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Modernism and Melodrama MODERNISM AND MELODRAMA Modernism and its effects on the operatic “text” Dipartimento di Studi Europei, Americani e Interculturali Dottorato di Scienze del Testo Yuri Chung Mat. 1421498 Supervisor Prof. Mario Martino A.A. 2018-2019 Modernism and Melodrama [Modernism and its effects on the operatic “text”] Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................................................ 3 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................................... 3 1. The libretto and the return of the poet .................................................................................................. 7 a) The First “Librettists” (17th-18th centuries) ....................................................................................... 7 b) Poets of Music: The Viennese heritage ............................................................................................ 10 c) The last sparks before the gradual loss of the halo ......................................................................... 18 d) Literary Wagnerism .......................................................................................................................... 24 e) A new Poet .......................................................................................................................................... 27 2. Opera in English: From Dryden to Gilbert ............................................................................................. 33 a) A court masque or “opera” during the Restoration ....................................................................... 35 b) “When I am laid in earth”: The English lament ............................................................................. 39 c) The Italian parody alias the Ballad Opera ...................................................................................... 42 d) Haendel: From pastoral opera to oratorio ...................................................................................... 47 e) A German/English Romantic Opera ................................................................................................ 52 f) Search for a true Grand English Opera .......................................................................................... 57 g) The rise of light opera [Gilbert and Sullivan] ................................................................................. 61 3. Modernism ............................................................................................................................................. 66 a) Definitions of Modernism ................................................................................................................. 66 b) Modernity and Modernism ............................................................................................................... 70 c) The 20th century: a historical account .............................................................................................. 72 d) The “Age of Anxiety.” A literary overview of the period............................................................... 77 e) The Modern Melodrama ................................................................................................................... 81 f) The Twentieth Century Opera in English ....................................................................................... 84 4. “The Last refuge of the High style”: literary critics on the libretto .................................................. 87 a) Critics on the Libretto. ...................................................................................................................... 87 b) A Valid Literary Text ........................................................................................................................ 90 c) An Evaluative Model ......................................................................................................................... 94 5. Case studies ............................................................................................................................................ 96 a) Edwin DuBose Heyward: Adaptation from an original novel ....................................................... 97 Porgy and Bess ....................................................................................................................................... 97 1 b) W.H. Auden (& Chester Kallman): Poetic experiments .............................................................. 105 Paul Bunyan ......................................................................................................................................... 106 The Rake’s progress ............................................................................................................................ 111 The Bassarids ....................................................................................................................................... 122 c) Edward Morgan Forster (& Eric Crozier): A novelist at work .................................................. 127 Billy Budd ............................................................................................................................................. 127 d) Giancarlo Menotti: on the footsteps of Boito and Leoncavallo ................................................... 133 Amahl and the Night Visitors ............................................................................................................. 133 Vanessa ................................................................................................................................................. 137 e) Samuel Beckett: the librettist of an anti-opera ............................................................................. 143 Neither .................................................................................................................................................. 143 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................... 146 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................. 147 Texts .......................................................................................................................................................... 147 Essays ........................................................................................................................................................ 151 2 Abstract The advent of Modernism has affected various fields including opera. The 20th century has seen a rise in the number of operas written in English. Not only English and American composers but also distinguished foreign ones like Stravinsky and Henze have proposed their operas in this language. The operatic librettist instead has experienced a literary rebirth with renowned authors like W. H. Auden and E. M. Forster opting for this literary form. According to Auden, in a period in which it has become impossible to write high literature, the operatic libretto appeared to him as a valid solution to solve this impasse due to its own special conventions. In this dissertation, I will try to prove the literary validity of the libretto, even without the music, as a textual mirror of the important issues of the time. I will do this by examining initially the evolution of the librettist in time and in the English context. Then, I will focus on Modernism and finally peruse eight librettos belonging to this period. Introduction When one thinks about melodrama, one imagines the French mélodrame which is the reciting of a text with music accompaniment. In Italy, this is called melologo while melodramma is a synonym of opera. In England, instead, melodrama is a term used to express the Victorian dramas that had music accompanying the action, similar to the French model, but this term also represented the works based on exaggerated characters, feelings and events. This negative definition was the result of the natural dislike the British had towards Italian opera. This will be discussed briefly later on. In this work, I will concentrate merely on the Italian meaning of melodrama and I will use the term interchangeably with that of opera. Inevitably, one question would immediately arise: why use the term melodrama in the title and not opera that would certainly make it more intelligible? In Italy, we have the term opera lirica that includes in its name the two fields of the genre, music and literature, but, in English, it simply becomes opera. We lose the “lyric” part, the textual footprint of the work. I could have used lyric opera but that would have been undoubtedly an unnatural and forced choice. For experts, it would have appeared more like a direct reference to the operatic theatre 3 of Chicago, known by that name. On the contrary, melodrama reflects the two parts of the category: the Greek term mélos means part of a musical phrase while drama stands for action or the play itself. Therefore, the term melodrama merges the two artistic fields without losing both connotations as with the use of the term opera. In my dissertation, I will consecrate my time to the literary text, the libretto. All this reasoning should help us avoid other possible questions: why choose
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