Everything about Opera Seria totally explained
Opera seria (usually called
dramma per musica or
melodramma serio) is an Italian musical term which refers to the noble and "serious" style of
Italian opera that predominated in Europe from the 1710s to ca. 1770. The term itself was rarely used at the time and only became common usage once
opera seria became unfashionable, and was viewed as a historical genre. The popular rival to
opera seria was
opera buffa, the 'comic' opera that took its cue from the improvisatory
commedia dell'arte.
Italian
opera seria (invariably to Italian
librettos) was produced not only in
Italy but also in
Habsburg Austria,
England,
Saxony and other
German states, even in
Spain, and other countries.
Opera seria was less popular in France, where the national genre of
French opera was preferred. Popular composers of
opera seria included
Alessandro Scarlatti,
Johann Adolf Hasse,
Leonardo Vinci,
Nicola Porpora,
George Frideric Handel, and in the second half of the 18th century
Tommaso Traetta,
Gluck, and
Mozart.
Structure
Opera seria built upon the strict
dramma per musica ("drama through music") conventions of the High Baroque era by developing and exploiting the
da capo aria, with its A-B-A form. The first section presented a theme, the second a complementary one, and the third a repeat of the first with ornamentation and elaboration of the music by the singer. As the genre developed and arias grew longer, a typical
opera seria would contain not more than thirty musical movements.
A typical opera would start with an instrumental overture of three movements (fast-slow-fast) and then a series of recitatives containing dialogue interspersed with arias expressing the emotions of the character, this pattern only broken by the occasional duet for the leading amatory couple. The recitative was typically
secco: that is, accompanied only by continuo (harpsichord or cello). At moments of especially violent passion
secco was replaced by
stromentato recitative, where the singer was accompanied by the entire body of strings. After an aria was sung, accompanied by strings and oboe (and sometimes with horns or flutes), the character usually exited the stage, encouraging the audience to applaud. This continued for three acts before concluding with an upbeat chorus, to celebrate the jubilant climax. The leading singers each expected their fair share of arias of varied mood, be they sad, angry, heroic or meditative.
The dramaturgy of opera seria largely developed as a response to French criticism of what were often viewed as impure and corrupting librettos. As response, the Rome-based Arcadian Academy sought to return Italian opera to what they viewed as neoclassical principles, obeying the dramatic Unities of Aristotle and replacing "immoral" plots, such as
Busenello's for
L'Incoronazione di Poppea, with highly moral narratives that aimed to instruct, as well as entertain. However, the often tragic endings of classical drama were rejected out of a sense of decorum: early writers of
opera seria librettos such as
Apostolo Zeno felt that virtue should be rewarded and shown triumphant. The spectacle and ballet so common in French opera were banished.
Voices
The age of
opera seria corresponded with the rise to prominence of the
castrati, often prodigiously gifted male singers who had undergone castration before puberty in order to retain a high, powerful
soprano or
alto voice backed by decades of rigorous musical training. They were cast in heroic male roles, alongside another new breed of operatic creature, the
prima donna. The rise of these star singers with formidable technical skills spurred composers to write increasingly complex vocal music, and many operas of the time were written as vehicles for specific singers. Of these the most famous is perhaps
Farinelli, whose debut in 1722 was guided by
Nicola Porpora. Though Farinelli didn't sing for Handel, his main rival,
Senesino, did.
Opera seria: 1720 - 1740
Opera seria acquired definitive form early during the 1720s. While
Apostolo Zeno and
Alessandro Scarlatti had paved the way, the genre only truly came to fruition due to
Metastasio and later composers. Metastasio's career began with the
serenata Gli Orti Esperidi ("The Gardens of the
Hesperides").
Nicola Porpora, (much later to be
Haydn's master), set the work to music, and the success was so great that the famed Roman
prima donna,
Marianna Bulgarelli, "La Romanina", sought out Metastasio, and took him on as her protegé. Under her wing, Metastasio produced libretto after libretto, and they were rapidly set by the greatest composers in Italy and Austria, establishing the transnational tone of
opera seria:
Didone abbandonata,
Catone in Utica,
Ezio,
Alessandro nell' Indie,
Semiramide riconosciuta,
Siroe and
Artaserse. After 1730 he was settled in Vienna and turned out more librettos for the imperial theater, until the mid 1740s:
Adriano,
Demetrio,
Issipile,
Demofoonte,
Olimpiade,
La clemenza di Tito,
Achille in Sciro,
Temistocle,
Il re pastore and what he regarded as his finest libretto,
Attilio Regolo. For the librettos, Metastasio and his imitators customarily drew on dramas featuring classical characters from antiquity bestowed with princely values and morality, struggling with conflicts between love, honour and duty, in elegant and ornate language that could be performed equally well as both opera and non-musical drama. On the other hand, Handel, working far outside the mainstream genre, set only a few Metastasio libretti for his London audience, preferring a greater diversity of texts.
