-made. Many of the Märchen in Grimm had already been efficiently bowdlerized by one Ludwig Bechstein (), much revered in mid-nineteenth-century Germany, whose collections of fairy tales outsold those of the Grimms for many decades and were the preferred domestic version when Humperdinck was a child. While the Grimms presented the tales as German families actually told them, Bechstein issued them as he thought families ought to tell them. A pharmacist turned ducal librarian, a devout soul, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, naturalist, Freemason and father of six, Bechstein sought to spiritualize the stories, both by softening the grislier portions and by adding episodes of prayer and allusions to divine benevolence. Effusively likening the fairytale tradition to a "floating bird of paradise," he saw it as a "sacred," "everlasting" and "unalloyed" source of "popular moral philosophy." Born illegitimate, Bechstein had known only hardship as a child and therefore inevitably had an idealized view of fairy tales, regarding them not as Gothic horror stories but as uplifting lessons that would bring hope to children. "I know the golden morning of childhood only from the description of poets," he wrote. "The first eight years of my life are like a bad dream I had no father, and my mother left me with paid caretakers." Only at the age of nine, when he was taken in by an uncle, did he begin to enjoy a normal domestic atmosphere with his supportive foster family. Bechstein's "Snow White" does not conclude with the evil Queen being forced to dance herself to death in shoes filled with red-hot coals. She perishes instead because of the "worm of envy" gnawing at her heart, although Snow White tries to forgive her. His "Little Red Riding Hood" ends simply with the death of the Big Bad Wolf, unlike the Grimm version, whose epilogue depicts a second wolf being lured to his death. Moreover, countless executions Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper described in the Grimm tales are simply excised in Bechstein.

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Bechstein conceived his "Hänsel und Gretel" in this gentler vein as well. The wicked stepmother is replaced by an overworked but conscience-stricken biological parent; the Witch, unlike the wholly terrifying creature of the Grimm collection, has a comic dimension; and the children repeatedly find consolation in prayer. Bechstein, as a foster child, was all too eager to turn the mother of his "Hänsel und Gretel" into a biological mother, for the poor man seriously worried about political correctness toward stepmothers. "Among the thousands of children who get their hands on books of fairy tales," he warned, "there must be the so-called stepchildren. When such a child -- after reading many a fairy tale in which stepmothers appear [the stepmothers are uniformly evil] -- feels that it has been somehow injured or insulted by its own stepmother, then that young person makes comparisons and develops a strong aversion to his guardian which disturbs the peace and happiness of an entire family." The Grimms' stepmother is delighted when Hänsel and Gretel disappear, but Bechstein's mother is conflicted and contrite, "not sure whether to scold or Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper after the children's first return from the woods. This relatively humane portrait clearly affected Humperdinck and Wette as they created Gertrud's brief but poignant Act I lament. The stepmother in Grimm is motivated by meanness as she tries to alienate her husband from his own children. In Bechstein, the parents, driven by dire poverty, take joint responsibility as they reluctantly send away the children they cannot properly support. (In the opera it is tamer still, with Gertrud sending them off to look for Dragon Sisters Slots Machine As in Bechstein, the mother in the opera participates in the joyful final reunion, while in the Grimm version, the evil stepmother dies along with her surrogate, the Witch.

The Grimms' witch is a red-eyed pagan sorceress with a feral ability to smell her victims from afar.

Bechstein's witch, with her "big, big nose" and "grass-green eyes," is quasi-amusing, and the list of goodies she offers to the children ("biscuits and marzipan, sugar and milk, apples and nuts and delicate cakes") makes her quite appealing, temporarily, to young readers. Very different is the Grimms' red-eyed pagan sorceress, whose feral ability to smell victims from afar is described in detail. (Humperdinck and Wette go even further than Bechstein by eliminating the cannibalism: their witch's oven magically transforms children into edible morsels of gingerbread, and when it explodes, with her in it, the children are returned whole to the living.) Bechstein stresses that the witch's death is a proper reward for all of her misdeeds; needless to say, no such moralizing appears in the Grimm. The most startling divergence is Bechstein's emphasis on the children's religious faith. In Grimm, a forest is a forest -- a frightening place in which the children's worst fears are realized. In 67

Bechstein, it is rather a place ordained by God for contemplation and prayer, where the children find a peace denied them in their poverty-ravaged home. The first time they are lost, Hänsel comforts Gretel with the words "Dear God is at our side"; the second time, he states, "Dear God knows every path and will surely show us the right one." Clearly, the opera is imbued with Bechstein's form of piety. Indeed, its only consistent musical motif is the Evening Prayer (Abendsegen), heard as the first notes of the opera's overture, a piece Humperdinck called The Children's Life. This theme reappears in the luxuriant central finale when Hänsel and Gretel pray for fourteen angels to protect them in the forest, and it is woven into the quadruple counterpoint of the opera's conclusion when children and parents are reunited. The prayer's text, absent from both Grimm and Bechstein, is another piece of traditional Germanica. It first appeared on a tombstone dated and was included in the Des Knaben Wunderhorn collection.

HANSEL (RISË STEVENS) AND GERTRUDE (CLARAMAE TURNER) IN MET PRODUCTION

In order to establish a comfortable, familyfriendly tone, Humperdinck launches each of the opera's three scenes with a folk or folklike tune associated with well-known popular verses. "Suzy, little Suzy, now listen with care" (Scene 1) comes from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. "Now once upon a time in the wood alone" (Scene 2) is borrowed from the highly popular mid-nineteenth-century minstrel poet Hoffmann von Fallersleben Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper of "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles"), and a familiar folk tune played by French horn begins the prelude to the final act. All three create a warmhearted atmosphere at odds with Grimm. One early listener who questioned this tone, curiously, was Gustav Ferdinand Humperdinck, father of the composer and librettist. Fearing that the opera failed to "ennoble" and "refine" the fairy tale sufficiently, he observed, "Perhaps the libretto should not have followed Bechstein so closely -- I find the Grimm version preferable." In the second half of the twentieth century, the senior Humperdinck's thesis has at last been tested. The composer Conrad Susa harrowingly dramatized "Hänsel und Gretel" and other Grimm tales in his first opera, Transformations (), based on a poetry cycle by Anne Sexton, who sets the stories in a Boston mental institution. Subtitled "Mother Love and Cannibalism," Susa's "Hansel and Gretel" episode reveals the witch and the stepmother to be the same devouring person. Here, the pathological horror inherent in Grimm comes to the fore, with subtext transformed into psychologically universal meta-text. We are a long way from

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Humperdinck's sylvan repose, so deeply imbued with German Romanticism's Waldeinsamkeit (forest solitude). Yet one suspects that Humperdinck, despite his father's payson casino, was wise to reject unalloyed Grimm. Had Humperdinck provided grimmer music, one doubts that the opera would have achieved the same artistic and popular success. In capturing what the critic Jack Zipes termed Bechstein's "overt 'folksy' bourgeois appeal," Humperdinck's exuberant melos -- lovable, accessible, brimming over with psychological health -- provides its own justification.

PROF. CERF is Skolfield Professor of German at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine.

OPERA NEWS, December 28, Copyright © The Metropolitan Opera Guild, Inc.

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SOME FACTS ABOUT THE METROPOLITAN OPERA Wallace K. Harrison, architect Cyril Harris, acoustical consultant This opera house is the 2nd home of the Metropolitan Opera. The 1st was located at Broadway and 39th St. The Met’s new home at Lincoln Center cost $49 million to build and construction took 4 years. The Met is the 2nd-deepest building in Manhattan. It consists of 10 floors: stage level, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, six floors above and three below, cushioned with anti-vibration pads for sound-proofing. The opera season generally runs from September to April, during which time the opera company puts on 7 performances a week (two on Saturdays) from a repertoire of different operas. The auditorium can seat 3, people on five tiers, and there is standing room space for people on various levels. There are no 90° angles anywhere in the auditorium, and the boxes have irregular, shell-patterned decorations. This design distributes sound evenly throughout the auditorium and prevents it from being “swallowed.” A single African rosewood tree was used to panel the walls. The tree, brought from London, was almost ft. long and about 6 feet in diameter. The ceiling rises 72 feet above the orchestra floor and is covered with over 1 million 2-½-inch-square sheets of nearly transparent carat gold leaf. Not only does the gold Luckys Diner Slots Machine to 200% Deposit bonus 7Kasino Casino glamour of the interior, but it is supposed to eliminate the need for maintenance and repainting. You’ll notice that the ceiling in the outer lobbies has a greenish color. These ceilings are covered with a Dutch alloy which contains copper and turns green when it tarnishes.

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There are two house curtains in the auditorium: • •

Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper curtain - Made of gold velour, this curtain rises and descends vertically. Wagner curtain - This design was conceived by Richard Wagner and first used in in Bayreuth, Germany. It is a motorized tableau drape with adjustable speed. The existing curtain, woven of 1, yards of goldpatterned Scalamandre silk, was installed at the Met in and is the biggest Wagner curtain in the world.

The chandeliers are a gift from the Austrian government. The one central chandelier is 17ft. in diameter and is surrounded by 8 starbursts of varying sizes. The 12 satellite clusters can be raised to avoid blocking the stage. Altogether, the chandeliers contain over 3, light bulbs. Does your seat feel a little tighter than last time? Not Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper the chairs at the Met are the same size; they vary in width from 19 to 23 inches. This staggered seating arrangement provides the best possible sight lines. The conductor’s podium is motorized so that it can be adjusted to any height. It is equipped with cue lights that indicate when the curtain is ready to rise and a telephone line that connects to the stage manager’s post and the prompter’s box.

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GLOSSARY Musical Terms and Definitions Definitions adagio

Indication that the music is to be performed at a slow, relaxed pace. A movement for a piece of music with this marking.

allegro

Indicates a fairly fast tempo.

aria

A song for solo voice in an opera, with a clear, formal structure.

arioso

An operatic passage for solo voice, melodic but with no clearly defined form.

baritone

Man’s voice, with a range Classic Slots Slots Machine that of bass and tenor.

bel canto

Refers to the style cultivated in the 18th and 19th centuries in Italian opera. This demanded precise intonation, clarity of tone and enunciation, and a virtuoso mastery of the most flori passages.

cabaletta

The final short, fast section of a type of aria in 19th-century Italian opera.

cadenza

A passage in which the solo instrument or voice performs without the orchestra, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, usually of an improvisatory nature.

chorus

A body of singers who sing and act as a group, either in unison or in harmony; any musical number written for such a group.

coloratura

An elaborate and highly ornamented part for soprano voice, usually written for the upper notes of the voice. The term is also applied to those singers who specialize in the demanding technique required for such parts.

conductor

The director of a musical performance for any sizable body of performers.

contralto

Low-pitched woman’s voice.

crescendo

Means “growing”, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, used as a musical direction to indicate that the music is to get gradually louder.

ensemble

From the French word for “together”, this term is used when discussing the degree of effective teamwork among a body of performers; in opera, a set piece for a group of soloists. 72

finale

The final number of an act, when sung by an ensemble

fortissimo (ff)

Very loud.

forte (f)

Italian for “strong” or “loud”. An indication to perform at a loud volume.

harmony

A simultaneous sounding of notes that usually serves to support a melody.

intermezzo

A piece of music played between the acts of an opera.

intermission

A break between the acts of an opera. The lights go on and the audience is free to move around.

legato

A direction for smooth performance without detached notes.

leitmotif

Melodic element used by Richard Wagner in his operas to musically represent characters, events, ideas, or emotions in the plot.

libretto

The text of an opera.

maestro

Literally ‘master’; used as a courtesy title for the conductor, whether a man or woman.

melody

A succession of musical tones (i.e., notes not sounded at the same time); the horizontal quality of music, often prominent and singable.

mezzo-soprano Female voice with a range between that of soprano and contralto

opera buffa

An Italian form in which the spoken word is also used, usually on a comedy theme. The French term “opera bouffe” describes a similar type, although it may have an explicitly satirical intent.

opera seria

Italian for “serious opera”. Used to signify Italian opera on a heroic or dramatic theme during the 18th and early 19th centuries.

operetta

A light opera, whether full-length or not, often using spoken dialogue. The plots are romantic and improbable, even farcical, and the music tuneful and undemanding.

overture

A piece of music preceding an opera.

pentatonic scale Typical of Japanese, Chinese, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, and other Far Eastern music, the pentatonic scale divides the octave into five tones and may be played on the piano by striking only the black keys.

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pianissimo (pp) Very softly.

piano (p)

Meaning “flat”, or “low”. Softly, or quietly.

pitch

The location of a musical sound in the tonal scale; Templari Slots Machine quality that makes “A” different from “D”.

prima donna

The leading woman singer in an operatic cast or company.

prelude

A piece of music that precedes another.

recitative

A style of sung declamation used in opera. It may be either accompanied or unaccompanied except for punctuating chords from the harpsichord.

reprise

A direct repetition of an earlier section in a piece of music, or the repeat of a song.

score

The written or printed book containing all the parts of a piece of music.

serenade

A song by a lover at the window of his mistress.

solo

A part for unaccompanied instrument or for an instrument or voice with the dominant role in a work.

soprano

The high female voice; the high, often highest, member of a family of instruments.

tempo

The pace of a piece of music; how fast or how slow it is played.

tenor

A high male voice.

theme

The main idea of a piece of music; analogous to the topic of a written paper, subject to exploration and changes.

trill

Musical ornament consisting of the rapid alternation between the note and the note above it.

trio

A sustained musical passage for three voices.

verismo

A type of “realism” in Italian opera during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in which the plot was on a contemporary, often violent, theme.

volume

A description of how loud or soft a sound is.

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MEMBERSHIP STANDARDS THE MET STAGES MEMBERSHIP PROGRAM REQUIRES THAT ALL STUDENTS WHO ATTEND REHEARSALS AT THE MET:

1. Are familiar with the opera’s story, and can relate its themes and situations to their own lives; 2. Are familiar with the opera’s music or musical style; 3. Learn to recognize and discuss the choices made by the directors, designers, conductors, and singer; 4. Will be able to make and justify their own artistic Спина партии игровые бесплатно демо игры 5. Are aware of Opera House etiquette and understand how to be good audience members.

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Word and Music Studies Selected Essays on Opera by Ulrich Weisstein

WORD AND MUSIC STUDIES 8 Series Book of Aztec Slots Machine Bernhart Michael Halliwell Lawrence Kramer Suzanne M. Lodato Steven Paul Scher†Werner Wolf

The book series WORD AND MUSIC STUDIES (WMS) is the central organ of the International Association for Word and Music Studies (WMA), an association Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper in to promote transdisciplinary scholarly inquiry devoted to the relations between literature/verbal texts/language and music. WMA aims to provide an international forum for musicologists and literary scholars with an interest in interart/intermedial studies and in crossing cultural as well as disciplinary boundaries. WORD AND MUSIC STUDIES will publish, generally on an annual basis, theme-oriented volumes, documenting and critically assessing the scope, theory, methodology, and the disciplinary and institutional dimensions and prospects of the ďŹ eld on an international scale: conference proceedings, collections of scholarly essays, and, occasionally, monographs on pertinent individual topics as well as research reports and bibliographical and lexicographical work.

Word and Music Studies Selected Essays on Opera by Ulrich Weisstein

Edited by

Walter Bernhart

Amsterdam - New York, NY

The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISOInformation and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. ISBN X ISBN ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY Printed in The Netherlands

Contents Preface vii

Selected Essays on Opera by Ulrich Weisstein The Libretto as Literature () 3 Cocteau, Stravinsky, Brecht, and the Birth of Epic Opera () 17 Introduction to The Essence of Opera () 33 Reflections on a Golden Style: W. H. Auden’s Theory of Opera () 43 “Per porle in Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper Da Ponte/Leporello’s Amorous Inventory and its Literary and Operatic Antecedents from Tirso de Molina to Giovanni Bertati () 65 Educating Siegfried () 91 (Pariser) Farce oder wienerische Maskerade? Die französischen Quellen des Rosenkavalier () The Little Word und: Tristan und Isolde as Verbal Construct () Benedetto Marcellos Il Teatro alla moda: Scherz, Satire, Parodie oder tiefere Bedeutung? ()

Von Ballhorn ins Bockshorn gejagt: Unwillkürliche Parodie und unfreiwillige Komik in Ambroise Thomas’ Mignon () “Die letzte Häutung”. Two German Künstleropern of the Twentieth Century: Hans Pfitzner’s Palestrina and Paul Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler () Between Progress and Regression: The Text of Stravinsky’s Opera The Rake’s Progress in the Light of its Evolution () What is Romantic Opera? Toward a Musico-Literary Definition () Böse Menschen singen keine Arien: Prolegomena zu einer ungeschriebenen Geschichte der Opernzensur ()

Sources Acknowledgments Register of Persons and Operas Mentioned in the Text

Preface Ulrich Weisstein, well-known as an international authority in the fields of comparative literature and comparative arts, is one of those scholars of worldwide distinction who have paved the way for the now flourishing field of intermedia studies. His most extensive intermedial concerns have always been with the relations of literature to the visual arts and to music. Already his dissertation was devoted to opera, which is a form that has become his life-time obsession. It is in the operatic field that Professor Weisstein has most significantly contributed to the area of Word and Music Studies, which sufficiently explains why his work on opera is now naturally finding its way into the book series of that name. What is here presented is a collection of essays which reflect fifty years of Ulrich Weisstein’s involvement with opera and which represent thirty-five years of his publishing activity in the field. The necessarily restrictive selection of essays from his impressively large output on opera is primarily governed by the wish to present to an interested scholarly readership texts that are representative Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper their author’s work and, at the same time, are unlikely to be readily available through other channels. Further selection considerations, concerning limits of space and the avoidance of occasional thematic duplications, have led to the sequence of fourteen essays collected in this volume, which are arranged in chronological order and – following the publisher’s policy – are predominantly written in English. Only four – of a substantial number online casino spiele that language – are in German, but the volume would have been sadly diminished without them as they address essential and particularly suggestive issues. The title of the first essay here reprinted, “The Libretto as Literature”, has the character of a motto for much of what follows, as it points to a central concern of Weisstein’s work on opera. He introduced the serious study of libretti in their own right and, thus, can be seen as an early initiator of librettology as an independent branch of

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literary and intermedial studies. His keenest interest is in the genesis of dramaturgically successful operas, tracing adaptive processes from textual sources to final products and investigating the collaborative efforts of writers and composers in creating effective operas. A further innovative focus is on the social ambience of operas as, for example, reflected in Marcelloâ€&#x;s Il Teatro alla moda with its brilliant satire on operatic activities in early-eighteenth-century Italy, or in the surprisingly widespread practices of opera censorship, on which the most recent essay included in this selection throws a strong first light. Generally, the essays show a tendency to discuss works which are not necessarily the most popular and most frequently studied ones, which results in a welcome widening of perspective and offers opportunities for unexpected discoveries, such as a number of so-called artist operas, which reflect Ulrich Weissteinâ€&#x;s most personal interests as an indefatigable art-lover. His wide range of experience allows for a birdâ€&#x;s-eye overview of the various types of opera that have emerged over the centuries, an overview that he has given in his seminal earlier volume, The Essence of Opera, and which led to his attempts at defining the specific properties of such forms as the romantic opera or the epic opera, to be found in this selection, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. It is to be hoped that the essays here collected, written as they are in an accessible, essentially non-technical language, make not only a profitable reading, but a pleasurable one as well. Thanks are due to Professor Weisstein himself for his untiring commitment and enthusiasm in collaborating on letting this book see the light of day, and to Ingrid Hable, who has once again been a most conscientious help in bringing a volume of Word and Music Studies into the printable shape as required by current publishing standards. All essays have been reset, but bibliographical documentation has not been unified and basically follows the principles of the original publications. Yet it has been carefully checked and, where necessary, made consistent and occasionally corrected. The sources of the essays and the acknowledgments of permissions for reprint are found at the end of the volume. Graz, June

Walter Bernhart

Selected Essays on Opera by Ulrich Weisstein

The Libretto as Literature () Considering the wealth of operatic material hidden in the world’s libraries, a disproportionately small amount of scholarship has, so far, gone into its critical evaluation. It seems especially desirable that the ‘ancillary’ genre of the libretto should receive fairer treatment both with regard to its dramatic and its poetic qualities, for the serious critical attempts to deal with this stepchild of literature are few and far between. All the greater is the challenge posed for the literary critic of the libretto. By some sort of tacit agreement, the dramatic aspect of opera is generally considered to be the domain of musicologists, the more catholic of whom (Edgar Istel, Edward J. Dent, and a few others) have honestly striven to restore the dignity of the music drama. Most of their colleagues, however, incline to overemphasize the role of the composer, a sin exemplified by Kerman’s statement, “For the composer, I should like to believe that the essential problem is to clarify the central dramatic idea, to refine the vision. This cannot be left to the librettist; the dramatist is the composer.”1 (Italics mine). This opinion is shared by many composers who, without directly denouncing the libretto, claim sole authority for judging its ‘operatic’ qualities. Richard Strauss expresses the conviction that “except for the person who wants to set it to music, nobody is able to judge a serious and poetically accomplished libretto before having heard it performed together with its music”.2 And Giancarlo Menotti asserts that “to read and judge a libretto without its musical setting is unfair both to the librettist and the composer”.3 1

Joseph Kerman. Opera as Drama (New York. Knopf. ), p.

2 Letter to Hugo von Hofmannsthal of May 3, See their Briefwechsel (Zürich. Atlantis. ), p. The translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. 3

“Opera Isn’t Dead”, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. Etüde, Vol. LXVIII, No. 2, February,

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The Libretto as Literature

There have indeed been literary critics with an interest in the nonmusical aspects of opera (I think of Bulthaupt’s Dramaturgie der Oper and the Tristan chapter in Francis Fergusson’s Idea of a Theater); but their influence has hardly been such as to eflect an appreciable change in critical opinion. On the whole, then, we are still faced with the situation described by Dent: “The libretto, as a thing in itself, has never received the systematic analytical study which is its due.”4 This is all the more perplexing since, in a number of notable instances, the collaboration between composer and librettist has been exhaustively documented in their published correspondence (Verdi-Boito and Strauss-Hofmannsthal5). When asked to furnish the names of the most prominent librettists in operatic history, even the most enthusiastic opera fan will find Knights Heart Slots Machine knowledge restricted to Metastasio, Da Ponte, Scribe, Boito, Hofmannsthal and perhaps W. H. Auden. Rare is the operaphile who could cite Quinault, Calsabigi, Zeno, Helmine von Chezy, Ghislanzoni and Ramuz. Operatic audiences do not think of these individuals as authors in their own right, although Auden’s poetry, Scribe’s plays and Hofmannsthal’s demanding œuvre enjoy a certain popularity among the intelligentsia of their native countries. Their librettos are offered for sale in the lobby of the License to Spin Slots Machine, in Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, and wherever there is an operatic stagione; but who bothers to read them from beginning to end? Most of the operas in the standard repertory have been heard so often that almost everybody knows their plots. Even such plays as Pelléas and Salome, which have been composed integrally, seem to have lost their status as literature, the musical versions having, in a manner of speaking, superseded their literary antecedents. Such is the triumph of music in opera – a triumph which luckily has not as yet extended to Büchner’s Wozzeck, Kafka’s Trial 4

“Un Ballo in Maschere”. Music and Letters, April,

5 The Verdi-Boito correspondence was published by Alessandro Luzio in Carteggi Verdiani (Rome. Reale Accademia d’Italia. ), Vol. II, p. 95ff.

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(with music by Gottfried von Einem) and other works melodramatized by composers of the Expressionistic and post-Expressionistic generation. Viewing these facts, how can one expect the average listener to challenge the truth of Kerman’s statement? Even in the mid-twentieth century it requires courage to come to the rescue of that much maligned and self-effacing individual, the librettist. Kerman’s point of view is certainly justified with regard to Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper in which the music has overcome the obstacles presented by the underlying text. Beethoven’s Fidelio and Mozart’s Magie Flute offer examples of the transcendence of textual shortcomings, Verdi’s Il Trovatore of the defeat of structural absurdities. The first two works reveal a loftiness not only of purpose (for such was certainly present in the plays of Bouilly and Schikaneder) but also of expression (masking the triteness of the poetry). In the quatrain assigned to the three Knaben in Act I of The Magie Flute, the banality of the verses is transcended by Mozart’s sovereign treatment of the metrical pattern.6 Similar instances abound in the songs of Schubert and Schumann. Another abuse of the librettist’s privilege consists in the practice, common in Handelian times, of inserting irrelevant arias borrowed from other works, adding bravura pieces (such as Constanze’s “Martern aller Arten” in The Abduction from the Seraglio) at the request of prima donnas and castrati, and distributing arias in deference to the artist’s reputation and salary. The following passage from a letter by Giuseppe Riva partly explains the dramatic failure of Handel’s operas: For this year and for the following there must be two equal parts in the operas for Cuzzoni and Faustina. Senesino is the chief male character, and his part must be heroic; the other three male parts must proceed by degrees with three arias each, one in each act. The duet should be at the end of the second act, and between the

6 “Dies kund zu tun, steht uns nicht an;/ Sei standhaft, duldsam und verschwiegen./ Bedenke dies; kurz, sei ein Mann,/ Dann, Jüngling, wirst du männlich siegen.”

