City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Dissertations and Theses City College of New York 2015 Inventions of Truth Deidre Bird CUNY City College How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cc_etds_theses/563 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] BIRD | 1 Inventions of Truth Deidre Bird Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Of Master of Arts of the City College of the City University of New York Professor Felicia Bonaparte October 15, 2015 BIRD | 2 Inventions of Truth Table of Contents 1. INTRODUCTION 3 2. PART 1 ­ Christoph Willibald Gluck / Ranieri de' Calzabigi 6 3. PART 2 ­ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart / Lorenzo Da Ponte ​ ​ 28 4. PART 3 ­ Giuseppe Verdi / Francesco Maria Piave ​ ​ 71 5. PART 4 ­ Richard Wagner ​ 115 6. BIBLIOGRAPHY 141 BIRD | 3 INTRODUCTION The American humorist Robert Benchley (1889­1945) famously described opera as “when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings.” The joke is a good one. Not only does it play on the prevailing idea of opera as unrealistic (sight unseen), but his quip interrogates the central criticism of this particular genre: How can opera function as a relevant art form when it does not adhere to or support accurate representations of reality? This sentiment was born alongside opera and has clung to it with remora­like tenacity for over four hundred years. Oddly enough, rationality and a realistic portrayal of human emotion were the very things which the progenitors of opera were seeking to convey. Loosely defined, opera was created towards the end of the 16th century with the intention of better fulfilling the Platonic and Aristotelian theories of art as imitation. This was a maturation of the Counter Reformation’s attempts to reform polyphonic church music, which challenged music’s relationship to its setting. The church’s problems with polyphony were twofold: simultaneous singing of lines clouded the meaning of a text, and it was simply unrealistic that several persons should be speaking concurrently with the expectation that an audience might understand. These 17th century calls for clarity eventually gave way to 18th century calls for musical context. How could music better reflect the meaning of the text? Merely imitating sentiments using sound, a tactic employed often in madrigals, was nothing more than an inhibitive parlor trick and a not genuine pursuit of mimesis. Serious proponents of the theoretical establishment of a BIRD | 4 dialectic between music and text knew their search did not end with simple imitation. Opera as an art form was created as a tangible answer to this dilemma. In its origins opera sought to answer concerns regarding music’s relationship to text, but the 17th century concept of music was not capable of answering these types of questions. Music, due to its nebulous representational nature, was not viewed as a serious art until the 19th century. In order to follow the development of music, and therefore opera, this paper explores the differences between operatic libretti and their original sources, beginning in the Enlightenment. The evolutionary process from urtext to libretti not only further defines the society in which it originated, but helps elucidate important changes in artistic interpretation and evaluation from one epoch to the next. This study focuses on two works each from the 18th and 19th centuries, chosen for their popularity at the time of debut, the significance of their contribution to the genre of opera, their lasting compositional impact, and their frequency of performance in modern repertoire. All four works’ libretti are based on a pre­existing plot or work of literature that was readily available to the composers, librettists, and the opera’s intended audience. There are frequent references to the relationships between operatic composers and their librettists, the reasons these relationships changed over time, and how the process of adaptation from the original text to the libretto was influenced by the interaction between librettist and composer. While the social environment in which an opera matures has a lasting impression on the final product, the balance of control between composer and librettist is one of the most important determinants in how an antecedent plot line is used, manipulated, or maintained for the purpose of staging. BIRD | 5 BIRD | 6 I. THE FIRST STEP IS ADMITTING YOU HAVE A PROBLEM: Orfeo ed Euridice (1762) ­ Christoph Willibald Gluck / Ranieri de' Calzabigi ​ During the centuries leading up to the 1700’s, music, in the minds of most listeners, existed as a subordinate art form whose cultural significance was garnered through the successful accompaniment of a well­received text or liturgical writing. Music was required to be composed in vast amounts, performed for a specific task, and then discarded: a disposable luxury. The prominent Enlightenment theorist