Within sixty years of the opera’s appearance, new concepts developed such as the aria, which similarly to a theatrical soliloquy, real time stops. “In an aria, the librettist provides words that pause and reflect and the composer creates music that interprets and deepens the emotions behind those words” (L12, 8:12). About “the year 1660, the aria had joined recitative as one of the two essential aspects of operatic dramaturgy” (L12, 30:21). “Unlike recitative in which the words carry the expressive message, in an operatic aria it is the music that carries the expressive message” (L12, 31:59).
The same Baroque advances in harmony; rhythm, motivic manipulation and melodic construction that led to the development of purely instrumental music provided the means for the invention of the operatic aria as well” (L12, 32:29). As the aria became the focus of Baroque opera, recitative became secondary or “seco” and performed “accompanied only by the basso continuo, a harpsichord or maybe a harpsichord and a cello. Conversely, arias are always accompanied by the orchestra no matter who sings them” (L12, 32:43). In 1637 the first public opera house opened in Venice and everything changed.
Opera rapidly grew into the most popular entertainment across Italy and in doing so, became more profitable; which was debased by greed and “a public hungry for spectacle, diversion and cheap titillation” (L12, 47:10). By the year 1650, seven full time opera houses were in operation with fifty new opera productions a year. The priority of high artist ideals or profiteering now began the consistent ebb and flow that would cycle throughout the history of opera. With the quality of operatic productions on the down swing, a number of Italian poets, specifically, a librettist named Apostolo Zeno (1668-1750) sought operatic reform.
Zeno was appointed as Vienna’s imperial poet and librettist but reform did not occur until he was replaced eleven years later by a younger Roman poet, Peitro Antonio Domenico Bonaventura Metastasio (1698-1782). Metastasio would see Zeno’s reform brought to fruition with opera seria (serious opera). Opera seria is a literary formula created by Metastasio which became the standard operating operatic procedure for more than one hundred years after its inception. By 1740, “the etastasian opera seria had come to dominate European opera (L28, 8:35).
Greenberg quotes the opera historian Donald Grout who stated: As a rule, these works presented a conflict of human passions in an action based on some story from an ancient Greek or Latin author. They made use of the conventional cast of two pairs of lovers and subordinate personages, and quite often brought in a favorite 18th century character, the magnanimous tyrant. The course of the action gave occasion for introducing varied scenes, pastoral or martial, solemn ceremonies and the like. The resolution of the drama often turned on a deed of heroism or sublime renunciation by one of the principal characters.
There were three acts, cast almost unvaryingly in the form of alternating recitatives and arias. The action was developed in dialogue in recitatives, while each aria represented what might be called a dramatic soliloquy, in which a principal actor would give expression to appropriate feelings or comment about the particular situation then existing. There were occasional duets but few large ensembles (L28, 8:45). Although the Metastasian formula provided operatic reform, its negative effect became one of repetition and boredom which gave too much creative power to the singers; who became the sole attraction for performances.
The economics of the opera house changed. Increasingly, the ticket buying audience came not to hear a story or even to hear the music per se, but rather to hear the singers sing their arias. The singers became the overwhelming focal point of opera seria and with all that power, came artistic irresponsibility” (L28, 11:30). Without any respect at all for dramatic or musical appropriateness, singers began making demands on the librettists and composers to alter the compositions in order to feed their own egos with their displays of vocal acrobatics.
Opera seria conflicted with the Enlightenment as the aforementioned consistency of opera’s ebb and flow of economics and artistic expression; which created another operatic reform movement to emerge in the 1730’s. The new enlightenment musical style developed as the Baroque style was rejected. A catalyst for the new musical style was the” Swiss-born intellectual philosopher, composer, and author, JeanJacques Rousseau (1712-1778). He gained enormous public notoriety and affluence in his time during the “1740s and ’50s.
The spirit of the Enlightenment was such that Rousseau became a prophet and he was listened to very carefully indeed” (L28, 14:03). He believed “the natural man” was good by nature but corrupted by civilization; society was ultimately detrimental to the well-being of human beings as individuals. According to Rousseau, only an operatic genre that artistically expressed the portrayal of real people in real situations singing natural music could coincide with the humanistic spirit of the Enlightenment.
The Enlightenment’s humanistic spirit in addition to the War of the Clowns, an intellectual squabble over comedic and serious opera genres that lasted for two seasons, inevitably gave rise to the new favorite genre, opera buffa, comic opera. “Opera buffa, Italian opera buffa, or comic opera, evolved not from the operatic tradition we’ve observed thus far, but rather from street theater, from the Italian commedia dell’arte” (L28, 1713). The commedia dell’arte developed in northern Italy in the sixteenth century; it was comprised of traveling theatrical groups whose performers came from the middle and lower classes.
These performers entertained audiences with their portrayal of the aristocracy and upper class as “blundering, pompous and ultimately stupid”. “The directness of its stories and music, and the social criticism inherent in its commedia dell’arte archetypes” was adopted by opera. “This ability for an audience, especially a middle class audience, to personally identify with the characters and the dramatic situations of opera buffa, cuts to the heart and soul of what opera buffa is all about” (L28, 24:18).
Opera buffa “is about recognizing and portraying life’s everyday absurdities and trying to negotiate them with some, with any degree of dignity and that’s why it speaks to us as opera seria never can” (L28, 31:34). This operatic reformed genre featured the following elements: 1) the music is lively, catchy and falls between sophistication and popular; 2) it features no particular formula, the text and music follow the story; and 3) the cast is small and portable. Finally, opera lands in the compositional hands of Mozart.
The opera Don Giovanni (1787) by Wolfgang Mozart in collaboration with librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte, tells a musically dramatic tale of a dastardly person who commits dastardly deeds until he unintentionally commits murder without remorse. The cad refuses repentance and gets his comeuppance giving the story moral fortitude, but not by realistic consequences. For entertainment purposes, the story has a comedic element and action that keeps the attention of the viewer, while at the same time Mozart’s music sets the tone and evokes feelings beyond just the words.
Don Giovanni is not technically an opera buffa, but rather a drama giocoso, a comic opera with tragic elements Structurally, Don Giovanni acts like an opera buffa in that the rituals and formulas of opera seria are nowhere in evidence” (L29, 0:40). “Drama giocoso or opera buffa, Don Giovanni is a superb example of the new Enlightenment-inspired classical era opera” (L29, 1:45). As discussed by Greenberg (2009), as a child prodigy, Mozart composed his first opera buffa La Finta Semplice, (The Pretended Simpleton) at the age of twelve.
Regarding Mozart’s opera compositions as an adult; Greenberg (2009) remarks: “in an opera, it is the composer who is the dramatist and Mozart was, for my money, the greatest musical dramatist in history” (L29, 8:09). Greenberg (2009) discusses Mozart’s exceptional talent for dramatizing the staged performance of opera with music, specifically Don Giovanni’s opening; “this brilliant upbeat music seemed the perfect way to begin an ostensibly comic opera, but we also observed that this comic upbeat sonata form is preceded by a dark and malevolent introduction that’s about as comic as a root canal” (L29, 9:44).
Greenberg (2009) demonstrates this by playing an excerpt of the overture which has very base notes and a very ominous sound. Greenberg (2009) states: “This fearsome introduction leaves a nagging sense of impending disaster in the pits of our bellies despite the comic and upbeat music that follows. Indeed, this tragic music presages tragic events that will occur at the very end of the opera” (L29, 10:37).