Some Representations of Opera Seria in Opera Buffa

Some Representations of Opera Seria in Opera BuffaAuthor(s): Mary HunterSource: Cambridge Opera Journal, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Jul., 1991), pp. 89-108Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/823602 .

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Cambridge Opera Journal, 3, 2, 89-108

Some representations of opera seria in opera buffa

MARY HUNTER

It is becoming increasingly usual to think of music of the Classical period as conveying its meanings at least in part through a rhetoric of topoi. According to this model, such elements as rhythm, texture and melody evoke both musical and extra-musical 'echoes'. Woven into the structure of the music, these echoes form a collage of connotations from which meaning can be inferred. As a genre of its time, opera buffa is in no way exempt from this 'combinatorial' process, or its corollary system of associative meaning.1 Indeed, every level of meaning in opera buffa arises from the combination and recombination of textual, musical and dramatic elements. For example, the characters, plot types and comic riffs of opera buffa are often drawn from the commedia dell'arte;2 we also find stories from folk tales and fairy tales,3 and from fashionable novels and spoken theatre.4 We find gestures and scenes from opera seria and tragedie lyrique, as well as quotations from and allusions to other opere buffe.5 The music 1 Leonard Ratner, Classic Music (New York, 1980), presents the most comprehensive

account of both musical topoi and the idea of combinatoriality. Wye J. Allanbrook's Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart (Chicago, 1983) also relies on topoi for its reading of Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni. The notion of topoi that may suggest extramusical meanings is not unrelated to the idea of a formal or melodic archetype against which a particular musical formulation may be understood. Many scholars have used H. C. Koch's Versuch einerAnleitung zur Composition (Leipzig, 1782, 1787 and 1793) and his Musikalisches Lexikon (Frankfurt a. M., 1802) as the basis for studies of such archetypes as they form a system of purely musical meaning.

2 The young lovers, the wily male servant and the lustful old warden are among the most obvious of the stock characters in opera buffa. This connection is noted in most writing on the genre.

3 Zemire et Azor, set as an opera comique by Gretry, and translated into Italian thereafter (and performed at least at Eszterhaza during Haydn's employment there), is a version of 'Beauty and the Beast'; Bertati's and Anfossi's II curioso indiscreto (Rome, 1777) is based on an episode from Don Quixote that had achieved the status of a folk tale; and many of the fundamental structures in opera buffa (generational rebellion, for example, or the recognition of true identity) are also found in folk tales and fables.

4 Richardson's Pamela and Marivaux' sentimental novel La Vie de Marianne were models for many opere buffe. Beaumarchais' stage plays Le Barbier de Seville, Le Mariage de Figaro and Eugenie were all adapted as operas.

5 The famous quotations from three contemporary opere buffe in the last act of Don Giovanni are the most celebrated examples of a common procedure. The 'French topos' occurs in a number of operas, usually as a subject of ridicule. See, for example, Monsieur Gir6's rendition of 'Que vos yeux sont touchants' in Gassmann's L'amore artigiano (Vienna, 1767); or another Monsieur Gir6's French barbarisms in the Vienna 1788 version of Livigni's and Anfossi's Le gelosie fortunate.



Mary Hunter

also ranges widely in stylistic origin and reference, moving from low comedy to elevated coloratura, from bland neutrality to affecting sentimentality, and from extended expressions of a single emotion to lightning changes in Affekt. Thus the rhetoric of topoi characteristic of instrumental music of the period is included within a structure of reference and resonance that invokes textual and dramatic 'sources' as well as musical ones. Opera buffa is, in other words, a fundamentally intertextual genre.

One can of course argue that any discourse is 'nothing but' an assemblage of units or signs borrowed from a given cultural heritage, and that in this respect opera buffa is no different from any musical genre.6 Robert Hatten has described the inevitable sharing of musical devices that characterises all compositions in a given style as a sort of 'anonymous' intertextuality.7 However, the sort of intertextuality that distinguishes opera buffa is broader and coarser, and is perhaps best described by Hatten's term 'thematic intertextuality':8 'thematic is understood in the broadest sense as those elements and processes .. . which are sufficiently characterized as to be "marked" for the listener's attention'.9 In opera buffa, what tends to be 'marked' for attention is the combination of musical, textual and dramatic resonances, since it is by means of these combi- nations that character is developed and the action of an opera individuated.

A pervasive point of reference within opera buffa is opera seria. Like comedy of many sorts, opera buffa relies on, or presupposes the existence of, a parallel higher genre, even when full-scale generic parody is not at issue. 0

Opera buffa's references to and uses of opera seria range in form from citations of particular works, events or characters to the most general recalling of opera seria's world of elevated postures and gestures, heroic dilemmas, classical references and aristocratic social milieu. The citations and allusions range from parody or satire to sympathetic assimilation. And although this article describes and categorises levels of reference to opera seria in opera buffa, it also suggests connections between form and tone, as well as some ways in which this particular type of intertextuality relates to the social function of opera buffa in the latter part of the eighteenth century.

My repertory is limited: chronologically to opere buffe written from about 1765 to about 1790; geographically to those written (and mostly produced) from Rome to Vienna. Venice is the nucleus of the area, and Goldoni is the

6 'Bricolage' is one current term for the borrowing that pervades every level of a discourse. The term was originally coined by Claude Levi-Strauss, but is adapted (and then instantly undercut) by Jacques Derrida in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (London, 1978), 285-6. I am grateful to-Malcolm Woodfield for this reference.

