Page 221 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

Italy
The nineteenth century is often called the “golden age of opera.” It is the cen- tury of Rossini, Bellini, Verdi, Wagner, Bizet, and Puccini. Notice that the four opera composers whose names end in “i” were, of course, Italian. The Italian language, with its evenly spaced, open vowels, is perfectly suited for singing, and the people of Italy seem to have an innate love of melody. Perhaps for this rea- son, opera began in Italy, around 1600 (see Chapter 5). Thereafter, Italian opera dominated the European stage. When Handel wrote opera for London in the 1720s and Mozart for Vienna in the 1780s, they did so using mainly the language and traditions of Italian opera. Even today, Italian remains the language most frequently heard in opera houses around the world, from La Scala in Milan to the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
In the early nineteenth century, the primacy of Italian opera was maintained almost single-handedly by Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868), the composer of The Barber of Seville (1816). Surprising as it may now seem, Rossini was the most cel- ebrated musician in Europe during the 1820s, far exceeding even Beethoven in fame. Why this “Rossini fever,” as it was called? Because Rossini wrote operas— not symphonies or string quartets—and opera was then the leading genre of musical entertainment. Indeed, during Rossini’s lifetime, opera captured the popular imagination in much the way that film does today.
Rossini and his younger contemporaries pioneered a new type of op- era in which attention was focused exclusively on the solo voice—on a style of singing called bel canto, a term coined by Rossini himself. In bel canto opera, all of the musical interest lies in the rapturous sound of the human voice as it spins out an expansive melody—sometimes slow and melting, sometimes fast and dazzling—above the thinnest of ac- companiments. As one Italian newspaper of the day declared, “In the theatrical arts it is said that three things are required: action, action, action; likewise, three things are demanded for music: voice, voice, voice.”
Not surprisingly, by placing such importance on the voices of the leading singers, bel canto opera fostered a star system among the cast. Usually, it was the lyric soprano (Figure 13.1)—heroine and prima donna (first lady)—who held the most exalted position in the operat-
ic firmament. By the 1880s, she would also be called a diva, Italian for “goddess.” Indeed, the diva and her beautiful voice would rule Italian bel canto opera throughout the nineteenth century and even up to the pres- ent day.
As to the men, the castrato finally disappeared from the operatic stage in 1821. The romantic lead was now sung by a man with a high, but natural, voice. Replacing the heroic castrato with the equally heroic male tenor was part of a general nineteenth-century operatic evolution away from the artificial and “ef- feminate,” and toward greater realism. This male voice lived on in the pow- erful, but lyrical, style of singing made famous by Enrico Caruso (1873–1921) and Luciano Pavarotti (1935–2007), the most commercially successful operatic singer of all time.
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Figure 13.1
The reigning opera diva Renée Fleming of Rochester, New York, specializes in bel canto opera. She is known as the “People’s Diva,” a title solidified by her half-time appearance at the 2014 Super Bowl.
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