Douglas Presnell
Music 308B
14 Feb 2017
Count Durazzo and the Reformation of Italian Opera My grandson recently asked me about my past adventures when I was younger. I decided to tell him about the time I snuck into the cast party for the ballet Don Juan, ou Le Festin de pierre. It was 1761 in Vienna. I wanted to meet the creators of that ballet to try to see if I could be in one of their productions, so I pretended to be one of the stage workers to get in. Thinking back on it, it was a pretty ridiculous thing to try to do. I'm surprised they even spoke to me for as long as they did. I certainly wouldn't have in their position. Maybe they had too much wine. I had heard that Count Durazzo was getting talented creators together to …show more content…
What I didn't tell him at the time was that I had seen his opera La Semiramide riconosciuta in Vienna in 1748. One thing that struck me was that his music was so different. He also broke from the usual opera conventions, even back then. "He omitted the orchestral introduction to some arias and sometimes refrained from using the da capo form (Croll and Hauschka)." I then explained to my grandson what about da capo aria. A da capo aria has an A section that sticks around tonic and goes to dominant, a B section that is in a related key, then repeats the A section, usually ending on tonic. The B section is usually a contrasting emotion, which would shift back to the original emotion when the A section repeats. Another thing Gluck did back then, he "left behind him the narrow constraints of Italian virtuoso singing opera (Croll and Hauschka)." He was already starting to drift away from the repeated opening sections of an aria and the overly virtuosic …show more content…
This probably contributed to why they revealed so much. They talked about their next opera that was to come out, which was Orfeo ed Euridice. As it turns out that Mr. Calzabigi wanted to blend the best of Italian and French opera in order to create a new style that was better (Eckelmeyer et al.). Along with Christoph's desire to break away from da capo arias, they embarked on some revolutionary changes. Christoph wanted to "serve the poetry by expressing feelings and the situations of the story (Burkholder and Palisca 51)." He felt that the music didn't have to fit into a form like ABA. The music can fit the emotions and events of the scene and can shift at any moment. The drama of the opera scenes drive the music instead of the other way around. Seconda pratica of the opera world, no longer being confined to recit, aria, recit, aria, chorus. No longer letting the singers decide what arias to perform to fit the emotion, instead the music fits the drama and emotion of the scene directly and does not have to conform to any musical
Music 308B
14 Feb 2017
Count Durazzo and the Reformation of Italian Opera My grandson recently asked me about my past adventures when I was younger. I decided to tell him about the time I snuck into the cast party for the ballet Don Juan, ou Le Festin de pierre. It was 1761 in Vienna. I wanted to meet the creators of that ballet to try to see if I could be in one of their productions, so I pretended to be one of the stage workers to get in. Thinking back on it, it was a pretty ridiculous thing to try to do. I'm surprised they even spoke to me for as long as they did. I certainly wouldn't have in their position. Maybe they had too much wine. I had heard that Count Durazzo was getting talented creators together to …show more content…
What I didn't tell him at the time was that I had seen his opera La Semiramide riconosciuta in Vienna in 1748. One thing that struck me was that his music was so different. He also broke from the usual opera conventions, even back then. "He omitted the orchestral introduction to some arias and sometimes refrained from using the da capo form (Croll and Hauschka)." I then explained to my grandson what about da capo aria. A da capo aria has an A section that sticks around tonic and goes to dominant, a B section that is in a related key, then repeats the A section, usually ending on tonic. The B section is usually a contrasting emotion, which would shift back to the original emotion when the A section repeats. Another thing Gluck did back then, he "left behind him the narrow constraints of Italian virtuoso singing opera (Croll and Hauschka)." He was already starting to drift away from the repeated opening sections of an aria and the overly virtuosic …show more content…
This probably contributed to why they revealed so much. They talked about their next opera that was to come out, which was Orfeo ed Euridice. As it turns out that Mr. Calzabigi wanted to blend the best of Italian and French opera in order to create a new style that was better (Eckelmeyer et al.). Along with Christoph's desire to break away from da capo arias, they embarked on some revolutionary changes. Christoph wanted to "serve the poetry by expressing feelings and the situations of the story (Burkholder and Palisca 51)." He felt that the music didn't have to fit into a form like ABA. The music can fit the emotions and events of the scene and can shift at any moment. The drama of the opera scenes drive the music instead of the other way around. Seconda pratica of the opera world, no longer being confined to recit, aria, recit, aria, chorus. No longer letting the singers decide what arias to perform to fit the emotion, instead the music fits the drama and emotion of the scene directly and does not have to conform to any musical