7 'The Place of Intertextuality in Music Studies', American Journal of Semiotics, 3/4 (1985), 69-82.

8 Hatten, 70. 9 David Bromwich, 'Parody, Pastiche and Allusion', in Lyric Poetry: Beyond New Criticism,

ed. Chaviva Hosek and Patricia Parker (Ithaca, 1985), 328-44, uses the term 'pastiche' to refer to the level of intertextuality that is my concern here. However, since 'pastiche' in the context of eighteenth-century opera has another, well-defined meaning, I will avoid the term.

10 Joseph Dane, Parody (Norman, Ok., 1988), 17-18.

90




forefather of most of the libretti, but the direct author of only a very few. I have looked only at two- and three-act opere buffe, with various genre designa- tions (dramma giocoso, intermezzo, dramma tragicomico, opera comica, etc.). Of the roughly 160 such operas from the period 1770 to 1790 listed in Taddeo Wiel's catalogue of operas performed in Venice in the eighteenth century, I have looked at about fifty,11 plus another thirty first produced in Vienna, Rome and elsewhere.

1

While the libretti of Metastasio are the most frequently quoted examples of opera seria, classical myth and Ariostan pastoral tend to stand for a more general notion of the high style. Musical references to opera seria also range from literal quotations and specific parodies to more general allusions to the elevated style.12 The repertory also includes full-scale satires on the genre itself, such as Calzabi- gi's and Gassmann's L'opera seria (1769), or Diodati's and Cimarosa's L'impre- sario in angustie (1786). Works of this nature are well covered in the literature; there is little new in the examples I have seen, and I will not discuss them in this essay. The primary targets of their humour remain organisational incom- petence, competing degrees of personal vanity, theatrical extravagance and the absence of artistic integrity; these jokes seem to have remained remarkably con- stant through the century.

Literal quotations of Metastasian material occur about ten times in my repertory, not counting insertion arias.'3 All occur in the course of comic arias, and all are straightforwardly parodistic. I will discuss two representative examples here. The first comes from the famous aria 'Vo solcando un mar crudele' from Metastasio's Artaserse, as set by Leonardo Vinci in 1730.14 In Guglielmi's II ratto della sposa (Venice, 1765), Metastasio's lines are inserted into a comic number in which the singer, Gaudenzio, suggests how his friend Gentilino might dupe an old man out of his fortune by pretending to be the old man's long-lost nephew, recently returned from France with lots of money and all the fashionable accomplishments (which, naturally, include being able to sing a Metastasian aria). The aria begins with Gaudenzio setting the scene in typical comic patter (see Ex. 1). Gaudenzio then describes to Gentilino the things 'the nephew' is supposed to have learned in Paris: ballet (a padedu); other dances (the capriola); and singing, in the form of this aria, which Gaudenzio teaches to Gentilino as he sings it (see Ex. 2). The parodistic intent is clear from the text and dramatic situation in several ways. The librettist degrades the Vinci 1 I teatri musicali di Venezia (Venice, 1897). 12 Steven Hughes, 'Allusion and Expression in Eighteenth-Century Literature', in The

Author in his Work, ed. Louis Martz and Aubrey Williams (New Haven, 1978), lays out a useful scheme of types of 'strict' intertextuality in literature of this century. 13 Needless to say, these findings are unlikely to be exhaustive. Most of my quotations include a first line from a Metastasian text, and are thus easy to identify. There are probably many more quotations of later parts of Metastasian texts yet to be discovered.

14 I am most grateful to Reinhard Strohm for pointing out the musical origin of this quotation.

91



92 Mary Hunter

[Andante]

Ist & 2nd 7 Violins

Gaudenzio | -- | J I 1 I Fi gu - ra- ti in quel si - to, il vec - chio che t'a -

Ist & 2nd L - ) . | -J Violins f=^V=^= 'l:=^ y ^ 1

Gaudenzio X 5 ? ' I Io X

- spet - ta, il vec - chio che t'a - spet - ta

Bassi I

Ex. 1. G. Martinelli and Pietro Guglielmi, II ratto della sposa, Act I scene 7 (Venice, 1765). Source: A:Wn Mus. Hs. 17784. Translation: 'Imagine yourself there, the old man waiting for you'.

from an expression of sentiment or vocal power to a cynically manipulated status symbol, and suggests a 'mismatch' between the audience's cultural memory of a virtuosic opera seria performance and the current promise of an incompetent performance by an untrained trickster. The music intensifies the joke. Guglielmi changed Vinci's Allegro to Andante, making the original nimble leaps awkward, and no doubt necessitating extra breaths in musically clumsy places. This could be performed either as a simple example of ineptitude, or as an attempt to teach Gentilino the tune. This section returns in the final section of the aria, in note values half as long as the first time: either Gaudenzio has figured out 'how it goes', or he assumes that his student doesn't need any more help.15

My second example of direct quotation from Metastasio is a text from Didone abbandonata (Act II scene 2),16 'Ah non lasciarmi no'; and instead of taking aim at the heroic posture, it uses intense sentiment as its target.17 The quotation '5 The same quotation, with essentially the same music, occurs in a later Guglielmi opera,

Le vicende d'amore (Rome, 1784); it was evidently found funny enough to bring back (though in Le vicende the dramatic excuse is significantly feebler).