At this time the leading Metastasian composers were Hasse,
Antonio Caldara, Vinci, Porpora, and
Pergolesi. Vinci's settings of
Didone abbandonata and
Artaserse were much praised for their
stromento recitative, and he played a crucial part in establishing the new style of melody. Hasse, by contrast, indulged in stronger accompaniment and was regarded at the time as the more adventurous of the two. Pergolesi was noted for his lyricism. The main challenge for all was achieving variety, a break from the pattern of
secco recitative and
aria da capo. The mutable moods of Metastasio's librettos helped, as did innovations on behalf the composer, such as
stromento recitative or cutting a
ritornello. During this period the choice of
keys to reflect certain emotions became standardized: D minor became the choice key for a composer's typical "rage" aria, while D major for pomp and bravura, G minor for pastoral effect and E flat for pathetic effect, became the usual options.
Opera seria: 1740 - 1770
After a peak of the Metastasian ideal during the 1750s, the model of
opera seria that he'd developed began to lessen in popularity. New trends, popularized by composers such as
Niccolò Jommelli and
Tommaso Traetta, began to seep into
opera seria. The Italian-style pattern of alternating, sharply contrasted recitative and aria began to be weakened by ideas from the French tradition of opera. Jommelli's works, from 1740 onwards, began to introduce greater levels of accompanied recitative and dynamic contrast, as well as increasing the prominence of the orchestra and limiting vocal virtuosity. Traetta re-introduced ballet to his operas, and the tragic, melodramatic endings of classical drama returned. His operas, particularly from 1760 onwards, also brought the chorus back to greater prominence.
The culmination of these reforms arrived in the reform operas of
Christoph Willibald Gluck. Beginning with
Orfeo ed Euridice, Gluck drastically cut back on the possibilities for vocal virtuosity afforded to singers, abolished
secco recitative (thereby heavily reducing the delineation between aria and recitative), and took great care to unify drama, dance, music, and theatrical practice in the synthesis of Italian and French traditions. He continued his reform with
Alceste and
Paride ed Elena. Gluck paid great attention to the orchestration and greatly increased the role of the chorus: he also greatly reduced the previous tradition of exit arias. The labyrinthine subplots that had riddled earlier baroque opera were eliminated. In 1768, the year after Gluck's
Alceste, Jommelli and his librettist Verazi produced
Fetonte. Ensemble and chorus are predominant: the usual number of exit arias slashed in half. For the most part, however, these trends didn't become mainstream until the 1790s, and the Metastasian model continued to dominate.
Opera seria: 1770 - 1800
Gluck's reforms made most of the composers of
opera seria of the previous decades obsolete. The careers of Hasse, Jommelli, Galuppi, and Traetta were effectively finished. Replacing them came a new wave of composers such as
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,
Joseph Haydn,
Antonio Salieri (a disciple of Gluck),
Antonio Sacchini,
Giuseppe Sarti, and
Domenico Cimarosa. The popularity of the
aria da capo began to fade, replaced by the rondò. Orchestras grew in size, arias lengthened, ensembles became more prominent, and obbligato recitative became both common and more elaborate. While throughout the 1780s Metastasio's libretti still dominated the repertory, a new group of Venetian librettists pushed
opera seria in a new direction. The work of Gaetano Sertor and the group surround him finally broke the absolute dominance of the singers and gave
opera seria a new impetus towards the spectacular and the dramatic elements of 19th-century Romantic opera. Tragic endings, on-stage death and regicide became the norm rather than the exception. By the final decade of the century
opera seria as it had been traditionally defined was essentially dead, and the political upheavals that the
French Revolution inspired swept it away once and for all.
Social context
With a few exceptions,
opera seria was the opera of the court, of the monarchy and the nobility. This isn't a universal picture: Handel in London composed not for the court but for a much more socially diverse audience, and in the Venetian republic composers modified their operas to suit the public taste, and not that of the court. But for the most part,
opera seria was synonymous with court opera. This brought with it a number of conditions: the court, and particularly the monarch, had to see their own nobility reflected on the stage.
Opera seria plot-lines are heavily shaped by this criterion:
Il re pastore displays the glory of
Alexander the Great, while
La clemenza di Tito functions along similar lines. The dictator in the audience would watch his counterparts from the ancient world and see their own benevolent autocracy reflected in himself.
Many aspects of staging contributed to this effect: the auditorium and stage were virtually equal in quantity of lighting, while the sets mirrored, almost exactly, the architecture of the palace that hosted the opera. Sometimes the links between opera and audience were even closer: Gluck's
serenata Il Parnasso Confuso was first performed at Vienna with a cast consisting of members of the royal family. However, with the French Revolution came serious political upheavals across Italy, and as new egalitarian republics were established and the old autocracies fell away, the Arcadian ideals of
opera seria seemed irrelevant. Rulers were no longer free from violent deaths, and under new social ideals the hierarchy of singers broke down. Such significant socio-political change meant that
opera seria, so closely allied to the ruling class, was finished.
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