Program notes for the February 11, 2017 concert
Opera is drama in which the actors do not speak, but rather sing their lines and are accompanied by instrumental music. It differs from oratorio by incorporating acting and stagecraft.
An Italian invention, opera has entertained audiences since the 16th century. The three great operas of Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), Poppea, Orfeo and Ulysses, are the high point of pre-tonal music and are the oldest operas in the repertory today.
Spectacle is a large part of opera’s popularity; an opera house is the largest concert facility in most cities. Society and composers have long regarding opera as the highest form of musical performance. Rare is the major composer who did not compose opera (Brahms and Bach come to mind). A good example of opera’s attraction is the American George Gershwin (1898-1937) who, while even while establishing himself as a “legitimate” composer, wrote his opera Porgy and Bess (1935) even before attempting a symphony or string quartet.
Opera offers the opportunity for a composer to make a name and a fortune. The complexity of producing opera requires large financial commitments, not only for the music but for scenery, staging, etc. An opera house amortizes these costs by giving numerous performances of a production, as opposed to the one or two evenings that most symphony orchestras will play a program, making large royalty payments possible. All of the composers we are playing tonight (except Mozart) prospered from their operas. Giuseppe Verdi, who composed at a time when copyright laws first enforced royalty payments, became the wealthiest composer of the 19th century; Andrew Lloyd Weber, whose musical shows are a form of opera, was the wealthiest of the 20th.
Opera has numerous opportunities for instrumental music. One finds an overture, music for changes of scene, music to underscore stage action, music to comment upon the actions or emotions of the characters and ballet scenes. Also, opera being very tuneful, sets of opera songs are often scored for instrumental performances. The overture will typically present themes from the opera to follow and sets the mood of the work; Porgy and Bess, for example, gives a musical description of Catfish Row, the setting of the first act. Interludes allow the audience to reflect upon the previous song and contemplate what might come next. Dance music is frequent and indeed was obligatory in the French opera of the 19th century. All of these genres are on tonight’s program.
Vocal forms for opera include recitatives, which replace simple speech; arias, duets, ensembles and choral works. An aria is a solo song. Arias rarely advance the action but rather offer insight into the mood of the character. Referencing Porgy and Bess again, Clara’s opening aria “Summertime” tells us about her dreams and aspirations as she sings this lullaby to her baby. Think of “Summertime” for a moment (everyone knows “Summertime”, yes?), of how the languid accompaniment and simple triadic melody set the mood. Tonight we will give you three arias for coloratura; a coloratura is a soprano with a particularly fine upper register.
Orchestral opera musicians live in a very different world than symphony players. The orchestra plays in the pit in front of the stage and is always subordinate to the singing. Opera music tends to be less technical than symphonic works, a nod to limited rehearsal time. Being off the stage reduces stress and permits performance of substantially longer works; operas are typically an hour longer than symphony concerts. I love playing opera; having fine singers on stage above and behind forces one to be very attentive and focused, resulting in better performances.
Why should a community orchestra, or any orchestra, play opera? Some dismiss opera as elitist and snobbish, of no relevance to ordinary people with everyday concerns. Nothing could be further from the truth. Great opera combines the orchestra, the solo singers, the chorus, with all of the aspects of theater, heightening and intensifying the staged drama.
Today’s program is drawn from some of the most well-known and beloved operas. Two of these operas failed on their opening nights, but came back to enter the operatic canon.
Gioacchino Rossini (Italian, 1792-1868)
Overture to The Barber of Seville (1816)
One of the best known of opera overtures, this was borrowed from two earlier Rossini operas, Aureliano in Palmira (1813) and Elisabetta (1815), as the composer had no time to write a new overture for The Barber. So, although it suits the mood of The Barber, it contains no quotations or melodies from it. Indeed, it even uses a different orchestra; the opera requires only one oboe and one trombone but this overture calls for two of each.
It is in the modified sonata form that is typical of Rossini’s overtures. A lyrical E-major opening featuring wind solos leads to an allegro exposition of the jaunty main theme group in the parallel minor. The tonal plan of E major, e minor, G major (the second theme—oboe solo), e minor (repeat of the first fast theme), E major fits well with the opening of the first act and may be the reason that Rossini chose this overture for The Barber. The long, dramatic crescendi that Rossini builds on the closing theme of the Allegro, first in the secondary key of G then in the home key of E, are so typical of this composer that they are often called Rossini crescendos.
The Barber’s premiere performance was a failure: hecklers paid by a rival composer to disrupt the opera hissed and jeered throughout, and accidents occurred on stage, including a stray cat interrupting the finale to Act 1. Absent the claque and the cat, the next night’s show was well received and The Barber became a staple almost immediately.