16 First set by Domenico Sarro in 1724. 17 I have not identified a musical source for this quotation; unlike the Vinci, which stands

out in every way from its context, it seems to be from the same period as its surrounding aria, if not from the same affective world.




Gaudenzio

Gaudenzio

Gaudenzio

t I IJ Ji IJ ' 1F Vo sol - can-do un mar cru- - de - le sen - za ve- le e

sen - za sar

f rf<-- I-M te

Ex. 2. Martinelli and Guglielmi, II ratto della sposa, Act I scene 7. Translation: 'I cross a cruel sea, with neither sail nor sail shroud'.

occurs in Paisiello's Le due contesse, in which the fatuous Cavaliere re-enacts in heartfelt but incoherent terms the death of Dido, which he connects with the death of his late wife. His audience is the servant girl Livietta, whom he believes to be a countess, and who is planning to entrap him in marriage. She rejects his posturing and quickly moves to the next day's nuptial arrangements. These completed, however, she gives her version of the Dido and Aeneas story:

Sapete che dicea al furbarel d'Enea mesta Didone un di. Piangendo modestina la povera Regina sempre dicea cosi: ah non lasciarmi no caro bell'idol mio, se tu m'inganni oh Dio di chi mi fidero ? Badate di non essere com'il Trojano infido di non partir dal Lido com'Egli se n'ando.

[You know that one day / Dido sadly spoke / to that rascal Aeneas. / The poor modest / weeping Queen / continually spoke thus: / 'Ah do not leave me / my dearest beloved; / if you deceive me, oh God, / whom will I trust?' / Mind that you are not / like the unfaithful Trojan, / and don't leave the country / like he did.]

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Mary Hunter

The aria begins in sprightly buffa style (see Ex. 3), but moves to affected sentimentality for the textual quotation, with frequent sighing appoggiaturas and a striking leap on 'oh Dio' (see Ex. 4). The parody is not as crude as in the

[Allegretto]

Livietta =' i [ ~ r e

Sa - pe - te che di - ce -a al fur - ba- rel d'E - ne - a

Bassi i b : r/ I Y | - I r XI

A^ 1- L i

Livietta r p6p vr I me -sta Di - do -neun di, me - sta Di-do-ne un di.

Bassi | I'

Ex. 3. Giuseppe Petrosellini and Giovanni Paisiello, Le due contesse, Act II scene 3 (Florence, 1776). Sources: Rome and Vienna 1776 libretti; A:Wn Mus. Hs. 17803 and H:Bn OE-75.

previous example, but there are many similarities, including the manipulation of high culture for material gain; here, Livietta seems to assume that knowledge of classical fable will bolster her disguise, and thus better her chances with the Cavaliere. Parody here arises partly from the 'misuse' of the text as cultural artifact, and partly from Livietta's inability to grasp the nobility of her theme; Dido and Aeneas are for her no more than a 'modestina' and a 'furbarello'.

Although opera buffa quotes seria texts rarely, it often evokes the seria world by referring to seria characters. Most frequent by far are Dido and Aeneas, but a variety of generically classical or Ariostan characters such as Hercules, Diana, Orlando or the Eumenides appear with some regularity. There are also occasional references to specifically Metastasian characters.18 Classical, pastoral or seria characters are typically invoked in two contexts. The first involves madness (usually feigned) where the possessed character 'sees' the other-worldly characters; indeed the invocation of the classical or Ariostan world constitutes

18 For example, in Anfossi's and Bertati's II curioso indiscreto (Act II scene 7), the heroine Clorinda feigns madness and pretends that she sees her rival lovers as Timante and Olinto, characters from Metastasio's Demofoonte and Demetrio respectively. I thank Bruce A. Brown for help on this point.

94




Larghetto

Livietta E7 r 7e r 6 r I I i I w Ah no. la-sciar- mi n6, la-sciar-mi no, ca - ro bel-l'i-dol

Bass i 4-:- 4 - iBassi F t i r r r i r r r I l I

Livietta J r - - r 6 [ I ' !

mi - o se tu_ m'in-gan-nioh Dio oh Dio di chi mi fi- de-

Bassi ) I rrr r r r r r r r

Livietta M .

- rb,_ se tu m'in-gan-nioh Di-o di chi mi fi - de - rb?

Bassi br | r r J J I

Ex. 4. Petrosellini and Paisiello, Le due contesse, Act II scene 3.

the most frequent signal of madness in my repertory. The second context involves a character (usually the buffoon) comparing himself bathetically to a great hero from the past.19 Such references usually occur in recitative, and might have been emphasised with gesture in ways that are no longer recoverable; the music almost never betrays a response to the text. Comic confrontations with death also occasion invocations of the classical world; as Charles Troy has pointed out, buffoon versions of the supernatural were a standard device in comic operas from the beginning of the eighteenth century.20

From the late 1760s on, however, references to the next world not infrequently conjure up memories of Orfeo. Two of the most striking references occur in Petrosellini's and Paisiello's Le due contesse and in Porta's and Righini's II convitato di pietra. In the first of these the ridiculous Cavaliere makes his entrance by comparing himself to Orfeo, saying that were he that hero, he would be looking for his dead wife, and then quoting the beginning of the text to the most celebrated number in Gluck's Orfeo, 'Che faro senza Euridice' (see Ex. 5). The melodic references to Gluck are much more subtle than the textual ones. The music recalls Gluck's original only in the short phrases ending in suspensions to the leading note. The only other melodic reference to Gluck 19 Squire characters, such as Pasquale in Badini's and Porta's Orlando Paladino (set by

Guglielmi and Haydn) are particularly prone to such comparisons. 20 Charles E. Troy, The Comic Intermezzo (Ann Arbor, 1979), 82.

