Opera Within Opera: Contexts for a Metastasian Interlude

Donald Bewley Opera within Opera: Contexts for a Metastasian Interlude Opera within opera is neither recent nor uncommon. An unusual example is Metastasio’s L’impresario delle isole Canarie in eighteenth century London. Comedies by this master dramatist of opera seria were rare. But in a variety of theatrical forms – as an intermezzo satirising its companion opera, an ‘afterpiece’ accompanying different plays, or burlesque ‘rehearsal’ framed by an independent satire – L’impresario toured the principal London theatres. First presented in Italian as composed originally, then in English set successively by two London com- posers, it served rival poets as a vehicle for satire. It left untouched Metastasio’s London reputa- tion as worthy poet, dramatist and moral philosopher. Evolution of operatic comedy A single work is all we usually expect for an evening at the opera, unless the company presents Puccini’s triptych or pairs two short operas such as I pagliacci with Cavalleria rusticana. In opera’s early days, however, more was commonly expected and provided, one result being that opera expanded its range and styles. Opera’s roots were in late Renaissance attempts to reconstruct the drama of classical Greece. In the earliest operas, Monteverdi’s Orfeo, for instance, mythic characters performed and sang their familiar tales, while on the same stage their actions were overseen and discussed by moralising muses. Opera began to diversify when such serious traditional works were challenged by iconoclastic strands of comedy. Monteverdi himself recognised that if opera was to entertain, especially in public theatres, there should be some comic characters, lowly born servants or peasants, for contrast and humour. They either interacted with the principals or played out a sub-plot, a contrascena – bringing a lighter, perhaps raucous, even obscene, element into an otherwise high-minded drama.1 In time some sub-plots were played independently, be- tween the acts of the main opera, as interludes or intermezzi, perhaps burlesquing the main drama or providing commentary on it. An evening at the opera in the eighteenth century often included two or three distinct music 1 See Part IV (‘The Tradition of Comedy’) in David Kimbell, Italian Opera (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 281-387. 336 Donald Bewley dramas, whether contained within a principal opera, or simply sharing the programme with it, just as in the spoken theatre the main play might have plot and sub-plot yet still share the evening with an ‘afterpiece’, some acro- bats or a brief ballet. Eventually comic episodes ceased to be a subsidiary, as opera within opera. New genres of opera giocosa and opera buffa evolved, some as a whole evening’s entertainment, some as companion pieces and context for another opera. Opera within opera The tradition of an opera within an opera has not been lost. Today’s opera repertory includes a few that are regularly presented; others occur occasional- ly or experimentally. The most frequently performed is Leoncavallo’s popu- lar verismo opera I pagliacci (1892): its plot tells how a commedia dell’arte touring company is riven by the Clown’s jealousy of his wife, the soubrette; his aria ‘Vestii la giubba’ (‘On with the motley’) tells of the paradox of his comic role and his personal misery. But during the play jealousy proves too much – ‘No pagliaccio non son’ (‘I’m a clown no more’) – and there on stage he kills his wife and her lover.2 Having debated in Capriccio the question whether the priority in opera is in poetry or music, Richard Strauss in Ariad- ne auf Naxos (composed 1911-12 to a libretto by Hofmannsthal) compared the virtues of two rival genres of the eighteenth century theatre, opera seria and commedia dell’arte, by including episodes of each within the framework of his opera.3 Shakespeare has been the source of many opera libretti. Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream each contain a play within a play and their operatic settings yield an opera within an opera. Of more than thirty operatic Hamlets, it is Thomas’s French version from 1868 that remains in the regular repertory.4 Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1960) is the most commonly heard and recorded of two dozen operatic settings.5 As we shall see later, eighteenth century London enjoyed the Pyramus and Thisbe episode, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a separate ‘afterpiece’ in 1745 by J.F. Lampe, in a performance ‘burlesquing’ opera.6 In the last two decades of the twentieth century the concept of an opera within an opera resulted in at least three major works, representative of the 2 Matthew Boyden, Opera: The Rough Guide (London: The Rough Guides / Penguin, 1997), pp. 327-330; on CD: EMI CMS57 63967. 3 Boyden, pp. 384-386; CD: EMI CM57 64 159-2. 4 Boyden , pp. 259-260; CD: EMI CDS7 54820-2. 5 Boyden, pp. 542-543; CD: LONDON 425 663-2LH2. 6 CD and booklet: HYPERION CDA66759. .

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