Understanding Italian Opera
Tim Carter
Table of Contents
Preface
1: What is Opera?
Some definitions
In praise of librettists
Italian versification
Poetic structures and musical consequences
Two examples from Mozart
An "exotic and irrational entertainment"?
2: Giovanni Francesco Busenello and Claudio Monteverdi,
L'incoronazione di Poppea (Venice, 1643)
Monteverdi in Venice
The first operas
"But here the matter is represented differently"
"Speaking" and "singing"
Seductive Poppea
Seneca's death
Ottavia in exile
Ecstasies of love
3: Nicola Francesco Haym and George Frideric Handel,
Giulio Cesare in Egitto (London, 1724)
Arcadian reforms
Adapting Bussani
Recitatives and arias
Some alternatives
"Fly, my heart, to the sweet enchantment"
Taming Cleopatra
Cesare returns
All's well...
4: Lorenzo da Ponte and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,
Le nozze di Figaro (Vienna, 1786)
... these Italian gentlemen are very civil to your face
Translating Beaumarchais
Aria forms
A duet, a trio, and a sextet
Finales
Readings and messages
5: Francesco Maria Piave and Giuseppe Verdi,
Rigoletto (Venice, 1851)
"Le Roi s'amuse"
Cantabiles and cabalettas
Duets
Arias and monologues
A quartet ... a storm ... and a death
6: Giuseppe Giacosa, Luigi Illica, and Giacomo Puccini,
La Bohème (Turin, 1896)
Bohemian rhapsodies
A publisher, two librettists, and a rival
A missing act
Verse and music
Formless forms?
Operatic realisms
Mimì dies
7: Afterthoughts