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Mary Hunter

[b.43]

Cavaliere

Bassi

Cavaliere

Bassi

Andante

"Lim --- j~ I i Er - _m 1.I Lir-- Che fa - ro senz' Eu-ri- di-ce che fa -

M T 5 J I - || J4 I I I~ .

~-'Ir I [1-~"~

I! F I I

- ro senz' il mio ben?

1) rr

, iJ I7 . J 1 S'I

Ex. 5. Petrosellini and Paisiello, Le due contesse, Act I scene 2.

might lie in the descent from 5 to 3 in bars 3-4 and 7-8, which echo the end of Orfeo's first phrase (see Ex. 6). The accompaniment, however, clearly refers

Andante sostenuto sciolte

A 3 3 3. 3 1- j Ilw

I IIv' ,0W !'"

I IP--- W!ml-

II

Vn. II II I I. ItI. I " 1 ~'1'7 I..,,1" I I I I I

Ah s'io fos - si co - - meOr - fe - o

Cavaliere J' i [ _7 -

Bassi - r i I

Vn t^. tg _,. 7fr' ;' j --

.. T . . Vn.- . _ _ , -! . - r' _ !

cer - - che - re - i 'e - stin - - ta spo-sa

Cavaliere 4 - -- i I | I II

Bassi

rr F I '

Ex. 6. Petrosellini and Paisiello, Le due contesse, Act I scene 2.

to Orfeo's earlier dialogue with chorus, 'Deh placatevi con me', where the triplets are plucked and stand for Orfeo's lyre. In addition, Paisiello's choice

. . r f r I ! ,* r r \ I - - I I

96

I I I I I I




of C major (the key of 'Che faro') is probably not accidental. The parody, as always, consists in a diminution of the original material; in this case the heroic journey of Orfeo to the underworld becomes the entrance on stage of a buffoon nobleman, and the mythic death of Euridice engenders bald-faced and mundane references to dead wives. There is also a comic twist at the end: the Cavaliere loses control, and suggests that his wife died to spite him.

Ah s'io fossi come Orfeo cercherei l'estinto sposa e la cetra armoniosa pizzicando andrei cosi. Ma la sposa mia infelice dagl'Elisi piu non vien. Che faro senz' Euridice, Che faro senz'il mio ben? Voi ridete? Oh quest'e bella. Sono vedovo cospetto e mia moglie per dispetto, si signor, se ne mori.

[Ah, if I were like Orfeo / I would seek my dead wife, / and plucking my harmonious lyre / I would go along thus. / But my unhappy wife / does not return from Elysium. / 'What shall I do without Euridice, / what shall I do without my love?' / You laugh? That's nice. / Good heavens, I'm a widower / and yes, sir, my wife died / to spite me.]

At the end of Porta's and Righini's II convitato di pietra, Don Giovanni is dragged off to the underworld in C minor to music and words that cannot but remind us of the other famous C minor coro difurie. The unison beginning of the chorus is particularly telling, as it reworks the first six notes of the Gluck (see Ex. 7). This reference to Orfeo differs considerably from the obvious parody

Intro. Unison

j L Jt 1 j j j,j1 J44 Ji II etc.

Ex. 7. Nunziato Porta and Vincenzo Righini, II convitato di pietra, Act III, ultima (Prague, 1776). Sources: Vienna 1777 libretto; H:Bn OE-84.

described above. There is, for example, no verbal mention of Orfeo, and the tone of the reference is much less clear. On the one hand, there seems to be a serious moralising purpose to the scene, which might suggest some sort of homage to Gluck. Not only does Don Giovanni get his just deserts, but this is made perfectly explicit in the libretto, which prefaces the coro difurie with a perfectly serious statement of the moral of the story:

97



Mary Hunter

La giustizia del Cielo ha prevenuto II tardo colpo di Giustizia umana; II terribile caso omai c'insegni Che l'uom muore qual visse, e il Giusto Cielo Dimostra adesso a noi con quest'esempi Come punisce i Dissoluti, e gl'Empi.

[Heaven's justice has pre-empted / the late operation of human justice; / this terrible event teaches us / that man dies as he has lived, and that the just heavens / show us with these examples / how dissolute and impious men are punished.]

On the other hand the suspensions and dissonances in the music (which are in my experience untypical of Righini, who usually writes no more than har- monically competent music), are so unlike Gluck's elegant consonances that they suggest either that Righini was trying to express the agony of the condemned soul, or that he was engaging in musical parody, not only taking the original 'out of context', but also debasing it (see Ex. 8).

J - I , I I I I ? I

Fra ne - re fu - rie or - ri - bi - le, | J A,_L _ L-

r ' ' fra ne-re fu - rie or-

: ..A B.