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The Libretto as Literature

two ladies. If the subject has in it three ladies, it can serve because there is a third singer here.7

It is this curious practice, as well as many others indulged in by the makers of late Baroque operas, which Benedetto Marcello scorns in Il teatro alla moda8. But even in our own age operatic arias are often detached from their context for the sake of recordings, recitals, and concerts. It is well to remind the denunciators of the libretto that the spoken drama itself is based on a number of highly artificial conventions, few of which, to be sure, are as far removed from ‘lived’ reality as are their operatic counterparts. Every drama is a Gesamtkunstwerk whose printed text resembles a musical score in that it merely suggests the theatrical possibilities which are inherent in it. Soliloquy, aside, and chorus – which are a thorn in the flesh of the Naturalistic playwrights – still remain within the realm of language, the difference between them and ordinary discourse being quantitatively determined (at least by common consent, since it is wholly a matter of definition where to place the exact point at which the qualitative leap begins). The use of different meters to indicate different levels of consciousness is a more strictly musical device, however. It is illustrated by T. S. Eliot’s The Family Reunion, where the progression from seven-stress to two-stress lines corresponds to the operatic sequence: dialogue-recitative-aria/ensemble. But what are the specific conventions, at first strictly observed but later modified in the direction of greater realism, employed in the preclassical-classical-Romantic type of opera? The convention most likely to shock the naive observer derives from the principle of simultaneity which, negatively applied in the spoken drama, forbids the use of several individualized speakers at the same time – the chorus con-

7 Letter to Muratori of September 7, See Alexander Streatfeild’s article “Handel, Rolli and Italian Opera”. Musical Quarterly, July, 8 Published in an English version by Reinhard G. Pauly in Musical Quarterly, XXXIV (), p, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. ff.

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sisting of persons expressing themselves collectively. In opera, contrasting moods may be rendered simultaneously with an entirely pleasurable effect upon the listener. Stendhal effectively counters the objections of the “poor frigid souls [who] say [that] it is silly for five or six persons to sing at the same time” by pointing out that “experience completely ruins their argument”9. This rationalistic approach is exemplified by Calvin S. Brown’s interpretation of “the famous quartet from Rigoletto, with two persons inside a shack thinking they are alone, two outside spying on them, and all four singing full blast in sickly [sic] contrived harmony” For a very practical, but nonetheless superficial, reason this observation holds true with regard to the literary side of opera; Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper one cannot read several lines of poetry at once. Hence the awkwardness in the arrangement of the text in the printed versions of most librettos. Opera also employs a different concept of time, the horizontally progressing dramatic time (which is conceived in analogy with actual time) being replaced by a ‘timeless’ moment of reflection and introspection. Beginning with Mozart, however, the great melodramaturgists have intuitively modified this procedure by combining action and reflection in their ensembles, something Gluck had not yet dared to do. This reemergence of dramatic time is especially noticeable in Verdi’s maturest operas, where lyrical epiphanies (in the Joycean sense) go hand in hand with actions in which the scenic word (la parola scenica) rules. Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper the reiterated shifting of levels of consciousness, the musical momentum required for increasing and decreasing emotional tensions seriously affects the structure of the lyrical drama. It corresponds to the phenomenon of crystallization which Stendhal analyzes in De l’amour.

9

Vie de Rossini (Paris. Le Divan. [n. d.]), Vol. I, p.

10 Music and Literature The Pig Wizard Megaways Slots Machine. University of Georgia Press. ), p.

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The Libretto as Literature

While affecting the listener much more directly than the spoken word (hence the empathic mode of reception presupposed in preExpressionistic operas), music is somewhat slower than language in reflecting the evolution of a feeling whose breadth is audibly manifested. Composed of arbitrary signs and primarily intended as a vehicle for thoughts and ideas, language denotes specific objects rather than picturing or reproducing them. It also has the advantage of knowing how to indicate rapid shifts of opinion and quick changes in attitude. But its very wealth points to its basic deficiency. Condemning music “because it cannot narrate”11, however, is just as foolish as chastising language for its failure to convey the rhythm of the emotions. Music, according to Schopenhauer, does not express the phenomenon itself but only the inner nature of all phenomena (not joy, sorrow, horror and pain themselves but their rhythmic substratum) Language, however, names the emotions. The merger of music and words, the temporal and the spatial, the general and the particular, should theoretically result in a more satisfactory image of the mental universe than is furnished by either in isolation. But, alas, so great are the difficulties to be overcome in the process of unification that the desired effect is rarely achieved. Returning to the musical momentum and its exigencies, we should take note of the fact that whereas in the spoken drama mood is usually the means to an end (the end being action), operatic action is commonly regarded as a point of departure, a hard core around which emotions may crystallize. The pyramidal scheme presented by Gustav Freytag in his Technik des Dramas has no place in pre-Expressionistic melodramaturgy. Instead of stressing the progression from scene to scene and from act to act (with the necessary retardations), the makers of opera concentrate on the act itself as their basic unit. Hence the need for intermissions at the conclusion of each act. Within this larger

11 Boileau in the preface to his fragmentary “Prologue d’opéra”. 12 See Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, II, 3, p.

The Libretto as Literature

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unit a fluctuation of moods between lyric and dramatic is often discernible. Similar to the symphonic development, where a theme may be shifted from major to minor and otherwise played upon, the operatic action moves in a wavelike rhythm that is peculiar to the lyrical drama. This symphonic structure is outlined by Hofmannsthal in the following résumé of his method of composition: The most difficult and at the same time most challenging task consists in balancing the spiritual motives, and in determining the inner relation between the characters and among the parts of Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper whole; in short: in designing the exact scheme of inner motives which must be in the poet’s – just as in the symphonist’s – mind. [] This spiritual web is the very essence [of opera]

Since music lacks the speed and verbal dexterity of language, fewer words are needed in opera than would be required in a play of comparable length. Librettos are usually shorter than the texts of ordinary dramas, and often to the point of embarrassing the listener or reader Repetitions are frequently called for if the librettist has failed to leave sufficient space for the music. This drastic reduction in the quantity of text, in conjunction with the highly sensual nature of music, necessitates a simplification of both action and characters, the emotions expressed in the closed musical numbers occupying a large segment of the time normally reserved for the dramatic events. The poet in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s dialogue “Poet and Composer” justly complains: It is the incredible brevity you demand of us. All our attempts to conceive or portray this or that passion, in weighty language are in vain; for everything has to be settled in a few lines which, in addition, have to lend themselves to the ruthless treatment which you inflict upon them

Opera seems often absurd because its characters are poorly motivated Character is defined succinctly and forthrightly and must be 13 Letter to Strauss of May 28, 14 “It is frightening to see how short is the libretto of Tristan, and how long the opera.” Hofmannsthal to Strauss in a letter of June 3, 15 The dialogue forms part of the sequence of stories entitled Die Serapionsbrüder. 16 To make matters worse, it is often hard to understand the singers. Strauss’s assertion that “in an opera, one third of the text is always wasted” is partly explained by the poor enunciation of the soloists and partly by the rich orchestral palette preferred by many modern composers.

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The Libretto as Literature

accepted at face value. Passion being the operatic coin of the realm, everything is seen in relation to it, even to the point where it becomes impossible sensually to distinguish between good and evil characters. Kierkegaard asserts that music is ethically indifferent and W. H. Auden maintains that, in opera, “feelings of joy, tenderness and nobility are not confined to ‘noble’ characters but are experienced by everybody, by the most conventional, most stupid, most depraved” In the closed number, mood seems to lead an existence apart from character. But in spite of this transformation of individuals into mouthpieces of generalized emotions (types), every surge of passion appears to be fresh and personal. As far as their feelings are concerned, operatic figures are individuals because the listener identifies himself with the emotions they radiate. They revert into types in the very moment in which their action falls short of the expectations aroused by these emotions (Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni). Taken by itself or in the melodramaturgical context, music is hard pressed when urged to represent falsehood, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, irony, or ambiguity. It was this deficiency which provided Hofmannsthal with a cogent explanation for the dramatic failure of Così fan tutte Nor is music capable of being humorous, at least not in the usual meaning of the word. Since humor results from the awareness of incongruity (it is a form of mental detachment), it cannot be rendered by music except indirectly. It is, after all, an intellectual rather than an emotional category. Perhaps the most ingenious way of expressing that incongruity in opera consists in the introduction of unmusical characters such as Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger. The aesthetic principles so far discussed largely apply to the socalled Nummernoper which, in Wagner’s time, began to give way to the durchkomponierte Oper (the opera composed integrally from beginning to end), whose structure shows a much greater conformity 17 “Some Reflections on Music and Opera”. Partisan Review, January/February,p. 10ff. 18 See his letter to Strauss of August 13,

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with the spoken drama. At its worst, the music of the durchkomponierte Oper will endeavor to illustrate even the minutest variations in speech and action. By thus trying Habilidad en Net Slots operate on too narrow a basis it will often defeat its own musical purpose. This threat to musical integrity induced Wagner to use the pseudo-literary device of the leitmotif, which must not be confused with Berlioz’s idée fixe, a truly musical, because melodic and rhythmical, device. In the leitmotif, at least in its Wagnerian usage, the important musical category of repetition is turned into a literary cliché. Used more discreetly, the music of the durchkomponierte Oper will seek to refine upon that which the spoken word expresses unsatisfactorily; but in contrast with the Nummernoper it will do so contemporaneously with language rather than biding its time until an occasion for crystallization arises. Adding a new dimension to speech, it brings to the surface what the characters cannot or will not utter. It is a mirror of the unconscious In The Great Wild Slots Machine, life is presented as a stratified temporal process, the drama showing the surface, and the music the depth, of existence. If Tristan, intended for composition, is also a piece of literature, the same can be said with even greater veracity of the librettos fabricated by the Symbolists. Taking their clue from Verlaine’s plea for “de la musique avant toute chose”20, these writers were less concerned with the words themselves than with the mood evoked by them, i. e., with the latent music of their poetry If the music is thus regarded as being prefigured in the libretto, the question arises as to whether a musician is at all needed to spell it out, since ‘to spell out’, in the lan-

19 Busoni considers this to be the main function of music in opera. See his Entwurf einer neuen Aesthetik der Tonkunst of 20 In his poem “Art poétique”. 21 Hofmannsthal begged Strauss to credit him not “with the words themselves as they appear in the libretto but with that which lies unspoken between them” (letter of January 20, ).

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guage of the Symbolists, means to destroy the vagueness (l’indécis) essential to poetry. What would happen if some composer were to apply his art to Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard or Sea Gull, whose beauty is textural rather than structural? Shakespeare’s Othello, too, comes so close to being a lyrical drama that Stanislavsky conceived of it altogether in musical terms Hofmannsthal’s evaluation of his librettos recalls the favorite Romantic image for the relationship between poetry and music: the riverbed into which the composer pours the enlivening water of his melodies. Goethe, who idolized Mozart and Cherubini, enjoined his librettist “to follow the poetry just as a brook follows the interstices, juttings and declivities of the rocks” But whereas Hofmannsthal’s theory of opera centers in the claim that poetry comes ever so close to being itself music, Goethe ‘Romantically’ believes in the subordination of the poetry. For him, as for Mozart, “the word is to be the obedient servant of the music” Another concept of melodramaturgy evolved with a view toward granting drama equal status within the Gesamtkunstwerk (a term sometimes inappropriately used in this connection) prevails among the Expressionists. In their epic operas, the constituent parts are meant to live a life of their own, each being asked to comment upon the other. In Stravinsky’s Histoire du soldat, the orchestra is placed on the stage in full view of the audience – another example of Expressionistic alienation Neither Brecht’s Dreigroschenoper nor Histoire is intended for empathic reception on the part of the audience. And although Brecht’s drama can be enjoyed as literature, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, Weill’s music 22 See especially p. of Stanislavsky Produces Othello, Helen Novak, tr. (London. Geoffrey Bles. ). 23 From his letter to Philipp Christoph Kayser of June 20, 24 From a letter written by Mozart to his father. 25 See Stravinsky: An Autobiography (New York. Simon & Schuster. ), p. ff.

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adds a new dimension, though hardly the one which Brecht envisaged. Indeed, now that the novelty of the work has faded, many of Weill’s tunes are found to be ingratiating. Such is the fate of many experimental works that have since become classics. A similar fallacy persisting in the short but varied history of opera underlies Gluck’s melodramaturgy (his theory Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper fortunately not his practice). An ardent champion of the music drama, Gluck “sought to restrain music to its true Manga Money Slots Machine, namely that of serving poetry by means of the expression, without interrupting the action or spoiling its effect by useless and superfluous arguments” As Berlioz observed, the catch lies in the word “expression”; for any serious attempt by a great composer to fortify the language of a drama inevitably works in favor of the music It takes considerable effort and self-denial on the part of the composer to create the kind of musical arabesque which Verdi uses in his Falstaff and Strauss in his conversational operas An interesting sidelight on the classicistic approach to opera is shed by the eighteenth-century notion of counter-sense, which Rousseau defines as a “vice indulged in by the composer when he renders a thought other than that which he ought to render” Such misuse may refer to single words and phrases as well as to entire scenes or situations (depending on whether the composer is stimulated by language, character, or action). A Romantic perversion of this concept occurs in Stendhal’s book on Rossini when he praises the composer for having overcome certain difficulties inherent in the libretto of one of his op-

26 Preface to Alceste in a dedicatory letter to Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany (). 27 See his essay “L’Alceste d’Euripide, celles de Quinault, et de Calsabigi, les partitions de Gluck, de Schweizer, de Guglielmi et de Handel sur ce sujet”. A Travers Chants (Paris. ), p. ff. 28 See Strauss’s letter to Stefan Zweig of December 19,in their Briefwechsel, Willi Schuh, ed. (Frankfurt. S. Fischer. ). 29 Article “Contresens” in his Dictionnaire de musique. According to Rousseau, it was d’Alembert who claimed that “music being merely a translation of words into song, it is obvious that one can fall into countersense”.

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eras Here the counter-sense is understood to have originated in the literary substratum of opera, this being a parodistic view of the libretto as literature. Two further observations may help to clarify the Romantic point of view with regard to the libretto. One would normally expect the libretto to form the basis of an opera, i. e., prima le parole e poi la musica But theatrically-minded composers have occasionally reverted to the unorthodox practice of demanding words for a piece of music already completed. Mozart, discussing The Abduction from the Seraglio, informs his father: “I have explained to Stephanie [the librettist] the words I require for this aria – indeed I had finished composing most of it before Stephanie knew anything whatever about it.”32 Stendhal manifests his contempt for the librettos of the operas he heard at La Scala when informing his readers: “I take the situation envisaged by the librettist and ask for a single word, not more than one, to qualify the emotion which underlies it. Nobody should be so imprudent as to read the entire libretto.”33 And Auden says as much when stating: The verses which the librettist writes are not addressed to the public but are really a private letter to the composer. They have their moment of glory, the moment in which they suggest to him a certain melody; when that is over, they are as expendable as infantry is to a Chinese general; they must efface themselves and cease to care what happens to them

Abandoning himself to his musical fancy, Berlioz epitomizes the Romantic attitude when defending his choice of Hungary as the setting for the initial scene of Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper Damnation: Why did the composer cause his protagonist to go to Hungary? Because he wished to introduce a piece of instrumental music whose theme is Hungarian. [] 30 Vie de Rossini, I, p. 31 This is an inversion of the title of a one-act opera by Salieri (with a libretto by the Abbé de Casti) to which Strauss refers in the motto of his opera Capriccio. 32 Letter of September 26, See The Letters of Mozart and His Family, Emily Anderson, tr. (London. Macmillan. ). 33 Vie de Rossini, I, p. 34 “Some Reflections on Music and Opera”.

The Libretto as Literature

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He would have sent him anywhere if he had found the slightest musical [Italics mine] reason for doing so

This much for the historical side of a critique of the libretto as literature. To those who object to this approach because it violates the spirit in which many librettos were conceived (i. e., their subordination to music) I can only answer that by the same token we would deprive ourselves of the pleasure of studying the sketches for a painting, the bozzetto of a sculpture, the plans for a building, or a film script. It may well be that in the case of the libretto the percentage of literary failures is exceptionally high and that much time would be required to separate the grain from the chaff. But why be discouraged by such a prospect? Chances are that the student of the libretto as literature will get a fair return for his investment in time and effort.

35 From his preface to the opera-oratorio.

Cocteau, Stravinsky, Brecht, and the Birth of Epic Opera () As its title indicates, this paper is not intended to be a comprehensive survey of anti-Romantic and anti-Wagnerian tendencies in modern opera, but merely an attempt to evaluate certain affinities among Jean Cocteau’s Le Coq et l’Arlequin, a collection of brilliant aperçus about music and the theater, Stravinsky-Ramuz’ Histoire du Soldat, BrechtWeill’s Dreigroschenoper, and the series of Anmerkungen which Brecht appended to the latter work. An historical outline of the epic trends on the musical stage of our day would necessarily entail consideration of such other key works as Erik Satie’s Parade, Milhaud’s Le Boeuf sur le Toît, Cocteau’s Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel, Milhaud’s La Création du Monde, Sitwell-Walton’s Façade, and ClaudelMilhaud’s Christophe Colomb, whose authors, instead of wishing to place the audience at once in a “narcotic atmosphere”, “wanted to show how the soul gradually reaches music”1. Taking the programmatic Le Coq et l’Arlequin as our point of departure, we note that Cocteau finished this manifesto toward the end of World War I, dedicating it to Georges Auric on March 19,exactly six days before Debussy’s death. Le Coq furnishes a convenient summary of the artistic aims pursued by the group of French composers known as Les Six and consisting of Honegger, Milhaud (who joined the group after his return from South America), Poulenc, Auric, Georges Durey, and Germaine Tailleferre. Les Six had grown out of a nucleus of musicians whom Erik Satie, their patron saint, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, had dubbed Les Nouveaux Jeunes and who had made their first collective appearance in January, The name Les Six was attached to them by the music critic Henri Collet, whose article “Un livre de Rimsky et un 1

Paul Claudel, “Modern Drama and Music”. Yale Review, XX (), p. 94ff.

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Cocteau, Stravinsky, Brecht, and the Birth of Epic Opera

livre de Cocteau – les cinq Russes et les six Français” had appeared in the January 16 and 23,issues of the magazine Comoedia. Collet defined the aims of the French artists in analogy to those spelled out by the Russian composers Balakirev, Moussorgsky, Borodin, RimskyKorsakov, and César Cui, popularly known as “The Five”. Both schools were largely concerned with writing music conceived along national lines, freed, wherever possible, of foreign influence. Cocteau, who is not a professionally trained musician but is known to possess an uncanny talent for grasping the aesthetic significance of musical phenomena, was ideally suited to become the spokesman of Les Six.2 For him, to pretend that “one cannot talk music if one does not know its algebra” was tantamount to declaring “that one cannot enjoy good food without knowing how to cook, that one cannot cook without knowing chemistry, etc.” (Revue de Genève, No. 21, March, ). As for the aesthetic of the group, it was a direct outgrowth of their anti-Romanticism, of their rebellion against Wagner (including his followers and the Impressionists), and of the Germanophobia which swept France at the outbreak of the global conflict. Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper Wagner and Debussy they opposed Erik Satie (much of whose laconic writing has entered into Le Coq et l’Arlequin), to Galaksino Casino No Deposit Bonus Codes murkiness a classical sense of form, proportion, and clarity, and to German music an art of decidedly Gallic persuasion. Viewing the group’s classicist bent, it seems odd that Jean Cocteau should have acted as their self-appointed Musagete, for the author-to-be of La Machine Infernale and future champion of Surrealism would seem to have been ill-disposed for such a role. Indeed, as early asin Carte Blanche, he com-

2 “Jean Cocteau aura été un des très rares – je crois bien que, sans KISS Slot 200 Free Spins, on peut bien dire même le seul – qui ait toujours été en contact direct avec la musique; à l’avoir fréquentée pour elle-même, comme une chose en soi, en tant qu’élément essentiel; bien plus, à avoir su la regarder vivre et, partant d’une connaissance fort bien eclairée des époques ayant précédés la nôtre, partant d’une compréhension de l’enchâinement des faits musicaux, à avoir su l’aider à vivre, à accomplir son destin à une époque donnée.” Claude Rostand in the special Cocteau issue of La Table Ronde (No. 94, October, ), p.

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pletely reversed his opinion when asserting that “the Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper nations” – France prominently among them – “have always been the scene of salutary disorders” and accusing the Germans of indulging in “order, propriety and a clinical discipline”3. But in it was the Frenchman Cocteau who came to the rescue of Classicism, as in his own way the German-Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni had done ten years earlier in his Entwurf einer neuen Aesthetik der Tonkunst. Seen with a view toward the evolution of musical taste in the last three centuries, Cocteau’s Poetics marks the culmination of a rebellion against the Gesamtkunstwerk, the theatrical synthesis of the arts, with its empathic mode of being (according to Cocteau it “forces us to listen with our skin”, [I, 36]) and its endless melody. Cocteau sided with Nietzsche who, cured of Wagnerism, had in Der Fall Wagner and Nietzsche contra Wagner used Georges Bizet as a whipping boy against the sorcerer of Bayreuth4. He rejected Romantic music and painting because they involved the emotions rather than the intellect, because he thought them to be eclectic, and because, in his opinion, they sacrificed form to content5. Romantic music is music created by dreamers; but the dreamer “est toujours mauvais poète”6. It is music as motley as the costume of the Harlequin which, as in Wagner’s Tristan, does not like to be roused from its reveries. What Cocteau and Les Six prescribed as an Best Sic Bo Casinos USA 2020 was a type of linear music based on melody 3 Œuvres Complètes (Paris, ), I, Future reference to this work will be noted in the text by volume and page number. 4 In Der Fall Wagner, Nietzsche speaks of Wagner as a “Polyp in der Musik”, a phrase which Cocteau borrowed when calling Wagner and Stravinsky “des pieuvres qu’il faut fuir ou qui vous mangent”. 5 In Le Coq, Cocteau opposes Bach and – in an appendix – Mozart to Beethoven and Wagner. Beethoven is “fastidieux lorsqu’il Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper [] parce qu’il fait du développement du forme”, whereas Bach “fait du développement de l’idée”. Cocteau, of course, was never afraid of contradicting himself. 6 InCocteau stated: “I do not have on my conscience many works written while awake, except the books which preceded Le Potomak, when I began to go to sleep; but I have some. How much would I give not to have them exist.” Opium, tr. M. Crosland and S. Road (New York, ), p. Was Le Coq one of the books he regretted having written?

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but “sans la caresse des cordes”, a music that, being simple, has also “l’air facile”7, a music of “tous les jours” which ironically defeats the emotions, a music, above all, which is Apollo Rising Slot Review on the principle of renunciation (I, 31). The anti-Wagnerism of Les Six was most poignantly expressed in their feelings about the theater. Once again it was Nietzsche who set the tone for the group’s violent reaction against traditional operatic modes of creation: “Aber Wagner macht mich krank. Was geht mich das Theater an? Was die Krämpfe seiner sittlichen Ekstasen, an denen das Volk – und wer ist nicht Volk? – seine Genugtuung hat? was der ganze Gebärden-Hokuspokus des Schauspielers?”8 What Nietzsche especially disliked in the Wagnerian conception of the theater was its cultic, pseudo-religious nature manifested by every performance in the Festspielhaus, at whose opening in the Zarathustrian “said quietly farewell to Wagner”. In Le Coq, Cocteau voiced his antipathy by calling the theater corrupt and corrupting because it forced REINO UNIDO Casino Club Casino Bonus audience to “listen with their faces buried in their hands” (I, 39). It was for similar reasons that subsequently Brecht encouraged the male members of his audience to take out their cigars and smoke them, so as to gain distance from the events portrayed on stage9. Stravinsky, too, whom Cocteau accused of having succumbed to theatrical mysticism in his Sacre, was soon to develop a dislike to music to which one must listen as if in a trance. It was this shutting out of the world, this act of concentration and forced identification which Cocteau signified by the phrase quoted Wheel of Fortune Cash Link Slots Machine the beginning of this paragraph. Exactly what did the proponents Wildbots Orchestra Slots Machine the new aesthetic seek to substitute for the “Einopern” of opera in the theater? They resolutely turned to the music hall, to popular music, jazz, the café-concert – 7 Nietzsche, in Der Fall Wagner, asserts: “Das Gute ist leicht, alles Göttliche läuft auf zarten Füssen.” 8

Nietzsche, Werke (Stuttgart, ), I. Abtheilung, VIII,

9

Schriften zum Theater (Frankfurt, ), p.

