CHAPTER 30
The Birth of Opera:
Florence, Mantua, and Venice
• Opera: the term, which literally means "work," was
first employed in the Italian phrase opera
drammatica in musica (a dramatic work, or play, set
to music). In the West, opera first appeared in
Florence, Italy, at the turn of the seventeenth
century. The fundamental premise of opera is that
sung music can heighten the emotional intensity of
a dramatic text.
• Libretto: The text that conveys the story of the
opera, written in poetic verse.
Early Opera in Florence
• Florentine Camerata: A "club" or "circle" of
prominent Florentines gathered to discuss
literature, arts, and science in the home of Count
Giovanni Bardi as early as the 1570s. The members
of the Camerata sought to create a modern music
that approximated the vocal declamation of ancient
Greek tragedy.
• Vincenzo Galilei: musician, scientist, and member of
the Florentine Camerata. He is important to history
for several reasons: he was the father of the
famous astronomer Galileo Galilei; he was one of
the earliest advocate of equal temperament; he
was one of the first to argue for a new style of solo
singing in his important treatise Dialogo della
musica antica, et della moderna (Dialogue on
Ancient and Modern Music).
Funeste piagge
Stile rappresentativo: a vocal expression somewhere between song and declaimed
speech advocated by the members of the Camerata. The singer emphatically
declaimed the text so that the pitches and rhythms of the voice matched exactly the
rhythms, accents, and sentiments of the text. The bass moves more rapidly or slowly
as the text requires.
Composer-singer Jacopo Peri portraying the
mythological poet-singer Arion in Florence in 1589
• Ottavio Rinuccini: Florentine court
poet and author of the early opera
libretti Dafne (1598) and Euridice
(1600), the latter based on the
story of Orpheus and Euridice.
• Jacopo Peri: Florentine composer
and singer, he created the first
true operas: the now mostly lost
score to Rinuccini's Dafne (1598),
a unified multi-scene drama
entirely sung; and the first
completely preserved score to
Rinuccini's Euridice (1600).
• Giulio Caccini: Florentine
composer, singer, and music
teacher. Only months after the
performance of Peri's Euridice, he
rushed into print his own setting of
Rinuccini's libretto, intent on
making sure his own Euridice was
seen to be as timely and novel as
Peri's. In 1602 he published Le
nuove musiche (The New Music), a
collection of solo madrigals and
strophic solo songs.
• The Orpheus Legend is the mythological tale of
the poet-singer Orpheus, the son Apollo, of the
Greek god of the sun and of music. Orpheus (in
Italian Orfeo) falls in love with the beautiful human
Euridice, who dies shortly after their marriage as a
result of a snake bite. Through the divine musical
powers of his voice, Orpheus descends to the
Underworld determined to restore Euridice to life.
This he nearly accomplishes, overcoming the furies
of Hades with the beauty of his expressive song.
This mythological tale is important to the history of
opera as numerous composers would set it to
dramatic music over the next three centuries.
• In the preface to Le nuove musiche, Caccini was first to describe
early Baroque vocal ornaments, which he also wrote out directly in
the score (see Anthology, No. 80).
• Esclamazioni: the inflections of longer notes by means of slight
crescendos and diminuendos.
• Passaggio: the practice of filling in larger melodic intervals with
running scales.
• Trillo: a repeating percussive effect placed on a single pitch.
• Gruppo: the counterpart of our modern neighbor-note trill.
Early opera in Mantua: Monteverdi's Orfeo.
• Apparently inspired by Peri's Euridice, Claudio Monteverdi—
in the early 1600s director of music at the northern court of
Mantua—took up the legend of Orpheus and Euridice in his
opera titled Orfeo (1607), based on a new libretto by
Alessandro Striggio. Compared to earlier settings of the
Orpheus legend, Monteverdi's is a richer, more opulent
score. As well as a larger number and variety of
instruments, Orfeo features diverse kinds of music: choral
songs, choral dances, instrumental interludes, and various
kinds of solo singing.
• Toccata: an instrumental piece for keyboard or other
instruments, requiring the performer to touch the instrument with great technical dexterity. Literally meaning "a
touched thing," a toccata is an in instrumental showpiece.
Monteverdi's Orfeo opens with such a "toccata" (Anthology,
No. 81a), a brief fanfare that also exemplifies the
remarkable variety of instruments of the Baroque period.
• Recitative: musically heightened speech that in opera usually tells
the audience what has happened. As it attempts to mirror the
natural stresses, the stile recitativo ("recited style") is often made
up of rapidly repeating notes followed by one or two longer notes
at the end of phrases, after which the reciter might rest to catch a
breath (Ex. 30-3).
• Simple recitative: A recitative that is accompanied only by the
basso continuo.
Arioso style: a manner of singing halfway between a recitative and a
full-blown aria. It involves fewer repeating pitches and is rhythmically
more elastic than a purely declamatory recitative, but it is not as
song-like and expansive as an aria.
•
•
Aria: Italian for "song" or "ayre," is more florid, more expansive, and more melodious
than recitative or arioso. Invariably, an aria sets a short poem made up of several
stanzas. Indeed, a closed strophic poem in the libretto became a cue to the
composer to create a lyrical aria. While the recitative maintains a narrative function,
the expressive lyricism and affective rhetorical power of an aria provides the musical
high points of most operas. When set for two or three singers, an aria is called a
"duet" or "trio."
Strophic variation aria: An aria in which the same melodic and harmonic plan
appears, with slight variation, in each subsequent strophe. Possente spirto from
Monteverdi's Orfeo (Anthology, No. 81b-d) is an example of a strophic variation aria.
Early opera in Venice
• When the first public theater opened in
Venice in 1637, opera as we know it
today was born. While in Florence,
Rome, and Mantua opera was
sponsored by aristocratic courts, in
Venice it became the enterprise of
wealthy merchant families who saw it
as a way to make money. The audience
was no longer a select group of twohundred aristocratic guests, but a feepaying crowd of as many as 1,500
drawn from many sections of society.
• The transition from courtly to
commercial opera led to important
changes: star singers acquired great
importance and wealth as opera houses
competed amongst themselves for
audience; more and more, composers
were forced to tailor the music to suit
the voice of leading singers, while
librettists wrote texts that would appeal
to their audience; stage machinery and
elaborate sets created an air of the
spectacular (Ex. 30-3).
Ships sail on the high seas as gods
descend from heavens in Giacomo
Torelli's stage set for the opera
Bellerofonte (Venice, 1642).
• In 1613 Monteverdi quit his job in Mantua and moved to
Venice, where he had accepted the prestigious position
of maestro di cappella (director of music) at St. Mark's
Basilica. In 1640, three years after the first public
theater was opened for business in Venice, Monteverdi
returned to the operatic stage apparently for the first
time since his Mantuan years. He did so with Il ritorno
d'Ulisse in patria (The Return of Ulysses), followed by Le
nozze d'Enea (The Marriage of Aeneas, 1641) and
L'incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea,
1642). The latter, based on a historical rather than
mythological subject matter, is considered by many
today as the greatest opera of the seventeenth century.
• Other important composers of Venetian opera are
Monteverdi's pupil Francesco Cavalli and follower
Antonio Cesti.
Point of Discussion
• The exquisite and memorable finale of Poppea, the
duet "Pur ti miro" (Anthology No., 82), may have
been added later to Monteverdi's opera, and
perhaps was not composed by Monteverdi at all.
Does it matter? Do questions of authenticity
diminish or augment the aesthetic worth of a work
of art? Should modern stage productions eliminate
or include the final duet according to its
authorship?