Jean Le Rond D’Alembert (1717­1783) addressed this specific subordination of music in his essay On ​ the Freedom of Music (1759). How was it possible in a century during which “pens have ​ been brought to bear on the freedom of commerce, the freedom of marriage, the freedom of the press, the freedom of the painted canvas, no one has yet written on the freedom of 1 music?” ​ There were many, in fact hundreds, of writings on the topic of music during the Age of Reason that pre­dated D’Alembert’s essay. It was not until the mid­to­late 18th century when composers, audiences, and ruling parties alike began to recognize music’s deep potential for influence. Opinions on this development varied across social strata, but the collective awareness and burgeoning opposition only fueled its dissemination and general acceptance. For composers, it meant the beginning of the end of their role as “court musician,” a position whose functions often resembled those of indentured servitude. Even Franz Joseph Haydn (1732­1809), the Classical composer who enjoyed the greatest success 1 Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, “On the Freedom of Music” (1759), from Music and Culture in ​ ​ ​ Eighteenth Century Europe: A Sourcebook, ed. Enrico Fubini, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, ​ 1994), 85. BIRD | 7 during his lifetime, lamented his well­paid position as Kapellmeister to the supremely wealthy Esterhazy family: “‘I am doomed to stay at home. It is indeed sad always to be a 2 slave.’” ​ In order to fund his artistic endeavors, Haydn chose to enter into a contractual agreement with Prince Nicolaus Esterhazy (1714­1790), a commitment that was only up for renegotiation thirty years later upon the death of the monarch and the ascension of his son, Prince Anton (1738­1794). Although arrangements like that of Haydn’s were considered the norm throughout 18th century Europe, composers began to cast furtive glances outside the confines of monarchical employment. The desirability of the artistic freedoms associated with the role of a freelance composer began to weigh heavily against the financial stabilities afforded to contracted servants of the state. Under court employ, an artist’s creations were subject to the jurisdiction of the ruling party. Though fame and notoriety were attainable along this route, composers and librettists faced heavy scrutiny from their respective monarchies, which required their compositions to comply with the tastes and principles of their masters. Composers could oftentimes take refuge in the ambiguity of musical compositions however, when it came to opera, they had to align their artistic impulses with those of their patrons. In opera, or “drammi per musica”—dramas for music, as they were called in Gluck’s and Mozart’s ​ ​ days—what could not be found easily objectionable in the music was in plain view during ​ ​ 3 a staged drama. ​ A composer’s artistic liberties were at their most vulnerable when their work was attached to a story line. The narrative of an opera holds the greatest potential for objection and kept composers on constant vigil for talented and deviously innovative 2 Karl Geiringer, Haydn: A Creative Life in Music (New York: W.W. Norton, 1946), 86. ​ ​ ​ 3 John A. Rice, Mozart on the Stage, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 20. ​ ​ ​ BIRD | 8 librettists. To work alongside a poet who could balance both censorship and artistic integrity was the key component to maximum artistic freedom in 18th century opera. One of the first successful operas to highlight this particular and essential bond between composer and librettist was that of Gluck’s and Calzabigi’s Orfeo ed Euridice. ​ ​ Gluck, who chose never to enter into a position of long­time vassalage, made his home in 4 Vienna, but found himself equally as comfortable in any opera­friendly city. ​ Fearing the fate of composers like Haydn, who famously wrote to a friend, “I never can obtain leave, 5 even to go to Vienna for four­and­twenty hours’,” ​ Gluck primarily worked for theater houses and by commission, a choice that afforded him freedom in travel and 6 composition. ​ One of Gluck’s recurring employers, Count Giacomo Durazzo (1717­1794) of Vienna’s Imperial Theater, unwittingly changed the course of opera and Gluck’s 7 career when he introduced the composer to Ranieri de' Calzabigi (1714­1795). ​ The 8 Italian poet had just arrived from Paris with an exciting new libretto: Orfeo ed Euridice. ​ As Casanova (1725­1798) described in his autobiography, Calzabigi was a “very calculating” man, “well­versed in theoretical and practical finance, familiar with commerce in all countries, learned in history, witty, worshipper of the fair sex, and 9 poet.’” ​ The majority of sources regarding Calzabigi make note of his “calculating” 4 Daniel Heartz, From Garrick to Gluck: Essays on Opera in the Age of Enlightenment, (Hillsdale, ​ ​ ​ NY: Pendragon Press, 2004), 313.