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where Satie himself had performed – and the circus These forms of light musical entertainment recommended themselves to the reformers because of the variety of tunes played in the course of a single evening and the necessary brevity of each piece. And just as Schönberg was to be disconcerted by the aphoristic quality of his first atonal compositions, Cocteau admitted that brevity was not in itself a virtue, but that it constituted an appropriate reaction against “l’interminable” Erik Satie, in whose name the war against the Wagnerian tribe was waged, has sometimes been called the Ingres of music. Such Ice Run Slots Machine analogy indeed suggests itself when one ponders the recently discovered brouillon for his Socrate to the effect that “the melody is the idea, the contour, just as much as it is the form and content of a work” One of the fiercest attacks launched by Satie was directed at the concept of program music, especially at Debussy’s use of precious, descriptive titles in his short piano pieces. Instead of simply omitting such designations from his own compositions, Satie furnished many of his scores with titles totally unrelated to or, at best, ironically reflecting upon the music. It was in consequence of this abuse that some of his contemporaries regarded him as Secret Bingo Slots Machine practical joker or crank and as the typical product “of this exhausted civilization which jeers in order not to

10 “Le music-hall, le cirque, les orchestres americains de nègres, tout cela féconde un artiste au même titre que la vie. Se servir des émotions que de tels spectacles éveillent ne revient pas à faire de l’art après l’art. Ces spectacles ne sont pas de l’art. Ils excitent comme les machines, les animaux, les paysages, le danger.” Cocteau, Œuvres Complètes, I, 11 See Schönberg’s lecture “Composition with Twelve Tones” in his book Style and Idea (New York, ), p. ff. In Carte Blanche (Œuvres, I, ) Cocteau speaks approvingly of an essay by a certain Marnold “lorsqu’il reproche aux œuvres la brièveté [] Mais la réaction centre l’interminable se faisait sentir, et toute réaction pèche par excès.” 12 This brouillon is quoted in Roger Shattuck’s The Banquet Years (New York, ), p. Satie’s life and art have been described and analyzed by Shattuck as well as by R. Templier and Rollo S. Myers (Erik Satie, London, ). Cocteau (Œuvres, 1, 25) affirms: “En musique la ligne c’est la mélodie. Le retour au dessin entraînera nécessairement un retour à la mélodie.”

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look death in the face” Satie’s loyal followers, however, saw in the master’s irony a decisive step in the direction of the coveted new classicism, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. Cocteau had met Satie inwhen he was in the process of adapting Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the circus. The plan miscarried; but Satie and Cocteau became inseparable. During a brief furlough from the army inthe poet conceived the idea for the Cubist ballet Parade, whose production in Rome in is a cause celèbre in the history of contemporary art, and which may be regarded as a live manifesto of the movement that had inscribed the words simplicity, brevity, and irony on its banners. Parade, whose music is “deliberately divested of subjective emotion, though a disturbing emotional experience results from the manner in which apparently banal fragments of melody and the simplest harmonies are deprived of their conventional associations and re-created in unexpected but logical patterns”14, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, is far from being a prototype of epic opera. But the spirit of revolt which it breathes, and the reaction provoked by the adverse criticism which was levelled against it, strongly contributed to the rapid evolution of that genre in the hands of Igor Stravinsky. A final glance at Le Coq et l’Arlequin may help to explain the paradoxical attitude which Les Six adopted toward Debussy and Stravinsky. The latter, though not actually Debussy’s pupil (he had studied with Rimsky-Korsakov), was nevertheless strongly influenced by his music. Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper Six found the composer of Pelléas et Mélisande laboring under the spell of Wagner and Moussorgsky. “Impressionism”, their spokesman stated, “is a repercussion of Wagner, the last rumblings of the thunder” (I, 38). When gauging Debussy’s accomplishments and comparing them with those of the neo-classicists, however, one does well to keep in mind that it was more in his practice than in his theory that the former differed from the latter. Musically speaking, 13 R. D. Chennevière in Musical Quarterly, V (), p. 14 Grove’s Musical Dictionary, fifth ed., VI, See also Georges Auric’s comments on Parade in the Nouvelle Revue Française, XVI (), p. ff.

Cocteau, Stravinsky, Brecht, and the Birth of Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper Opera

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Pelléas may well deserve to be called the Impressionistic Tristan. But when writing his opera, Debussy had long abandoned Wagner and turned toward a characteristically French manner of composing In this as well as in other respects he actually anticipated Satie’s musical nationalism and the polemical use which Cocteau was to make of it. Yet it is an indisputable fact that he, to whom, according to Léon Vallas, the theater was “a false and inferior type of art”16, wrote his Pelléas with the intention not of Legend of Zeus Slots Machine up the Wagnerian synthesis of the arts, but of heightening its effect by giving it more psychological and musical continuity than Wagner had provided (see especially Debussy’s letter concerning Pelléas to the Secretary General of the Paris Opéra Comique, as reproduced on p. f. of Vallas’ book). Nevertheless, Cocteau, Satie, and Les Six manifestly wronged the composer who, belated Wagnerian though he was without fully realizing it, clearly foreshadowed some of the tendencies that were to crystallize almost immediately after his death. He, too, after all, was a master of the arabesque (his name for the linear element in music) who regretted that “the French forget too easily the qualities of clearness and elegance peculiar to them and allow themselves to be influenced by the tedious and ponderous Teuton”. Returning to Stravinsky, we observe that Cocteau, who, by the way, had only recently ceased to admire the Impressionists, in Le Coq denounced what he called that master’s “musique française russe”. Although in some ways he lumped the young Russian’s music together with that of Wagner and the Impressionists, he left no doubt that he saw a marked difference in the way in which Wagner and Stra15 Debussy had been an ardent Wagnerian in his Prix-de-Rome days but had revolted as early as when he attended a performance of Tristan in Bayreuth. Edward Lockspeiser (Debussy [London, ], p. 72) quotes Tchaikovsky’s patroness Nadeshda von Meck, in whose household the young Debussy served as an accompanist, as stating that already in the composer did not care for the Germans and maintained: “Ils ne sont pas de nôtre tempérament, ils sont si lourds, pas clairs.” 16 Léon Vallas, The Theories of Claude Debussy, tr. M. O’Brien (London, ), p.

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Cocteau, Stravinsky, Brecht, and the Birth of Epic Opera

vinsky sought to affect their audiences. What Wagner achieved by means of empathy, the author of Le Sacre, that “Georgics of Prehistory”, accomplished through shock effect: “Wagner treats us to an extended meal. Stravinsky does not give us time to say ‘ouf’. But both act on our nerves” (I, 39). However, when learning about L’Histoire, Cocteau quickly changed his mind and in a footnote appended to Le Coq apologized for having spoken ill of the composer as one who was not yet “de la race des architectes”. In the appendix of he even went so far as to call Stravinsky a musical surgeon, “un homme dur auquel l’opinion amoureuse demande ‘Brutalise-moi, frappe-moi encore,’ et qui lui offre des dentelles” Judging by the evolution of Cocteau’s views on music, one can see why, at a crucial point in his career, he denounced the Russian’s sumptuous ballet scores of the ante-bellum period, notably that of the Firebird. Stravinsky, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, after all, had grown up with a decided penchant for rich orchestral palettes suffused with local color. However, his friendship with Debussy, beginning aboutwas not to survive the premiere of Le Sacre, a work which the Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper man praised cautiously for having “enlarged the boundaries of the permissible in the empire of sound” Stravinsky later claimed that, all along, he suspected Debussy of duplicity and, at least in retrospect, showed annoyance at the latter’s “incapacity to digest the music of the Sacre when the younger generation enthusiastically voted for it” That Stravinsky was generally considered to have turned anti-Debussyite by is shown by a letter in which Jacques Rivière, the

17 Œuvres, I, ByStravinsky had become sufficiently inured to neoclassicism to think of writing his opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex on a Latin text. It was no other than Cocteau whom he commissioned to write the original French version of the libretto. 18 Quoted in Conversations with Stravinsky, ed. R. Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper (New York, ), p. 19 Conversations with Stravinsky, p. Cocteau, in his Journals, claims to have seen Debussy “sick at orchestra rehearsals of Le Sacre du Printemps. He was discovering the beauty of that music. The form he had given to his soul suffered from another form which did not match it.”

Cocteau, Stravinsky, Brecht, and the Birth of Epic Opera

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newly appointed editor of the Nouvelle Revue Française, requested his services for the magazine, the attention of whose readers he wanted to direct to the “anti-impressionist, anti-symbolist, and anti-Debussy movements that are becoming more and more precise and threaten to take the form and force of a vast new current” (Conversations, p. 63). But exactly when was it that Stravinsky began to shake off the tyranny of Romanticism-Impressionism? Around the Russian composer went to Bayreuth at the invitation of Diaghilev. He came away from a performance of Parsifal as a declared foe of Wagner. The overall impression he had received was one of sense-numbing boredom which made it impossible for him to concentrate on the music. He was equally appalled by the ritual and suprasensible element introjected into the operatic production. Trained primarily as a composer of music for the ballet, he subsequently embarked on a reform of the musical theater considered as a visual medium. As the composer and music critic Nikolas Nabokov put it in an essay entitled “Stravinsky and the Drama”: Ballet had a meagre and sporadic tradition. This gave the modern composer a free, comparatively easy field for experiment and invention. It relieved him of the obligation to follow a poetic text and by its very nature worked against the principle of the mixture of the genres. Instead, it directed the composer toward the harmonious fitting together of the three arts, each one complete in itself

It was in his second opera, Reynard, that Stravinsky began to destroy the much detested synthesis of the arts21; but only in the subsequent Histoire did Heat Em Up Slots Machine reformatory zeal lead to a systematic application of the epic principle. In his autobiography the composer stresses the advantage of having the instrumentalists in evidence during the entire performance of a stage work; for “the sight of the gestures and movements of the various parts of the body producing the music is funda-

20 Stravinsky in the Theatre, ed. M. Ledermann (New York, ), p. 21 Stravinsky prescribed that Reynard be played “by clowns, dancers or acrobats, preferably on a trestle stage with the orchestra placed behind. If produced in a theatre, it should be played in front of the Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. The players do not leave the stage.” Quoted by E. W. White on p. 65 of his book Stravinsky: A Critical Survey (London, ).

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Cocteau, Stravinsky, Brecht, and the Birth of Epic Opera

mentally necessary if it is to be grasped in all its fulness. All music created or composed demands some exteriorization for the perception of the listener.”22 In Switzerland, where he lived afterStravinsky became acquainted with the writer C. F. Ramuz, who collaborated with him in a number of ventures but made no original contribution until the spring of when, Stravinsky being in straitened financial circumstances, they “got hold of the idea of a sort of little traveling theater, easy to transport Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper place to place and to show in even small localities” The first epic opera thus did not result from purely aesthetic considerations but was partly conditioned by economic exigencies. Yet, whatever the role of the external circumstances involved in its creation, it can hardly be called coincidence that the genre which L’Histoire represents is so perfectly in keeping with the aesthetic developed by Les Six. For Cocteau and his friends were also to give battle in the name of simplicity, which was the mot d’ordre in the making of Stravinsky’s chamber opera. Histoire was to be a story presented in a threefold manner, namely read, played, and danced. Ramuz, who was not a man of the theater, had proposed to write a dramatic narrative to show “that the theater can be conceived in a much wider sense than is usually attributed to it” Making the most of Ramuz’ deficiency, Stravinsky decided that in the work in progress “the three elements [music, narrative, and action] should sometimes take turns as soloists and sometimes combine as an ensemble” (Autobiography, p. 73). L’Histoire, in short, was to perpetuate alienation through constant shifts in emphasis and the deliberate avoidance of extended parallelisms. 22 Igor Stravinsky: An Autobiography (New York, ), p. 23 For the whole question of the collaboration between Ramuz and Stravinsky see pp. 71ff. of the composer’s autobiography as well as Ramuz’ “Souvenirs sur Igor Stravinsky” (especially pp. in Vol. XIV of his Œuvres Complètes [Lausanne, ]) and his Lettres (Lausanne, ) with Ernest Ansermet’s account of “La Naissance de 1’Histoire du Soldat”. 24 Ramuz, Œuvres Complètes, XIV,

Cocteau, Stravinsky, Brecht, and the Birth of Epic Opera

27

Let us briefly explain the manner in which the principal ingredients of L’Histoire are treated both by themselves and in relation to each other. In an attempt to reduce the size of the orchestra, Stravinsky selected a group of seven instruments including “the most representative types, in treble and bass, of the instrumental families”. He was beginning to realize the advantages to be gained by renunciation which, in many of his neo-classical works, became the cornerstone of his aesthetic As for the music of Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, its complexity is such that veritable virtuosi are needed to perform it – a serious obstacle in the way of the simplicity for which composer and librettist were striving. The instrumental parts, moreover, are not consistently integrated throughout the opera; but each solo instrument is encouraged to develop an independent linear existence. For Stravinsky it was also a foregone conclusion that his music should be so far detached from the underlying action that it could be performed as an orchestral suite. A few words, finally, about the astounding variety of ways in which Ramuz designed each part of the action to operate both by itself and in conjunction with, or contrast to, the others. The dramatis personae of L’Histoire, for instance, lists four characters: the reader, the soldier, the devil, and the princess. But five performers are needed to fill their roles, since that of the devil is split up into a dancing and an acting part. The matter is further complicated by the fact that the reader is not restricted to narrating and interpreting the action, but frequently takes it upon himself to voice the soldier’s innermost thoughts and feelings. In short, the unity of character is persistently denied to the major figures. Scenically, effects of alienation in L’Histoire are achieved by the alternation of mute scenes with dialogic ones, of scenes played on center stage with others enacted in front of the curtain, and of dramatic action with ‘epic’ commentary. Another instance of neutralization is found in Stravinsky’s use of non-Russian music to accompany this 25 See the very interesting footnote on p. 97 of T. W. Adorno’s Philosophie der neuen Musik (Tübingen, ).

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Cocteau, Stravinsky, Brecht, and the Birth of Epic Opera

Russian folktale The introduction of Jazz into the score offers perhaps the most striking instance of this deliberate rejection of local color. The plot upon which Ramuz and Stravinsky fastened was well suited to their non-Aristotelian dramaturgy since, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper the course of its unfolding, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, the unity of the space-time continuum is disrupted and time treated in terms of spatial progression. Having been lured into extratemporal territory, the soldier, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, upon his return to the real world, finds himself regarded as a revenant. He finally manages to outwit the devil and to win the princess whom, with the help of his recovered instrument, he has cured of melancholy. But the devil strikes promptly back when the soldier, crossing the border in order to enter his native country, finds Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper deprived of the protection offered to him by the timeless realm. His punishment is deserved; for II ne faut pas vouloir ajouter à ce qu’on a ce qu’on avait, on ne peut pas être à la fois qui on est et qui on était. On n’a pas le droit de tout avoir: c’est défendu. Un bonheur est tout le bonheur; deux c’est comme s’ils n’existaient plus.

Rather than pursue Stravinsky’s operatic career beyond L’Histoire, we turn now to the artist who deserves credit for having brought the epic opera to its perfection both in practice and theory. Bertolt Brecht needs no special introduction as a writer. Yet it is relatively little known that he was also a practicing musician and that, in the early stages of his career, he composed the music for his own Balladen. Some of these songs made their appearance in his plays as well as in the Hauspostille, in which certain of the tunes are also reprinted. In his early plays, the young playwright, by his own confession, used music in the conventional manner by providing dramatic occasions for it It was only beginning with Kurt Weill’s contributions to Mann ist Mann 26 “Restait à trouver le sujet: rien de plus facile. J’étais Russe: le sujet serait russe; Strawinsky était Vaudois (en ce temps-là): la musique serait vaudoise.” Ramuz in Œuvres Complètes, XIV, 27 “In den ersten paar Stücken wurde Musik in ziemlich landläufiger Form verwendet; es handelte sich um Lieder oder Märsche, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, und es fehlte kaum je eine naturalistische Motivierung dieser Musikstücke [] Diese Musik schrieb ich noch selbst.” (Schriften zum Theater, p. )

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that the music achieved that Kunstcharakter or Selbstwert without African Safari Slots Machine there can be no epic opera. Epic opera, however, as Ernst Schumacher points out in his book on Brecht, is the epitome of the epic theater, “since the musical elements serve as an epic, i. e. retarding factor” As with Cocteau and his friends, Brecht’s break with musical Aristotelianism was largely due to his rejection of Wagner. In Wagner’s music dramas Brecht saw an incarnation of the emotional and unconscious elements. But actually his critique was aimed less at Wagner himself and his own Weltanschauung than at the modern Wagnerians “who are satisfied Pearl Traker Slots Machine remembering that the original Wagnerians had ascribed a meaning to Wagner’s opera” Brecht defied the so-called reforms of the musical theater under way in the twenties and aimed at modifying the outward form of opera without changing its apparatus. Desirous to change the apparatus itself, he pleaded for a Literarisierung of the theater, a process which he defined, in an untranslatable phrase, as “das Durchsetzen des ‘Gestalteten’ mit ‘Formuliertem’”. Brecht’s first venture into the musical theater, and his first collaboration with Weill, had taken place in when the original version of Mahagonny was written for performance at the Baden-Baden music festival. The plan for the most popular of Brecht’s contributions to the genre materialized, in the following year, during a perusal of Gay’s Beggar’s Opera. In his analysis of the Dreigroschenoper, Schumacher underscores the similarity of the circumstances which led to the creation of Gay’s satire and Brecht’s parody. Artistically, the Beggar’s Opera must be regarded as a protest against the totally unrealistic 28 Die dramatischen Versuche Bertolt Brechts (Berlin, ), p. John Willett, The Theatre of Bertolt Brecht (London, ), p. ff., also deals with the problem of epic opera. 29 “Die heutigen Wagnerianer begnügen sich mit der Erinnerung, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, dass die ursprünglichen Wagnerianer einen Sinn festgestellt und also gewusst hatten. Bei Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper von Wagner abhängigen Produzierenden wird sogar die Haltung des Weltanschauenden noch stur beibehalten. Eine Weltanschauung, die, zu sonst nichts mehr nütze, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, nur noch als Genussmittel verschleudert wird.” (Schriften zum Theater, p. 24)

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Cocteau, Stravinsky, Brecht, and the Birth of Epic Opera

style of Handel’s late baroque operas, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. Analogously, the Dreigroschenoper mocks the Handelian Renaissance in post-war Germany, which the generation of Neue Sachlichkeit and the Bauhaus came to view as a sign that the bourgeoisie was beginning to reconstitute itself, for the rise of opera had long been associated with the emergence of that class. Generically, the Dreigroschenoper stands halfway between the Singspiel and the Jazz Revue, traditional forms being consistently used with ironic overtones. The Wagnerian Dice On Fire Slots Machine is replaced by a small jazzband, the set form of the aria by Moritat and Song Like Stravinsky, Brecht wants the musicians to be visible during the whole performance of the work On the whole, however, the German writer is more consistent in his use of alienating devices, which he deploys programmatically. Where Stravinsky totally eliminates the singers, Brecht retains them, but insists on neatly separating the various levels of verbal expression. In the Dreigroschenoper, there are to be no smooth transitions between spoken dialogue, recitative and singing; for “nothing is more detestable than for the actor to pretend that he does not notice the transition from speech to singing” (Schriften zum Theater, p. 32). Nor is the sequence Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper levels regarded as signifying an increase in emotional intensity. In order to forestall any such interpretation, Brecht uses titles and signs as “primitive attempts at making the theater literary” (p. 30), and as a means of training the audience in the art of “complex seeing”.

30 For Brecht’s defense of Jazz Revue and Singspiel see the essay “Über die Verwendung von Musik für ein episches Theater” (Schriften zum Theater, p. ff.), especially the paragraph culminating in the assertion: “Die sogenannte billige Musik ist besonders in Kabarett und Operette schon seit geraumer Zeit eine Art gestischer Musik; die ernste Musik hingegen hält immer noch am Lyrismus fest und pflegt den individuellen Ausdruck.” 31 Schriften zum Theater, p. With regard to the size of the orchestra to be used in the Dreigroschenoper Brecht states: “Die grosse Menge der Handwerker in den Opernorchestern ermöglicht nur assoziierende Musik” and demands a “Verkleinerung des Orchesterapparates auf allerhöchstens 30 Spezialisten” (see fn. 9).

Cocteau, Stravinsky, Brecht, and the Birth of Epic Opera

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Whereas in Stravinsky’s opera the innovations came about for a variety of reasons not necessarily related to the final product, Brecht’s revolution in aestheticis is the well-defined and carefully shaped byproduct of a larger issue. In L’Histoire, for instance, the plot itself is treated quite seriously. Music and action, though not always running a parallel course, never clash or look at each other ironically. The fable of the Dreigroschenoper, on the other hand, Vampires Castle Slots Machine treated parodistically; and instead of leading up to a clearly defined moral, the action concludes with a literary cliché. Throughout Brecht’s work, music is used as a tool of Arising Phoenix Slot Machine, especially in the sense that conventional tunes are applied to unconventional contexts: “By acting emotionally and rejecting none of the customary narcotic charms, it helped to unmask bourgeois ideology” (p. ). From the musician’s point of view, Kurt Weill arrived at a similar conclusion: “I found myself confronted with a realistic action, to which I had to oppose my music, since I consider music incapable of being realistic.”32 In the Dreigroschenoper, accordingly, traditional musical forms such as arias, duets, and chorales are used in contrast with the dramatic situations which give rise to them. This does not preclude the use of strictly musical parody in the form of dissonance, such as appears in the famous “Kanonensong”. Further increasing the distance between words (or action) and music, Brecht advised the actors occasionally to speak against the music, an ironic perversion of the use which Schönberg and Alban Berg had made of Sprechstimme The limitation of scope and subject matter self-imposed upon the present paper renders impossible a discussion of the subsequent evolution of Brecht’s ideas about the musical theater: his collaboration with 32 From an article in the Monatsschrift für moderne Musik, cited by Schumacher, Die dramatischen Versuche Bertolt Brechtsp. 33 “Was die Melodie betrifft, so folge er [the actor] ihr nicht blindlings: es gibt ein Gegen-die-Musik-Sprechen, welches grosse Wirkungen haben kann, die von einer hartnäckigen, von Musik und Rhythmus unabhängigen und unbestechlichen Nüchternheit ausgehen.” (Schriften zum Theater, p. ; see fn. 9)

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Weill on the expanded Mahagonny, his interest in the Schuloper, and his later theoretical writings. Suffice it to say that the Anmerkungen to Mahagonny offer a formal poetics of the epic opera with its total and permanent Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper of ingredients, and that the Little Organon postulates a half-hearted return to art as ‘culinary’ entertainment, music having the task of “establishing itself in many ways and quite independently by expressing its attitude toward the subject” or merely that of “adding variety to the entertainment” (Schriften zum Theater, p. ). This is a far cry from the relentless pursuit of alienation which characterized the author of the Dreigroschenoper.

Introduction to The Essence of Opera () The editor of a collection like the present one, which aims at acquainting the reader with as wide as possible a variety of views on opera broached by composers, librettists, and aestheticians during the last three hundred and fifty years, cannot possibly hope to unite all the important statements bearing on that subject in a single volume. It will rather be his task to proffer the most significant samples of each of the four basic approaches to opera which evolve in the course of the history of the form. The undertaking seems doubly justified by the fact that it has no precedent and that a considerable portion of the material appears for the first time in translations from the German, French, and Italian. The omission of relevant utterances by such eminent librettists as Quinault1, Apostolo Zeno2, Marmontel3, Goldoni4, Eugène Scribe5, 1 Concerning this principal librettist for Jean Baptiste Lully see Etienne Gros’ Philippe Quinault (Paris: Champion, ). 2 Zeno, the predecessor of Metastasio and da Ponte, lived from to He wrote innumerable librettos for composers like Bononcini, Galuppi, Hasse, Porpora, and the Scarlattis. His letters in six volumes were published in (Venice: Sansoni). 3 Marmontel, the chief French author of librettos for comic operas in the second half of the eighteenth century (he wrote ten for Grétry and five for Piccinni), lived from to He is also known for his Essai sur la révolution de la musique française of 4 Goldoni’s Memoirs, trans. by J. Black, edited by W. A. Drake (New York: Knopf, ), contains many interesting details and anecdotes about his experiences with managers and composers, especially with Baldassare Galuppi. 5 Scribe, the most prolific librettist of them all, not only wrote thirty-eight texts for Auber but provided the librettos for Verdi’s Vêpres siciliennes, Boieldieu’s Dame blanche, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, Meyerbeer’s Huguenots, Robert le diable, and Le Prophète, and Halévy’s La Juive. Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera, Bellini’s Sonnambula, and Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur also derive from plays he wrote. Scribe’s contribution is discussed by Neil C. Arvin in his book Eugène Scribe and the French Theatre (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ).