- - T:^bF ' bC I - t

f P f p f p f p

B. r ! 1 'r r Ir r f | bi-le pe r sem - pre, per sem - pre, per sem - pre

_f P ) ri - bil pe se p re pr se pre r r I p T.~~~~~~~~~~ rv

Ex. 8. Porta and Righini, II convitato di pietra, Act III; ultima. Translation: 'Among dark and horrible furies forever'.

Coro

Core

S. J J J W. -- " .I. A.~bb, d W I iL a i

98

/

I hNh I




2

In addition to appearing in quotations or specific references, opera seria is also represented in opera buffa by the use of stylistic types. These range from whole arias to single phrases or particular devices. The rage aria is an obvious example of a type appropriated from opera seria, and often used parodistically. In fact there is some evidence that the parodic rage aria was an established type in this period. In Salieri's La fiera di Venezia, Falsirena, the seconda donna of the plot, pretends for her own nefarious reasons to audition for a position in a company. She sings a seria piece - a duet with a text supposedly from some version of Acis and Galatea - and then produces her buffa number, the beginning of which is given in Example 9. It progresses to an absurd pitch of hysteria towards the end, further intensifying the parody (see Ex. 10).21

Falsirena

Bassi

Falsirena

Bassi

f r r - Ir r l r r r F Rab-bia, bi - le, af- fan- no, e stiz - za, e di-

w- t f 7 _ r I

r r--Ir -r - spet - to, ege - lo - si - a.

-4X f r r ir r r rI

Ex. 9. Boccherini and Antonio Salieri, La fiera di Venezia, Act I scene 9 (Vienna, 1772). Source: H:Bn OE-10. Translation: 'Rage, anger, grief, and offense, / and vexation and jealousy'.

Most appropriations of seria types are not as clear in tone as the parody rage aria. The heroic aria in 4/4 or cut time, with an opening melody that proceeds mostly in minims or large note values over a trommel bass, and with extensive coloratura at the ends of the exposition and recapitulation, is particularly ambiguous in tone. Musically, such numbers are indistinguishable from their counterparts in opera seria. Dramatically, their evaluation as heroic, mock- heroic or pale imitation of heroic depends heavily on the status of the character: a peculiarly difficult thing to assess today (see below). However, as I have argued elsewhere, such arias typically raise the possibility of parody, even if

21 Compare, for example, with 'Odio, furor, dispetto, dolor' from Haydn's Armida.

99



100 Mary Hunter

Allegro assai

Salierir j ?; I

Rab- bia, bi - le, af - fan - no, e ge-lo -

- si - a il mio co-re e l'al-ma mi - a in - co-min-cia- no a strac-ciar, non mi

Bassi 1 5 T

Salieri | pos- so piu fre - nar, non mi pos - so piu fre - nar.

Bassi . | |

Ex. 10. Boccherini and Salieri, La fiera di Venezia, Act I scene 9. Translation: 'Rage, anger, grief and jealousy / begin to tear at my heart and soul .... / I can no longer restrain myself.'

they do not fulfil it, and a certain ambiguity or fragility of tone is characteristic of appropriations of heroic musical figures.22

Less specific than the appropriation of particular textual or musical types, but still falling within a comparatively 'strict' definition of intertextuality, is opera buffa's use of seria-like plot topics.23 However, it is not the world of ancient history so common in Metastasio's full-length libretti that is represented in this sub-genre of opera buffa, but the world of classical fable and myth, and the pastoral world of Ariosto and his followers. These are the realms of Metastasian one-act feste teatrali, and of libretti by such writers as Calzabigi and Varesco. Examples of opere buffe that refer to or rework classical or Ariostan plot types, albeit in a variety of ways, include Dittersdorf's II finto pazzo per amore,24 which uses the genre of the pastoral as its basis, even referring to at least two Metastasian texts: Gazzaniga's L'isola di Alcina,25 and Haydn's

22 Mary Hunter, 'Cosifan tutte et les conventions musicaux de son temps', L'avant-scene opera, 131-2 (May-June, 1990), 158-64.

23 For a succinct description of different 'levels' of intertextuality, see Gerald Prince, A Dictionary of Narratology (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1988), 46.

24 Johannisberg, 1772 (libretto used: Eszterhiza 1776). 25 Venice, 1772 (libretti used: Vienna 1774, Graz 1778, Eszterhaza 1779).




Orlando paladino.26 But perhaps the most famous example of a reworked seria- like plot is Da Ponte's and Martin y Soler's L'arbore di Diana,27 which refers to the classical fable of Diana and Endymion. While opere buffe about the genre of opera seria are uniformly parodistic, ones that simply appropriate seria- like plots are more various in tone. In the following discussion of L'arbore di Diana I want to suggest the complex dialectic between parody and assimilation possible in opera buffa, particularly when the primary 'background' text belongs to a more elevated genre.

