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Weisstein, Introduction to the Libretto As Literature Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma The Libretto as Literature Author(s): Ulrich Weisstein Source: Books Abroad, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Winter, 1961), pp. 16-22 Published by: Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40115290 Accessed: 12-01-2017 16:07 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Books Abroad This content downloaded from 67.80.80.37 on Thu, 12 Jan 2017 16:07:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms The Libretto as Literature By ULRICH WEISSTEIN ^considering the wealth of operatic ma- their influence has hardly been such as to rt terial hidden in the world's libraries, effect an appreciable change in critical opin- ^^ a disproportionately small amount ion. On the whole, then, we are still faced of scholarship has, so far, gone into its crit- with the situation described by Dent: "The ical evaluation. It seems especially desir- libretto, as a thing in itself, has never re- able that the "ancillary" genre of the libretto ceived the systematic analytical study which should receive fairer treatment both with is its due."4 This is all the more perplexing regard to its dramatic and its poetic quali- since, in a number of notable instances, the ties, for the serious critical attempts to deal collaboration between composer and libret- with this stepchild of literature are few and tist has been exhaustively documented in far between. All the greater is the challenge their published correspondence (Verdi- posed for the literary critic of the libretto. Boito and Strauss-Hofmannsthal5). By some sort of tacit agreement, the dra- When asked to furnish the names of the matic aspect of opera is generally consid- most prominent librettists in operatic his- ered to be the domain of musicologists, the tory, even the most enthusiastic opera fan more catholic of whom (Edgar Istel, Ed- will find his knowledge restricted to Meta- ward J. Dent, and a few others) have hon- stasio, Da Ponte, Scribe, Boito, Hofmanns- estly striven to restore the dignity of the thal and perhaps W. H. Auden. Rare is the music drama. Most of their colleagues, operaphile who could cite Quinault, Cal- however, incline to overemphasize the role sabigi, Zeno, Helmine von Chezy, Ghislan- of the composer, a sin exemplified by Ker- zoni and Ramuz. Operatic audiences do man's statement, "For the composer, I not think of these individuals as authors in should like to believe that the essential their own right, although Auden's poetry, problem is to clarify the central dramatic Scribe's plays and Hofmannsthal's demand- idea, to refine the vision. This cannot ing be oeuvre enjoy a certain popularity left to the librettist; the dramatist is among the the intelligentsia of their native composer."1 (Italics mine). This opinion countries. Their librettos are offered for is shared by many composers who, without sale in the lobby of the Metropolitan, in directly denouncing the libretto, claim Chicago,sole San Francisco, Dallas, and wher- authority for judging its "operatic" quali- ever there is an operatic stagione; but who ties. Richard Strauss expresses the convic- bothers to read them from beginning to tion that "except for the person who wants end? Most of the operas in the standard to set it to music, nobody is able to judge repertory a have been heard so often that al- serious and poetically accomplished libretto most everybody knows their plots. before having heard it performed together Even such plays as Pelleas and Salome, with its music."2 And Giancarlo Menotti which have been composed integrally, seem asserts that "to read and judge a libretto to have lost their status as literature, the without its musical setting is unfair both to musical versions having, in a manner of the librettist and the composer."3 speaking, superseded their literary antece- There have indeed been literary critics dents. Such is the triumph of music in with an interest in the non-musical aspects opera - a triumph which luckily has not as of opera (I think of Bulthaupt's Dramatur- yet extended to Biichner's Wozzec\, Kaf- gie der Oper and the Tristan chapter in ka's Trial (with music by Gottfried von Francis Fergusson's Idea of a Theater) ; but Einem) and other works melodramatized This content downloaded from 67.80.80.37 on Thu, 12 Jan 2017 16:07:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms LIBRETTO AS LITERATURE 17 by composers of the Expressionistic It is this curious practice, and as well as many post-Expressionistic generation. others indulged inViewing by the makers of late these facts, how