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and Gabriele d’Annunzio6 is regrettable. But a line had to be drawn at some point and repetition would have been unavoidable. The number of first-rate and second-rate composers slighted in our anthology is naturally legion. Some of those whose works are still in the repertory (Donizetti, Bellini, Smetana, etc.) or formerly had a prominent place in it (from Cimarosa and Païsiello to Cherubini, Spontini, Meyerbeer, Gounod, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, and Auber) either found no occasion to verbalize their feelings about the art they practiced or merely echoed what their predecessors and contemporaries had to offer by way of comment, although some interesting material could have been drawn from the formal or informal writings of most of them. Evidence from the pen or mouth of older masters (Purcell, Hasse, Telemann, Alessandro Scarlatti) either does not exist or is extremely hard to come by. Nor did it seem desirable to burden the collection with views on comic opera. On the whole it is evident that unless they are conscious innovators or reformers, the makers of operatic music are not overly inclined to theorize about their art, except spontaneously during the creative process. Of the great masters in the field who are still acknowledged as such, Handel is the only one not directly quoted in the anthology, since his letters shed little light on his conception of opera as an art form. Haydn’s annotations to his own works for the musical stage and Weber’s communications with Helmina von Chézy are, unfortunately, unavailable. One cannot tachi palace casino resort but notice that this anthology is largely composed of programmatic and quasi-programmatic statements, even though some of the selections appear to be of a strictly descriptive nature. In spite of the many disparities between intention and execution, no attempt has been made – except briefly as part of the introductory matter – to evaluate the material critically, i. e., to match an artist’s theory with his practice. The reader who wishes to pursue that aspect should consult the books and articles listed in the succinct bibliographies 6 D’Annunzio wrote the Mystère de Saint Sebastien, for which Debussy supplied incidental music. Their correspondence, edited by G. Tosi, was published in

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appended to each introduction. An excellent analysis of the relationship between music and drama and its effect on operatic history, theory, and criticism is made by Joseph Kerman in his stimulating though one-sided book Opera as Drama. In his judgment of works for the musical stage Noahs Ark Slot is guided by the belief that “in opera, the composer is the dramatist and [] the clarification of the dramatic idea and the refinement of the vision cannot be left to the librettist,” a view that flatly contradicts the neoclassical concept of opera. So far nobody has written a history of the libretto, a task we consider to be a prerequisite for that history of melo-dramaturgy for which our anthology might serve as a tentative basis and for that poetics of opera which Beaumarchais envisaged in his preface to Tarare and which a latter-day Algarotti should perhaps be encouraged to create. The pieces assembled on the following pages are extremely diverse. Some constitute private, some semi-private documents, while others were intended for publication. Letters exchanged between individuals engaged in creating a symbiosis of music and drama are especially valuable insofar as their content directly reflects the creative process and acquaints us with the actual intentions of librettists and composers. Monteverdi’s letters to Striggio, Goethe’s to Christoph Philipp Kayser, Mozart’s to his father, Verdi’s to his numerous collaborators, and Puccini’s to Giuseppe Adami belong to this category, which is nowhere better represented than in the extensive correspondence exchanged between Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Other epistles, such as St. Evremond’s letter to the Duke of Buckingham, Gluck’s to de la Harpe and the Mercure de France, and Debussy’s to the Secretary General of the Opéra Comique in Paris, are much less spontaneous. The same applies to Rossini’s conversations with his biographer Zanolini and to Lorenzo da Ponte’s patently apologetic memoirs. Prefaces to, and dedications of, specific works represent a rather formal type of communication between an artist and his patrons or his audience. Gluck used his dedication of Alceste to Grand Duke Leo-

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pold of Tuscany as an excuse for writing a manifesto. Corneille’s Examen of Andromède; Dryden’s preface to Albion and Albanius, Beaumarchais’ to Tarare, Berlioz’ to La Damnation de Faust, Hofmannsthal’s to Die ägyptische Helena, Strauss’ to Intermezzo; Berg’s observations about Wozzeck; and Brecht’s “Anmerkungen zur Dreigroschenoper” fall under this heading. Examples of treatises on the genre are found in Voltaire’s Dissertation sur la tragédie ancienne et moderne, Diderot’s Le Neveu de Rameau, Wieland’s essay on the Singspiel (his term for opera seria), E. T. A. Hoffmann’s dialogue between poet and composer, Wagner’s Oper und Drama, Nietzsche’s proWagnerian and anti-Wagnerian polemics, Busoni’s Versuch einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, Cocteau’s aphoristic Le Coq et l’Arlequin, and Claudel’s dissertation on “Modern Drama and Music”. Stendhal’s Vie de Rossini is a Romantic poetics of opera in disguise, Marcello’s satire Il Teatro alla moda a melo-dramaturgy in reverse. Dictionary entries, like Rousseau’s articles on opera and counter-sense from his Dictionnaire de musique and Voltaire’s definition in his Connaissance des beautés et des défauts de la poésie et de l’eloquence dans la langue française, lay claim to greater objectivity but are by no means free of polemic overtones. Several contributions consist of reviews of specific operas (Grillparzer on Weber’s Freischütz, Weber on E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Undine) and books (Shaw on Noufflard’s Richard Wagner d’après lui-même) or, as in Addison’s sarcastic Spectator essays, are journalistic attacks on contemporary operatic abuses. Aesthetics proper is represented in writings by Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard; and the volume concludes with a symposium on the present state of opera conducted by some of today’s leading melodramatists. Although it is quite impossible (and perhaps undesirable) to reduce the manifold views on opera to a set of clearly delimited, mutually exclusive categories, four basic approaches to melo-dramaturgy suggest themselves, with numerous intermediary positions completing the spectrum. A fifth approach – that which posits the absurdity of the

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genre “since music is unable to tell a story” (Boileau) – cannot be taken seriously by anyone concerned with enriching the repertory. The first approach, which is essentially that embraced by the classicists and neoclassicists of all nations and ages, rests on the assumption that in opera music must always remain a modest handmaiden. At its inception in the days of the Florentine camerata, opera was earmarked as the modern equivalent of ancient tragedy (of whose musical qualities we have only a faint idea based on, among other things, the notation of a few lines in Euripides’ Orestes). Rinuccini, Caccini, Peri and their contemporaries agreed that the musical ingredient should underscore, perhaps enhance, but never overshadow the spoken word. From Corneille to Beaumarchais this was the position held, with a few notable exceptions, by one generation of French critics after another. Rousseau and the Encyclopedists never ceased to think of music – or, at any rate, of song – as a kind of language; and the venerable Pietro Metastasio, reminding us of the fact that Aristotle listed music as the fifth of the six constituent parts of drama, proudly reported that his dramas – the famous Didone abbandonata among them – were more frequently seen as plays than as operas. By far the staunchest defender of the neoclassical view was Christoph Willibald Gluck, who thought it his mission to “reduce music to its true function”, that of “serving the poetry by means of the expression”. Luckily for us, the great reformer was much too inspired a musician to let his genius be quenched, although he too cherished the notion that music “even in the most terrible situations, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, must never offend the ear, but must please the hearer, or, in other words, must never cease to be music” (Mozart) – a view that was subsequently challenged by Diderot and Berlioz and refuted in toto by the Expressionists. Philosophically, the neoclassical theory of opera finds support in the writings of Kant, for whom reason is the supreme guide in human affairs and who, judging the arts according to the degree in which reason partakes in their execution and reception, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, finds fault with music on account of its sensuousness.

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The Romantic theory of opera, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, radically opposed to its classical antecedents, celebrates the triumph of music over drama. Stepping out of the role assigned to it by the classically minded aestheticians, music now regards literature as its slave. Mozart, although a born melodramaturgist, nevertheless demands that “the poetry must be altogether the obedient daughter of the music”, Stendhal wants the operatic audience to dispense (or nearly dispense) with the libretto, Berlioz shows sovereign contempt for dramatic values by dispatching his Faust to the plains of Hungary, and W. H. Auden offends his muse by asserting that “the verses which the librettist writes are not addressed to the public but are really a private letter to the composer”. Romantically inclined composers – but, understandably, not only those – are at times so carried away by their inspiration that they compose the music for numbers whose text has not as yet been written. This paradox, bearing out the contention Prima la musica e poi le parole (the title of an opera by Salieri), is mentioned in the letters of Mozart, Verdi, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, Strauss, and Puccini. The philosophical blessing upon Romantic melodramaturgy was bestowed by none other than Schopenhauer who, revolting against the Kantian rationalism, glorified Rossini’s music as one that speaks “its own language so distinctly and purely that it requires no words and produces its full effect when rendered by instruments alone”. The two radical positions just outlined are duly complemented by two others, which hinge on the conviction that the two principal ingredients of opera are equally valuable and that neither of them should be exalted at the expense of the other. Wagner proclaimed the union of music and drama in terms of a perfect marriage contracted and consummated between male and female, whose copulation renders the Gesamtkunstwerk possible, whereas, breaking away from the Wagnerian style, the founders of Epic Opera were determined to provide equal but separate facilities for music and drama. Both elements are thus assured their independence. Stravinsky, Brecht, and to a certain extent Claudel are fond of alienation, whereas Alban Berg, in his

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Wozzeck, alienates music from drama sub rosa while emphasizing the expressive quality of his music. Chronologically, the neoclassical view predominated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (except when opera gave itself frankly as a baroque spectacle), whereas Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper Romantic concept prevailed in the first half, and the Wagnerian in the second half, of the following centennium. Twentieth-century melo-dramaturgy, when it avoids the charge of being conservative or reactionary, centers in the fourth approach. However, at times the rebellion against Wagner took so violent a turn that an exodus of opera from the theater to the concert hall (opera-oratorio) or music hall (Satie’s Parade) was deemed advisable. Thus a period of operatic history is brought to a close under circumstances that bear a striking resemblance to those which led to the demise of Handelian opera under the impact of John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera. Apart from the basic, and hence constantly repeated, question concerning the true nature of the relationship between music and drama (or poetry), a limited number of topics of a more specialized nature are intermittently discussed in our anthology. Those who affirm the role of opera as an important ingredient of the aesthetic universe are naturally eager to explain what makes it a form sui generis. What can opera do, they ask, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, that the exclusively literary or musical genres find themselves barred from achieving? Those who want to undermine the foundations of opera, on the other hand, seek to prove that it can never rid itself of its inherent flaws. The champions of opera are only too quick to point out that what the spoken drama lacks most of all is the ability to handle several strands of action or emotion simultaneously. In the musical drama, however, simultaneity comes naturally and, as Stendhal explains, “experience completely ruins the arguments” of those “poor frigid souls [who] claim [that] it is silly for five or six persons to sing at the same time”. Nor do the participants in an ensemble (Weber calls it a “Janus head”) have to share identical feelings, a fact most beautifully illus-

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trated in the quartet from Otello to which Boito refers in his letter to Verdi. What is more, considerable depth is gained in opera by the interplay between the singers and the orchestra, since the latter may be advantageously used to comment upon the action on stage, just as it can serve to reveal the subconscious motives and urges of the protagonists. Wagner even wants it to perform the role of historian and prophet. Music being a mood-building art, its presence often adds a totally new dimension to the drama: the sensuousness which language, that arbitrary system of counters, lacks. In the spoken drama, mood can only be expressed negatively, for instance by means of significant pauses. In the lyrical plays of Hofmannsthal, Chekhov, and Maeterlinck, what is free slots zeus often matters less than what remains unspoken, whereas Shakespeare’s Othello – joined, perhaps, by the second part of Goethe’s Faust – is the rare example of a play that is lyrical in the sense of aspiring to be music. Stanislavsky, I think, was right when treating it symphonically, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. A further advantage enjoyed by opera, and repeatedly touched upon in our anthology, derives from the use of several levels of expression, and hence consciousness, which that art form renders feasible. The operatic composer commands a variety of means of expression – from the conversational to the symphonic, from ordinary speech via Sprechstimme, melodrama (of the type encountered in Fidelio), recitativo secco and accompagnato to full-fledged arias, ensembles, and purely instrumental music – that is unparalleled in regular drama. At best this wealth can be approximated in a poetic play like T. S. Eliot’s Cocktail Party, where the number of stresses per line indicates the appropriate level of consciousness. This stratification, however, also has its disadvantages: for how is the composer to proceed from one level of discourse to another without breaking the continuity? Wagner fiercely attacked the fragmentation he noticed in operatic practice, a fragmentation defended by, among others, Alfred de Musset in his maiden speech at the Académie Française. Wagner in-

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sisted on writing through-composed operas, in which the levels imperceptibly merge in a continuous stream of musical progression. Today operatic abuses of the kind Wagner attacked are out of fashion and composers are no longer forced to bow to the wishes of prima donnas (as Mozart did in Die Entführung aus dem Serail and Die Zauberflöte) or the spoiled taste of a public set in its ways. To us even Puccini’s striving for effect seems out of place. What the critics of opera most violently object to in the genre is the artificiality of the conventions which gave rise to it and which make its existence possible. People don’t sing in real life, these critics say; why should they do so in the theater? But, as Wieland points out astutely, the conventions of the spoken drama and of art in general, are hardly less constraining, and the difference is, at best, one of degree. Many champions of opera, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, anticipating this common objection, sought to assign to it a realm sufficiently remote from ordinary life to make these conventions tolerable. The musical theater, in their opinion, should never engage in realistic modes but should restrict itself to the presentation of mythological, pastoral, or otherwise ‘marvelous’ scenes and actions. Dryden, Wieland, Busoni, Hofmannsthal and, in part, Beaumarchais share this view; and Schiller, in a letter to Goethe of December 29,goes so far as to express the hope that a rejuvenation of drama might be effected by way of opera. Other weighty objections consistently raised by the foes, and difficulties encompassed by the executants, of opera, include the undue brevity of the libretto (Hofmannsthal was frightened to see “how short is the libretto of Tristan and how long the opera”), the amount of repetition allowed and often required by music, music’s inability to convey deception, contradiction, and even humor (Hamlet makes a very poor operatic subject; and perhaps the best way of being humorous in an opera consists in introducing unmusical characters such as Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger and the male protagonist of Strauss and Zweig’s Die schweigsame Frau), and the often painfully noticeable unintelligibility of the singers (Richard Strauss claimed that one third

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of each operatic text is a total loss). These factors surely contribute to the failure of many a music drama and help to account for the excruciatingly small number of operatic masterpieces. All the more reason for us to ponder these questions anew and to sharpen our awareness of the hurdles any team of composer and librettist has to clear before it can proceed to the finish.

Reflections on a Golden Style: W. H. Auden’s Theory of Opera () For several decades now, W. H. Auden has been regarded as the most representative English writer (or, at least, the most representative British poet) of the generation following that of T. S. Eliot. In recent years, literary historians and critics have begun to scrutinize his Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper and even his criticism – much of it conveniently gathered in the volume, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays1 – has attracted attention in the world of scholarship. Its growth and scope have been surveyed in essays by Edward Callan and Cleanth Brooks2. As a playwright, too, Auden has found himself in the critical limelight, notably regarding his contributions to the repertory of the British Group Theatre in the thirties (The Dog Beneath the Skin and The Ascent of F 6, both written in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood). What literary scholars, with few exceptions, have thus far failed to realize is that, because of his close and intimate contact with music, Auden’s theatrical interests have gradually shifted from the spoken verse drama to the music drama, which he now regards as one of the only two contemporary vehicles of the Golden and High Style required by a public art – the other being the ballet. As a sheer artifice, that is to say, opera is not ashamed of the rhetoric from which the modern playwright shies away. Whereas Joseph Warren Beach refuses to treat Auden’s librettos “with critical solemnity” since they “have been one means of eking out a poet’s slender income” and “represent

1

New York: Random House, Subsequently referred to as DH.

2 E. Callan, “The Development of W. H. Auden’s Critical Theory”. Twentieth Century Literature, IV (), ; Cleanth Brooks, “W. H. Auden’s Literary Criticism”. Kenyon Review, XXVI (),

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[] the hobbies of a highly gifted poet”3, Monroe K. Spears is aware of the fact that “opera libretti [] have Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper Auden’s only long works [] in recent years”4, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, and John G. Blair admits that “in the opera [Auden] seems to have found a set of conventions that is most congenial to his poetic and dramatic talents”5. In our study of that author’s poetics of opera, we shall proceed from this assumption. Auden’s collaboration with Benjamin Britten in a number of musical ventures – beginning with the “Symphonic Cycle for Soprano and Orchestra”, The Hunting Fathers (), and ending in with the chamber Baccarat Squeeze Slots Machine (or operetta) Paul Bunyan6 – need not detain us here, although it should be noted, if only for curiosity’s sake, that the pair did not subsequently follow the example of Strauss and Hofmannsthal. Auden’s profound and lasting interest in opera was apparently not aroused until after he had come of age, as he reports in an essay entitled “A Public Art”: I was brought up to believe that opera was a bastard art-form. The great Mozart operas might just do because Mozart was Mozart, but Wagner in one way and Verdi in another were considered vulgar; as for Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti, they were simply beyond the pale. (Judging by some articles I have read, this prejudice still survives in certain English quarters.) In addition, we were put off, not entirely without justification, by the kind of public which did ‘go to the op-

3 The Making of the Auden Canon (Minneapolis, ), Beach nevertheless devotes a whole chapter () to Auden’s librettos, focusing almost entirely on Britten’s Op. 14, the Ballad of Heroes, which is partly based on the poem “Danse Macabre”. 4 The Poetry of W. H. Auden: The Disenchanted Island (New York, ), The opening section of the fourth chapter of Spears’s book () deals exclusively with Auden’s operatic contributions. 5 The Poetic Art of W. H. Auden (Princeton, ), Blair analyzes the libretto of The Rake’s Progress at some length (), as does Joseph Kerman in his fine book, Opera as Drama (New York, ), 6 The work remains unpublished, since the authors withdrew it after the premiere staged in May in Columbia University’s Brander Matthews Theatre. Spears discusses it on the basis of information furnished by Daniel G. Hoffman. Auden’s remarks concerning “Opera on an American Legend: Problems of Putting the Story of Paul Bunyan on the Stage” (New York Times, May 4,section 9, 7) constitute a first sketch of his theory of opera in-the-making.

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era’; many of them seemed more interested in appearing at the appropriate social event for the London Season than in listening to music.7

The revelation must have occurred around for, as Auden puts it in his inaugural Oxford lecture, “I am eternally grateful [] to the musical fashion of my youth which prevented me from listening to Italian opera until I was over thirty, by which age I was capable of really appreciating a world so beautiful and so challenging to my own cultural heritage” (DH, 40). Similarly, it was Nietzsche’s polemic tract, Der Fall Wagner, “which first taught [him] to listen to Wagner, about whom [he] had previously held silly preconceived notions” (DH, 48). Auden’s poetic and musical views about opera began to crystallize in the late forties, largely in connection with his work on the libretto for The Rake’s Progress, which Igor Stravinsky had commissioned from him Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper the suggestion of Aldous Huxley8. Since then, operatic problems have occupied him as intensely as they did Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Austrian, European and Master Librettist”, to whose memory the three makers of Elegy for Young Lovers were later to dedicate their work9. This incontrovertible fact explains why it is virtually impossible to do justice to Auden’s mature art – both in theory and practice – without reference to music in general and melodrama in particular. Those literary critics who presume to do so act in ignorance and demonstrate, once again, the dire consequences which an arbitrary fragmentation of the arts entails. In the following discussion, it will be our principal aim to furnish some guidelines for an understanding of Auden’s poetic theory and to

7

Opera (London), XII (),

8 Concerning the genesis of The Rake’s Progress see the composer’s report, Auden’s letter, and the first scenario, as included in Stravinsky’s book, Memories and Commentaries (Garden City, NY, ), 9 The hero of this opera – perhaps a caricature of the beloved model – is an “artistgenius [] morally bound [] to exploit others whenever such exploitation will benefit his work and to sacrifice them whenever their existence is a hindrance to his production”. Elegy for Young Lovers (Mainz, ),

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state, as succinctly as possible, the reasons for his choice of opera and the dance as the preferred artistic media of our age. (We hardly need apologize for the omission of some particulars and details which – the standard fare of melo-dramaturgy – would only clutter up the pages.) As will shortly be seen, it was in Kierkegaard – more specifically in the section of Either/Or which deals with music in its sensuous and erotic aspects – that Auden encountered the most congenial treatment of this burning question. He candidly acknowledged his debt when, in a review of the Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper complete English translation of this treatise, he stated that “Kierkegaard’s essay on music is the only illuminating suggestion for a musical esthetic that I have seen” In keeping with our announced purpose, we do not intend to analyze any of the original librettos Auden wrote jointly with Chester Kallman11, except where the nature or evolution of such texts has a bearing on the subject of operatic theory, which constitutes the focus of our essay. Nor shall we explicitly concern ourselves with Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper translations of Die Zauberflöte, Don Giovanni, and Brecht’s Die sieben Todsünden der Kleinbürger12, especially since we have given an extended critique of the transmogrified Magic Flute in another context Auden himself has admitted his skepticism with regard to the translatability of librettos. Infor instance, he put himself on record as believing:

10 “Preface to Kierkegaard”. The New Republic, May 15,11 Disregarding the “corporate personality” (DH, ) at work in these librettos – which also include Delia or A Masque of Night (Botteghe Oscure, XII,) – most critics annex them to the work of Auden. In the case of The Rake’s Progress, the exact nature of the collaboration has been disclosed by Stravinsky (Memories and Commentaries, footnote) and Auden’s former secretary, Alan Ansen (The Hudson Review, IX,). Spears was informed by Auden that seventy-five per cent of the text of Elegy for Young Lovers must be credited to Kallman. 12 The Magic Flute (New York, ); Don Giovanni (New York, ); Seven Deadly Sins in Tulane Drama Review, VI (Sept. ), 13 “Sarastro’s Brave New World or Die Zauberflöte Transmogrified”. Your Musical Cue (Bloomington), II (Dec., / Jan., ),

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It is precisely because I believe that, in listening to song (as distinct from chant), we hear, not words, but syllables, that Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper am violently hostile to the performances of opera in translation. Wagner in Italian or Verdi in English sounds intolerable, and would still sound so if the poetic merits of the translation were greater than those of the original, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, because the new syllables have no apt relation to the pitch and tempo of the notes with which they are associated. The poetic value of the notes may provoke a composer’s imagination, but it is their syllabic values which determine the kind of vocal line he writes. In song, poetry is expendable, syllables are not

If HotlineCasino 1000 FS Tournament a few years following this pronouncement Auden had embarked on doing exactly what, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, in theory, he did not regard as being worth the trouble, this can be explained in a very pragmatic manner. For as the poet himself candidly admits: “The big broadcasting companies are willing to pay handsomely for translations and we saw no reason why, if a translation was going to be made, we shouldn’t get the money.”15 Yet there is reason to assume that Auden and Kallman became intrigued by the problems involved in transposing an operatic text from one tongue into another. A note of hope and despair, triumph and defeat is sounded – by way of a captatio benevolentiae – in the preface to the Englished Zauberflöte: Translation is a dubious business at best and we are inclined to agree with those who believe that operas should always be given in their native tongue. However, if audiences demand them in their own, they must accept the consequences. Obviously, the texture and weight of the original words set by the composer are an element in his orchestration and any change of the words is therefore an alternation of the music itself. Yet the goal of the translator, however unattainable, must be to make audiences believe that the words they are hearing are the words the composer actually set, which means that a too-literal translation of the original text may sometimes prove a falsification

14 “Some Reflections on Music and Opera,” Partisan Review, XIX, (), The passage was not contained in an earlier version of the “Reflections” published in the British periodical Tempo, No. 20 (Summer, ), They form part of Auden’s reply to a critique of his views on opera offered by Ronald Duncan in Opera, III (),and were later incorporated in the revised notes. Readers are alerted to the excisions, additions, and emendations found in the various versions of the “Reflections”. 15 “Translating Opera Libretti” (co-authored by Kallman), DH, 16 The Magic Magic Harp Slots Machine, XIV-XV. Under his own name, Auden presented similar views in a short essay entitled “Putting it in English: A Translator Discusses the Problems of Changing an Opera’s Language”. New York Times, January Cash Caboose Slots Machine,section 2, 9. The

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As we turn to the central topic of our discussion, we wish to emphasize that Worlds at War Slots Machine order fully to savor the meaning of Auden’s views on opera for the poet’s esthetic orientation we must see them in relation to his attitudes toward the other art forms. Taken as a whole, these attitudes form a frame of reference in which all artistic media occupy their assigned stations and are judged according to a carefully drawnup scheme of values. That Auden was relatively slow in arriving at this grand conception of a harmonia artium and that, nevertheless, this development was a natural one, is proved by the notions – however tentative – which the young author of the Group Theatre harbored. These notions (which must have found a sympathetic ear in T. S. Eliot, the author of the Agon, Sweeney Agonistes) in some ways clearly foreshadow the final epiphany. In a paradigmatic utterance published in a program of the communal enterprise, Auden sought to establish the superiority of the poetic drama over any branch of dramatic realism. He wished to Herlige Roma spor maskinen anmeldelse all vestiges of Barbaria Slots Machine reality transferred to the art of cinematography: “The development of the film has deprived drama of any excuse for being documentary. It is not in its nature to provide an ignorant and passive spectator with exciting news.”17 While the documentary elements of drama are thus relegated to the movies, character portrayal is handed over to the novel: “Similarly the drama is not suited to the analysis of character, which is the province of the novel. Dramatic speech, like dramatic movement, should possess a self-confessed, significant and undocumentary character.” Only one step further, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, and the realization that opera was the perfect Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper of this dream would have dawned upon the poet who, already at this early point, states unequivocally that “drama, in fact, deals with the general and

article “On The Magic Flute”. Center: A Review of the Performing Arts, I (), was, unfortunately, unavailable. 17 From “What I Want the Theatre to Be”, as quoted by Ashley Dukes in Theatre Arts, XIX (),

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universal [= the mythical], not with the particular and local.” But Auden was not quite ready to take this step. The expected development took place gradually Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper the course of the next decade, with the first crystallization – to use Stendhal’s pet term – occurring in conjunction with the writing of Paul Bunyan, which deals precisely with a mythical subject; myths being, in Auden’s view, “collective creations” which “cease to appear when a society has become sufficiently differentiated for its individual members to have individual conceptions of their own tasks” The opera, therefore, begins with a prologue “in which America is still a virgin forest and Paul Bunyan has not yet been born” and ends “with a Christmas party at which he bids farewell to his men because now he is no longer needed”; for “a collective mythical figure is no use, because the requirements of each relation are unique. Faith is essentially invisible.” Like Hofmannsthal who – for slightly different reasons – regarded mythological operas as the truest of all art forms19, Auden, ever since he became involved in the creation of works for the lyrical stage, has persistently sought to embrace subjects expressing the universal and the general. Whereas in The Rake’s Progress he fell somewhat short of the goal because this was a commissioned work and he was tied to the essentially didactic subject suggested by the composer, the Elegy for Young Lovers is concerned with the artist genius who, in the librettist’s opinion, constitutes “not only a nineteenth and early twentieth century myth, but also a European myth”20, while his latest libretto,

18 New York Times, May 4,section 9, 7. Spears discusses Paul Bunyan on Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. of his study. 19 The operas that come to mind forge a link between the ‘realistic’ librettos for Der Rosenkavalier () and Arabella (). They are Ariadne auf Naxos (), Die Frau ohne Schatten (), and Die ägyptische Helena (). It is in the preface to the latter work that Hofmannsthal enters his plea: “For if this age of ours is anything, it is mythical – I know of no other expression for an existence which unfolds in the face of such vast horizons.” 20 Elegy for Young Lovers,

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Die Bassariden, is a revamping of Euripides’ Bacchae and treats a myth which, though it may have been considered moribund in the nineteenth century, has taken on new meaning in the present one; for “today we know only too well that it is as possible for whole communities to become demonically possessed as it is for individuals to go off their heads” Here, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, then, is the core of Auden’s poetics of opera as far as its subject matter is concerned, which must clearly belong to that “secondary world” which creates an ambience of its own while at the same time giving depth to the primary world inhabited by ordinary mortals: At the same time, no secondary world can fully hold our attention unless it has something significant to say [] about our present life. The most successful heroes and heroines in opera are mythical figures. That is to say, whatever their historical or geographical setting, they embody some element of human nature or some aspect of the human condition which is a permanent concern of human beings irrespective of their time and place

Since the theory of any art – whether it be literature, music, painting, sculpture, architecture, the film, or any mixture of these – must inevitably come to grips with form as well as Stoff, we must undertake to reconstruct Auden’s esthetic universe in toto and, on the basis of this model, deduce the general and specific reasons responsible for the exalted place assigned to opera within that harmony of artistic spheres. First of all, we are surprised that a man who tends to emulate what we might call the Romantic view of opera should so brazenly insist on a neat separation of genres, or rather on assigning to each genre its uniquely proper function. Only a neoclassical purist could be expected to vouch that “each of the arts has its special field with which it can deal better than any rival medium can, and its special limitations which it transgresses at its peril” The practical applica-

21 “The Mythical World of Opera”. Times Literary Supplement, November 2, This is “a somewhat shortened version of the third of Mr. Auden’s T. S. Eliot Memorial Lectures given at the University Wicked Jackpots Casino Bonos Kent”. 22 Ibid. 23 Vogue, Julyp.