Although the original source of this opera is classical fable, it is likely that Da Ponte at least knew of Metastasio'sfesta teatrale entitled Endimione (1721), set at least a dozen times in the course of the century.28 Both Metastasio and Da Ponte reworked the original story: Endimione reciprocates Diana's love, and the piece ends with the happy arrival of Hymen to celebrate the couple's nuptials. In both pieces a disguised Amore intervenes to bring about the happy conclusion. One significant difference is that Metastasio uses Endimione's amorous inexperience as the only obstacle to the final, happy union (Amore nudges him into reciprocation of Diana's love), while Da Ponte builds his plot around the more serious obstacle of Diana's dedication to virginity. The general smooth- ness of Metastasio's version is entirely appropriate to its brevity and its original function as entertainment for an aristocratic wedding. Da Ponte's numerous plot complications befit a full-length opera buffa. I would suggest that while Da Ponte's expansion of the incidental complications of the plot makes fun of both the Metastasio and the classical fable, his focus on Diana's, rather than Endimione's, change of heart is anything but parodistic. Martin y Soler's music also reinforces the emotional weight of Diana's progress through the drama.

Although I cannot describe all the ways in which the incidental tomfoolery of Da Ponte's libretto presents an irreverent version of a well-known myth, and in some instances seems specifically to refer to Metastasio's festa teatrale, one instance suggests a sense of the comic aspect of the whole. This concerns the re-figuring of Amore. In Metastasio's Endimione, Amore appears as the usual boy, and retains that persona throughout. In L'arbore di Diana, however, having introduced himself in his real persona, Amore infiltrates Diana's garden of virginity as a charming maidservant, which naturally causes all sorts of confu- sion among the men of the plot. This twist was complicated by the fact that Amore was played by a woman, and - a further twist - that Amore's costume for the sections where he appears as a boy was extremely low cut, amply revealing the sex of the singer, and occasioning at least one outraged complaint about the obscenity of the piece.29 The play on sexual identity and the many double entendres of the libretto are a far cry from Metastasian primness. Indeed, this 26

Eszterhaza, 1782. 27

Vienna, 1787. 28 Included among these settings are Alberti (Venice, 1737), Bernasconi (Venice, 1742),

Jomelli (Genoa, 1756) and Fiorillo (Kassel, 1763). 29 Anon., 'LETTRE d'un habitant de Vienne a son ami a Prague, qui lui avait demande

ses reflexions sur l'opera intitule L'Arbore di Diana'. From Otto Michtner, Das alte Burgtheater als Opernbihne (Vienna, 1970), 435-9.

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Amore is not at all the saccharine purveyor of easy and socially acceptable sentiment that appears in Endimione and is invoked in most opere buffe; he is, rather, and despite the comic trappings, much closer to the self-absorbed and socially disruptive force that drives Busenello's and Monteverdi's L'incoro- nazione di Poppea.

As the piece develops, Amore causes Diana to undergo a conversion from the rigid, old-fashioned, traditionally aristocratic (or in this case divine) postures of proud self-assertion and rage to a presumably more appealing submission to love. In other words, she moves from a position above the main business of the action (and thus susceptible to parody) to a position level with mortals that permits, even encourages, sympathetic identification. Conversion exper- iences, especially ones that stick, are rare in opera buffa, where either the proper alignments of couples are a foregone conclusion, or unexpected alignments are facilitated by changes in outward circumstances (such as documents proving noble or ignoble lineage).

Diana's change from implacable goddess to vulnerable woman is essentially a psychological rather than a circumstantial change, and it is realised musically as well as poetically. Her first aria, before she knows of Amore's intrusion, is a gentle pastoral in ABA form. Her reaction to discovering that men have been introduced into her kingdom is an archetypically 'elevated' aria: formally old-fashioned (sonata-like with contrasting middle section, reminiscent of da capo form), a triadic melody in 4/4, the usual pulsing bass, and the predictable coloratura at the end of the exposition (see Ex. 11). Diana's next aria occurs at the beginning of the second act, as she discovers one of her nymphs with

Allegro [Vns]

.... ~ba - iq'I f P T Sen - - to che De-a son i - o,

Diana "bb ' c 1 [ 5 ?

sen - to che ho reg-no, e so-glio

Bassi 9: Sv 1 ' I ~--k 1

Ex. 11. Lorenzo Da Ponte and Martin y Soler, L'arbore di Diana, Act I scene 9 (Vienna, 1787). Sources: Vienna 1787 libretto; A:Wn Mus. Hs. 17795. Translation: 'I feel that I am a goddess, / that I have the realm and the throne'.

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Allegro assai

Diana f 1' p T i C r r $ m

Im-pu - di - ca in-dar - no fug - gi, di ce-

Bassi j):bJ

| I J ~ J I | I

Diana U 9 -

r r - lar - ti in-dar - no ten- ti, hosco- per -to tra -di-

l oBassiJ bJ J F

I -

Diana $ IT -

T I -

- men - ti di quel - l'al - ma sen - z'o - nor. etc.

Bassi L) i J I 6

Ex. 12. Da Ponte and Martin y Soler, L'arbore di Diana, Act II scene 2. Translation: 'Shameless woman, you flee in vain, / your attempts to hide are in vain; / I have uncovered the treachery / of your dishonourable heart.'

men. This is a typical rage aria: 4/4, much sound and fury in the orchestra, downward sequences of quavers in the vocal part and so on (see Ex. 12). The first signal that she might have been infected by love comes immediately after this aria, as she wonders in recitative why she isn't really as angry as she should be. Her duet with the newly awakened Endimione, in an uncharacteristically buffa style, suggests that she is at the very least coming off her pedestal (see Ex. 13). The final evidence of her conversion is her Rondo, which she sings as a regretful adieu to Endimione, thinking that she has been caught out by her priest and will have to give up her lover. The opening of the Rondo recalls an almost Gluckian world of noble simplicity; it is difficult to take it as anything but perfectly serious, partly because of the music, and partly because the emo- tions expressed recall those of the myth (see Ex. 14). This touching moment is immediately revealed to be the result of a trick arranged by Amore, at which point we move back into the more familiar mode of irreverent critical distance from both the myth and Metastasio's reworking of it.

