[lit-ideas] Dramma per musica
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 01:55:28 EDT
It ain't over 'til the fat lady sings
Solo and Duet
Taste: Good and Bad
In a message dated 9/26/2010 9:19:23 A.M. Coordinated Universal Time,
palma@xxxxxxxx writes:
to opera musings, on which, while displaying
exceedingly bad taste, at least you talk about a subject
-----
Possibly, for Kant, the idea of 'bad taste' is inconclusive. In an
article, I argue that if the idea of 'bad taste' is inconclusive, so is the
idea
of 'good taste'.
Palma argues that my taste in opera is bad. I agree!
-------- Opera is possible an Italian invention. It was invented in
Firenze. The idea was to set to music the tragedies of Ovid's Metamorphoses.
One
problem they soon found about this is that "Metamorphoses" contains no
tragedies.
The first opera 'ever' was once called "Dafne". In Greek, "daphne" means
'laurel'. The 'opera' deals with the rather idiotic story of this girl who
(in the proceedings of Apollo wanted to rape her) is transformed into a
'laurel'.
"Opera" is NEVER used by Italians. It is an expression used by what
Italians call "furriners". In Italian, 'opera' means 'piece of work'.
The terms the Italians use are other: 'melodramma' (In Latin it was
'drama', but the Italians multiply the 'm' there), or 'dramma per musica', or
'azione tragica', or other stuff. They usually refer to 'opera houses' as
'teatro lirico' --.
---- In parts OTHER than Italy there are so called "Italian opera houses".
In Paris (Parigi, as the Italians call it), there were two main "Italian
opera houses". One was off the Boulevard des Italiens -- and it's the
current Opera Comique. But the Italians left the building in 1840, and
occupied
ANOTHER theatre, which is also referred to as "Italian Opera". So beware.
---- My favourite Italian opera composer is Bellini. I believe in
bel-canto tenor writing, and Bellini supplied it. Donizetti is just as genial,
but
his genius was too broad for me to identify (he wrote "Don Pasquale" and
many other operas, whereas Bellini stuck to a few, and so he needs more
publicity).
The other three composers that make up for the '5 Italian masters of
opera' are Rossini (but only a FEW of his 'hits' have remained: one: "Ecco,
ridente in cielo", from Barbiere di Siviglia), Verdi, of course, and Puccini,
who wrote 12 operas.
Mussolini used to say that Wagner was a better composer than Puccini. But
his son (Mussolini's, not Puccini's, or Wagner's) used to say that his
father (Benito) would often be seen asleep during a Wagner opera. So you never
know.
Tomorrow is the opening of the season at the Met in New York, with Das
Rheingold. This opened in Venezia in 1883, as "L'oro del Reno". The Italians
were then pretty incapable of digesting Wagner in _German_ (or "Deutsche").
Oddly, Wagner was the responsible for the closure of the Royal Italian
Opera House in London. The impresario who ran it approached Wagner with the
request to have his opera sung in London in Italian. Wagner refused. The rest
is history: they staged the opera in the vernacular (German) and opera was
never the same in London. They started to stage operas other than in
Italian.
------ In Italy it is different. Opera started as a courtly entertainment
for the Medicis of Firenze. Although Peri was Roman by birth. After
Firenze, Mantova was another important centre, with Monteverdi. To some
(including
me) the real decay with opera (who had started in 1600, with "Dafne") was
1635, when the first opera opened in Venezia.
In Venezia, for the first time, people were 'charged' to attend an opera.
The result was that the paying audience later thought they had a right to
decide about 'taste'. And what is worse, the typical Italian opera composer
(e.g. Verdi) will argue that if the paying audience says an opera is BAD,
then it IS bad.
Etc.
Kant possibly didn't like opera.
Speranza
-----
It is a perception of Grand Opera, typically overweight sopranos, and
perhaps Brünnhilda's final arias from Die Walküre or Götterdämmerung in
particular, from an American working class cultural perspective of the early
20th
century.
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
