Transcript French, English Opera PPT

Domenico Scarlatti 1685-1757
Alessandro Scarlatti 1660-1725
Da capo aria
• A and B sections
• A section then repeated (“da capo” means
literally “from the head”)
• Performers expected to improvise variations
and ornaments during the repeated A section
Queen Anne of Austria
Cardinal Mazarin
Louis XIV
The Palace at Versailles
• Versailles
– Landscaping
• Hall of Mirrors
– Extravagance
Pierre Perrin
Jean-Baptiste Lully
Opera in France
• Tragedie lyrique: combo of dance scenes,
lyrical music and plot based upon courtly love.
• Jean Bapiste Lully
(1632-1687)
father of French opera
French Overture
•
Overture is French for “opening”
2 sections, each repeated
1. First section homophonic, dotted rhythm,
majestic (was supposed to signal the entry of the
king) and slower
2. Second section polyphonic, faster
How evil is opera?
a French critic, late 1600s:
Opera is a bizarre affair made up of
poetry and music, in which the poet and
the musician, each equally obstructed
by the other, give themselves no end of
trouble to produce a wretched work.
How evil is opera?
Opera was illegal in Rome in the early
1700s.
an English critic, 1872:
Opera is to be regarded “musically,
philosophically, and ethically, as an
almost unmixed evil.”
Opera in England
• James I (r. 1603-25)
• Charles I (1625-490
– Stuart Kings
– Supported musical plays called “masques” to be
performed in private palaces.
– Very popular during this period of time.
Commonwealth Period
• 1649-60
• Ruled by the Puritans
• Opera, Stage Plays, Secular forms of entertainment
were forbidden.
• Considered blasphemous
• Plays set to music could be performed if set with the
proper precautions.
• John Blow is the first English masque writer.
• His pupil, Henry Purcell (1659) was the first major
English Opera Composer.
Henry Purcell 1659-1695
Dido and Aeneas (1689)
• Dido, filled with grief meets her death. (loss of
love)
• Climbs a funeral pyre.
• Music: descending line in ground bass is a sign
of grief in baroque music.
• Descending line paints “laid in earth.”
• Use of ground bass.
• Use of dotted rhythms to denote royalty.
Dido and Aeneas, Act III Dido’s
Lament
• Virgil’s Aeneid
• Adventures of Aeneas after the fall of Troy
• Aeneas is stranded in Carthage, Northern
African coast
• Falls in love with Dido, Queen of Carthage
• Aeneas pushes her away as he must leave for
Italy…. Soon to be the founder of Rome.
After Dido . . .
• English preferred spoken drama
• Purcell wrote some “Semi-operas”
– Example: The Fairy Queen (1692)
• Opera had support of the monarchy in France
and the public in Italy, but from neither in
England
Types of Recitative
• arioso – passages that lie somewhere between
recitative and aria style
• recitative semplice (simple recitative) – as
speechlike as possible and accompanied only
by basso continuo
• recitative accompagnato (accompanied
recitative) – used orchestra to dramatize tense
situations