French Opera

Musical Europe – as we have seen – is a unity, with composers and musicians from several nations benefiting from cross-cultural experience in such great artistic capitals as Venice, Paris, Vienna, London. So, a purely national description of the operatic scene is inadequate. Giacomo Meyerbeer for example, born in Berlin in 1791 but living most of his life in Paris where his pageant-like operas were first performed, is thought of as French composer. Similarly Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687), although born in Florence, took French citizenship in 1661 where he lived form the age of 14. Described as a supreme courtier and intriguer he wrote 20 ballets and operas and took French opera out of its aristocratic origin and made it a popular art.

Jean-Philippe Ramaeu (1683-1764 was a more considerable figure, an innovator in harmony and orchestration as well as a respected teacher and performer of the harpsichord. He began to compose his 20 operas when he was fifty and whilst received cautiously at the time, recently they have had a revival, with several recordings in the catalogue.

Claude Debussy (1862-1918) takes us to the modern era and like Beethoven, he wrote only one opera. ‘Pellaes et Melisande’ , produced in 1902 and quite distinctive, having some of the orchestral virtuosity of Wagner but a gentle fluidity and deceptively simple declaration that is unmistakably French. N.G.D.M. says that ‘he brought an entirely new tone to opera – and an unrepeatable one’. I have heard the work on disc and it is very beautiful indeed.

Between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, strides Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), the recently completed three volume biography emphasising the impossibility of doing him justice in this brief reference to him. He was the arch-Romantic, making enemies as easily as friends, misunderstood in his own country but welcomed as a conductor of his own and other people’s music in Russia, England, Germany and Austria. He was a lofty idealist with a leaping imagination and his music has a distinctive sound with its rhythmic fluctuations and themes superimposed on each other –with plenty of brass! He wrote several operas, only one of which –‘Benvenuto Cellini’ – I have heard in performance. His colourful image concealed the originality and brilliance of his music and only in recent years under the advocacy of such people as Sir Colin Davies, has his true worth been recognised and celebrated.

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Wagner

Richard Wagner (1813-1883) was a visionary and lived an eventful often tumultuous life. In early years he lived in poverty in Paris. He was an innovator (he even invented his own tuba in order to give added strength to the massive orchestras he required) and a controversialist (enthusiasts of Brahms and Wagner were factions in constant conflict – indeed people have argued about him ever since). He was a philanderer. He was twice in flight from the police because of his support for revolutionaries in Dresden and Munich. He was egocentric and self- absorbed; a white supremacist who later was used by the Nazi’s for their own ugly purposes.

He was also a genius. For him ‘opera’ meant music drama on the most elevated and extravagant scale. Inspired by the German romantic spirit of Weber, and reading copiously, he wrote the text for all his works of which Der Ring des Nibelungen is the most famous and formidable, its four operas spanning fifteen hours of music. He built an opera house in Bayreuth to stage the huge drama and needed a new breed of singers who could cope with his demands. Visiting London in 1877 he conducted a series of concerts at the Royal Albert Hall to raise money to help cover the deficit on his new building, a later development of which is still in regular use.

Wagner brought to a fine art the use of musical themes representative of the characters in the opera – the ‘leitmotiv’- and identifying those themes with their characters is a good way to prepare for the marathon of hearing the whole Ring cycle – which I have never done, though I have heard one of the four –Die Walkure, in concert performance, and three of his other operas performed on stage.

It may already have become clear that I am not a natural Wagner fan. I find him rather too po-faced and prolix – I may lack staying power, and I am not too good on heroic myths either. Some say he was a bad influence on the development of music, as composers tried to emulate his rich orchestration but lacked his driving self-belief and discipline. But no one can deny his skill, and dedication to his art. The sheer rhythmic force and splendour of his music will never be equalled either in sheer power or in beauty. Learning from others, he created a musical world that was utterly and uniquely his own.

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German Opera

Christoph Willibald Gluck’s colourful life spanned much of the eighteenth century. Together with the poet Calzabigi, he moved opera on from being a showplace for singers to display their gifts, to an art form where the drama and story line were of first importance.' Modest though the changes may seem to us (and I was present at a performance of ‘Iphigenie en Aulide’ by Opera North some years ago and though impressed was not emotionally engaged ) there were quarrels, arguments and even duels amongst his supporters and detractors, sometimes with fateful consequencies.