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tion of this view was suggested in a document published three years later: Every artistic medium reflects some area of human experience. Those areas often overlap but never coincide, for if two media could do the same thing equally well one would be unnecessary. When someone, like myself, after years of working in one medium, essays another for Bug Life Slot Machine Review first time, he should always, I believe, try to discover its proper principles before starting work, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. Otherwise he is in danger of carrying over assumptions and habits of mind which have become second nature to him in a field where, as a matter of fact, they do not and cannot apply

In light of this cautionary note, we justly expect Auden to strive for a systematic exploration of the arts in terms of their interrelationship. Although, for reasons which will soon become apparent, he pays relatively little attention to the plastic arts, he does not, on the whole, disappoint us in this respect. His discontent with the visual arts stems primarily from his awareness of their stationary and hence essentially passive character. Whereas “the possibility of making Power 4 Bonus Slots Machine [] depends primarily, not Online Slots Features man’s possession of an auditory organ, the ear, but upon his possession of a sound-producing instrument, the vocal chords”, in the case of painting, sculpture, etc. “it is a visual organ, the eye, which is primary, for without it, the experience which stimulates the hand into becoming an expressive instrument could not exist” Auden seems to regard the plastic arts Viking Quest Slot Machine Review being mimetic and representational – a rather old-fashioned view regarding the predominance of abstract painting in the first half of the twentieth century. What really irks him, however, is the circumstance that, lacking the temporal dimension, painted characters are unable to choose or assert their wills in any recognizable way. They thus invariably appear to be products of their environment or victims of fate. This was the chief handicap with which Auden and Casinos in virginia found themselves saddled

24 Tempo, No. 20 (), 6. This section is missing in subsequent versions of the “Reflections”, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. 25 Partisan Review, XXIX (), 13f.

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when Stravinsky proposed an operatic subject based on Hogarth’s series of engravings: A character in opera can never appear the victim of circumstances; however unfortunate, he or she is bound to seem the architect of fate. When we look at a picture of a couple embracing, we know for certain that they are interested in each other, but are told very little Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper Emerald Isle Online Slot Game each is feeling; when we listen to a love duet on the opera stage, it is just the other way round; we are certain that each is in love, but the cause of that love will seem to lie in each as subject not as an object

Kierkegaard certainly would have given his placet, for what mattered to him in his search for the most perfect expression of sensuous-erotic genius was the suitability of a given artistic medium for that purpose: The most abstract idea conceivable is sensuous genius. But in what medium is this idea expressible? Solely in music. It cannot be expressed in sculpture, for it is a sort of inner qualification of inwardness, nor in painting, for it cannot be apprehended in precise outlines; it is an energy, a storm, a passion, and so on, in all their lyrical quality, yet so that it does not exist in one moment but in a succession of moments, for if it existed in a single moment it could be modeled or painted

As we move with Auden from painting to cinematography, we find some satisfaction in entering an ambit of temporal progression in a visual art. Yet in spite of the desired “immediacy” – a key term in Auden’s and Kierkegaard’s poetics – we are still on that side of the esthetic ledger which records the passive or negative assets. For the characters on the screen, while theoretically free to act and portrayed as acting, still remain subject to “the necessities of nature or the necessities of the social order” This view is broached in Auden’s essay on Veristic opera, where he denounces Naturalism as an art which precludes choice on the part of the individual and which therefore fails to rise even to the level of ethics – not to mention the level of esthetics which constitutes the desired secondary world Auden would apply 26 “The Rake’s Progress,” Harper’s Bazaar, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, February27 Either/Or, tr. D. F. and L. M. Swenson, rev. by H. A. Johnson (Garden City, NY, ), I, 28 “Cav and Pag”. DH, The essay originally appeared as an introduction to an RCA Victor recording of Cavalleria rusticana and I Pagliacci. 29 Auden interprets verismo very broadly as including Bizet’s Carmen as well as Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.

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this stricture – although less stringently – to fiction and epic poetry as well. The foregoing argument by no means exhausts the objections which Auden feels urged to raise against cinematography; for in addition to disqualifying the film artistically on the grounds of its ‘documentary’ nature, he also resents its didactic and magical properties. By the latter he means the “means for inducing desirable emotions and repelling undesirable emotions in oneself and others” More important still, the film – he argues – renders abortive any attempt on the artist’s part to transcend nature by means of the spirit, whereas in opera the spirit decidedly triumphs over nature. Auden seeks to prove his contention by comparing Wagner’s Tristan with Cocteau’s L’Eternel Retour in the following manner: On the other hand, its pure artifice renders opera the ideal medium for a tragic myth. I once went in the same week to a performance of Tristan und Isolde and a showing of L’Eternel Retour [] During the former two souls, weighing over two hundred pounds a piece, were transfigured by a transcendent power, in the latter a handsome boy met a beautiful girl and they had an affair. This loss of value was due not to any lack of skill on Cocteau’s part but to the nature of the cinema as a medium. Had he used a fat middle-aged couple, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, the effect would have been ridiculous because the snatches of language which are all the movie permits Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper not sufficient power to transcend their physical appearance. Yet if the lovers are young and beautiful, the cause of their love looks ‘natural’, a consequence of their beauty, and the whole meaning of the Myth is gone

Moving to the level of literature, we can confine ourselves, with Auden, to a brief consideration of the drama which, unlike epic poetry or fiction, retains little of the material dross – the documentary values and environmental factors – which weighs so heavily on the visual arts. (As for the nature of the relationship between lyrical poetry and music – chant and song – Auden discusses it at some length in his introduction to An Elizabethan Song Book)

30 “Squares and Oblongs”. Poets at Work, ed. C. D. Abbott (New York, ), 31 Partisan Review, XIX (), Elsewhere Auden calls Tristan and Isolde “two mountains of corseted flesh”. 32 Garden City, NY,

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Auden finds literature to be superior to painting because it is, first and foremost, a temporal art. However, in the more extended fictional forms it suffers – in his opinion – from leaving too much room for reflection, thereby allowing the other temporal dimensions to intervene: the past in the form of memories and regrets, and the future in the form of hopes, doubts, and anticipations. The gain – to use Kierkegaard’s terminology – is to be credited to ethics, the loss, however, to esthetics. Moreover, the metaphorical nature of language encourages an implicit spatialization through imagery; and this in turn impairs and at times destroys that immediacy of feeling and directness of movement which is the hallmark of the esthetic constructs admired by Kierkegaard and Auden: A verbal statement and a musical phrase are both temporal successions of sounds that take time to say or play, but words, unlike notes, have denotative meanings. Consequently in most verbal statements there is little or no relation between the temporal expression of the words and the thought which they express. When we speak, that is to say, we are usually stopping to think, but music is always going on to ‘become’

Among the kinds of literature it is drama which comes closest to meeting the demands for an art of pure becoming in which every moment is felt in its immediacy while at the same time there is a contiguous sweeping movement, each choice leading to an action and each action compelling those involved in, or affected by, it to choose anew. In other words, drama is the only form of literature based on the premise that what really counts is the individual will and its assertion in thought (choice) or deed (action); the only disadvantage being that, as a verbal art, it is still ethically determined. The ethical, however, lacks immediacy; it is “sentimental” while the esthetic is “naïve”. Drama, in Auden’s view, is based on the Mistake (i. e., the wrong choice unwittingly made) or on the deliberate choice of good or evil. Both choices entail some degree of responsibility on the part of their agents. That hubris (the tragic outgrowth of responsibility) is essential to drama is shown in Auden’s essay “Cav and Pag” through an analy33 Times Literary Supplement, November 2,

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sis of Naturalistic drama, in which suffering replaces choice, insofar as the blame is placed on the circumstances rather than the individual. While a playwright who believes “that the most interesting and significant characteristic of man is his power to choose between right and wrong, his responsibility for his actions” will select “situations in which the temptation to choose wrong is at the greatest and the actual consequences incurred by the choice are most serious”, the writer “committed to a naturalist doctrine” is driven “to find a substitute for the tragic situation in the pathetic [] and a substitute for the morally responsible hero in the pathological case” The final and irrevocable parting of ways occurs precisely at the point of transition from drama to opera – or, more generally but also more vaguely speaking, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper literature to music; for the ethical is chained to the primary world by means of realism and psychology, whereas the esthetic belongs, ideally, to the domain of pure spirit which constitutes a world of artifice where ethical categories are no longer applicable. As a mimetic art, drama is more natural than opera (and the ballet) in many ways – and quite pragmatically so; for while “in any village twenty people could get together and give a performance of Hamlet which, however imperfect, would convey enough of the play’s greatness to be worth attending”, if the same people attempted “a similar performance of Don Giovanni, they would soon discover that there was no question of a good or a bad performance because they could not sing the notes at all” In other words, both opera and ballet are virtuoso arts since “without an exceptional physical endowment, vocal chords or a body, granted to very few human beings, no amount of intelligence, taste and training can make a great singer or dancer”

34 DH,Auden objects to La Bohème precisely because Mimi is too passive a character. 35 Partisan Review, XIX (), 36 “A Public Art”. Opera, XII (),

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Expounding Kierkegaard – as early as – Auden surveyed the dialectic triangular relationship between Art, Morality, and Religion and concluded: In treating [] theft as an individual act of will which cannot be judged in abstraction from the concrete temporal situation in which it occurs, the Religious sides with the Esthetic against the Ethical in upholding the unique importance of the individual will. But in asserting that the good act – not stealing – is always and only the product of good will, and the bad act – stealing – always the product of an evil will, it sides with the Ethical against the Esthetic belief that to will is valuable in itself. Lastly, it disagrees with both in blessing an act neither for its manifestly interesting appearance nor for its demonstrably good result, but for its hidden subjective intention. To the Esthetic, as the Ethical, any suffering involved in an act is accidental and without significance in itself, but to the Religious it is precisely in the suffering that the significance lies

With Auden, as with Kierkegaard, the greatness and perfection of a work of art depends entirely on the extent to which it succeeds in attracting the spirit of sensuous genius and repelling the moral elements from its territory. In the case of Mozart, for example, Don Giovanni succeeds where Die Zauberflöte fails, mainly because of the “ethical” nature of its subject. While the esthetic, according to the body of opinions under discussion, insists on choice without tolerating any change in the character engaged in choosing, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, the ethical presupposes a change in consequence of the individual’s choice. It is precisely this which makes an ethically determined story interesting: It is rare for the story of a successful opera to be interesting in itself. Even Don Juan, a character of profound extramusical significance, cannot be said to have a story since, by definition, he cannot or will not change himself; he can only be shown as triumphant and invulnerable (the Duke in Rigoletto), or in his fall (Don Giovanni) [] The characters in Die Zauberflöte, on the other hand, have a real history in which what happens next always depends upon what they choose now

This view is foreshadowed by the Danish philosopher who, while introducing Papageno Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper a prototype of the second stage of the musical-erotic, severely criticizes Mozart’s German opera: 37 The New Republic, May 15,38 The Magic Flute, viii. Compare Auden’s remarks on Tristan, Don Giovanni, and Falstaff in his essay, “The Prince’s Dog”. DH, f.

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It might not be without interest to run through the whole opera in order to show that its subject matter, considered as operatic material, profoundly fails of its purpose. Nor would we lack occasion to illuminate the erotic from a new side, as we noticed how the endeavor to invest it with a deeper ethical view [] is an adventure which has ventured quite beyond the range of music, so that it was impossible for even a Mozart to lend it any deeper interest. This opera definitely tends toward the unmusical, and therefore it is, in spite of individually perfect concert numbers and deeply moving, pathetic utterances, by no means a classic opera

Opera, then, must be ethically indifferent so that, in effect, every choice made by an operatic character is automatically a good – or, at any rate, the right – one. Moreover, since it is inevitably the wilful assertion of an emotion – supplying, as it does, an “illusion of absolute certainty out of the individual passions of [a character’s] immediate moods”40 – it is, by its very nature, pleasurable as well. Following Aristotle’s precept to the effect that “objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with fidelity” Auden validates the paradox by asserting “that emotions and situations which in real life would be sad or painful are on the stage a source of pleasure” In the operatic medium, he surmises, anomaly is heightened (an innocent bystander might say: to the point of absurdity), for the singer may be playing the role of a deserted bride who is about to kill herself, but we feel quite certain as we listen that not only we but also she is having a wonderful time. In a sense, there can be no tragic opera because whatever errors the characters make and whatever they suffer, they are doing exactly what they wish

Conversely, “feelings of joy, tenderness and nobility are not confined to ‘noble’ characters but are experienced by everybody, by the most conventional, most stupid, most depraved” In Auden’s opinion (which Mozart would certainly have shared), Alban Berg’s Wozzeck is 39 Either/Or, I, 77f. 40 The New Republic, May 15, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, 41 Poetics, chapter IV. 42 Partisan Review, XIX (), 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid.,

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a failure because “in any satisfactory opera the voices must make as beautiful noises as the orchestra” Choice, in the melo-dramatic world of Auden’s making, is essentially “out of character”, since the emotions projected are universal rather than being tied to any particular time, place, person, or situation. The proof of the pudding, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, he contends, lies in listening “to a recording of an opera sung in a language that one does not know”; for in spite of this barrier of communication “one can generally tell what is the particular emotional state – love, rage, grief, joy or so forth – Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper the singer is expressing at a given time, but one cannot tell whether the singer is a duchess, a chambermaid, a prince or a policeman”, as “all social distinctions and all differences in age are abolished by song. In the case of some operas like Casino cast and Arabella one cannot even tell the sex.”46 This observation calls to mind a passage in Stendhal’s book on Rossini, where we are told that, at Vicenza, “on the first night, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, it was customary to skim through [the libretto] just sufficiently to gain some notion of the plot, glancing, as each new episode opened, at the first line, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, just so as to appreciate the emotion or the shade of emotion which the music Pandamania slot free demo game supposed to suggest” At least insofar as the text of arias, duets, and ensembles is concerned, Auden prefers to regard the libretto as a “private letter to the composer”. In his eyes, “the verses which the librettist writes are not addressed to the public [] They have their moment of glory, the moment in which they suggest to him a certain melody; once that is over, they are as expendable as infantry to a Chinese general; they must efface themselves and cease Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper care what happens to them.”48 This is a condition which, as Auden rather sadly remarks, Hofmanns-

45 “A Public Art”. Opera, XII (), Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, 46 Times Literary Supplement, November 2,Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, 47 Quoted in The Essence of Opera, ed. U. Weisstein (New York, ), 48 Partisan Review, XIX (),

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thal’s Rosenkavalier does not meet The translator of a libretto, accordingly, is free to alter the text of the vocal pieces as he sees fit, as long Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper the general mood is retained, no counter-sense produced, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, and the syllabic values are preserved. A literal translation is needed only in the recitatives – secco and accompagnato – and the prose dialogue, whose function it is to propel the action after it has been suspended in the closed numbers. The process of musical ‘depersonalization’ just referred to also affects the personal interrelationships of the characters; one might go so far as to say, with Auden, that it renders communication as a social phenomenon impossible: “In verbal speech, I can say: ‘I love you.’ Music can, I believe, express the equivalent of ‘I love’ but it is incapable of saying who or what I love – you, God, or the decimal system. Music, one might say, is always intransitive, and in the first person.”50 Hence Auden’s aversion to contemporary subjects like Menotti’s The Consul, where the situation is “too actual, that is, too clearly a situation some people are in and others, including the audience, are not in, for the latter to forget this and see it as a symbol of, say, man’s existential estrangement” The most pronounced assertion of wilful feelings (in opera as in real life) is the gratuitous act of the kind envisaged by Gide’s Lafcadio. In the present context we are not so much concerned with the existential nature of this act – which Auden adumbrates in his essay “Squares and Oblongs” as well as in the introduction to his Kierkegaard anthology52 – as with their role within the esthetic universe of opera. That the “free act” has always been what amounts to an obsession in Auden’s work could be demonstrated in a number of ways. One need only think of the opening line of Prospero’s address to Ariel 49 Ibid., The passage is deleted in DH. 50 Times Literary Supplement, November 2,51 Partisan Review, XIX (), 52 The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard, presented by W. H. Auden (New York, ), esp.

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in The Sea and the Mirror, the poet’s “Commentary on Shakespeare’s The Tempest”. More relevant to our discussion is Auden’s dramaturgical use of God Odds Casino: 2022 Best Bonus Codes and 50 Free Spins concept in The Rake’s Progress, where Nick Shadow, the Mephistophelian tempter, persuades the hero to marry Baba the Turk by arguing: Why? Because they are not free. Why? Because the giddy multitude are driven by the unpredictable Must of their pleasures and the sober few are bound by the inflexible Ought of their duty, between which slaveries there is nothing to choose. Would you be Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper Then learn to act freely. Would you act freely? Then learn to ignore those twin tyrants of appetite and conscience

For Auden the gratuitous Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, Juicy Fruits Slots Machine unattached to ethics, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, religion, psychology, and the world of social taboos and biological urges, is the very epitome of esthetic behavior. Its archenemy is verisimilitude in its various guises: the sensible, the credible, the plausible, and the probable. The precise semantic implications of these terms have been the subject of an exchange of views between Auden and his fellow librettist Ronald Duncan However, even Auden’s latest pronouncement on this topic reaffirms his conviction “that a good opera plot is one that provides as Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper and as varied situations in which it seems plausible that the characters should sing. This means that no opera plot can be sensible; for in sensible situations people do not sing. An opera plot must be, in both senses of the word, a melodrama.”55 In terms of the context of operatic history, to which we now turn our attention in concluding, Auden’s theory of opera finds its paragons exclusively in the Golden Age of opera which, in his opinion, extends from Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice () to Verdi’s Otello (), with a center of gravity constituted by the works of Bellini and Donizetti. Puccini and Strauss foreshadow the decline of the High or Golden Style, which is complete in modern opera. On the whole, modern composers are suspect to Auden since they tend to write “a 53 The Rake’s Progress (New York, ), 54 “An Answer to Auden,” Opera, II (),and “Auden Replies,” ibid., III (), 55 Times Literary Supplement, November 2,

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static kind of music in which there is no marked difference between its beginning, its middle and its end, a music which sounds remarkably like primitive proto-music” The views on opera we have traced here clash head-on with the neoclassical theory illustrated by Gluck’s famous dictum: “[In Alceste] I sought to restrict music to its true function, namely to serve the poetry by means of the expression – and the situations which make up the plot – without interrupting the action or diminishing its interest by useless and superfluous ornament.”57 Auden comes much closer to agreeing with Mozart that “in an opera the poetry must be altogether the obedient daughter of the music” However, one suspects that he feels somewhat uneasy about Mozart’s dramaturgical skill and finds greater satisfaction in the pure bel canto of Norma and Lucia di Lammermoor Chronological considerations apart, it is, therefore, fully appropriate that he teamed up with Stravinsky at a time when the latter wished to indulge in musical eclecticism, rather than during a phase of experimentation with Epic Opera Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper du Soldat) or ascetic neoclassicism (Oedipus Rex). As for Wagner, Auden (much as he likes Tristan and Die Walküre) would hardly subscribe to the master’s carefully elaborated theory of the total Gesamtkunstwerk in which the orchestra functions as an “agent which constantly completes the unity of expression and which, wherever the vocal expression of the dramatic characters lowers itself in order to define the dramatic situation more clearly [] balances the

56 DH, This passage is not found in the earlier versions of the “Reflections.” 57 From Gluck’s letter of dedication to Grand-Duke Leopold of Tuscany, as quoted in The Essence of Opera, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, 58 Mozart, speaking about Die Entführung aus dem Serail, in a letter to his father dated October 13, 59 See Auden’s list, “My Favorite Records”, in Saturday Review of Literature, November 27, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, 48, where the only complete opera recordings referred to are Lucia di Lammermoor, Don Pasquale, Così fan tutte, and Un Ballo in Maschera, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. This is not necessarily a list of Auden’s favorite operas, however.

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abated expression of the dramatic characters” Both share a strong aversion to instrumental music, since – in Wagner’s words – “the work of the composer of absolute music must be regarded as one altogether lacking in poetic Russia 2018 FIFA World Cup Slots Machine for although feelings may well be aroused by purely musical means, they cannot by such means be fixed as to their actual nature” Kierkegaard, too, questioned the alleged esthetic superiority of music over language by calling the common view that music is a more perfect medium “one of those sentimental misunderstandings which originate only in empty heads”. He was out of sympathy “with that sublime music which believes that it can dispense with words” Auden would seem to be even less tolerant than Kierkegaard, who regarded the overture to Don Giovanni as a masterpiece rising high above the usual “labyrinthine hodgepodge of associated ideas” As he puts it in his “Reflections on Music and Opera”, [i]n opera, the orchestra is addressed to the singers, not to the audience. An operalover will put up with and even enjoy an orchestral interlude on condition that he knows the singers cannot sing just now because they are tired or the scene-shifters are at work, but any use of the orchestra by itself which is not filling in time is, for him, wasting it. Leonora III is a fine piece to listen to in the concert hall, but in the opera house, where it is played between scenes one and two of the second act of Fidelio it becomes twelve minutes of acute boredom

Exactly twenty years ago Auden publicly stated that, as a rule, the opera addict will be a conservative “who does not welcome new opera” because he has staged a “daydream repertoire of seldom performed operas by, say, Bellini or Rossini or Weber or Meyerbeer or Gounod or the young Verdi, which he longs to hear and fears he never will” Even for the author of The Age of Anxiety, opera (and art in general) was, and is, a “fait accompli” which “presents/ Already 60 From Opera and Drama () as quoted in The Essence of Opera, 61 Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, 62 Either/Or, I, 63 Ibid., 64 Partisan Review, XIX (), 65 Vogue, July

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lived experience/ Through a convention that creates/ Autonomous completed states”, and an “abstract model of events/ Derived from dead experiments” For us who like the living experiments conducted on the lyrical stage in our day, such a view seems overly cautious if not downright reactionary.

66 “New Year Letter” (), The Collected Poetry of W. H. Auden (New York, ),

“Per porle in lista” Da Ponte/Leporello’s Amorous Inventory and its Literary and Operatic Antecedents from Tirso de Molina to Giovanni Bertati () In his Memorie, written when the author, then Professor of Italian at Columbia College in New York, was in his seventies, Lorenzo Da Ponte, one-time poet-in-residence of the Imperial Theatres in Vienna, relates an episode that must have taken place aroundFat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, i. e., approximately a lustrum after the world premiere of Don Giovanni in Prague (October True Love Slotmachine Review, ) and roughly four years after that opera’s first performance in the Austrian capital (May 7, ). His account, patently biased, must be read with several grains of salt and a pinch of pepper: II nuovo poeta del teatro [Giovanni Bertati] era sovra tutti ansiosissimo di sapere s’io intendea partir da Vienna o rifermarmivi. lo conosceva le sue opere, ma non lui. Egli n’aveva scritto un numero infinite, e, a forza di scriverne, aveva imparato un poco 1’arte di produr l’effetto teatrale. Ma, per sua disgrazia, non era nato poeta e non sapeva 1’italiano. Per conseguenza l’opere sue si potevano piuttosto soffrir sulla scena che leggerle. Mi saltò il capriccio in testa di conoscerlo. Andai da lui baldanzosamente. [] Mi domandò il mio nome, gli dissi ch’io aveva avuto 1’onore d’essere stato il suo antecessore e che il mio nome era Da Ponte. Parve colpito da un fulmine. Mi domandò in un’aria molto imbarazzata e confusa in che cosa potea servirmi, ma sempre fermandosi sulla porta. Quando gli dissi ch’avea qualchecosa da comunicargli, trovossi obbligato di farmi entrar nella stanza, il che fece però con qualche renitenza. Mi offri una sedia nel mezzo della camera: io m’assisi senza alcuna malizia, presso alla tavola, dove giudicai dall’apparenze ch’ei fosse solito a scrivere. Vedendo me assiso, s’assise anch’egli sul seggiolone e si mise destramente a chiudere una quantità di scartafacci e di libri, che ingombravano quella tavola. Ebbi tuttavia 1’agio di vedere in gran parte che libri erano, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. Un tomo di commedie francesi, un dizionario, un rimario e la grammatica del Corticelli stavano tutti alla destra del signer poeta; quelli che aveva alla sinistra, non ho potuto vedere che cosa fossero. Credei allora d’intendere la ragione per cui gli dispiaceva di lasciarmi entrare1. 1

Lorenzo Da Ponte, Memorie, libretti mozartiani, Milan (Garzanti)p. f.

