Opera... Its Origins and Development

With the dawn of the Renaissance, rising European thought turned toward the ancient classical cultures, especially the Greek among them, and borrowed from it the general fundamental principles on which thought as a whole, and art in particular, must rest. Among these principles is the one which holds that art must imitate nature and portray it with truth and fidelity. For this reason we have seen the writers and poets of the later Renaissance cast to the winds all the restrictions placed upon free expression, which portrays the human soul and nature in the most beautiful, the most exact, and the most truthful way. This tendency was general in all intellectual and artistic activities, especially the musical; and so opera came, the child of this arduous labor, and made of music a more expressive art, just as it was in itself a new conquest.

Its origins: The first thing the musicians did along this path was to take the Greek stories and myths and produce them in a new mold, on the model of the way drama was performed to the accompaniment of the chorus in the classical Greek age. This nascent movement was supported by a group of Italian musicians in Florence, who gathered into a single circle known as the "Camerata." Among what this group produced were Dante's "Divine Comedy" and the play "Dafne," which was performed before the public in the year 1600.

These musicians believed that they were merely imitating and seeking to bring back the bygone Greek drama, but in fact they were creating a new musical art standing on its own, which made direct personal expression on the stage possible; and the accompanying music was itself a reflection of the thoughts and emotions which the words expressed. This was the new art — the liberated opera — and this liberating movement was accompanied by a religious movement which led to the appearance of the religious oratorio, which came to maturity at the hands of Bach and Handel.

Opera is the heiress of several musical forms, gathered into one crucible and melted down, then poured into this attractive new shape. It inherited the songs sung at carnivals; it inherited the masked festivities and the singing of choirs; it inherited the rustic dances which represent a particular idea in their performance. What made opera stand apart from the other forms was its appearance with certain characteristics: the dialogue presents broad situations and scenes, with delightful settings restful to the eye and acting that seizes the spectator's attention; as for the ending, it was happy in most cases. And music was used to confirm the meaning or to strengthen the expression.

The first composer to write the music of a great opera was Monteverdi, who worked to make the music more realistic and more emotional — unlike the composers who came after him, for they softened the effect of this realism and worked to make the music more evenly balanced, thus opening the way for the singer to display the power of her voice and her technique in singing, instead of the emphasis falling upon loftiness of thought and feeling.

Opera in the Eighteenth Century

The works of Scarlatti (1659–1725) gathered together the styles and methods used by those who came before him. He cast them into a single mold and manner, known afterward as the standard Italian opera. The characteristics of the Italian opera may be summed up as follows: the musical introduction, or overture, is a special form with several parts — the first fast, the second slow, and the third fast as well. The beauty and splendor of the vocal melody is all that the composer aims at; the story was merely the foundation on which the musician built his music; and the singers were expected to add tunes of their own to their parts during the repetition of a single passage. The voices were very beautiful, and most of the opera stories were mythical.

As for opera in France, its foundations were laid at the hands of Lully (1632–1687) and Rameau (1683–1764), but it took on a rigid character, empty of movement and of expressive power, as with the Italian opera. There was a looking forward and a longing for the day when a composer of genius would appear to breathe life into French music. And what the Parisians hoped for came at the hands of a German-Bohemian settled in Paris: Gluck (1714–1787).

Gluck introduced several fundamental reforms into opera which worked like magic upon men's souls and laid down the rules of the modern opera, which most of the opera composers who followed adopted, in greater or lesser measure. Gluck wanted to be rid of the vanity of the singers and the composers' submission to them; he worked also to curb the tiresome, unnecessary repetitions, the singer's own additions to the melody during the repeat, and the musical interludes that break up the unity of the opera. What he sought by his reforms was that the composer should give more care to the music than before, so that it should heighten the splendor of the meanings and expressions without overwhelming them. For music must be as shading is to a drawing: it gives the drawing life without altering its principal lines. Likewise, the overture should prepare the spectators for what is to follow. Gluck desired his music to be of the utmost simplicity, refusing affectation and shunning entanglements. And he sanctioned the breaking of any musical rule or restriction whatsoever, should it stand as an obstacle in the way of art and its progress.