Joseph Haydn composed many operas which are rarely heard today and are eclipsed by those of his pupil Mozart whose operas, though very much of his own day, introduced a new depth to the genre and gave to the orchestra an eminence it had previously not enjoyed. It has been said of Mozart that all his music is made for singing and the lyrical beauty of so much of his work does indeed seem to belong to the voice. Nothing could be the same after ‘Don Giovanni’ with its powerful combination of humour and darkness.

Beethoven’s one opera, ‘Fidelio’ was the subject of many revisions; the four overtures are a sign of his commitment and of his desire to get the work as he wished it to be. The first performance in 1805 was a disaster and it was not until eight years later that a final version was widely applauded. A plea for pity and justice, it is a remarkable deeply moving work, it is in the basic repertoire of all major opera houses and there are many recordings available.

Carl Maria Weber(1786-1826) is seen as a further liberator of the operatic form and showed in his operas (still performed – a recent Covent Garden production of ‘Euryanthe’ was conducted by the brilliant Mark Elder), that the shape of folk tunes could be adapted for operatic purposes. The new flexible and romantic way in which Weber used the orchestra influenced many other composers such as Chopin, Liszt, Berlioz and Debussy who said of his music that it sounded as if he had studied the soul of every instrument. Following a performance of ‘Oberon’ in London, he died from the tuberculosis he had been struggling with. Richard Wagner, whom we shall meet next time and a friend and disciple of Weber, arranged for his coffin to be brought to Dresden where he gave the funeral oration.

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The World of Opera

I hope you have found my breathless blogs on Spanish music interesting, and similarly the additional ones on the wider European scene. Since beginning these articles in May of last year we have had 65,500 visits, and thank you for looking us up, but where to now? The Euroresidentes team suggest that I concentrate on particular compositions and memorable performances and this I will do, but I am conscious that we have neglected the world of opera, and so for the next few articles we’ll have a quick look there. Finally we shall do a round-up of contemporary Spanish music.

Operatic aficionados say that this is the perfect art form for it has music, song, dance (sometimes), drama, comedy and spectacle -it can also have an incredible plot line which suspends your intelligence but can arouse your emotions. It is generally agreed that the genre originated in Florence towards the close of the 16th.Century, where operatic behaviour was a way of life! There was a great deal of spoken dialogue (‘recitative’) but then under the influence of Claudio Monteverdi (1567- 1643)it developed rapidly, borrowing elements from the madrigal and ornate Venetian church music with a growing importance given to the place of arias and eventually the setting of recitative to music.

George Frideric Handel (1685-1759), German b y birth but living and composing in England, was responsible for a significent surge forward with his operas in the Italian ‘opera seria’ style; serious indeed with story lines borrowed from Greek mythology and extended and ornate solos, often for the great castrato singers and sopranos of his day.

Mozart whom we have met, gave opera – both comic and serious – a whole new dimension with prominence now given to the place of the orchestra as a full participant and not fulfilling a merely accompanying role, and with integrated plots peopled by characters of depth and personality. The Oxford Dictionary of Music says that after his ‘Don Giovanni’ in the world of opera, ‘almost anything was possible’.

We shall have a quick look at German, Italian, French and British opera.

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Johann Sebastian Bach

The Bach Family was almost a musical industry. Over a span of 100 years there were 53 of them holding such posts as organists, cantors or town musicians. J.S.B. was born in 1685. At the age of 32 and gaining a reputation as a brilliant organist, he was appointed as Kapellmeister at the court of Anhalt-Cothen, by which time he had composed many works. Three years later he became cantor of St.Thomas’, Leipzig, where he remained for the rest of his life. These were years of great creativity – it was normal for him to produce a new cantata for his protestant congregation every week (over 200 of them have been preserved and most of them have been recorded). He was very much a family man (he married twice) and had numerous children.

During his lifetime only a few of his works were published and as the new ‘enlightened’ aesthetic marked the end of the Baroque period of which he was the foremost exponent, some of his contemporaries regarded him as old fashioned and found his music too complicated (much of it certainly is very busy) and lacking in melodic appeal. That opinion remained for some years and it wasn’t until the early eighteenth century that his worth began to be recognised by the musical world and his many compositions catalogued and published.

The allegation that his music lacks tunes is easily discredited, perhaps especially so when his music is arranged for full symphony orchestra by such people as the composer William Walton and the conductor Leopold Stokowski, although purists disapprove. The Passions of the four gospels are in the repertoire of all major choral societies, his keyboard music, concertos for many instruments and the famous six Brandenburg Concertos are played regularly and have been recorded many times. Plenty of tunes there.The BBC are going to devote ten days of 'every note' he composed on their third programme during Christmas as they did recently for Beethoven. (Great for Bach devotees but hard on everyone else!)

