Operatic Motives in G. B. Shaw's Works
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Małgorzata Rychert Nr albumu 28981 Szkoła Wyższa Psychologii Społecznej Operatic Motives in G. B. Shaw’s Works Praca magisterska napisana pod kierunkiem prof. dr hab. Tadeusza Rachwała Warszawa, 2012 CONTENTS Preface .............................................................................................................................. 1 1. G. B. Shaw, a musical dramatist ................................................................................... 3 2. Opera and its characteristic elements .......................................................................... 11 3. The Structure of Shaw’s Plays. ................................................................................... 15 4. Shaw’s Stage Directions. ............................................................................................ 48 4.1 Decoration Sets and the Stage Division. ............................................................... 48 4.2 Incidental and Diegetic Music in Stage Directions .............................................. 62 5. Operatic Dialogues and Musical Elements of the Primary Text. ............................... 70 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 80 Summary ......................................................................................................................... 82 APPENDIXES ................................................................................................................ 84 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 86 1 Operatic Motives in G. B. Shaw’s Works Preface Born into a musical and humanistic family, since my early childhood I have been a book lover, a theater goer and a musician. I continued these passions on my double studies, making my BA in English literature and MA in music. When I was writing my BA thesis about Shaw’s play Arms and the Man I found out some operatic elements in the play. Amazed by this unexpected finding I decided to begin further exploration of Bernard Shaw’s musical life and his artistic works looking for more operatic elements and links between drama and music. Bernard Shaw was “born into a musical household […] had an ambition to become an operatic baritone. […] After abandoning professional criticism he followed development of music. […] He was close Elgar's friend” (NGDMM, volume VII, 232- 233)1. Shaw's plays were influenced by the works of the greatest opera writers, such as Mozart or Wagner. His delight for Mozart was so great that “ 'Don Giovanni' was his nickname […] Mozart's opera haunted his work from the short story of 1887, Don Giovanni Explains, to Man and Superman of 1901 […] the fourth play of Back to Methuselah, an ambitious scheme owing much to Wagner” (NGDMM, volume VII, 233). Fascinated by Shaw’s musical personality and untypical, operatic compositions of his plays, I will analyze the operatic elements that appear in his works.2 To illustrate Shaw’s style of writing according to the musical rules I will use his four plays: Arms and the Man, which sparked my interest in musical aspects of Shaw’s works; Man and Superman, which is a continuation of Mozart’s opera; Major Barbara, which contains elements from operatic versions of Faust and citations from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor; and finally Pygmalion, which is now one of the best-known musicals - My Fair Lady. This selection of plays demonstrates also that Shaw’s operatic inspiration derives from different composers and styles. 1NGDMM stands for The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Edited by Stanley Sadie Macmillan, London 1980 2 This fragment contains statements from my previous work The Textual Ways of Creating the Fictional World in “Arms and the Man” by George Bernard Shaw. 2 In my analysis of operatic elements in Bernard Shaw’s works I will focus on different elements of the texts and their performances on the stage. First, I will examine the operatic structure of Shaw’s plays. He does not divide acts into scenes, but builds them from small units presenting groups of characters. It reminds an opera where an act is divided into arias, duets, trios, quartets and ensembles. The number of characters appearing on the stage is also crucial for the tension management. Bernard Shaw, like a professional librettists, builds tension rising the number of performers on the stage, creates climaxes from ensembles and alternates strong tension scenes with relaxing scenes, decreasing the number of performers on the stage. He knowingly uses all operatic techniques. I will also examine Shaw’s elaborate stage directions and their two aspects: the decoration sets and music description. The author’s stage designs are overwhelming with their size, complexity and lavishness. Such decoration sets can be only seen in the grand opera houses. Moreover, notes about incidental and diegetic music complete the illusion of the opera libretto. Shaw, like a composer, remembers to fulfill his presentation of the world through music. He quotes famous opera writers and uses sound to illustrates some events. Finally, I will analyze the most operatic element of Shaw’s plays, the operatic utterances of the characters. The primary texts contain dialogues created according to operatic rules. The characters speak simultaneously like singers in the opera. Their utterances have musical and rhythmic qualities. In the primary text Shaw also copies the elements of speech of the famous opera characters or even quotes them. All these features create an extraordinary operatic style of writing. The author plays with the form of drama blending it with the structure of an opera. Shaw creates musical riddles for the audience saturating his plays with opera citations. He expects his audience be acquainted with the opera techniques and the greatest examples of this form. With this knowledge we can fully appreciate Shaw’s works. 3 1. G. B. Shaw, a musical dramatist George Bernard Shaw was not only a dramatist and a music critic, but a self- taught musician. He was very knowledgeable about music, as he was “born into a musical household headed by a trombone-playing father and singing mother”. (NGDMM, volume VII, 232)3. George John Vandeleur Lee, a well-known Dublin impresario, a singing teacher and a conductor living with the Shaw family, introduced very early Bernard Shaw to singing techniques and an Italian opera. As a result young Bernard Shaw had a burning ambition to become an operatic baritone and a deep conviction that “Don Giovanni was the most important item of his education”. (NGDMM, volume VII, 233). After leaving his father in Dublin, an alcoholic who had no money for his son’s education, Bernard Shaw went to live together with his mother and sister in London. His mother was teaching singing and his sister “was trying to make a career singing in opera buffo”. (Peters 6) In London Bernard Shaw spent years on social and art studies in the Reading Room of the British Museum and he devoted also a lot of his free time to self-study of learning to play the piano.4 He started at the age of sixteen learning the musical notation and keyboard, but immediately after gaining this basic knowledge he started to fight his way through scores of operas working out his own fingering. (Wisenthal 284) Through these scores studies he “‘gained penetrating experiences of Victor Hugo and Schiller from Donizetti, Verdi, and Beethoven; of the Bible from Handel; of Goethe from Schumann, of Beaumarchais and Moliere from Mozart, and Merimee from Bizet, besides finding in Berlioz an unconscious interpreter of Edgar Allan Poe’”. (Wisenthal 284) The first opera score that Shaw learned to play on the piano was Mozart’s Don Giovanni, “as he wanted to start with something he knew well enough so that he would at least know whether the notes were right or wrong”. (Cox) His lifelong fascination with Mozart and delight with this masterpiece influenced his whole artistic career. “‘Don Giovanni’ was his nickname in the early London days and Mozart’s opera haunted his work”. (NGDMM, volume VII, 233). First, he “used the Don Juan story in a novel entitled The Unsocial Socialist in 1883”. (Cox) In1887, he also wrote a short 3NGDMM stands for The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Edited by Stanley Sadie, Macmillan, London 1980 4 See appendix 2 4 story, Don Giovanni Explains presenting the Don Juan story from the Shavian perspective. It tells a story of a young girl on a train going home from a performance of Don Giovanni. She encounters the ghost of Don Giovanni, who explains her that “his reputation as a philanderer has always been exaggerated and misunderstood, whereas he was always pursued by women and forced into love affairs.” (Cox) The ghost tells the girl his version of the story presented in the opera, clarifies his relationship with Donna Elvira and disappears. (Cox) The most recognized presence of Don Giovanni in Shaw’s works is the play Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy, published in 1903. It is four-act play with a “dream-interlude” in the third act. It is a humorous love story of the main character unsuccessfully running away from his marriage with Ann Whitefield. (Cox) “The third act, the dream interlude, constitutes a continuation of the Don Giovanni story. It begins where the opera ends, namely when Don Giovanni descends into hell, and it is sometimes performed separately under the title of Don Juan in Hell.” (Cox) In the third