can one Baroqueexpect operas, the which average Benedetto Marcello scorns in // teatro alia moda? But even in listener to challenge the truth of Kerman's statement ? Even in the mid-twentieth our own age operatic ariascen- are often de- tached from their context for the sake of tury it requires courage to come to the res- cue of that much maligned recordings, and self-effacing recitals, and concerts. individual, the librettist. It is well to remind the denunciators of the libretto that the spoken drama itself is Kerman's point of view is certainly justi- fied with regard to operas based on ina number which of highly the artificial con- ventions, few of which, to be sure, are as music has overcome the obstacles presented by the underlying text. far removed Beethoven's from "lived" reality as are their Fidelio and Mozart's Magic operatic Flute counterparts. offer Every ex- drama is a amples of the transcendence Gesatnt\unstwer\ of textual whose printed text re- sembles a musical score in that it merely shortcomings, Verdi's // Trovatore of the defeat of structural absurdities. suggests the Thetheatrical first possibilities which two works reveal a loftiness are inherent not in it.only Soliloquy, of aside, and chorus - which are a thorn in the flesh of purpose (for such was certainly present in the plays of Bouilly and the Schikaneder) Naturalistic playwrights but - still remain within the realm of language, the difference also of expression (masking the triteness of between them and ordinary discourse being the poetry) . In the quatrain assigned to the three Knaben in Act I of quantitatively The Magic determined Flute, (at least by com- mon consent, since it is wholly a matter of the banality of the verses is transcended by Mozart's sovereign treatment definition of where the to placemetri- the exact point at cal pattern.6 Similar instances which the qualitativeabound leap in begins). The use of different meters to indicate different the songs of Schubert and Schumann. levels of consciousness is a more strictly Another abuse of the librettist's privilege musical device, however. It is illustrated by consists in the practice, common in Han- T. S. Eliot's The Family Reunion, where delian times, of inserting irrelevant arias the progression from seven-stress to two- borrowed from other works, adding bra- stress lines corresponds to the operatic se- vura pieces (such as Constanze's "Martern quence : dialogue-recitative-area/ensemble. aller Arten" in The Abduction from the Seraglio) at the request ofBut whatprima are the donnasspecific conventions, at first strictly observed but later modified in and castrati, and distributing arias in def- the direction of greater realism, employed erence to the artist's reputation and salary. in the preclassical-classical-Romantic type The following passage from a letter by Giu- seppe Riva partly explains of opera? the The dramaticconvention most likely to shock the naive observer derives from the failure of Handel's operas: principle of simultaneity which, negatively For this year and for appliedthe infollowing the spoken drama, forbids the there must be two equal parts in the op- eras for Cuzzoni and Faustina. Senesino use of several individualized speakers at the is the chief male character, and his part same time - the chorus consisting of persons must be heroic; the other three male parts expressing themselves collectively. In op- must proceed by degrees with three arias era, contrasting moods may be rendered si- each, one in each act. The duet should multaneously with an entirely pleasurable be at the end of the second act, and be- effect upon the listener. Stendhal effectively tween the two ladies. If the subject has in it three ladies, it can serve because there counters the objections of the "poor frigid is a third singer here.7 souls (who) say (that) it is silly for five or This content downloaded from 67.80.80.37 on Thu, 12 Jan 2017 16:07:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 18 BOOKS ABROAD six persons to sing at producing the them.same It also time" has the advantage by pointing out that "experience of knowing how to indicatecompletely rapid shifts of ruins their argument."9 opinion andThis quick changesrationalistic in attitude. But approach is exemplified its very wealth by points toCalvin its basic deficiency. S. Brown's interpretation Condemning of "the music famous "because quar-it cannot tet from Rigoletto, with narrate,"11 two however, persons is just as insidefoolish as a shack thinking they chastising are language alone, for its twofailure toout- convey side spying on them, the and rhythm all of the four emotions.
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