Opera seria
Opera seria is an Italian musical term which refers to the noble and "serious" style of Italian opera that predominated in Europe from the 1710s to about 1770. The term itself was rarely used at the time and only attained common usage once opera seria was becoming unfashionable and beginning to be viewed as something of 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. An opera seria had a historical or Biblical subject, whereas an opera buffa had a contemporary subject.
Italian opera seria was produced not only in Italy but almost throughout Europe, and beyond. Among the main centres in Europe were the court operas based in Warsaw, Munich, London, Vienna, Dresden as well as other German residences, Saint Petersburg, Madrid, and Lisbon. Opera seria was less popular in France, where the national genre of French opera was preferred.
Acclaimed composers of opera seria included George Frideric Handel, Johann Adolph Hasse, Antonio Caldara, Alessandro Scarlatti, Antonio Lotti, Attilio Ariosti, Antonio Vivaldi, Giovanni Bononcini, Nicola Porpora, Leonardo Vinci, Francesco Feo, Leonardo Leo, Baldassare Galuppi, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi and in the second half of the 18th century Christoph Willibald Gluck, Josef Mysliveček, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Joseph Haydn, Johann Christian Bach, Carl Heinrich Graun, Florian Leopold Gassmann, Niccolò Jommelli, Tommaso Traetta, Pasquale Anfossi, Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi, Antonio Salieri, Giuseppe Bonno, Antonio Sacchini, Giuseppe Sarti, Niccolò Piccinni, Giovanni Paisiello, and Domenico Cimarosa.
By far the most successful librettist of the era was Metastasio, whose work came to define the form. Others included Apostolo Zeno, Benedetto Pamphili, Silvio Stampiglia, Antonio Salvi, Pietro Pariati, Pietro Ottoboni, Stefano Benedetto Pallavicino, Nicola Francesco Haym, Domenico Lalli, Paolo Rolli, Giovanni Claudio Pasquini, Ranieri de' Calzabigi and Giovanni Ambrogio Migliavacca.
Structure
Opera seria built upon the 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, the so-called "Italian overture", though often termed a sinfonia in the period. Following that would then be a series of recitatives in verso sciolto containing dialogue, interspersed with arias in rhymed verse 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. At moments of especially violent passion secco was replaced by stromentato recitative, where the singer was accompanied by the entire body of strings.
Arias were scored for strings as well as continuo, and often included oboes, bassoons, horns, and occasionally flutes and/or recorders. More specific instrumentation could be called for, e.g. Cleopatra's aria V'adoro pupille from Handel's Giulio Cesare is scored for solo oboe, muted violins, viola, viola da gamba, and a continuo group made of harp as well as theorbo, bassoon and cello, in addition to the usual orchestral strings and basso continuo.
The arias were placed at the end of scenes, such that after singing the aria, the character usually exited the stage, encouraging the audience to applaud. Each scene generally had a stable number of characters on the stage. Occasionally, a short non-ternary cavatina would be written into a scene, before the same singer embarked on a full-length da capo exit aria. The leading singers each expected their fair share of arias of varied mood, be they sad, angry, heroic or meditative. Arias in the same style or key could not follow one another; and according to librettist Carlo Goldoni in his 1787 autobiography:
Among these styles of aria used in opera seria, the following fivefold classification was given by John Brown in his 1789 work Letters upon the Poetry and Music of the Italian Opera:
- Aria di bravura / Aria d’agilità
- Aria cantabile
- Aria di mezzo carattere
- Aria parlante / Aria di strepito
- Aria di portamento
- Aria concertata
- Aria d'imitazione / simile aria
- Aria all'unisono
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, the male lead being known as the primo uomo, alongside another new breed of operatic creature, the female lead or prima donna. These two would usually form the main romantic couple of the plot, and duets were assigned almost exclusively to this couple. It was common for the rest of the principal characters to be dominated by soprano and alto voices. Typically, the one tenor or bass voice was given a major patriarchal or monarchical role. For example, compare the role of Roman Emperor Titus in Metastasio's La Clemenza di Tito from Caldara's 1723 setting for alto castrato, with Gluck's 1752 setting and Mozart's 1791 setting, both for tenors.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 did not sing for Handel, his main rival, Senesino, did. Although spectacular coloratura was part of the reason that audiences flocked to opera houses to see, such long showy cadenzas, sometimes on inappropriately mundane words, were regularly lampooned.
By the middle of the eighteenth century, the importance of the arias to the public and the practice of tailoring roles for the performers gave star singers extraordinary power to dictate their requirements. Aria substitutions became common, turning the form into a sort of pasticcio. The number, emotional range and technical requirements of the arias reinforced a hierarchy within the opera company. Note though that the lead may not necessarily be the title role; for example, in the 1724 premiere season of Handel's Tamerlano, the primo uomo Senesino played the role of Andronico, the romantic lead; the second castrato Andrea Pacini took the title role.
History
Origins
The dramaturgy of opera seria developed largely as a response to French criticism of what were often viewed as impure and corrupting librettos. As response, the Rome-based Pontifical Academy of Arcadia sought to return Italian opera to what they viewed as neoclassical principles, obeying the classical unities of drama, defined by 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, while the antagonists were to be put on their way to remorse. The spectacle and ballet, so common in French opera, were banished.1720–1740
Opera seria acquired definitive form early during the 1720s. While Apostolo Zeno and Alessandro Scarlatti had paved the way, the genre truly came to fruition due to Metastasio and later composers. Metastasio's career began with the serenata Gli orti esperidi. Nicola Porpora set the work to music, and the success was so great that the famed Roman prima donna, Marianna Bulgarelli, nicknamed "La Romanina", sought out Metastasio, and took him on as her protégé. 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 nelle Indie, Semiramide riconosciuta, Siroe and Artaserse.After 1730 he succeeded Zeno as court poet in Vienna, and turned out more librettos for the imperial theater, until the mid-1740s: Adriano in Siria, Demetrio, , 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 and far from the court, set only a few Metastasio libretti for his London audience, preferring a greater diversity of texts, such as those from Nicola Francesco Haym, Antonio Salvi and Antonio Maria Lucchini. He frequently made use of adapted libretti from Apostolo Zeno and earlier.
At this time the leading Metastasian composers were Hasse, Caldara, Vinci, Bononcini, Leo, 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 recitativo secco and aria da capo. The mutable moods of Metastasio's librettos helped, as did innovations made by 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 major for pathetic effect, became the usual options.