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Operatic reform before Gluck, and the German heroic music theatre of the Sturm und Drang

1980; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 6; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/08145857.1980.10416656

1949-453X

Andrew D. McCredie,

Musicology and Musical Analysis

Abstract “Un opera di un gusto nuovo dove sono riuniti lo spettacolo francese e la musica italiana” (An opera of a new taste should be a reunification of French spectacle with Italian music). So wrote Algarotti to Voltaire on May 31, 1759, concerning the new operatic reforms at the Bourbon court at Parma.1 From about 1745 onwards, the winds of change blew with gathering momentum across the operatic landscape of Europe, causing a fragmentation of previously stereotyped forms, and leading to their cross-pollination with those of different national traditions and with other modes of dramatic expression. The climate of innovation, experiment and regeneration, once spawned, profoundly influenced not only the theory and practice of opera, but also those of ballet and incidental music. Until the first production of the Viennese version of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice in 1762, the operatic traditions of Europe’s foremost court theatres in Berlin, Dresden, Naples, Munich, Vienna and in Paris itself, appeared to preserve a series of ossifying Neapolitan, Venetian or Parisian styles, usually through the encouragement of composers particularly skilled in their execution (e.g. Hasse, Graun). In Italy in particular, the stagione system, which largely restricted operatic productions to the Carnival season between Epiphany and Ash Wednesday, helped to protect such traditions against change. The mechanism of the Italian stagione, graphically outlined in Villeneuve’s Lettre sur le méchanisme de l’opéra italien, was an ad hoc measure, under which a maestro and a group of singers were brought together in one centre, usually about a month before the Carnival season, to compose and rehearse an opera of usually twenty-five or twenty-six numbers linked by recitatives.2 Under such an arrangement, the casting and distribution of solo numbers tended to follow a hierarchic grading of singers according to their ability and/or reputation. With the exception of the Viennese circle, the proponents of change were the smaller rulers and princelings: in particular, the Dukes of Parma and Württemberg, the Palatine Elector at Mannheim, and the geographically peripheral court of the Braganzas at Lisbon. A comparative investigation of the theatrical conditions and practices at these courts in this period reveals a common pre-occupation in blending French spectacle and costuming with progressive reform and, at times, radical modification of the Metastasian tradition, as appeared implicit in Algarotti’s reform ideals.3 Moreover, each of these theatres sought to add to the spectacle through the incorporation of extended ballet sequences, which in Stuttgart and Mannheim, under the direction of such choreographers as Noverre and Laucherry, flowered into the ballet d’action.4 Several of these centres were also linked through incumbencies of the same composer-reformers: Jommelli was active in Vienna, Stuttgart and Lisbon, Traëtta in Parma, Mannheim and Vienna, Holzbauer in Stuttgart and Mannheim, and the widely performed Perez in Lisbon.