What I find remarkable about this piece is the range and variety of tone in the role of Diana, from her rage aria, which turns out to be a sort of self-parody,

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Mary Hunter

Andantino

Pia - nin pia - ni - no; lo chia -me - r6; poi quan-do e de -sto

fug-g prs Yto ,1 n Id r q

Y

fug-gi - ro pre -sto, in - di ben so quel che fa - ro.

(Vla) J' ,

7^ ri r < i ?r 3 If I r I

Ex. 13. Da Ponte and Martin y Soler, L'arbore di Diana, Act II scene 9. Translation: 'I'll call him / very softly, / then when he wakes / I'll run away quickly, / and after that I know / what I'll do.'

Largo , [+Vlnsl _

Diana

Bassi

rj r-rr^T ' u r- I I -J

I ir - r

f

Te- - co por - ta, o mia spe - ran- za, l'al - - ma

b r I J. i J II r 1 b I [+ C1& Via]

Diana

Bassi

mi - a, che vien con te;

>) r II B J sn J I [Bsn]

Ex. 14. Da Ponte and Martin y Soler, L'arbore di Diana, Act II scene 14. Translation: 'Carry with you, my love, / my heart which accompanies you.'

to her assumption of a buffa voice to speak with Endimione, to the sentimental self-exposure she affects in her Rondo. All these 'voices' or 'personae' are pro- jected by intertextual means, that is, they are understood by reference to the conventional musical topics of the genre. Connected as they are to the dramati-

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Diana

Bassi

Diana

Bassi




cally articulated changes in Diana's self-presentation, these voices and topics suggest remarkable depth and complexity of character.

3

All full-length opere buffe I have looked at include representatives of various social classes; the large majority include two or three characters either born into a high social class or with socially advantageous marital arrangements, and with sentimental interests within the drama.30 Although rarely described as parti serie in later eighteenth-century sources, the counts and countesses, marquises and ladies of opera buffa frequently and consistently invoke a Metasta- sian linguistic and musical world, and are clearly intended to represent the high style in some way or other.

However, while these characters continue to use a Metastasian lexicon of images, words, phrases and forms, they move away from a truly Metastasian poetics in at least one crucial respect. The linguistic hallmarks of these characters will be recognisable to most readers: a vocabulary of intense sentiments, especially negative (dolore, affanno and so on); words that imply grand dimen- sions of various sorts (cimento, procella, placare, sereno or eterno); and Rococo nature images such as soft breezes, sweet rays and cooing turtle doves. High- born characters also use rage and simile arias at appropriate moments, though these aria types are also favourite targets of parody.

A 'musical lexicon' also applies to these roles. Two-stanza texts set as sonata- like or truncated da capo forms in the heroic style described earlier belong exclusively to seria characters. (Comic characters parody virtually all elements of the heroic style, but I have found almost no comic arias sung completely in this style.) High-born characters typically display vocal virtuosity in the form of large leaps, extended coloratura passages and a high tessitura; they also sing short love or lament arias entirely in cantabile mode, with rich, often rippling accompaniments. In these instances, the seria vocal mode privileges both vocal production over the projection of the words, and extended examin- ations of one or two emotional postures over more speech-like switches from one rhetorical gesture to another.

A lexicon of Metastasian or seria-like linguistic and musical devices does not, however, make the high-born characters in opera buffa truly Metastasian. The protagonists of opera seria typically find themselves embroiled in major moral decisions, caught between the desires of the heart and the dictates of the state; their conflicts force them to make decisions whose processes and ramifications form the moral core of the drama. Cleonice in Demetrio must decide whether to marry the suitor of appropriate birth or the putative shepherd whom she loves; Tito in La clemenza di Tito must decide what to do about the plot against his life; Iphigenie in Calzabigi's and Gluck's Iphigenie en Tauride must decide 30 Goldoni is usually credited with being the first librettist regularly to weave such elevated

characters into the fabric of his plots; by the last third of the century, they were the norm.

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whether to disobey the dictates of the priest Thoas and save Orestes. As Daniela Goldin has pointed out, these conflicts are often embodied in arias whose seman- tic structure revolves around oppositions of various sorts.31 The following aria from Demetrio (Act III scene 3) shows a characteristic web of oppositions:

Io so qualpena sia Quella d'un cor GELOSO Ma penso al tuo riposo: FIDATI pur di me.

Allor che t'abbandono, Conoscerai chi sono; E l'esserti INFEDELE Prova sara di FE'.

[I know the pain / of a JEALOUS heart, / but I am thinking of your peace of mind: / TRUST me. / At the moment when I abandon you, / you will recognise who I am; / and being UNFAITHFUL to you / will be proof of FIDELITY.]

