Shakespeare in Music Theatre: West Side Story
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UDC 792.091:821.111-2 792.57.091 Svetozar Rapajić* University of Arts Faculty of Dramatic Arts Belgrade, Serbia SHAKESPEARE IN MUSIC THEATRE: WEST SIDE STORY Abstract T.S. Eliot compared Shakespeare’s dramatic poetry with music. The similarity was also recognized by those music dramatists who drew inspiration from Shakespeare’s plays in their operas and ballets. Some of those works are masterpieces (like Verdi’s Otello) and are considered by George Steiner to be the only real tragedies of the late 9th century. There are even American musical comedies that have been adapted from Shakespeare’s comedies. And when the theatrical art forms using music developed into music theatre, some of the new musicals drew inspiration from his tragedies. Bernstein’s West Side Story, in which the serious and the popular are merged, is the epitome of American music theatre. It sets the story of Romeo and Juliet in the mid-20th century streets of New York, where ethnic rivalry culminates in tragedy. The different adaptations of Shakespeare’s works, involving changes to the time period and setting of the narrative and the social class of the characters as well as the various interpretations of staging, are proof that his writing affords possibilities for new discoveries, and is at once versatile and universal. Key words: dramatic poetry, opera, ballet, musical comedy, musical drama, popular art, staging ∗ E-mail address: [email protected] 23 Belgrade BELLS In his famous essay Poetry and Drama, T.S. Eliot asserts his predilection for dramatic poetry, compares it to music, and contrasts it with prose drama: It seems to me that beyond the nameable, classifiable emotions and motives of our conscious life when directed towards action— the part of life which prose drama is wholly adequate to express— there is a fringe of indefinite extent, of feeling which we can only detect, so to speak, out of the corner of the eye and can never completely focus; of feeling of which we are only aware in a kind of temporary detachment from action… This peculiar range of sensibility can be expressed by dramatic poetry, at its moments of greatest intensity. At such moments, we touch the borders of those feelings which only music can express. (Kerman 1989: 5). In other words, dramatic poetry enriches dramatic action and supplies it with meaning, emotion, and subconscious layers which could not be sufficiently expressed otherwise, especially not in logical, veristic prose. By reaching unspoken depths, dramatic poetry’s function is similar to the effect of music: to touch the irrational, emotional side of the audience through artistically elaborated forms, rhythms, versifications, accents, dynamics, melodies, repetitions, contrasts, symbolizations, and similar elements that were integral even to ancient ritual practice. On the other hand, all those poetic, musical, irrational, even abstract qualities have to be organically interwoven with the basic dramatic elements: action, plot, and character development. Both sides of that complex theatricality Eliot finds in Shakespeare’s plays: “When Shakespeare, in one of his mature plays, introduces what might seem a purely poetic line or passage, it never interrupts the action, or is out of character, but on the contrary, in some mysterious way supports both action and character.” (Eliot 1951: 34). Consequently, it is not surprising that Shakespeare’s dramatic poetry, which Eliot compares to music, became a major inspiration for opera composers. But this did not happen before the emergence of Romantic art at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century. Until then, the dominant form had been Baroque opera (the Italian opera seria that reigned over the European stage and the French tragédie lyrique), which had its roots in the mythology of ancient Greece, the history or pseudo- history of the decadent Roman Empire, or the legends of medieval chivalry. 24 Svetozar Rapajić Shakespeare in Music Theatre: West Side Story The only exceptions were Purcell’s The Fairy Queen (1692), based upon A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and The Tempest (1692), both extravagant and spectacular productions that drew on the tradition of the English masque; as they were not imitations of the European operatic model, they were labeled semi-operas. But when the Romantics established the cult of Shakespeare, rediscovering the greatness of his works as well as admiring his immersion into the dark depths of the human soul and rejection of prescribed conventions, so akin to Romantic ideals, it was natural that Shakespeare’s plays readily lent themselves to the possibilities of being transformed into Romantic operas as dramatic musical creations. The first Shakespearean opera worth mentioning is Falstaff ossia Le tre burle (Falstaff, or The Three Jokes, 1799), an opera buffa by Antonio Salieri, who was a celebrated master of opera at that time, but today mostly known as being the presumed legendary rival of the great Mozart. The great Italian Romantic opera composers were