opera

By Esther Criscuola de Laix

Editions of operas, operettas, oratorios, masques, musical theater pieces, and other dramatic or semidramatic pieces include a number of elements unique to dramatic music, from act and scene labeling to stage directions. This post offers guidelines on how to format and present these elements within a critical edition.

By Natasha Roule

Paris, December 2015. I had come in search of opera. I had hoped to unearth reams of scores copied for provincial music academies, ideally complete with performance annotations and musicians’ cues. Instead, I stumbled across La chute de Phaéton, comédie en musique—a slender, unassuming livret by a playwright I had never heard of named Marc-Antoine Legrand. As I leafed through its pages, I couldn’t stop grinning. A spunky cast of hammy singers, foppish patrons, coy lovers, and no-nonsense officials sprang to life, mimicking the elegant verse of Lully’s tragédie en musique Phaéton (1683) with a humor that matched the dry wit of Oscar Wilde and the slapstick comedy of The Three Stooges. Lully’s opera told the story of the rise and demise of an arrogant demigod, cautioning spectators on the dangerous consequences of misplaced ambition and pride. Instead of a proud demigod, it is the opera company of Lyon—crippled by a history of poor financial decisions and personalities who do not care to truly set things right—that is the star of Legrand’s work.

By Albrecht Gaub

Within the annals of Russian opera, the collaborative opera-ballet Mlada (1872), with music by four members of the group of composers known as the Mighty Handful, is a case sui generis. The four-act spectacle was originally devised by Stepan Gedeonov, the director of the imperial theaters, who combined a scenario borrowed from an 1839 ballet with his own historical theories concerning the Western Slavs and their role in founding the first Russian empire. The music was divided act by act among the members of the Handful, with Cui taking the first act, Borodin the fourth, and Musorgskii and Rimskii-Korsakov sharing the two middle acts scene by scene. The surviving music for Mlada is now available in its entirety for the first time, and with this edition all surviving operas by major Russian composers of the nineteenth century have been published.

By Louise K. Stein

Celos aun del aire matan (Jealousy, even of the air, kills), by the composer Juan Hidalgo (1614–85) and the dramatist Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600–1681), is the first extant opera in Spanish and the most significant musical-theatrical work to survive from the vibrant culture of the Spanish siglo de oro. Written to commemorate the marriage of the Infanta María Teresa to Louis XIV of France, Celos transformed the ancient myth of Cephalus and Procris so that chastity is dethroned by the power of womanly desire, while tragic consequences unfold when marital harmony is disturbed by neglect and jealousy.

By Teresa Radomski

Manuel del Pópulo Vicente Rodríguez García (b. 1775, Seville; d. 1832, Paris) is widely recognized as one of opera history’s greatest tenors. Although his place in history has been secured by his renown as a performer and teacher, he was also an extremely prolific composer; his five chamber operas, composed in 1830–31, effectively illustrate the ample artistic requirements of early nineteenth-century singers. Un avvertimento ai gelosi, a one-act farsa giocosa with a small cast and piano accompaniment, was composed as a teaching piece for García’s students and features a humorous plot, charming arias, virtuosic fireworks, and a wide variety of dazzling ensembles that will still delight today’s singers and audiences.