In contrast, the noble characters of opera buffa are usually devoted in a remarkably single-minded way either to preserving family reputation or to achieving amorous union. Conflict tends to occur between rather than within individuals. Even when the plot necessitates a decision of serious moral or social import, as when the nobleman wants to marry the young woman of apparently humble birth (for example, in La buona figliuola and its many offshoots), the choice between duty to the family line and the urgings of love is never the focus of the drama. Diana's conversion in L'arbore di Diana, described above, also typi- fies the genre in that it happens without much doubt and with little self-reflection. And the structures of aria texts for the high-born characters in opera buffa mirror the absence of central moral dilemmas insofar as they are almost never built around the sorts of abstract oppositions so crucial to many Metastasian texts. In the rare cases where a high-style character does have a text that includes a significant opposition, the opposition is never as obsessively woven into the structure of the verse as in the example from Demetrio, or even in arias from opere serie not so completely concerned with moral struggle. For example, in Metastasio's Endimione, where no difficult decisions are made, the characters constantly refer to love in oxymoronic terms of delightful imprisonment, beloved chains or pleasurable pain; these terms are not found in L'arbore di Diana.

In closing, I should like to draw some general observations from this material, with the caveat that they are tentative and raise many further questions. The first observation is that the more specific a reference to opera seria in opera

31 'Per una morfologia dell'aria metastasiana', in Metastasio e il mondo musicale (Florence, 1986), 13-37, esp. 23-30.

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buffa, the more likely it is to be parodistic. Direct quotes are always parodistic; incidental references to particular characters from opera seria or from classical fables are almost always mocking or ridiculous. Less specific references to opera seria, such as Metastasian aria types or plot topics, may still be parodistic, but may also count as straightforward assimilation; dramatic context and musical setting create the tone. In opera buffa, then, no category of reference to opera seria is immune from parody, but some categories may not imply it so inevitably. Second, although the high style is used both seriously and for parodistic pur- poses, musical context rather than content almost always determines the tone of the moment. The famous large leaps at the beginning of 'Come scoglio', for example, cannot alone suggest either parody or seriousness, but must be interpreted in the light of what it means for Fiordiligi at this moment to sing a simile aria in elevated style. An understanding of the possible range of tone in opera buffa is crucial to a fuller understanding of the genre; Mozart's Cosi fan tutte is only the tour de force of a genre largely devoted to exploring that phenomenon.32

The relation between parody and 'assimilation' of the high style raises a ques- tion not only of tone but also of the social place of this genre. It is often said that Goldonian opera buffa is 'bourgeois', its audience reflected not only in the non-aristocratic settings of most works in this genre,33 but also by the increasingly sympathetic treatment of non-aristocratic characters. Critics have discerned a sort of absorption of the moral qualities of opera seria, and have called this 'middle class'. Maria Grazia Accorsi, for example, recently remarked on the bourgeois values embedded in the sentimental treatment of villani, as well as in the transferral of an aristocratic conception of 'honour' to a more middle-class notion of 'reputation'.34 Diderot's drame bourgeois was an explicit attempt to transfer the ethos of tragedy to the setting of comedy, and one can discern self-conscious attempts within opera buffa to do the same thing.35 How- ever, in most opere buffe written between 1760 and 1790 the relation between parody of the high style and assimilation of some of its qualities suggests that the genre has a socially more 'multivalent' function than many critics have described. I would suggest that although opera buffa during this period certainly has elements of bourgeois rapprochement between genres, it also uses parody

32 See Charles Rosen, The Classical Style (London, 1971), 317. 33 Goldoni's settings are remarkable for their extreme localisation - particular streets and

squares in Venice, for example. In the repertory I have examined, the settings are less specific; indeed, as Mercedes Viale Ferrero has pointed out in 'Torino e Milano nel tardo Settecento: Repertori confronti', I vicini di Mozart (Florence, 1989), 99-138, the same backdrops were regularly re-used in different operas. 34 'Teoria e pratica della variatio nel dramma giocoso: A proposito della "Villanella rapita" di Giovanni Bertati', I vicini di Mozart, 139-63.

35 Bartolomeo Benincasa's preface to his libretto for Bianchi's II disertore (Venice, 1785) is one of the outstanding Italian examples of an apologia for this sort of generic mixing. See Mary Hunter, 'The Fusion and Juxtaposition of Genres in Opera Buffa 1760-1800: Anelli's and Piccinni's "Griselda"', Music and Letters, 67 (1986), 363-80.

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108 Mary Hunter

in a way that relies on and reinforces the audience's sense of the actual and proper distance between classes.36 In other words, representations of opera seria in opera buffa present the genre's multiplicity of focus in microcosm, and suggest some reasons for its extraordinary success.37

36 In fact, the idea of a 'middle class' in northern Italy and Central Europe at this time is Anglo-centric and may be misleading. Marino Berengo, La societa veneta alla fine del Settecento (Florence, 1956), notes that while there were many groups in the middle ranks of society, there was no 'middle class' in the sense of a stratum of society with a collective sense of common circumstances and interests. As far as Vienna is concerned, the late development of a consolidated middle class is also evidenced in the slower development of a fully-fledged publishing industry, and the relatively late establishment of public concerts.

37 This essay is dedicated to my father, G. K. Hunter, on the occasion of his retirement.



Some Representations of Opera Seria in Opera Buffa

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