The son of a horn-player and a singer, young Rossini experienced opera in the orchestra pit and on stage. He was unrivaled in the Italian musical world of his time. His operas from 1810-25, premiered in Italy, set him as the greatest of European composers after Beethoven. Moving to Paris, he presented his last production there only to retire, rich and famous, at 37. Of Rossini’s 38 operas, The Barber of Seville is best known, with Italian Girl in Algiers and William Tell also being staples.
George Bizet (French, 1838-1875)
Suite No. 2 from Carmen (1875)
Carmen, Bizet’s masterpiece, it is the most performed of all operas. Bizet did not live to see his story of the fatal love between Carmen, a gypsy woman and Don Jose, a renegade soldier, become a success: the premiere at the Opéra-Comique, just weeks before his untimely death from strep throat, met with little enthusiasm. The story was considered too sordid and the music, so familiar now even to those who never attend opera, baffled audiences: one critic, incredibly, found it tuneless.
Other audiences recognized the composer’s genius. Tchaikovsky presciently pronounced Carmen a masterpiece that would become “the most popular opera in the world” while the Vienna premiere was a great success; Brahms saw it 20 times! Bizet’s friend Ernest Guiraud composed music for dialogue passages of the Vienna production and created two suites of music from the opera for the concert hall.
Suite No. 2 is derived from vocal numbers of the opera. It starts off with the “Marche des contrebandiers” (The Smugglers’ March), cunning and impertinent. The “Habañera” is Carmen’s famous aria describing love as a wild bird which can never be tamed. The “Nocturne” is a tender, soaring aria sung by Michaëla, José’s chaste former girlfriend, as she fearfully wanders into the mountains. The beautiful orchestration, with solo ‘cello supporting horn, was so admired by Richard Strauss that he gave it as an example in his revision of Berlioz’ orchestration text. Listen to the repeat of the main tune, where a solo violin takes over the vocal line an octave above the oboe. The “Chanson du Toréador” is Escamillo the bullfighter’s swaggering portrayal of his art and contains one of the best known of all opera tunes. “La Garde Montante” is the children’s chorus from the beginning of the opera, where children imitate the changing of the guard. Listen to the solo trumpet, assigned by turns both its customary role playing fanfares and the vocal tune. The finale, “Danse Bohême”, is a gypsy dance that starts quietly but builds to a frenzy with repetition and increasing speed, similar to the writing of Saint-Saens in the next number.
Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921)
“Bachannale” from Samson and Delila (1877)
Drawn from the Biblical story (Judges 16) this opera focuses on the relation between Samson and Delilah, the Philistine woman who bewitches him. Anguished and weakened by the shaving of his hair, blinded, mocked and enslaved, Samson exacts revenge upon the Philistines who have so abused him and his Hebrew people. The “Bacchanale” is a wild dance of the Philistine priests. An elaborate ballet was de rigeur at the Paris opera in the late 19th century—Verdi was obliged to add one for the Paris premiere of Aida — and Saint-Saens does not disappoint. A bachannale, after all, is an orgiastic or drunken dance. The oboe’s shawm-call solo introduces an exotic mood, using a scale with two augmented seconds, also used for the second main theme. A lush middle section, recapping Delilah’s aria from the first act, is in more usual scales and form. The return of the fast music is a swirling, ecstatic conclusion to the dance; one imagines whirling dervishes, barely-dressed women and raw athleticism.
A major figure of the Romantic era, Saint-Saens was a successful pianist, organist and composer. He lived long enough to see the world change around him with the music of impressionism, 12-tone and neoclassicism. Saint-Saens is remembered for his imposing Organ Symphony, his piano concertos and his divertissement, Carnival of the Animals. Few of his 13 operas are heard today, but Samson is a staple of the repertory.
Pietro Mascagni (Italian, 1863 – 1945)
“Intermezzo” from Cavalleria rusticana (1890)
Cavalleria rusticana (“rustic chivalry”) is a tale of revenge in a small Sicilian town. The return of the village lad Turiddu from military service leads to a chain of adultery and betrayal, culminating in his murder on Easter Sunday by Alfio, husband of Turiddu’s former fiancé Lola. This “Intermezzo” occurs after the plot has been presented but before the violent conclusion, while the villagers are in church celebrating Easter. It presents a meditation on the complicated social lives of the villagers and on the parallel sacrifices of Turiddu and Christ.
A relatively brief opera at 70 minutes, Cavalleria is often paired with Ruggero Leoncavillo’s Pagliacci to create the double-opera Cav-Pag. Mascagni’s first opera, Cavalleria was written for a competition for young composers; he finished it in just two months. It was a sensation from its first performance and quickly made its young composer wealthy; at the time of Mascagni’s death in 1945, the opera had been performed more than 14,000 times in Italy alone. It is the only Mascagni opera played today.
