Music Appreciation
Class #13
Romantic Ballet and Opera
Peyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
1840-1893
Biography
• Child prodigy
▫ Discouraged
• Composed at 14
• Musical training (conservatory)
• “The Five”
▫ Conflicting musical influences
• Civil service job
• International success
Musical style
• Russian
▫ Folk tunes
▫ Harmonies
▫ Rhythms
• European
▫ German form
▫ Italian melody
▫ French lyricism
Ballet (Russian Nationalism?)
• Previously inconsequential music
▫ 2nd rate composers
• Tchaikovsky elevated and expanded
▫ Full orchestral tonality
• Stand-alone quality
“Romeo and Juliet” (1869)
• Scandal!
 Musically graphic
 Violence/sex
• Overture Fantasy
•
Youtube.com @ 7:45
(11:00)
Brief segue
• Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)
▫ “Romeo and Juliet” 1935
 Arrival of the Capulets and the Montagues
 Romeo and Juliet’s pas de deux
 Rudolf Nureyev and Lynne Fontanne: Balcony
Scene
Nutcracker (1891)
• Most expansive ballet score to date
▫ Immediately popular
▫ Critically ridiculed
▫ “Sugar Plumb Fairy” from the Kirov Ballet
Piano Concerto #1 (1875)
• Van Cliburn (1934 - )
• 1st International Tchaikovsky Competition
▫ 1958
1812 Overture (1880)
• Commission
▫ Russia’s victory over Napoleon
▫ Orchestration
 Tubular bells
 16 cannon shots on musical cue!
• Carnegie Hall
• Philadelphia
 Seiji Ozawa and the Berlin Philharmonic @ 4:00
11:45
Personal
• Gay
▫ Punishable by
prison/execution
• Paranoid
• Married
▫ Antonina Miliukova
 Virtual stranger
 Unsolicited love letter
 Disastrous marriage
Nadezhda von Meck
• Patron, 1877-90
• Letter relationship only
• Abrupt end
“Bob”
France
Opéra Comique
Georges Bizet (1838-1875)
Carmen (1875)
• Prosper Mériméé (1845)
• Commission
▫ Opéra Comique
 Light, tuneful music
 Comic or silly plot
 Spoken dialogue
Premiere
• Acts 1 and 2
 Applause, curtain calls
• Acts 3 and 4
 Booing, whistling
• Bizet’s escape and death
Idée fixe
• “Fate” motive
▫ Overture
▫ Carmen and Don Jose’s meeting
▫ Carmen’s murder
Two scenes
• Habanera
• Carmen’s murder
▫ American singers
 Maria Ewing
 Barry McCauley
Retellings
• Ballet suite
• Carmen Jones (1943)
▫ Oscar Hammerstein II
 Dorothy Dandridge (Marilyn Horne)
Germany
Richard Wagner
Richard Strauss
Richard Wagner (1813-1883)
Biography
• Step-father’s influence
• Composition training
▫ Beethoven
▫ Bach
• Opera as drama
Gesamtkunstwerk
• “Complete art work”
▫ Total synthesis of





Music
Drama
Theater
Dance
Politics
Thirteen complete “music dramas”
• http://wagneroperas.com/indexwagneroperas.h
tml
Leitmotif
• Musical idea or Melody
▫ Associated with
 Character
 Event
 Prop
• Idée fixe
▫ Hector Berlioz
 Symphonie Fantastique
“Mad” King Ludwig II
King Ludwig and Wagner
• Admirer
• Patron
▫ Saved Wagner’s career?
• “Swan King”
▫ Lohengrin
Neuschwanstein
Bayreuth Festspielhaus
• Mecca for Wagnerites
• Replacement for Easter/Church
• Complete “Ring” cycle
• Hidden Orchestra pit
Der Ring des Nibelungen (1848-74)
• Das Rheingold (The Gold of the Rhine)
▫ Creation of the Ring
• Die Walküre (The Valkyries)
• Siegfried
• Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods)
Ring Cycle Facts
• Libretto
▫ German, Scandinavian and Norse myth
▫ 34 characters
 God(s) vs. humans
 Aryan culture vs. Jewish “threat”
• Music
▫ 15 hours
▫ Through-composed
Die Walküre (2nd opera in the cycle)
• God
▫ (Wotan or “Wälse”)
• Siegmund
▫ “victory” + “mouth” (“shield”)
• Sieglinde
▫ “victory” + “gentle”
God in Human Form
• Wagner ideal
• Sieglinde and Siegmund (“Wehwal”)
 Sister/bride and Brother/groom
 “Now let our race flourish and continue!”
 Siegfried (Savior/Fuhrer/Leader)
Background
• Hunding
▫ Mystery wedding party guest
• Tree with a Sword (“Notung”)
Finale of Act I. (Concert version with Domingo)
Bayreuth : Jeanine Altmeyer and Peter Hoffman
Essays
• Anti-Semitic
• Sexist
• Socialist
• Inspiration for Nazis
The Ring and Star Wars
• http://www.trell.org/wagner/starwars.html
Germany
Even Worse…
Richard Strauss (1864-1949)
Biography
• Musical family
• Involved with the Dresden opera
▫ Wagner
• Politically active
▫ 3rd Reich
Tone Poems (1896)
• Also sprach Zarathustra
▫ Friedrich Nietzsche
 “God is dead.”
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
▫ 1968
Salome
• Mark 6:21-29 & Matthew 14:6-11
• Oscar Wilde
▫ Paris, 1891
 In French?!
 Prison
Characters
• Herod, King of Judea
• Herodias, his wife (former sister-in-law)
• Salome, her daughter (14)
• John the Baptist (“Jochanaan”)
Operatic/dramatic problems
• Orchestra
▫ Wager +
• Salome
▫ Vocally demanding
 Look 14 years old
 Sexually attractive
▫ The “Dance of the Seven Veils”
Censored!
• New York, 1907
▫ Metropolitan Opera
• Dress Rehearsal
▫ Sunday afternoon
 Patrons = Astors, Vanderbilts
 Politicians
Opening Day Reviews
“…one of the most horrible, disgusting, revolting and
unmentionable exhibitions of degeneracy I have ever
heard, read or imagined...”
“…A sewer is a necessity of our everyday life, but the fact
of its existence does not also create the necessity for us
to bend over its reeking filth and inhale its mephitic
vapours...”
Final scene: warning!
• Catherine Malfitano