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Written three decades after the fact, this scathing indictment, culminating in the charge of verbal incompetence and poetic failure, mirrors, not unexpectedly, an attitude characterized by professional Roulette Advanced Slots Machine and envy. The report also strikes one as an act of bad faith, an implicit attempt to hide a bitter truth from posterity: for, sadly to say, the libretto of Mozart’s next-to-the-last Italian opera is not original in conception and plot but has its very tangible model in a text authored by the object of Da Ponte’s scorn in the passage cited above. More precisely, Bertati had recently collaborated with the composer Giuseppe Gazzaniga in the creation of a work for the musical stage entitled Don Giovanni o sia Il Convitato di pietra. That piece was successfully mounted during the Carnival season (on February 5,to be precise) at the Teatro Giustiniani di S. Moisé in Venice – only eight-and-one-half months, that is to say, before the maestro di capella Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart raised his baton to conduct the overture of his new work at the National- und Ständetheater of the Bohemian metropolis. What a coincidence; or, surely, more than a coincidence! For Don Juan operas were the rage just then, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, at least in northern Italy, where more than half a dozen, some concurrently, ran in the decade from to (Mozart’s masterpiece, climaxing this trend so fashionable in the waning years of the Enlightenment, which produced a Cagliostro and Casanova as well as the Encyclopédie, demonstrated its melo-dramat(urg)ic superiority over its predecessors by putting a stop to all further attempts to exploit the theme operatically.) And while there is no reason to think that the collaborative effort of Bertati and Gazzaniga was then, or ever, staged in Vienna, the facts, speaking for themselves, demonstrate that Da Ponte was intimately acquainted with

2 For an account and an analysis of these works see Stefan Kunze, Don Giovanni vor Mozart: Die Tradition der Don Giovanni-Opern im italienischen Buffa-Theater des Jahrhunderts, Munich (Fink)

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the libretto, as Mozart seems to have been familiar with the music of their joint product3. As a seasoned Dramaturg, fresh from the triumph of Le nozze di Figaro, the Abbate, looking for a subject capable of providing a full evening’s entertainment, must have been dissatisfied with what he saw: the text of a one-act opera buffa which, in performance, was usually preceded by a curtain raiser, the same team’s Capriccio drammatico4, in which, both literally and metaphorically, the Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper was set for the principal fare of the night at the opera5. Da Ponte, shrewdly realizing the potential of the piece, ingeniously solved the problem. By splitting Bertati’s action in half (Scenes 1 to 18 and 19 to 25 respectively), he had the beginning (Act I, Scenes 1 to 10) and end (Act II, Scenes 12 to 18) of his dramma per musica cut out for himself6. All he needed to do, borrowing freely from Molière’s Dom Juan ou Le Festin de Pierre and other sources7, and adding plot material of his own, was to furnish the middle section constituted by Act I, Scenes 11 to 21, and Act II, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, Scenes 1 to 11, of the opera Don Giovanni as we know it. This ‘labor of love’ he accomplished – if we are to trust the

3 The text of the libretto of that one-act opera was first published by Friedrich Chrysander in the Vierteljahrsschrift für Musikwissenschaft 4 (), pp. It is reprinted in Kunze, pp. 4 The full text of the capriccio is found in Kunze, pp. Chrysander offers only an abridged version. 5 In operatic history, the genre is represented by works like Mozart’s Der Schauspieldirektor, Salieri’s Prima la musica e poi le parole and, last but not least, Richard Strauss’ Capriccio. 6 Throughout the essay, Da Ponte’s text is quoted from the Memorie, libretti mozartiani, where Don Giovanni appears on pp. 7 As the impresario Policastro puts it in Scene 11 of the Capriccio drammatico (Kunze, p. ): Ma la nostra Commedia Ridotta com’ell è fra la Spagnuola Di Tirso de Molina, Tra quella di Molière, E quella delli nostri Commedianti, Qualunque sia, non fu veduta avanti.

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memoirs, where his crib is at no point mentioned – in the space of sixty-three days, in which he also claims to have written the entire text for Padre Vincenzo Martini’s Arbore di Diana and part of the libretto for Salieri’s Tarare8. Outwardly adhering to the conventional structure of the opera buffa (two acts with one intermission) but aiming – one suspects, at Mozart’s urging – at the more stately pattern of opera seria9, he laid the foundation for Il dissoluto punito ossia il Don Giovanni, a dramma giocoso partaking of two conflicting traditions and forcing the unfortunate stage director to mount a four-act opera in two acts 8 Da Ponte’s account, as found in Memorie, p. f., offers the following information (here condensed): Me ne presentarono 1’occasione i tre prelodati maestri, Martini, Mozzart e Salieri, che vennero tutti tre in una volta a chiedermi un dramma. [] Pensai se non fosse possibile di contentarli tutti tre e di far tre opere a un tratto. Salieri non mi domandava un dramma originale. Aveva scritto a Parigi la musica all’opera del Tarar, volea ridurla al carattere di dramma e musica italiana, e me ne domandava quindi una libera traduzione. Mozzart e Salieri lasciavano a me interamente la scelta. Scelsi per lui il Don Giovanni, soggetto che infinitamente gli piacque, e L’arbore di Diana pel Martini. [] Io seguitai a studiar dodici ore ogni giorno, con brevi intermissioni, per due mesi continui. [] La prima giornata [] ho scritte le due prime scene del Don Giovanni, altre due dell’Arbore di Diana e più di metà del primo atto del Tarar [] e in sessantatré giorni le due prime opere erano finite del tutto, e quasi due terzi dell’ultima. 9 In her biography of Da Ponte – The Libertine Librettist, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, New York (Abelard– Schuman)p. –, April Fitzlyon quotes an American acquaintance of Da Ponte as having been told: Mozart determined to cast the opera exclusively as serious and had well advanced in his work. Daponte assured me that he remonstrated and urged the expediency on the great composer of the introduction of the vis comica, in order to accomplish a greater success, and I prepared the role with Batti, batti: La ci darem etc. Although the account may well be apocryphal, it underlines a tendency corroborated by the fact that for the Viennese production of the opera Da Ponte supplied (on his own?) a number of additional scenes comical in nature and enhancing the scope of the Leporello/Zerlina/Masetto subplot. See Christoph Bitter’s essay “Don Giovanni in Wien ” in the Mozart-JahrbuchSalzburg,pp. The scenes in question, which dropped out very quickly and are not included in the standard editions of the work, are found in the Reclam text (Universal-Bibliothek, # ) edited by Wilhelm Zentner. 10 For a treatment of this problem, see especially Emilio Carapezza’s book Figaro e Don Giovanni: Due folli giornate, Palermo (Flaccovio)p.

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In the present essay, I am not so much interested in Da Ponte, the dramaturgist, as in Da Ponte, the poet and verbal artificer. In this, the linguistic, realm, too, Mozart’s librettist owes a debt of gratitude to Bertati, whose text provides, in many instances, the basis on which his emulator’s verbal structures rest. However, given the fact that Bertati’s handling of language is often crude and lacks elegance, Da Ponte’s assessment (“He was not a born poet and did not know Italian”) seems fully justified. Indeed, Da Ponte’s stylistic superiority is such cheat codes for double down casino a major publishing house – Garzanti in Milan – felt the need for including his Memorie e libretti mozartiani (but only those!) in a series of grandi libri not only of Italian vintage (Ariosto, Goldoni, Leopardi) but of world literature (Shakespeare, Goethe, Balzac) as well. Thus, like Metastasio, the unchallenged librettista laureatus of Italy, Da Ponte may be regarded as a minor classic in T. S. Eliot’s sense – a label hardly applicable to, say, Apostolo Zeno or Verdi’s Antonio Ghislanzoni. It would be both illuminating and instructive to show – as I have tried to do in another paper11 – how deftly Da Ponte handled his mother tongue, not only in the way of phrasing or word choice, but also in the manner in which he wove verbal patterns that are almost entirely lost in most translations. But the task which I have set myself for the present occasion is, at once, more limited and more encompassing; for I intend to show, with reference to a small but significant and characteristic sample, that both Bertati and Da Ponte are links in a chain that originates, like so many features of Don Juan lore, with Tirso de Molina. The snippet I have chosen to focus on is the catalogue exemplified, at its very best, by Leporello’s two-part aria (#4 in Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper score of Mozart’s opera) beginning with the lines Madamina!/ Il catalogo è questo Delle belle che amò il padron mio.

11 “So machen’s eben nicht alle: Da Ponte/Mozarts Don Giovanni und die vergleichende Erotik”, in: Festschrift für Elisabeth Frenzel zum Geburtstag, Stuttgart (Kröner)I, pp.

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While the piece itself, a staple of Don Juan plays and operas, has been scrutinized before, mostly from a musicological standpoint12, the tradition of which it forms part has not, to my knowledge, been traced in any detail. It clearly warrants an investigation from the comparative angle. Before embarking on that enterprise – a Cook’s tour, as it were, of catalogue speeches and arias in various literatures –, I would like to reflect a) on the plot function of such a list, b) the place assigned to it in the sequence of events/adventures which make up the story of the seducer, c) the person asked to redact, and charged with delivering, it, and d) the audience to be addressed. The reasons for offering a statistical chart in a work dealing with Don Juan are simple and persuasive: the noble seducer, incarnation of male prowess and endowed with an almost Herculean sexual Potenz, is, after all, a quasi-mythical or legendary figure whose exploits exceed the narrow bounds of verisimilitude. A quality rather than a person (to use Kierkegaardian terminology), he can do the impossible. But insofar as the drama, for which type of literature the theme has a decided Gattungsaffinität, operates in the realm of the actual rather than in that of the possible, the need for limiting the scope of the action by presenting a concrete, though still approximate, number of victims arises. From the human – all too human – perspective, such a figure will still seem hyperbolic, if not fabulous, whereas from the mythical perspective it will seem unnecessarily restrictive and, hence, disenchanting. Whatever the case, it is a compromise – a strictly narrative, or epic, device mediating between the levels of myth and plot. On the casinos in ontario of plot, a further reduction in the number of characters is, obviously, required to achieve manageable proportions and pre-

12 By far the most elaborate treatment was given by Rolf Dammann in his article “Die Register-Arie in Mozarts Don Giovanni”, Archiv fur Musikforschung 23 (), pp.and 24 (), pp. Pp. are devoted to the text, the rest to its musical setting. Dammann does not proceed historically, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, nor does he specifically compare Bertati’s catalogue aria with Da Ponte’s.

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serve the clarity of structure. This presents a serious problem, insofar as the fewer women the playwright-librettist introduces, the more representative they must be. Nor must one overlook a weighty pragmatic factor, namely the limited size of the operatic companies, stationary or ambulatory, that were active in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Thus the troupe which performed Bertati/Gazzaniga’s piece consisted of eight singers charged, in this particular case, with embodying a total of ten roles. This necessitated the doubling up of one male (Biagio/Commendatore) and one female (Donna Ximena/ Maturina) member and mandated a juggling of the plot, as these pairs of characters could not jointly appear in any given scene. The whole question enters meaningfully, and amusingly, into the dialogue of the Capriccio drammatico, where the realization of the Impresario’s plan to stage a Don Juan opera in the cultural hinterland of Germany is pinned to his own willingness to take on the role of the servant Pasquariello assigned to a buffo caricato not otherwise present in the company In Prague, the Bondini troupe which premiered Don Giovanni in the fall of was even smaller than the one operating out of the Teatro Giustiniani di S. Moisé, consisting, as it did, of no more than seven singers. Having cut the number of dramatis personae from ten to eight by eliminating the part of the second servant (Lanterna) and distributing that of Donna Ximena among Donna Elvira (primarily) and Zerlina (secondarily), Da Ponte thus still saw 13 The matter is taken up in Scene 2 of the Capriccio (Kunze, p. ): Valerio: Quel che dite sarà; ma il Convitato, O Signor Impresario, Certo non sì può far. Polic.: Per qual ragione? Valerio: Perchè adesso ci manca Un Buffo Caricato. E qual ripiego C’è a questo Signor mio? Polic.: Da Buffo Caricato farò io. The impresario promptly demonstrates his talents as a buffo caricato by singing an aria beginning with the lines In Teatro siamo adesso, Pronta sta la compagnia.

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himself faced with the need for assigning two basso roles (Masetto and the Commendatore) Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper one artist, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, Giuseppe Lolli. On the whole, the reduction of Bertati’s quartet of women (Anna, Elvira, Ximena, Maturina) to a tercet (Anna, Elvira, Zerlina) was a clever stroke since Elvira and Ximena were poorly differentiated, to begin with. Concurrently, Da Ponte (at Mozart’s request?) enhanced the significance of Donna Anna. In the model, that luckless lady had vanished for good at the end of the third scene, in order to hide in a cloister until her father’s assassin was identified and the assassination revenged: Finchè il reo non si scopre, e finchè il padre Vendicato non resta, in un Ritiro Voglio passar i giorni; Nè alcun mai vi sarà, che me n’distorni. (Kunze, p, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. )

In Mozart’s opera, she is with us to the end, a dramatically static but musically dynamic figure bent on keeping Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper milksop Ottavio – another dramatic non-entity – on the qui vive The tripartite scheme which Da Ponte has adopted ad usum Delphini is most ingenious and, in the terms which I have just laid down, eminently appropriate: for both the social standing of the three women who cross the seducer’s path and their current status in relation to Giovanni are taken into account and ably correlated. To begin with Donna Anna who, being of noble birth, is a perfect match for the impetuous wooer: having the strength of character lacking in Elvira, she resists his rather brutal advances – one is tempted to say: manfully – and subsequently becomes the backbone of the counter-movement fighting for the restoration of order and morality. Judging by her treatment of Ottavio, whom she loves rather primly and, it would seem, impassionately, she appears to lack sensuality, not to speak of erotic fervor. Yet, could not her seeming detachment be a mask, the persona 14 In their analyses of the opera, Hermann Abert and several other critics have underscored this fact and, by implication, suggested that it was Mozart who gave them their present melo-dramatic stature.

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on public display that hides the true, seething Self underneath? Such, certainly, was the view taken by E. T. A. Hoffmann, who maintained that she was hopelessly enthralled with Don Juan and succumbed to him, much against her conscious will, at the critical moment of their nocturnal encounter: Wie, wenn Donna Anna vom Himmel dazu bestimmt gewesen wäre, den Don Juan in der Liebe [] die ihm innewohnende göttliche Natur erkennen zu lassen und ihn der Verzweiflung seines nichtigen Strebens zu entreissen? – Zu spät, zur Zeit des höchsten Frevels, sah er sie, und da konnte ihn nur die teuflische Lust erfüllen, sie zu verderben. – Nicht gerettet wurde sie. Als er hinausfloh, war die Tat geschehen. Das Feuer einer übermenschlichen Sinnlichkeit, Glut aus der Hölle, durchströmte ihr Inneres und machte jeden Widerstand vergeblich

This depth-psychological approach which, forming the basis of a different character portrait, could pose a real challenge for the Regisseur, finds verbal justification in the ambiguity of the language she uses in her account of the traumatic event: Alfino il duol, l’orrore dell’infame attentato accrebbe sì la lena mia, che, a forza di svincolarmi, torcermi, e piegarmi da lui mi sciolsi. (P. )

The last of the three verbs aligned in the infinitive is double-edged: used transitively, piegar means to bend, twist or, militarily, retreat: but used reflexively it means to yield or give way. By comparison, Elvira’s position is more clearly defined and her character less ambiguous. A representative of what might be called the upper middle class, she has fallen in love with, and yielded to, Don Giovanni, who has played his usual trick by vowing to marry her. (In doing so, he has committed blasphemy by mocking what Molière’s Sganarelle calls a “mystère sacré”) Although she has been jilted – Don Giovanni having left her behind in Burgos after spending three days in her company –, she is more than willing to forgive and forget: 15 “Don Juan” in Fantasie- und Nachtstücke, ed. Walter Müller-Seidel, Munich (Winkler)p. 16 Dom Juan I, 2, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Maurice Rat, Paris (NRF Bibliothèque de la Pleïade), I (), p.

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and, being jilted once again, the abbandonata does her level best to make him repent, wrestling to the very end with his immortal soul while cursing his mortal flesh. In doing so, she attests, more poignantly than words can do, to his lasting appeal and to the undiminished fascination which he exerts. At the center of the feminine trio, she is the hero’s true antagonist, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper in a fierce struggle that reflects their mutual attraction in love and hatred. Zerlina, who complements the two ladies, represents still another social class, the peasantry – corresponding to the shepherdesses and fisher girls in Tirso’s Burlador de Sevilla and their numerous descendents. She is the only true ‘exhibit’ in Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper Ponte’s libretto: for Don Giovanni is shown in the very act of seducing her. Cocksure of his success, he flaunts not only his manhood but also his social superiority, in order to bowl her over. And she, in her coquettish naiveté, escapes by the skin of her teeth, awakened to her own sensuality and thus emotionally transcending the level of her clodhopper fiancé. In Da Ponte/Mozart’s dramma giocoso, Anna, Elvira and Zerlina are flanked by three shadowy figures whose names do not appear among the dramatis personae: the bella dama of Act I, Scene 4 (p. ), a relic of Bertati’s Ximena, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, whom Don Giovanni literally smells Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper (mi pare sentir odor di femmina) and of whose imminent surrender he is, as usual, convinced: Elvira’s maid, of whom in Act II, Scene 1 (p. ) he says ecstatically: Non (ho) veduto Qualche cosa di bello

and whom, dressed in Leporello’s cloak, he serenades; and the fanciulla/Bella, giovin, galante (Act II, Scene 12; p. ) whom he meets at night on the way to the cemetery and who mistakes him, still disguised, for Leporello, her sweetheart or, who knows, her husband. While doubling the ‘score’, these women – all potential victims – do not significantly broaden the spectrum of representative female characters in the opera. The bella dama adds little variety since she seems to conform, more or less, to Elvira as a prototype, whereas the cameri-

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era and the fanciulla, city cousins of Zerlina, reflect the comic rivalry which, on account of Don Giovanni’s fishing in his servant’s pond, exists between him and Leporello. The full documentation and corroboration of the hero’s omni-potence, then, is left to the index nominum and/or rerum which forms the principal object of this study. As for the placing of the list within the dramaturgical framework, it should be strategic – more so with regard to the audience in the pit and the gallery than in view of the characters on stage to which the catalogue is addressed. Psychologically, its effect will be enhanced, and the Erwartungshorizont more clearly defined, if it is introduced at an early point since, in this manner, it will inform the spectator/listener, from the outset, welch Geistes Kind the hero is. (For cogent reasons, the catalogue records no failures such as the Don, whose luck is about to run out, is suffering before our very eyes.) Its most suitable author is Leporello, the servant who doubles as bard and bookkeeper since his master, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, like all those active in the seduction trade, has no time or inclination to keep score The factotum greatly enjoys the counting, though not the reporting, which invariably exposes him to the wrath of the irate women from whom he is supposed to shield his master, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. Regarding the person at whom the recital should be aimed, tradition – which carries its own weight – will have it that it should be a woman ‘after the fall’. Read at the master’s behest, or for the servant’s pleasure, it offers proof that Don Giovanni will have his way with women and that, having had it, he cannot be counted on to assume responsibilities of any kind. Repetition – the lethal enemy of élan vital – is not his style. Thus the shorthand account offers some sort of consolation and ‘reassures’ the betrayed woman that she is in good, though hardly exclusive, company. It cannot well be used as an

17 “Fast möchte man Leporello bedauern, der nicht nur, wie er selber sagt, vor der Tür Wache halten muß, sondern außerdem noch eine so weitläufige Buchführung zu erledigen hat, daß es einem routinierten Expeditionssekretär genug zu schaffen machen würde.” Søren Kierkegaard, Entweder/Oder, tr. H. Diem and W. Rest, Cologne/ Olten (Hegner)p.

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incentive; for, true to his nature, Don Giovanni tells every woman with aplomb that she is, and will remain, the only one, and proves his point by offering to marry her on the spot, without any further pomp and circumstance. In this, but only in this sense, he is indeed what Pasquariello cynically calls him: il marito universale. Now to the catalogue itself and its history as a symptomatic feature of dramatic versions of the Don Juan story from Tirso de Molina down to Da Ponte/Mozart. The brief overview I shall attempt will not be exhaustive, nor even comprehensive, but will seek to pinpoint the chief varieties of its use in different contexts, and to outline its theatrical (gesture) and literary potential. I begin, ab ovo, with El Burlador de Sevilla, the matrix of all plays and operas on the subject. On reading both the early, shorter play (Tan largo me lo fiáis) and its ampler sequel, one notes that neither offers what could be regarded as a direct ancestor of the item in question. Rather, the place into which the catalogue would fit dramaturgically – following Tisbea’s discovery of Don Juan’s desertion and preceding her “aria” of despair ( ff. of El Burlador)18 – is empty, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, in contrast to Da Ponte/Mozart’s Don Giovanni, where it appears exactly at this Tribal Spirit Slots Machine, namely at the end of Act I, Scene 5 (p. f.) and before Elvira’s recitativo secco “In questa forma dunque/ Mi tradì il scellerato” (p. ). Actually, in the tradition the piece is closely linked with the figure of Elvira, an affinity psycho-sociologically explained by the fact that a compilation of this kind is hardly needed to impress (or: depress) a mere peasant girl, and that it would be inappropriate in the case of the highly placed Donna Anna, whom it would only ‘drag into the mud’. However, the search for the roots of the compilation yields some results within the body of Tirso’s comedia, where the “playboy” –

18 The edition I have used, and from which I am quoting, is El Burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra, ed. Gerald E. Wade, New York (Scribner’s)

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Oscar Mandel’s rendition of burlador19 – upon returning to Seville engages in a curious dialogue with his friend, the Marquis de la Mota. Their exchange, showing Don Juan in the role of Tom Rakewell, concerns the city’s most notorious prostitutes and runs, in part, as follows: Juan: ¿Que hay de Sevilla? Mota: Está ya Toda esta corte mudada. Juan: ¿Mujeres? Mota: Cosa juzgada. Juan: ¿Ines? Mota: A Vejel se va. Juan: Buen lugar para vivir, La que tan dama nació Shark Meet Slots Machine El tiempo la desterró A Vejel. Juan: Irá a morir. ¿Costanza? Mota: Es lástima vella Lampiña de frente y ceja. Llámala el portugués vieja Y ella imagina qne bella. (ll. )20

19 Oscar Mandel’s translation of the shorter version appears under the title The Playboy of Seville in The Theatre of Don Juan: A Collection of Plays and Views,ed. Oscar Mandel, Lincoln (University of Nebraska Press)pp. 20 In the racy but inaccurate rendition by Harry Kemp (The Love Rogue, New York: [Lieber & Lewis]p. 89ff.) the passage reads: Juan: How goes it in Seville these days? Mota: Great changes, friend, have taken place Casino ribeauvillé a short time. Juan: The women? Mota: They Are well, what can a fellow say? Juan: Inez? Mota: She’s gone to Vejel. Juan: A rare Abiding place if she be there. Mota: Time has retired her to that town. Juan: Time that must bring all beauty down. Constanza? Mota: Ay, but it is sad To see the eyebrows she once had Grown bald now on her thinning hair.

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And so on through Teodora, who cures her French disease by profuse sweating (se escapó del mal francés Por un rió de sudores)

and the application of quicksilver that makes her teeth fall out. In short, the catalogue portion of the conversation is a specimen of low, coarse humor serving entirely satirical ends. The catalogue proper would seem to be an Italian invention linked to the lazzi executed, and largely improvised, by commedia dell’arte figures – in this case, Pulcinella. It makes its debut – or so we surmise – in an early adaptation of Tirso’s play that was staged in Naples and has been preserved in the form of a scenario entitled Il Convitato di pietra Set in the countryside by the sea near Naples, Act I, as epitomized, ends as follows: Tisbea vorrebbe andar con lui; ma Don Giovanni non vuole, dicendo che a lei deve bastare la gloria di essere stato goduta da un cavaliere della sua qualità; e dice a Policinella [= Leporello] che la ponga capolista. Tisbea fa suo lamento e, buttandosi in mare, si annega.