Unlike Rossini, Mascagni continued to compose past his thirties and became a prominent conductor. He resurrected operas by Mozart (Don Giovanni) and Rossini (Mosé, Semiramide), and popularized the music of Tchaikovsky and Dvorák in Italy.
Giacomo Puccini (Italian, 1858-1924)
“Quando m’en vo” (Musetta’s Waltz) from La bohème (1896)
An exponent of realism in opera (“verismo”), Puccini is famous today for three great operas, ‘La bohème’, ‘Tosca’ (1900) and ‘Madama Butterfly’(1903). Several of his other works remain in the repertory, including “Il Trittico”, a trilogy of one-act operas. Bohème, one of the most popular of operas, is a sentimental story of the love and death from consumption of Mimi, a poor young woman in Paris, a depiction of the so-called “Bohemian” life. The opera inspired the musical 1996 show Rent, which enjoyed its own popularity and which replaces tuberculosis with HIV.
Musetta’s Waltz is one of the most recognizable of opera arias; you know this tune, even if you don’t know what it is. In it, Musetta (the supporting lady), is dining out with Alcindoro, her rather boring lover. Tiring of him, she sings a risqué aria to her past lover Marcello (who just happens to be in the restaurant), hoping to instill a little jealousy and perhaps kindle some passion. To get the old fool out of the way, she feigns a broken shoe; when Alcindoro takes it to be repaired, Musetta and Marcello embrace and disappear, leaving the bill for a large party to Alcindoro.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Austrian, 1756-91)
“Come scoglio immoto” from Così fan Tutte (1790)
One of opera’s endearing qualities is the opportunity to mock what we cannot otherwise criticize, to turn the tables on the powerful and smug. Thus Verdi’s, Masked Ball, an opera about the assassination of a king and a thinly-disguised jab at Italian politics of his day, is set in Sweden; to honestly situate the story might have put the composer in jail. In Così fan Tutte (“Thus do all women”, subtitled “The School for Lovers”), Mozart lampoons Viennese upper class morality, suggesting in the title that no woman can be trusted to be true, while showing in the opera that men are even more untrustworthy in love. The libretto is by Mozart’s brilliant collaborator Lorenzo da Ponte, a Venetian Jew who converted as an adult to Catholicism and became a priest. Living openly with a mistress, he was banished from Venice for “public concubinage” and fled to Vienna. Da Ponte knew something about morals and temptation.
This aria is sung by Fiordiligi, one of two noble women whose lovers accept a wager from the cynical Don Alfonso. Alfonso bets that each can, by use of disguise and intrigue, seduce the other’s partner. Fiordiligi (a pun on “law-abiding flower”) sings here of her constancy in love. Mozart wrote this sparkling aria with enormous leaps and runs to challenge Adriana Ferrarese, the prima donna and da Ponte’s mistress, who he disliked. The aria is in an extended form with an elaborate recitative, a dramatic first theme, presentation of increasingly exciting tunes and a quick finale.
Leonard Bernstein (American, 1918-90)
“Glitter and be gay” from Candide (1956).
Bernstein’s opera is based on the Voltaire’s novel of that name. Cunegonde, the female lead, is a wealthy but naïve young woman who has been taken into the retinue of a minor nobleman; her name is a pun on French and Latin terms for female anatomy. Brought against her will to Paris and dressing for a party, she alternately laments her cruel fate (to the mournful tune of the English horn) and delights in the glittering jewelry with which she is to adorn herself. The aria is a tour de force for soprano both for its range—there are abundant high C’s, D-flats and E-flats–and for the need for great agility. In strophic form, the aria presents contrasting music, then returns to the beginning and repeats with changes in orchestration and words, adding a brilliant coda. Bernstein liked this coda so much that he pasted it into the Overture to Candide, one of the most performed of American concert orchestra works. Listen to the second theme of the allegro, how it sparkles like light off of jewelry.
Leonard Bernstein was the most influential American classical musician of the 20th century. Educated at Boston Latin School, Harvard and the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, he became the New York Philharmonic’s assistant conductor in 1943 and music director in 1958. A teacher, a brilliant conductor, composer, and pianist, Bernstein was accomplished in both classical and popular music. Beloved by the musicians who worked with him, he was known for his flamboyant conducting style, insightful interpretations and complicated personal life. His last concert, conducting the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood, opened with the “Four Sea Interludes” from Benjamin Britten’s opera Peter Grimes.
Notes by Robert Howe, who has played English horn in the MSOC since 1978.