Bach died in distressing circumstances – his eyes were failing and an unsuccessful
operation on them by John Taylor- a British oculist - in1750 caused his death. There is a
reverence given to Bach denied to most other composers. It is almost as if he
invented the musical tradition of which we are the fortunate inheritors.

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Vienna : City of Music

Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Bruckner, Haydn and Mahler have at least one thing in common – they all died in Vienna. Schubert was also born there. One writer suggests ‘that during the period 1740-1800 more music of recognised greatness was composed in Vienna than in any other city of the world’ – then and since, one might add. The city was a meeting place of three languages and cultures. Administration (often bureaucratic and inefficient) was carried out in German whilst the many resident or visiting nobles and their families cultivated the use of French and the large Italian community maintained the traditions of their position in the Hapsburg Empire.

Maria Theresa reigned from 1740 to 1780 and she and her court earlier in her reign attended various church occasions 78 times a year. Doubtless there was a demand for new church music and such events which were often preceded by musical processions. As many as 500 part-time musicians and singers were employed in this period. Concerts were frequently held in the theatres and great houses rather than in concert halls which came later.

By the end of the 19th Century the shift from aristocratic patronage to a broader civic base met the needs of a literate public of active amateurs from whose ranks Schubert’s friends and supporters came. Writing to his father in 1781, Mozart said ‘Vienna is the best place in the world for my profession’. He appeared in 71 concerts in the years 1781-1785 and his piano concertos were first performed there. Beethoven was able to enjoy a social position which Mozart and Haydn had barely achieved by the end of their lives. (It helped of course that the Archduke Rudolph -brother of the Emperor- was his adoring pupil). Yet all of the ‘classical’ composers were in their different ways honoured in the city even though often unrewarded financially.

In later years Mahler was not so well treated. He became a victim of the anti-Semitism that one day would fuel Nazism, and although he was the greatest conductor Vienna had ever known, he was effectively chased from the city, taking up an appointment as conductor of the New York Philharmonic.

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Haydn : 'Father of the Symphony'

…Well, if that’s not exactly accurate, that’s what many have said about this amazingly prolific composer, nicknamed affectionately if perhaps slightly pratronisingly, ‘Papa’. Born in 1732 and dying 77 years later, Franz Joseph Haydn for 30 years of his life was employed by one master: Prince Paul Eisenstadt followed by his successor Prince Nikolaus, both passionate music lovers. The family owned the extravagant Palace of Esterhaza, and lived there for the best part of every year, Haydn serving them as vice-Kapellmeister. ‘There was no one near to confuse me’ he said, ‘so I was forced to become original’. Earlier he had lived in near poverty as a teacher. For a time he taught Beethoven, spoke highly of him, and was rewarded for his pains by Beethoven saying he had taught him nothing! Mozart was his friend for whom he had the highest regard, and their works have an affinity of structure and style.

Haydn took hold of the baroque tradition and made it into a more varied and even sophisticated medium, the often predictable symphonic works of such people as Corelli and Vivaldi gaining new elegance and expressiveness in his hands. The term ‘sturm und drang’ (German for storm and stress) was used to describe the emotionalism and new harmonic flexibility of his symphonies (especially nos. 40-59) and the confidence of his enormously popular choral works such as ‘The Creation’ and ‘The Seasons’ , inspired by the English choral tradition established by Handel. His series of string quartets also reveal this new depth.

His 12 ‘London’ symphonies were partly written in Vienna and partly in London, which he visited at the invitation of the violinist and impresario Johann Salomon and where they were first performed to great acclaim. He wrote to please his employers and his growing public but in these, the last of his 104 symphonies, whilst the structure remains the same he challenges his listeners to think there way through his music rather than just be entertained by it. In the notes that accompany my copy of the Colin Davies and Concertgebouw recordings, Wolf Konold says ‘The undervaluation of Haydn that has prevailed since the Romantic era…..still stands in the way of a correct approach to Haydn’s late symphonies, which are comparable in musical significance to those of Beethoven, Bruckner or Mahler.

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(There is a huge website on Haydn which I haven’t explored – Google will get you there and you will find a picture of this kind and humorous man, enlivened by a right eye, which winks at you!)