Sometimes I despair of the endless recitativo of modern opera, this fallacious idea that the music should underscore the words. These passages remind me of Kenneth Hince's phrase: 'acres and acres of interminable mudflat', which he applied unfairly to Brahms, but which describes much contemporary opera better. I think this 'unending recitative' (which is not what Wagner asked for; he asked for 'unending melody') comes from a mistaken belief that words are the primary element in drama. They're not. It's the pyschological beat.
I believe that librettists can play their part to remedy this by creating events and situations that cannot fail but inspire melody, and instruct the composer not to follow the words, but to follow the metre, motivation and action.
I was intrigued by Der Rosenkavalier the other night because a lot of the vocal part is recitativo. Certainly Baron Ochs's part is mostly parlando. And yet the impression is not that dreary sub-lyrical sensation of contemporary opera. Why not? Because there is the constant lilt of waltz-time underneath, a frequent rising to peaks of melody. Opera situations have to rise to melody, or why bother?
Showing posts with label prima la musica e poi le parole. Show all posts
Showing posts with label prima la musica e poi le parole. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Thursday, December 30, 2010
A clue from Puccini
In studying Puccini, I'm struck by how often the lyrics are banal: "The bill - already?"; "I bought this house for ninety nine years, but with the option, at ev'ry month, to cancel the contract!..." and yet without the subtitles I hadn't noticed the banality.
"There is so much that shouldn't be sung," is a criticism I've heard made about contemporary opera. Yet, Puccini didn't seem to care. If he felt like writing a melody he wrote it. Banal text or not; the melody supersedes everything. Above all there is a melodic structure.
And yet the drama is no less important. I wonder if the problem lies nowadays in composers trying to underline the words - a lesson misunderstood from Wagner? People speak of Wagner's trying to marry the words to the music as one of his innovations, and tend to say, also, that when he resiled from this his 'experiment' failed. But what he realised is that the true level of marriage is music and action. And action is what Puccini keeps up, at the level of melody.
"There is so much that shouldn't be sung," is a criticism I've heard made about contemporary opera. Yet, Puccini didn't seem to care. If he felt like writing a melody he wrote it. Banal text or not; the melody supersedes everything. Above all there is a melodic structure.
And yet the drama is no less important. I wonder if the problem lies nowadays in composers trying to underline the words - a lesson misunderstood from Wagner? People speak of Wagner's trying to marry the words to the music as one of his innovations, and tend to say, also, that when he resiled from this his 'experiment' failed. But what he realised is that the true level of marriage is music and action. And action is what Puccini keeps up, at the level of melody.
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