Appropriately, the lista per Policinella finds its place among the props (robbe) enumerated in an appendix to the scenario. In a slightly later version of the play, published under the same title by the prolific Andrea Cicognini, we have a corresponding dialogue between Don Giovanni, his servant Passarino and the seduced girl Rosalba. Responding to the latter’s complaint that she has been jilted, Passarino coolly observes: Si l’attendesse la parola a tutte le donne, al bisognaria ch’al n’havesse sposade quattro milla And when Don Giovanni has left, claiming priority for some other ‘business’, the Zanni (as Passarino, They call her the “old Portuguese trull”; But still she thinks she’s beautiful. 21 “Lo Scenario italiano ‘Il Convitato di pietra’”, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, published by Giannina Spellanzon in the Rendiconti della Reale Accademia dei Lincei, vol. 5 (), pp. 22 The text is reproduced in G. Gendarme de Bevotte’s edition of Le Festin de Pierre avant Molière: Dorimon, De Villiers, Scénario des Italiens, Cicognini, Paris (Cornely et Cie.)undertaken on behalf of the Société des Textes Français Modernes. The quotation appears on pp. f.

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showing his true colors, is now called in the stage directions), addressing himself to the audience in broad dialect, throws the catalogue into the pit, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, exclaiming: “See for yourselves, my friends, if there aren’t several hundred on the list.” Two new features of the catalogue scene make their appearance in this passage, one of them relatively short-lived and basically limited to the commedia dell’arte, the other destined to become a permanent fixture. Taking the latter first: Passarino’s obsession with figures will be shared by his descendants in the next century-and-a-half, with the perplexing result that the total number The Master Cat Slot victims, while always considerable, varies from a few dozen to a few thousand, with Leporello’s mille ottocento occupying the middle ground. Mimetic rather than verbal, the other feature invites audience participation and provokes audience reaction. Still a mere insinuation in Cicognini, it blossoms into an outright challenge in the Convitato di pietra which in an Italian troupe of comedians displayed in Paris. In the scenario drawn up by one of its members, Biancolelli, the action at this point is described as follows: La pêcheuse [] dit a Don Juan qu’elle compte qu’il lui tiendra la parole Diamonds Are Forever Slot Machine Review lui a donnée de l’épouser. Il lui répond qu’il ne le peut et que je lui en dirai la raison. Il s’en va et cette fille se désespère. Alors je lui remontre qu’elle n’est pas la centième qu’il a promis d’épouser. ‘Lisez, lui dis-je, voilà la liste de toutes celles qui sont dans le même cas que vous, et je vais y ajouter votre nom’. Je jette alors cette liste roulée au parterre, et j’en retiens un bout, en disant: ‘Voyez, Messieurs, si vous n’y trouverez pas quelqu’une de vos parentes.’23

The Paris stagione of the Locatelli troupe, in whose production Biancolelli took the role of Don Giovanni’s servant, was apparently sensational and had a threefold literary aftermath. Already in the following year () there appeared, in print and on the stage, two tragicomédies entitled Festin de Pierre ou Le Fils criminel, the one authored by M. Dorimon, the other by a certain De Villiers; and six years later (in ) Molière’s Dom Juan ou Le Festin de pierre made its debut. Poquelin’s handling of the situation substantially differs 23 Ibid., p.

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from the solution – prevalent in the long run – embraced by his less talented predecessors. In his comédie, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, the issue, rather than coming to a head, is diffused and only morsels of the set piece are retained. Thus, in the opening dialogue Sganarelle, the loquacious groom portrayed by the playwright himself, tells his colleague Gusman, inter multa alia: Un mariage ne lui [Dom Juan] coûte rien à contracter; il ne se sert point d’autres pièges pour attraper les belles, et c’est un épouseur à toutes mains. Dame, demoiselle, bourgeoise, paysanne, il ne trouve rien de trop chaud ni de trop froid pour lui; et si je te disais le nom de toutes celles qu’il a épousées en divers lieux, ce serait un chapître à durer jusques au soir. (Pleïade ed., p. )

On the other hand, the scene into which this snatch of information most suitably fits – Act I, Scene 3 of Dom Juan corresponding to Act I, Scene 5 of Don Giovanni – merely proceeds to Sganarelle’s empty chatter (Madame, les conquérants, Alexandre et les autres mondes sont causes de notre départ, p, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. ), to be followed directly Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper Elvira’s accusations – here levelled at Dom Juan in person What is new and pacemaking about this abrégé is the division of the unnamed and unnumbered women into four estates (nobility, upper middle class, lower middle class, peasantry), to be Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper and elaborated by subsequent authors. In contrast to Molière, whose psychological finesse and overriding concern with motivation caused him to eliminate as many lazzi as possible, Dorimon and De Villiers expanded the catalogue, with the latter even retaining the stunt of shooting “un papier roulé ou il y a beaucoup de noms de femmes écrites”25 into the audience. The lists which their servant figures – Briguelle and Philipin – recite are unsophisticated and largely undifferentiated, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. Thus Briguelle, speaking to 24 The passage is faithfully copied in Karl von Marinelli’s Dom Juan oder Der steinerne Gast, Lustspiel in vier Aufzügen nach Molière und dem Spanischen des Tirso de Molina el Combidado de piedra, as reprinted in Die romantisch-komischen Volksmärchen, ed. Otto Rommel, series 13d, vol. 2 of the collection Deutsche Literatur in Entwicklungsreihen, Leipzig (Reclam) The catalogue is missing in the majority of German popular and puppet plays on Don Juan. 25 Gendarme de Bevotte (footnote 22 above), Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, p. 95f.

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Amarante, manages, before being interrupted by the arrival of his master, to reel off the names of more than thirty women whom, in his pays natal, Don Juan has either seduced or raped (note the coarsening of the tone!), throwing in an occasional epithet for good measure. Neither he nor the author seems to have noticed – or bothers to mention – the fact that theirs are French, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, rather than Spanish, names, suggesting various social stations and extending from the stately Dorinde, Angélique and Amarillis to the menial Margot, Janneton and Gillette. Comprising twenty-four lines and offering thirty-four names in all, some of them borrowed from Dorimon, De Villiers’ compilation is more extensive and colorful (la belle Joconde, Dont l’œil sçait embrazer les cœurs de tout le monde [ll. f.])

but equally fragmentary, as its perpetrator freely admits in closing his ‘sermon’: Et si je pouvois bien du tout me souvenir, De quinze jours d’icy je ne pourrois finir (ll. f.)26

With a substantial and richly varied tradition, extending over roughly half a century, behind it, the Don Juan-Stoff entered the world of opera on February 17,when Filippo Acciajoli’s “dramma per musica” L’Empio punito, with music by Alessandro Melani, premiered at the Palazzo Colonna in Borgo near Rome. It is a highly stylized version of the plot set not in a tangible and identifiable place or country, but in an Arcadian land by the name of Pella; and its dramatis personae are called Acrimante, Atamira and Bibi rather than Don Giovanni, Donna Anna and Leporello/Passarino/Pasquariello or the like. In such a work, aimed at literary connoisseurs rather than the hoi polloi, there is little room for popular entertainment and commedia-style lazzi. Yet, nodding in that direction, the librettist has Bibi most un-Leporello-like tell his master, upon arriving at an idyllic place where shepherdesses are seen fishing (!), to start keeping score:

26 Ibid., p.

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Allegrezza, padrone, Tien pur lesta la penna; Se non erra la vista, Ecco robba da scriver nella lista –

but that is where the matter rests Generally (and as far as the available texts allow one to judge), the early phase of Don Giovanni’s operatic career is marked by relative indifference, on the part of librettists and composers, toward the by now familiar Register. Thus, as Stefan Kunze reports in his invaluable monograph, the servant Malorco in La pravità castigata, a piece with music by Eustachio Bambini performed in Brno (now Czechoslovakia) inapes Cicognini’s Passarino by showing the catalogue to Rosalba; but he does not break into song. Nor does, fifty years later, the Pulcinella of Giacomo Tritti’s Il Convitato di pietra (), with text by Giambattista Lorenzi. By and large, however, the aria, well ensconced byhad begun to lose some of its improvisational character, as method began to take the place of humorous madness. Still, the ‘progress’ was by no means unencumbered, and an occasional ‘relapse’ can be noted. Thus, a one-act adaptation of Francesco Gardi’s “dramma tragicomico” Il nuovo convitato di pietra of – a rashly concocted piece that sought to make hay of Bertati/Gazzaniga’s success – made as late as by one Giuseppe Foppa lapses into sheer buffoonery, as the women on the list, numbered with actuarial pedantry, are graced not with their baptismal names but with grotesquely characteristic designations such as Cecca (the blind one), Storta (the deformed one), Tortigliona (the spiral one), Burchiella (canal barge) and Lasagna None of these precedents could have sufficiently interested or impressed Da Ponte for him to wish to emulate or plagiarize it. He was,

27 Quoted from the text as found in Giovanni Macchia, Vita, avventure e morte di Don Giovanni, Bari (Laterza)Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, p. 28 The full text is given by Kunze (op. cit., Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, p. 86), who also reproduces the words of the aria as sung in the original performance of the opera – a rather innocuous piece which culminates in an Aufforderung zum Tanz.

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after all, a poet of fairly high literary aspirations, well versed in the Latin and Italian classics, and with a sure sense of how to draw the line between the various levels of style, whether in speech, gesture or action. Thus, even though Marinelli’s recent success made the Don Juan theme a logical choice for the libretto which Mozart asked him to write, he, pressed as he was for time, might never have chosen this particular subject had it not been for a crutch on which he could lean with confidence. It so happened that Bertati’s text for Don Giovanni o sia Il convitato di pietra offered a mould into which he could pour the treasures of his own wit and ingenuity. A comparison of the two matching pieces, entrusted to Pasquariello and Leporello respectively, may help us to qualify the nature of Da Ponte’s inspired plagiarism. Pasquariello’s relatively short piece – a dozen lines of recitative and an aria based on nineteen lines of text – opens with a reference to Don Giovanni as Il Grande Alessandro delle femmine (a parallel inspired by Molière) who, in order to carry out his amorous plans, deflowers country after country. In contrast to Da Ponte’s imitationcum-variation, Bertati’s original ends in a duettino between Elvira and her seducer’s Certified Public Accountant – an unsatisfactory conclusion insofar as, at least by implication, it lowers Elvira in our esteem by bringing her down to Pasquariello’s level. Thematically, the organization of the aria is quite simple. Its first three lines tackle the geographic question by designating Italy, Germany and France as well as, naturally, Spain as the countries that have suffered the greatest damage during Giovanni’s erotic siege. The next three lines deal with social status and convey the notion that the protagonist distributes his favors about equally between upstairs and downstairs: next to countesses (contadine), ladies (madame), middleclass women (cittadine) and craftsmen’s wives (artigiane), he ‘flirts’ with chamber maids (cameriere), cooks (cuoche) and scullery maids (guattere) thereby descending – and condescending – below the level of what Da Ponte would subsequently find to be appropriate, his hero being cut of somewhat finer cloth.

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On the whole, Bertati’s Don is not particular, giving no hoot whether a wench is ugly or beautiful (Vi dirò che egli ama tutte, Che sian belle o che sian brutte);

but he draws a line where age is concerned, shunning intimate rapport with those tired of the amorous sport (Delle vecchie solamente Non si sente ad infiammar).

Having made this stricture, Pasquariello concludes his ‘sermon’ with the, by now stereotypical, apology that the list actually presented is no more than a symbolic gesture, a pars pro toto necessitated by the size of the catalogue, a full rendition of which would amount to a rhetorical marathon (Vi dirò che si potria Fin domani seguitar)

As for Da Ponte’s catalogue aria, it is verbally – as Mozart’s is musically – the culmination of the series. Justifiably, the author took pride in his accomplishment and, hardly a Vampires Castle Slots Machine to excel in modesty, inserted it, with a partly rewritten recitative, in the adaptation of Bertati’s libretto which, inhe undertook for a London production of 29 Kunze (op. cit., Secrets of Christmas Slots Machine. 43f.) reproduces the words of two catalogue arias substituted Horus Eye Slots Machine the standard text at regional performances of Gazzaniga’s opera in andi. e., after the premiere of Don Giovanni. One of them does not offer a list but deals with the tribulations of love, while the other consists of two parts, the first of which (Sei fra Indiane e del Perù Tre di Gubbio, a forse più Per adesso questo sono Nove belle per mia fe. Niente dico delle Gobbe, Guercie, zoppe, e lacrimose; Belle, brutte, e ancor meschine Serve, Dame e Contadine A diluvio qui ce n’e. Tutta a queste, gioja mia Tutta siete si per me) is a grotesque and scaled-down version of the model, while the second evokes a ballroom scene dominated by Don Giovanni and his girl of the hour dancing to the tune of various instruments.

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Gazzaniga’s opera. In that recitative, Don Giovanni, still compared to the King of Macedon, is described as a person whose principal aim it is to transform the world of women into a harem: Il mio padrone invece, Che conquistar non vuol paesi, e ville A dieci, a cento, a mille Cerca di conquistar tutte le belle, Onde andiamo girando a quadro, e a tondo Per convertir in un serraglio il mondo

In the dramma giocoso fashioned for Prague’s opera fans, Leporello is given more time to go through his files than is his twin in Bertati/Gazzaniga’s one-acter. While the recitative portion of the piece is slightly shorter than its model – from which it borrows the punchline Ogni villa, ogni borgo, ogni paese e testimon di sue donnesche [in substitution for Bertati’s clichéd amorose] imprese –,

The evolution of Richard Wagner's operatic tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Shamans Quest Slots Machine was a long and tortuous process, and the precise sequence of events which led the composer to embark upon such a vast undertaking is still unclear. The composition of the text took place between andwhen all four libretti were privately printed; but the closing scene of the final opera, Götterdämmerung, was revised a number of times between and The names of the last two Ring operas, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, were probably not definitively settled until

Conception of the Ring[edit]

The Wagner memorial in the Liebethaler Grundnear Dresden. Wagner probably conceived Siegfried's Todduring long walks in this picturesque valley.

According to the composer's own account – as related in his autobiography Mein Leben – it was after the February Revolution that he began to sketch a play on the life of the HohenstaufenHoly Roman EmperorFriedrich Barbarossa. While researching this work, he came to see Friedrich as "a historical rebirth of the old, pagan Siegfried".^[1] Then, in the summer ofhe wrote the essay Die Pure Casino No Deposit Bonus Codes Weltgeschichte aus der Saga (The Wibelungs: World History as Told in Saga), in which he noted some historical links (spurious, as it happens) between the Hohenstaufens and the legendary Nibelungs.^[2] This led him to consider Siegfried as a possible subject for a new opera, and by October the entire Ring cycle had been conceived.^[3]

This rather straightforward account of the Ring's origins, however, has been disputed by a number of authorities, who accuse Wagner of deliberately distorting the facts so as to bring them into harmony with his own private version of history. The actual sequence of Cash Wizard Slot, it seems, was not nearly as clear-cut as he would have us believe. It was in October – some sixteen months before the February Revolution – that he first drew up a plan Kentucky Online Casinos a five-act drama based on the life of Friedrich Barbarossa. He may even have considered writing an opera on Siegfried as early aswhen he read Jacob Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie (German Mythology), or possibly inwhen he borrowed several works on the Nibelungs from the Royal Library in Dresden. As for Die Wibelungen, it would appear that he only started work on this essay in December at the earliest, finishing it sometime before 22 Februarywhen he read it to his friend Eduard Devrient.^[4]

Whatever the truth, Wagner was certainly contemplating an opera on Siegfried by 1 Aprilwhen he informed Devrient of his plans.^[5]

Wagner was probably encouraged in these endeavours by a number of German intellectuals who believed that contemporary artists should seek inspiration in the pages of the Nibelungenlied, a 12th-century epic poem in Middle High German which, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, since its rediscovery inhad been hailed by the German Romantics as their country's "national epic". In the philosopher Friedrich Theodor Vischer suggested that the Nibelungenlied would make a suitable subject for German opera;^[6] and in and Louise Otto-Peters and Franz Brendel penned a series of articles in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik inviting composers to write a "national opera" based on the epic. Otto-Peters even wrote a libretto for such an opera.

Wagner, as it happened, was already familiar with the Nibelungenlied. He had even drawn upon it for one of the scenes in an earlier opera, Lohengrin, the text of which was written between July and November Act II, Scene 4, in which Ortrud interrupts the procession to the minster and confronts Elsa, is based on Chapter 14 of the Nibelungenlied, "How the Queens Railed at Each Other"; in the corresponding scene of Götterdämmerung (also Act II, Scene 4), it is Brünnhilde who interrupts a stately procession and provokes a quarrel.

Wagner the writer[edit]

Wagner's libretti, which he invariably wrote himself, usually passed through four stages; with one or two minor qualifications, the libretti of the four Ring operas were no different. These stages are Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper follows:^[7]

• Prose Sketch (Prosaskizze) – a brief outline of the dramatic action. Typically these sketches consisted of no more than a few paragraphs of prose, though Wagner sometimes added to them or modified them before proceeding to the next stage. This was the case with the sketches for the first three parts of the tetralogy. Exceptionally, however, Wagner (for reasons which will be explained later) never drafted a prose sketch for Götterdämmerung (or Siegfried's Tod, as it was originally called). The prose sketch for Act III of Die Walküre has disappeared.
• Prose Draft (Prosaentwurf) – an elaborate prose treatment of the opera, describing the action in great detail. These drafts were usually ten or more pages in length. They included a considerable amount of dialogue. Prose drafts survive for all four Ring operas.
• Verse Draft (Erstschrift des Textbuches) – a first draft of the final libretto, written in an archaic form of German alliterative verse known as Stabreim. Wagner created his verse drafts by versifying the dialogue already contained in his prose drafts – turning prose into poetry – or by creating new verse to replace those sections of the prose drafts for which he had not yet sketched any dialogue. He also added new elements not present in the prose drafts. For instance, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, the symbolic use of Wotan's spear and its engraved runes to embody the rule of law is not present in the prose draft of Das Rheingold: this idea only came to Wagner while he was working on the verse draft of Die Walküre. It was also while developing the latter that he first thought of making Loge a god of fire: in the prose draft of Das Rheingold he is merely a trickster and teller of unwelcome truths. While writing his verse drafts, Wagner also greatly expanded his stage directions (which, of course, were always in prose).
• Fair Copy (Reinschrift des Textbuches) – a clean, carefully written verse libretto (or Dichtung, "poem", as Wagner liked to call his finished libretti), usually free of corrections and alterations. Punctuation and capitalization were regularized at this stage. The fair copies generally incorporated the final version of any passage of the corresponding verse draft for which Wagner had sketched two or more competing versions; in a few cases the fair copy has an entirely new variant. The fair copies, however, were not necessarily the final versions of the libretti, as Wagner frequently made slight – but sometimes telling – alterations to the text during the composition of the music. Furthermore, he sometimes made two, three, or even four fair copies, incorporating revisions as he did so, in which case the fair copies are called respectively Zweitschrift (des Textbuches), Drittschrift, Viertschrift, and Fünftschrift.

Siegfried's Tod[edit]

The opening page of the Nibelungenlied

As part of his preparations for the projected opera on Siegfried, Wagner first drafted a preliminary study of the relevant German and Nordic myths, Die Nibelungensage (Mythus) (The Nibelung Saga (Myth)). This lengthy prose scenario, which was completed by 4 Octobercontains an outline of the entire Ring cycle from start to finish, though there is no evidence that Wagner was contemplating anything more at this point than a single opera on the death of Siegfried. Explore the Best of Call of Duty Betting he made a fair copy of this text on 8 October, he renamed it Die Sage von den Nibelungen (The Saga of the Nibelungs). In the collected edition of his works (Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen) it is entitled Der Nibelungen-Mythus: als Entwurf zu einem Drama (The Nibelung Myth: as Sketch for a Drama).

In drafting this prose scenario, Wagner drew upon numerous works of German and Scandinavian mythology, both primary texts (usually in contemporary German translations, though Wagner had some knowledge of Old Norse and Middle German) and commentaries on them. The most important of the former were the Völsunga Saga, the Poetic Edda, the Prose Edda, the Nibelungenlied and Thidriks saga af Bern, while the most important of the latter were Jacob Grimm's German Mythology and Wilhelm Grimm's The German Hero-Saga. In addition to these, however, Wagner picked up various details from at least twenty-two other sources, including a number of key philosophical texts that informed the symbolism of the Ring. Wagner contradicts his sources on various points – necessarily so as the sources don’t always agree with one another – conflates disparate stories into continuous narratives, creates some new, memorable characters by combining minor characters from different sources, etc. The final scenario is as much a unique recreation of the original myths as the Nibelungenlied was in its day.

Because Die Sage von den Nibelungen already contained a detailed account of the dramatic action of the proposed opera, Wagner neglected to make any prose sketches according to his usual practice. Instead, he immediately wrote a prose draft of the new work, which was to be called Siegfried's Tod (Siegfried's Death), complete with "English" apostrophe. This apostrophe, incidentally, appears in all the textual manuscripts of the work and in the private imprint ofbut was dropped from the title in the Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen of –^[8]

On 28 OctoberWagner read the prose draft of Siegfried's Tod to Eduard Devrient, and following some critical comments by the latter on the obscurity of the subject, he drafted a two-scene prologue which filled in some of the background story.^[9] This new prose draft was cast almost entirely in dialogue, much of it already very close to the final verse form it would take. By 12 November the revised draft of Siegfried's Tod was completed, and by 28 November it had been turned into alliterative verse, becoming in the process a fully fledged libretto for a three-act opera with a two-scene prologue. The following month (presumably) Wagner prepared the first fair copy (Zweitschrift des Textbuches), but almost immediately the work was extensively revised and a second fair copy (Drittschrift des Textbuches) was drawn up to reflect these revisions. It was at this stage that the episode known as "Hagen's Watch" (the final section of Act I Scene 2) made its first appearance.

With its two-scene prologue and three-act structure, Siegfried's Tod was to all intents and purposes a draft text for what would eventually be the final part of the tetralogy, Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods).

At this point, however, Wagner, it seems, began to doubt the wisdom of writing an opera on such an obscure subject. Even in Germany the Nibelungenlied was not very well known, and several of the other sources that he consulted were even more recondite. Whatever the reason, the fact of the matter is that having completed the libretto of Siegfried's Tod, Wagner then put the work aside and turned his attention to other matters. Between December and Marchhe wrote several influential essays, some of them quite lengthy. He also spent much of this time working out detailed scenarios for several other operas on a variety of historical and mythical figures: Jesus Christ, Achilles, Friedrich Barbarossa and Wieland der Schmied. None of these operas ever saw the light of day, though one musical sketch survives for Jesus von Nazareth.^[10]

Politics[edit]

It was also around this time that Wagner was most actively engaged in German politics. Dresden had long been known as a cultural centre for liberals and democrats; the anarchist newspaper Dresdner Zeitung was partly edited by the music director August Röckel, and contained articles by Mikhail Bakunin, who came to Dresden in March Röckel also published the popular democratic newspaper Volksblätter. The activities of these radicals culminated in the May Uprising of Wagner, who had been inspired with the revolutionary spirit sincecultivated Röckel's friendship and through him became acquainted with Bakunin. He wrote passionate articles in the Volksblätter inciting the people to revolt, and when the fighting broke out he played a small though significant role in it, possibly ordering hand grenades and certainly standing as a look out at the top of the Kreuzkirche.

The revolution was quickly crushed by Saxon and Prussian troops, and warrants were issued for the arrest of the leading revolutionaries, including Wagner. Röckel and Bakunin were captured and sentenced to lengthy terms of imprisonment. Wagner, however, made good his escape, and with the help of Franz Liszt he fled to Switzerland, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, from where he eventually made his way to Paris. In July he returned to Switzerland and settled in Zürich, which was to be his home for the greater part of the next nine years.^[11]

There, in Mayhe once again took up Siegfried's Tod. He prepared a third fair copy of the libretto (Viertschrift des Textbuches) for publication, which, however, did not take place,^[12] and by July he had even begun to compose music for the prologue. Of this music a sheet of preliminary sketches survives and a more detailed composition draft, which extends about one quarter of the way into the duet between Brünnhilde and Siegfried. Having reached this point, however, Wagner abandoned the work.

Trilogy[edit]

The earliest mention we have of a festival theatre being specially constructed for a performance of Siegfried's Tod is in a letter to the artist Ernst Benedikt Kietz, dated 14 September A week later in a letter to his friend Theodor Uhlig, dated 22 September, Wagner elaborated on this idea: now he was hoping to stage three performances of Siegfried's Tod in a specially constructed festival theatre, after which both the theatre and the score were to be destroyed: "If everything is arranged satisfactorily, I will allow three performances of Siegfried [i.e. Siegfried's Tod] to be given in one week under these circumstances: after the third performance the theatre is to be torn down and my score burned"

Gradually the notion of a trilogy of operas culminating with Siegfried's Tod was beginning to form in Wagner's mind. The idea was not a new one. In he had read and been deeply impressed by Aeschylus's Greek trilogy the Oresteia in a German translation by Johann Gustav Droysen; and inafter his flight from Dresden, he had read Droysen's reconstruction of the same playwright's trilogy the Prometheia, which includes the well-known tragedy Prometheus Bound.^[13] It seemed only right that a similar trilogy of German tragedies, written by a latter-day Aeschylus, should be performed in its own dedicated theatre and as part of a "specially-appointed festival".^[14]

The idea of expanding Siegfried's Tod into a series of two or more operas would have been particularly appealing to Wagner, as he had now come to realize that it would be impossible to say all that he wanted to in a single opera without an inordinate number of digressions. The political events of the past few years and his recent discovery of the philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach had greatly enlarged the scope of ideas which he hoped to explore in his new opera. He also wished to incorporate various ideas that he had been mulling over in the works on Jesus, Frederick, Achilles and Wieland (all four of which had been effectively abandoned by now). These ideas ranged over the politics of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin and the philosophy of Hegel and the Young Hegelians.

