Text Rendering in Eighteenth Century Recitativo Secco
2009; Routledge; Volume: 65; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2769-4046
Autores Tópico(s)Historical Influence and Diplomacy
ResumoIN MARCH 1771, MOZART RECEIVED a contract to compose a dramma per musica for the Regio Ducal Teatro in Milan, entitled Lucio Silla. It was premiered, perhaps oddly, on December 26, 1772. One can scarcely imagine a Weihnachtstag-Generalprobe in the 21st century!1 The sixteen year old Mozart was the first composer to set the new libretto by Giovanni De Gamerra. He was already an experienced composer of opera seria even at this age, having previously set Cigna-Santi's Mitridate, re di Ponto (1770), based on Racine's eponymously titled play. By the time Lucio Silla was premiered, he had already had the experience of writing the music for, and witnessing performances of, his settings of the Goldoni opera buffa, La finta semplice (1769), the Parini festa teatrale, Ascanio in Alba (October 1771), and the Metastasio azione teatrale, Il sogno di Scipione (May 1772). Wolfgang and his father Leopold had travelled to England in 1764, and the boy Mozart was exposed to the galant symphonies, sonatas, and stage works of Johann Christian Bach then in vogue, as well as meeting the older composer in person. The strong influence of Bach's music on Mozart's development is well known, and perhaps even overemphasized. In a curious reversal, two years after Mozart's Lucio Silla premiere in Milan, J. C. Bach was commissioned to compose an opera to the same De Gamerra libretto for Carl Theodors court in Mannheim. After some logistic setbacks, the opera seria was performed at the Mannheim Hoftheater in November 1775. De Gamerra's text was also set to music by Pasquale Anfossi for Venice (1774) and Michele Mortellari for Turin (1778),2 before the waning demand for opera seria in the late eighteenth century signalled the demise of all such libretti. Although Mozart went on to compose nine more Italian operas (two of which were opere serie), Lucio Silla was his last opera commissioned by and written for an Italian stage. The existence of separate musical settings of the same libretto by two of the great composers of the late eighteenth century-both scores being available in modern editions-enables us conveniently to compare individual approaches to Italian prose text setting in operatic recitativo secco. Admittedly, neither composer was a native Italian, but both had been immersed in the operatic world of Italy in their youths, aware as they were of the centrality and preeminence of Italian operatic style in the European musical world of the time. Both could compose Italian opera with the stylistic and linguistic authenticity of a Cimarosa, Piccinni, Paisiello, or Salieri, just as Handel's forty-three Italian operas had rivaled those of Alessandro Scarlatti in a previous generation. Mozart's ability to handle Italian musical text-setting was mastered in his pre-teen years, and there is little reason to suppose that, had J. C. Bach's setting of Lucio Silla been written before that of Mozart and had Mozart known it, that Mozart's work would exhibit any less distinctiveness to Bach's than it does in reality. An extant letter of Mozart from 1777 indicates that he showed an interest in Bach's opera, and asked the Abbe Vogler for a copy of the score to peruse. It is generally known that Italian libretti from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries alternated prose passages (whose purpose was usually to advance the plot) with poetic passages that provided opportunity for reflection, description of emotive states, and, of course, compositional dexterity and vocal display, both solo and in ensemble. Commentators frequently have pointed out the deftness with which Mozart broke down the barriers inherent in those conventions to allow for overlap of function-recitatives in which characters step out of the immediate dramatic moment to comment on their emotional states, and accompanied arias and ensembles in which much forward action takes place. Mozart's genius for drama is undeniable, and generally appreciated in the mature works of the last ten years of his life. …
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