drawn to the remarkable themes and figures of British history, dynastic conflicts, and bloody civil wars, as well as Shakespeare’s dramatic poetry, which was found to lend itself most favorably to musical adaptation. Thence emerged operas which enjoyed enormous success and which are still included in the opera repertories of modern times, like Otello ossia il Moro di Venezia (Othello, or the Moor of Venice, 1816) by Gioachino Rossini, and I Capuleti e i Montecchi (The Capulets and the Montagues, 1830) by Vincenzo Bellini. Also worthy of note is the almost forgotten Giulietta e Romeo (1825) by Nicola Vaccai. Riccardo Zandonai, a late Romantic Italian composer, today best known for his opera Francesca da Rimini, made a contribution to Shakespearean musical theatre that transformed Romeo and Juliet into the opera Giulietta e Romeo (1922). Giuseppe Verdi was often inspired by great works of Romantic literature (by Friedrich Schiller, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas), and was also considerably influenced by Shakespeare. One of Verdi’s best known operas is Macbeth (1847), and the mature genius of his later masterpieces can be seen in Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893). In his book The Death of Tragedy, George Steiner, researching the possibilities for tragedy in modern times, concludes that since early Romanticism, only opera has been able to make a strong claim on the legacy of tragedy: The titles are given in their original orthography, followed by the English translation in parentheses. 25 Belgrade BELLS The Shakespeare of the romantics … was not primarily an Elizabethan poet with medieval traditions in his art and world view. He was a master of poetic sublimity and volcanic passion, a proclaimer of romantic love and melancholy, a radical who wrote melodramas. The difference between the false picture and the true can be clearly shown in Verdi’s operas. Macbeth dramatizes a romantic reading of Shakespeare. Otello and Falstaff, on the contrary, exhibit a transfiguring insight into the actual meaning of the two Shakespearean plays. (Steiner 1978: 155-156). Steiner poses a question: “Could opera achieve the long-sought fusion of classic and Shakespearean drama by creating a total dramatic genre, the Gesamtkunstwerk?” (Steiner 1978: 286). He also gives an answer: “Tristan und Isolde2 is nearer to complete tragedy than anything else produced during the slack of drama which separates Goethe from Ibsen. And nearly as much may be asserted of two other operas of the late nineteenth century, Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov and Verdi’s Otello.” (Steiner 1978: 288). Steiner’s definitive conclusion is: “Verdi and Wagner are the principle tragedians of their age.” (Steiner 1996: 285). French Romantic composers also found a source of inspiration in Shakespeare’s plays. Some of those operas, like Beatrix et Benedicte (based on Much Ado About Nothing, 1862) by Hector Berlioz, and Hamlet (1868) by Ambroise Thomas, are to this day periodically revived on stages throughout Europe. (Curiously, directors staging Hamlet today have the problem of how to eschew the absurdly optimistic ending of Thomas’s opera.) But Roméo et Juliette (1867) by Charles Gounod is still performed frequently, popular among audiences, and sung by today’s greatest opera stars. The Romantic cult of Shakespeare in Germany began with Goethe (a supreme and undisputed authority on German art and the author of essays on Shakespeare and translator of Romeo and Juliet) and the young rebels of the Sturm und Drang. The complete works of Shakespeare were translated, studied enthusiastically, admired, imitated, and naturally adapted into opera. As a result, relatively successful operas began to emerge, if today almost forgotten, like Der Widerspentigen Zähmung (The Taming of the Shrew, 1874) by Hermann Goetz and Macbeth (1910) by Ernest Bloch. The most successful among them was the opera by Otto Nicolai Die lustigen 2 By Richard Wagner. 26 Svetozar Rapajić Shakespeare in Music Theatre: West Side Story Weiber von Windsor (The Merry Wives of Windsor, 1849), which remains popular. In the 20th century, a variety of composers discovered Shakespeare’s dramatic poetry to be an inspiration for modern approaches to opera; examples of such operas range from those marked by variations of neo- romanticism or eclecticism, to those influenced by popular music or jazz, to those produced by radical avant-garde or experimental music theatre. Among them are: Gian Francesco Malipiero’s Giulio Cesare (1936); Heinrich Sutermeister’s Romeo und Julia (1940); Frank Martin’s Der Sturm (The Tempest, 1956); the radical Giselher Klebe and his Die Ermordung des Cäsar (The Assassination of Caesar, 1959), a one-act opera based on the third act of Shakespeare’s tragedy; Samuel Barber’s Anthony and Cleopatra, which, adapted and staged by Franco Zeffirelli, inaugurated the new Metropolitan Opera House in 1966; Aribert Reiman’s Lear (1978), one of most appreciated works of modern German music theatre; Pascal Dusapin’s version of Roméo et Juliette (1989); Stephen Oliver’s Timon of Athens (1991).