In the winter of –, while he was working on Opera and Drama, Wagner toyed with the idea of writing a comic opera based on a well-known folk-tale, Vor einem, der auszug, das Fürchten zu lernen (The Boy Who Set Out to Learn Fear), which he had come across in Grimms' Fairy Tales. "Imagine my surprise," he later wrote to his friend the violinist Theodor Uhlig, "when I suddenly realized that this youth was none other than young Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper

Within a week, in Mayhe had drawn up some fragmentary prose sketches for a prequel, or "comic counterpart", to Siegfried's Tod, which he called Jung-Siegfried (Young Siegfried), later altering the title to Der junge Siegfried (The Young Siegfried).^[15] A more extensive prose draft was completed by 1 June, and by 24 June this had been transformed into a verse draft. By August the Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper copy of this verse libretto was finished and Wagner had even begun to set it to music.^[16] These efforts, however, never amounted to anything more than a handful of sketches, which were later used in the composition of Siegfried.

The earliest mention we have of a festival of three operas based on the Nibelungenlied is in the autobiographical work Eine Mittheilung an meine Freunde (A Communication to My Friends), which Wagner originally wrote in August "I propose to produce my myth in three complete dramas"^[17]

Der junge Siegfried and Siegfried's Tod were now clearly envisaged as the second and third dramas of a trilogy. By October, however, Wagner had decided that this trilogy required a prelude – was he thinking again of Aeschylus and the ancient Greeks, whose trilogies were usually accompanied by a satyr play?^[18] – and the text of Eine Mittheilung was duly altered to reflect the change. To the sentence quoted above he added the words, "which will be preceded by a great prelude". Nevertheless, Wagner always referred to the Ring as a trilogy rather than a tetralogy. He envisaged it being performed as part of a three-day festival preceded by a preliminary evening. Thanks to Aeschylus and his contemporaries, the term trilogy had a certain cachet for Wagner which the term tetralogy never acquired.

In October Wagner drafted a short prose sketch for the preliminary opera which would precede the trilogy proper. He vacillated over the title of the work, trying out in turn, Der Raub: Vorspiel (The Theft: Prelude), Der Raub des Rheingoldes (The Theft of the Rhinegold) and Das Rheingold (Vorspiel) (The Rhinegold (Prelude)). The following month he drafted some prose sketches for the first of the three main dramas, Siegmund und Sieglinde: der Walküre Bestrafung (Siegmund and Sieglinde: the Valkyrie's Punishment). Between March and November he elaborated these short sketches after his usual practice, developing prose drafts from them, which he then proceeded to turn into verse drafts. By that time he had renamed the operas Das Rheingold and Die Walküre respectively.

Whereas the prose draft of Das Rheingold was written before that of Die Walküre, the verse draft of Die Walküre preceded that of Das Rheingold. So while there is some truth to the oft-quoted remark that the Ring cycle was conceived backwards, it is not completely accurate.^[19]

The original prose sketch for Das Rheingold consisted of just three paragraphs, each prefaced by a Roman numeral. It would Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper from this that Wagner originally conceived it as a three-act opera in its own right, and this is confirmed by a letter he wrote in October to his friend Theodor Uhlig: "Great plans for Siegfried: three dramas, with a three-act prelude.". Byhowever, Das Rheingold had become a one-act opera in four scenes. Nevertheless, there are good reasons for regarding the opening scene of the opera as a prologue ("The Theft of the Gold") to the main part of the drama ("Valhalla"). Thus, both Das Rheingold and Götterdämmerung share the same prologue-plus-trilogy structure which characterises the Ring cycle as a whole.^[20]

As for Die Walküre, the first act of this opera probably gave Wagner more trouble than any other act in the entire tetralogy. In his two prose sketches for it Wotan enters Hunding's house in his guise as Der Wanderer ("The Wanderer") and thrusts the sword into the ash tree, which Siegmund then withdraws only minutes later; the fully worked-out prose draft also brings Wotan onto the stage. It was only at a later stage in the evolution of the text that Wagner banished the Wanderer and his sword to the backstory which Sieglinde narrates to Siegmund. Now the sword is already embedded in the tree as the curtain goes up on Act 1 and Siegmund's withdrawal of it becomes a climactic piece of dramaturgy.^[21]

Opera and Drama[edit]

The title page of Oper und Drama

Parallel to these renewed efforts on The Ring was Wagner's work on a lengthy essay entitled Oper und Drama ("Opera and Drama"), which musicologist Deryck Cooke () has described as, "essentially a blueprint [for the Ring]". Wagner's principal theoretical work, Oper und Drama grew out of a draft of an essay on Das Wesen der Oper ("The Essence of Opera"), which, preparatory to the composition of Siegfried's Tod, he wrote in an attempt "to tidy up a whole life that now lay behind me, to articulate each half-formed intuition on a conscious level".^[22] First mentioned in a letter to Theodor Uhlig on 20 Septemberthe work was begun by 9 October. Wagner, it seems, anticipated that Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper would be no longer than the other essays he had recently completed; but over the winter of –, it grew into a book of some considerable size. Completed by 20 Januaryjust four months after Wagner conceived it, it was first published in by J. J. Weber of Leipzig. It was in the pages of Opera and Drama that Wagner's nebulous or half-conscious ideas on artistic method and the relationship between music and drama were first given concrete expression.^[23]

The title page of Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft

Appreciation of The Ring, and of the ideas which inform it, is assisted by placing it in the context of Wagner's wider literary and political endeavours of the period. Four of his prose works, the so-called "Zürich Manifestos", which helped to establish Wagner's reputation as a controversial writer) are particularly relevant:

Der Ring des Nibelungen[edit]

It was in that Wagner finally settled upon the name Der Ring des Nibelungen for the complete cycle. Other titles that were considered and rejected included: Das Gold des Nibelungen (The Gold of the Nibelung), which appeared on the title page of the verse draft of Die Walküre; and Der Reif des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), which was mentioned in a letter to August Röckel, dated 12 September On 14 Octoberhowever, Wagner informed Theodor Uhlig that he had finally decided that the title of the entire cycle would be Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung, or The Nibelung's Ring).

In November and DecemberWagner made extensive revisions to the libretti of Der junge Siegfried and Siegfried's Tod. This was partly to accommodate the expansion of the cycle and the growing significance of Wotan, the protagonist of the first two parts of the tetralogy, and partly to reflect Wagner's reading of the philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach (see below).^[24] The changes to Der junge Siegfried were entered into the first fair copy (Reinschrift des Textbuches), while those to Siegfried's Tod were entered into the third fair copy (Viertschrift des Textbuches). In each case several Cute and Fluffy Slot Machine Review of the fair copy were replaced with newly written ones. The principal changes to Siegfried's Tod involved the opening scene of the prologue (the Norns scene), Brünnhilde's scene with Waltraute (which had originally included all nine Valkyries), and Brünnhilde's closing speech at the end of the Hot Cherry Slots Machine

Fair copies of Das Rheingold and Die Walküre and a fourth fair copy of Siegfried's Tod (Fünftschrift des Textbuches) were completed by 15 December and the entire text was privately published in February ^[25] Fifty copies were printed, most of which were given to Wagner’ friends. Over the course of four evenings (16–19 February ) Wagner gave a public reading of the complete text in Zürich's Hôtel Baur au Lac. This text, however, did not represent the final version, as Wagner often made changes to his libretti Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper he was setting them to music. In the case of the Ring such changes were duly entered into Wagner's personal copy of the printing; but not all of these emendations were incorporated in either the public printing of or the version Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper the Gesammelte Schriften Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper Dichtungen ofa situation which has caused unending problems for scholars, translators and performers alike.

Furthermore, it was probably not until that Wagner definitively changed the titles of casino peralada third and fourth parts of the Ring to Siegfried and Götterdämmerung respectively.^[26] In the texts of all four Ring operas were published for the first time Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper their present titles.^[27]

The end of the Ring[edit]

The final scene of the Ring probably caused Wagner more trouble than any other. He rewrote the text for it several times and his final thoughts were never made absolutely clear. Six or seven different versions exist or can be reconstructed from Wagner's drafts:

• Original Ending (early December ) – Wagner's first Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper for the cycle was optimistic and confident. The ring is returned to the Rhine; Alberich and the Nibelungs, who were enslaved by the power of the ring, are liberated. In her closing speech, Brünnhilde declares that Wotan is all-powerful and everlasting; she gives up her own life and leads Siegfried to Valhalla, where he is reconciled with Wotan and order is restored. Siegfried and Brünnhilde are depicted rising above Siegfried's funeral pyre to Valhalla to cleanse Wotan of his crime and redeem the gods, rather as The Dutchman and Senta ascend above the clouds at the end of Der fliegende Holländer. A major difference between this Jumba Bet Casino Bonuses and subsequent revisions is that there is no suggestion here that the Gods are destroyed. Brünnhilde's final oration stresses the cleansing effect of Siegfried's death:

"Hear then, you mighty Gods. Your guilt is abolished: the hero takes it upon himself. The Nibelungs’ slavery is at an end, and Alberich shall again be free. This Ring I give to you, wise sisters of the watery deeps. Melt it down and keep it free from harm."

• First Revision (before 18 December ) – the second fair copy of the libretto for Siegfried's Tod (Drittschrift des Textbuches) was made almost immediately after the first. It incorporates several revisions, most of which are quite minor, and none of which affects the ending. The only major change, as noted above, was the addition of the Hagen's Watch episode to Act I, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. After completing this fair copy, however, Wagner made two marginal alterations to Brünnhilde's closing speech. In the first of these she declares that the gods have now atoned for their misrule of the world, and she urges them to accept Siegfried as a new member of the Norse pantheon. This was clearly an attempt by Wagner to restore Siegfried's role as Christlike redeemer of the gods, taking their guilt upon himself and by his death atoning for their sins. The second alteration, added later, is quite different. Brünnhilde now admonishes the gods to "depart powerless", leaving the world to mankind;

"Fade away in bliss before the deed of Man: the hero you created. I Trolling for Treasure Slots Machine to you freedom from fear, through blessed redemption in death."

• May Revision Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper in May Wagner made a third fair copy of the text (Viertschrift des Textbuches) in the hopes of having it published. Unfortunately this manuscript, which is presently in the Bayreuth Archives, is fragmentary, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper of its pages having been discarded during the next revision, for which it was the source-text, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. Among the missing pages are the final few, so it is impossible to tell whether either of the marginal verses added to the final page of the second fair copy was incorporated into Brünnhilde's closing speech.
• Feuerbach Ending (November and December ) – by the time Wagner had completed the libretti for Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, he had come to realize that the cycle must end with the destruction by fire of both Valhalla and the gods. This necessitated further and far-reaching revisions of both Der junge Siegfried and Siegfried's Tod. The new ending of the latter was influenced by Wagner's reading of Ludwig Feuerbach, whose writing suggested that Gods were the construction of human minds, and that love had primacy over all other human endeavours. In this Feuerbach ending Brünnhilde proclaims the destruction of the Gods and their replacement with a human society ruled by love:

"The holiest hoard of my wisdom I bequeath to the world. Not wealth, not gold, nor godly splendour; not house, not court, nor overbearing pomp; not troubled treaties’ deceiving union, nor the dissembling custom of harsh law: Rapture in joy and sorrow comes from love alone."

This ending was added by Wagner to the third fair copy (Viertschrift des Textbuches) of the work.^{[citation needed]} Although the Feuerbachian lines were eventually dropped, the other significant change to the ending (viz. the substitution of the gods’ destruction for the liberation of the Nibelungs) was retained in all subsequent versions.

• Schopenhauer Ending () – following his discovery of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his growing interest in Buddhist philosophy,^[28] Wagner once again changed the ending of the Ring.^[29] The Schopenhauer ending stressed self-overcoming, resignation and the illusory nature of human existence, in keeping with the notion of negation of the Will. Brünnhilde sees herself redeemed from the endless cycle of birth, suffering, death and rebirth; enlightened by love, she achieves the state of non-being, or Nirvana. Wagner wrote out a prose sketch of this new ending in (WWV 86D Text VIIIb), but he did not set it to verse until oradding the text and its fair copy to his personal copy of the printing of the Ring libretti. Brünnhilde's new verses (which were intended to precede the passage beginning, "Grane, mein Ross") close with the words:

"Were I no more to fare to Valhalla's fortress, do you know whither I fare? I depart from the home of desire, I flee forever the home of delusion; the open gates of eternal becoming I close behind me now: To the holiest chosen land, free from desire and delusion, the goal of Vampires Castle Slots Machine world's migration, redeemed from incarnation, the enlightened woman now goes. The blessed end of all things eternal, do you know how I attained it? Grieving love's profoundest suffering opened my eyes for me: I saw the world end."^[30]

• Final Ending () – when Wagner finally came to set the ending to music inhe reverted to the revision, but shorn of its closing Feuerbachian lines. Although Wagner never set either the Schopenhauerian or the Feuerbachian lines, he did include them as footnotes in the final printed edition of the text, together with a note to the effect that while he preferred the Schopenhauerian lines, he declined to set them because their meaning was better expressed by the music alone. In other words, the ending he finally set to music is Schopenhauerian in its intention even though this is never stated explicitly in the libretto.^[31]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

Notes[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

• Burbidge, Peter (). Sutton, Richard (ed.). The Wagner Companion. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN&#.
• Cooke, Deryck (). I Saw the World End. London: Clarendon Press. ISBN&#.
• Dahlhaus, Carl (). Über den Schluss der Götterdämmerung. Regensburg.
• Darcy, Warren (). Wagner's Das Rheingold. Oxford University Press. ISBN&#.
• Deathridge, John (). "Cataloguing Wagner". The Richard Wagner Centenary in Australia. Adelaide. pp.&#;–
• Deathridge, John (), Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. Geck, Martin; Voss, Egon (eds.). Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke Richard Wagners und ihrer Quellen. Mainz: Schott. ISBN&#.
• Deathridge, John (). The Ring: An Introduction. Program notes to Siegfried, performed by the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, conductor James Levine (Deutsche Grammophon CD ).
• Donington, Robert (). Wagner's Ring and Its Symbols: The Music and the Myth. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN&#.
• Magee, Elizabeth (). Richard Wagner and the Nibelungs. London: Clarendon Press. ISBN&#.
• May, Thomas (). Decoding Wagner. Milwaukee: Amadeus Press. ISBN&#.
• McCreless, Patrick (). Wagner's Siegfried: Its Drama, History and Music. Michigan: Ann Arbor. ISBN&#.
• Millington, Barry, ed. (). The Wagner Compendium: A Guide to Wagner's Life and Music. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN&#.
• Newman, Ernest (). Wagner Nights. London: Putnam. ASIN BCHKMY.
• Newman, Ernest (). The Life of Richard Wagner, Vol. II: –. London: Cambridge University Press. ISBN&#.
• Porges, Heinrich (). Wagner Rehearsing the Ring. Jacobs, Robert L. (trans.). New York: Cambridge. ISBN&#.
• Sadie, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, Stanley, ed. (). The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. London: Macmillan. ISBN&#.
• Strobel, Otto, ed. (). Richard Wagner: Skizzen und Entwürfe zur Ring-Dichtung. Munich.
• Wagner, Richard (). My Life. Gray, Andrew L.; Whittall, Mary (Eng trans.). New York: Cambridge. ISBN&#.

External links[edit]

Fukushima Lions Club Christmas Cakes for Children at Kindergartens and Childcare Centers To celebrate Christmas, on December 17, , Fukushima Lions Club members dressed as Santa Claus and gave Christmas cakes to children at three kindergartens and childcare centers in the districts of Yoshioka and Fukushima.

In return for the gift of cakes, the children sangfor our club, making it a fun day for us with these precious children!

After the event, some of our members delivered Christmas cakes to their grandchildren as well.

Fukushima Lions Club Weihnachtliches Gebäck für Kinder in Kindergärten und Kinderkrippen Zu Weihnachten haben sich am 17. Dezember Mitglieder des Fukushima Lions Club als Weihnachtsmänner verkleidet und Kinder in drei Kindergärten und Kinderkrippen in den Distrikten Yoshioka sowie Fukushima mit Weihnachtsgebäck beschenkt.

Als Dank dafür haben die Kinder unserem Club etwas vorgesungen und uns damit einen wunderschönen Tag beschert!

Nach dem Ereignis haben einige unserer Mitglieder auch ihre Enkelkinder mit Weinachtsgebäck beschenkt.

Note:  This is a machine-based translation.

José Cura uses language with precision and purpose;  the computer does not.  

We offer it only a a general guide to the conversation and the ideas exchanged but the following should not be considered definitive.

José Cura "I am a Renaissance artist"

This giant of Argentine origin is revolutionizing the world of opera not only with his voice but with his daring way of performing.  After an unusual multimedia version of La traviata, he also triumphed in the classical music record market.

BYN

Susana Gavína

August

 Dark and penetrating look, jet-black hair, half a beard that sets boundaries to his marked features, all crowning his generous six feet in height.  One hundred and eighty centimetres imprisoned by a body worthy of a gladiator, worked for years on martial arts.  This is the first impression when José Cura makes an appearance in one of the rooms of the Teatro Real in Madrid, where the interview will take place. But when the distance becomes shorter, and his eyes fall on those of his interlocutor, one realizes the tremendous magnetism of this 37 years old tenor and conductor, born in Rosario (Argentina).

Less than a year Gods of Giza A Complete Overview, José Cura appeared in Otello at Madrid's Teatro Real, where he will return next season with Il trovatore, also by Verdi.  This is a composer very present in Cura’s career, as evidenced by his latest projects, among which are an album that will soon be released that includes arias by the Italian composer, and the television broadcast of a very particular version of La traviata.  In a multimedia show format, this opera, inspired by the novel The Lady of the Camellias by Alexander Dumas, was performed in various natural settings in Paris and broadcast live on television in more than countries last June. The Argentinean tenor was accompanied by the conductor Zubin Mehta and the soprano Eteri Gvazava. And as testimony in sound of this work, a recording of it Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper already in sale in stores.

BYN:  What moved you to participate in this multimedia Traviata?

JC: When the producer of  La traviata decided to make this film, he called me and I was interested in the project, although getting involved in the cliché that people had of Alfredo's character was another matter. However, Roberto Zaccaria, the stage director, wanted to create a different Alfredo, darker as a character, with more temperament, that would justify in some way that a woman like Traviata, who had everything and who lived maintained by the members of high society, would leave everything to move in with a nobody.  That Alfredo should have, at least, a very special magnetism. And based on that we build the character.  Right Mocha Orange slot free demo game wrong?  I don’t know.  I don't want to say that we have pontificated and that now Alfredo should be like that. This is the version that goes with my personality, with the color of my voice

Roles with meat

BYN: This justifies approaching a character like this, since you moves best in meaty roles

JC: It is not difficult for me to adopt the personality of the characters, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, but what I cannot fight against is the dramatic connotations of my voice. I can't sing like a light lyrical tenor, because I'm not one. Taking into account that limitation, what I did was to give the character some stronger nuances, which during the "toast" so well known to all, went beyond that popular music, stopping at the words that Alfredo says are very daring, scandalous, even with a double Freudian meaning.

BYN: I imagine there will be purists who have accused this work of being something of a "pseudo-opera," a multimedia show lacking a true operatic line.

JC:  And what is opera really? Everything can be a "pseudo-opera" if viewed from a rigorous point of view. I just did a version of Otello set in in Munich. This would also be a "pseudo-opera," because Otello did not happen at that time. What determines this cataloging? I am in favor of every activity of the human being that means a search, an attempt to do things differently from what we have learned, and which, depending on the results, are repeated or not.

BYN: You are a man of your time, who is hooked on the advancement of new technology.

JC:  It’s a normal thing. It was the same for those men who stood out in their time.  In the transition from the harpsichord to the traditional piano, for example, composers had to adapt to the new capabilities of the instruments being built. All the men who Pandamania Slot Machine participated and wanted to be protagonists and witnesses of the evolution have adapted, making mistakes and also successes, like the world. Now we live in a time that is like that.  You can continue doing things as before—why not?—but also try the new. I consider myself a Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper artist.

In Verdi's light

BYN: This season you debuted in Madrid, in this same theater, with Otello, and next time you will return to it with Il trovatore, both by Verdi. At the end of this month the international launch of an album with arias by the Italian composer will take place, and that will arrive in Spain in mid-September. What is Verdi's role in your career?

JC:  The other day I was asked the following question: "Are you a Verdian tenor?"  To which I replied, "And what is the Verdian voice?"  I don't think anyone knows what this is, and I express that in the liner notes for my CD.   For me, the search for a Verdian voice is like the search for the Holy Grail. They say it exists, but for now, it is part of men's fantasy.

BYN: You are an expert in doing multiple things at once. You have proven himself to be a versatile artist: tenor, conductor, composer

JC:  Maybe it's because I have a Renaissance vision of my career. I’m an holistic artist who does not have a recalcitrant specialty in which I’m fixed without looking beyond. This is how I manage my career as a conductor, as a composer, as a singer Also, for the Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper few years, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper, I have dedicated myself to photography, which I have always been passionate about. Very soon, as soon as they are edited, I will release my first books.

BYN: Why this interest in photography?

JC: When you work with cameras or lights, with images, you have no choice but, sooner or later, to be passionate about visual art. Many actors paint or draw. I like photography and understanding how light, shadows, angles, lenses work You better understand how to remain Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper front of the public. Everything enriches. Dedicating yourself to Secrets of Christmas Slots Machine facet does not mean that you don’t have time to do other things, or that you are mediocre in others areas.

BYN:  You are also very committed to acting as an actor, as a singer. Is it essential that the singer knows how to act now in opera?

JC:  I don't know if it is essential. You are talking to me about a very definite term: "singer." It may not be essential for a singer, but for the opera performer, yes. If you take opera only as a singing phenomenon and nothing else, then it is not essential as it has been that way for many years. The singer would stand in the proscenium and sing. But if you refer to the artist then as a whole you must know how to act, where and how to stand, how to adapt their gestures to the character. It is not the same to be the king as it is the vassal, a bohemian hero rather than a politician If you are Otello or if you are Samson. The capital letter Opera, because it is a sum of theater, lights, music, staging, is almost the most complete art form. If you consider yourself a complete artist, then opera takes on another meaning, at least for me.

BYN:  In the beginning, you did everything, even swept the stage.

JC: I first went on stage when I was twelve or thirteen, a quarter of a century ago. I've had the good fortune to go through all the stages, from placing the chairs and the lecterns and sweeping the stage, to what I am now: a solid artist, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. I have gone through all the colors and nuances of a stage. Strength does not come only from a determined technical training, it is also provided by life experience. After twenty-five years in the theater, one feels comfortable about it. It is like an extension of oneself, you do not feel the terror of crossing the boundaries of the stage, as if it were a sacred hymen.

BYN: This means that you are no longer afraid when you have to act?

JC: One thing is the tension of responsibility, which one never loses; on the contrary, it increases with popularity because people come to the theater not only for the opera, but also for you. And another thing is terror on stage. I enjoy and have fun on it. If you don't have a good time, neither does the audience because they notice it.  When you are sick, you notice how the audience is sitting on the edge of their seats suffering for you.

Placido Domingo

BYN: The comparison with Plácido Domingo is a constant in your career.  Does it flatter, offend, amuse you?

JC:  All the comparisons with the greats are Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper a compliment. It is a kind of obligatory initiation rite that all young people of Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper discipline go through. If you are a new model, they will compare you to the latest top model; if you are a car racer, with Fitipaldi; or a footballer, with Maradona The public creates associations with the beloved [established] artist and the young artist that he likes. Then, over time, things begin to separate and they recognize you for who you are. It is a right that must be earned, Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper. In the first years of my career, these comparisons with Plácido Domingo were often made. However, now they are hardly heard anymore. Now there is talk of José Cura.

BYN: It's like becoming independent from parents

JC: Yes, it can be understood like this, to become independent, but in a positive sense. What is clear to me is that an artist does not repeat anyone.

BYN: Another of the topics that recur when José Cura is mentioned is your status as a "sex symbol."

JC: Yes, too. Something I find horrible.  One of the nicest things that has happened to me now in Germany, where I had given a concert but had never done an opera, is that I have always been sold as the "handsome boy" or the "sex symbol," Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper very dangerous when it comes to offering a classical music product, because people Fat Lady Sings Ein Abend in der Oper a very superficial image of the artist. I was flattered that the reviews echoed such comments but did not interfere with the evaluation of me as an artist.

BYN: Do you cultivate or pay special attention to your physical appearance?

JC: My past as an athlete gives me a certain Sweetie Land Slots Machine. Having a very large body, very bulky, makes it difficult to move gracefully or elegantly on stage. What has helped me a lot in sport, especially martial arts, is in learning to walk, to gesticulate in a certain way, to walk a stage without looking like an elephant. I weigh a hundred kilos, and moving them elegantly is not the same Zodiac Casino 80 Free Spins moving seventy kilos.