BourgeoisGentilV1, Istex, Corpus, bibRecord, 000573

Opera on Stage. Ed. by Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli. Trans. by Kate Singleton. pp. xii + 346. The History of Italian Opera, 5. (University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2002, $55. ISBN 0-226-04591-9.) Opera in Theory and Practice, Image and Myth. Ed. by Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli. Trans. by Kenneth Chalmers and Mary Whittall. pp. xiv + 456. The History of Italian Opera, 6. (University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2003, $70. ISBN 0-226-04592-7.)

Identifieur interne : 000573 ( Istex/Corpus ); précédent : 000572; suivant : 000574

Opera on Stage. Ed. by Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli. Trans. by Kate Singleton. pp. xii + 346. The History of Italian Opera, 5. (University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2002, $55. ISBN 0-226-04591-9.) Opera in Theory and Practice, Image and Myth. Ed. by Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli. Trans. by Kenneth Chalmers and Mary Whittall. pp. xiv + 456. The History of Italian Opera, 6. (University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2003, $70. ISBN 0-226-04592-7.)

Auteurs : Emanuele Senici

Source :

Music and Letters [ 0027-4224 ] ; 2006-01.

RBID : ISTEX:AEF294F13159FCC8D7736AC4296A0A0E51E2CD07

English descriptors

Teeft :
- Bibliographic notes, Chicago press, Dramaturgy, English translation, Felice romani, Fundamental role, Genre, Giorgio pestelli, Isbn opera, Italian culture, Italian literature, Italian opera, Italian styles, Kate singleton, Lorenzo bianconi, Mary whittall, Myriad ways, Opera direction, Opera production, Operatic dramaturgy, Second chapter, Second part, Storia italiana, Theatrical dance, Theatrical spaces, Visual aspect, Visual component.

Url:

https://api.istex.fr/ark:/67375/HXZ-JQZR0BMC-0/fulltext.pdf

DOI: 10.1093/ml/gci147

Links to Exploration step

ISTEX:AEF294F13159FCC8D7736AC4296A0A0E51E2CD07

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. Ed. by Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli. Trans. by Kenneth Chalmers and Mary Whittall. pp. xiv + 456. The History of Italian Opera, 6. (University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2003, $70. ISBN 0-226-04592-7.)</article-title>

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            <given-names>Emanuele</given-names>

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    <p><italic>Opera on Stage</italic>
 and <italic>Opera in Theory and Practice, Image and Myth</italic>
 are the English translations of, respectively, <italic>La spettacolarità</italic>
 and <italic>Teorie e tecniche, immagini e fantasmi</italic>
, vols. 5 and 6 of the <italic>Storia dell’opera italiana</italic>
 planned in the early 1980s by the Italian Musicological Society in association with the publisher E.D.T. (Edizioni di Torino). The second part of this enterprise, entitled ‘Systems’ and comprising vols. 4–6, was published in 1987 (vol. 4) and 1988 (vols. 5 and 6); the first, ‘Events’, has yet to appear. Reviewing the English translation of vol. 4, <italic>Opera Production and its Resources</italic>
 (1998), a few years ago, I confidently predicted that part 1 of the <italic>Storia dell’opera italiana</italic>
 would be published eventually; the University of Chicago Press is apparently counting on it, since it promotes the two volumes under review as nos. 5 and 6 of <italic>The History of Italian Opera</italic>
. I am no longer so sure: after noises were heard throughout the 1990s, it has been awfully quiet on the Italian front for some years now. In the end, I don’t think it really matters anyway. The three published volumes constitute an invaluable contribution to the literature on Italian opera, and opera <italic>tout court</italic>
, and their importance has by and large not been diminished by their delayed appearance in English. For years I wished I could include some of their chapters in both undergraduate and graduate syllabuses, and I am glad to be able to do so at last. <italic><italic>Opera Production and its Resources</italic>
</italic>
 has already proved immensely useful, and I am sure that <italic>Opera on Stage</italic>
 and a few chapters in <italic>Opera in Theory and Practice</italic>
, <italic>Image and Myth</italic>
 will be equally helpful to students and scholars alike in search of an expert introduction to fundamental aspects of Italian opera.</p>

    <p><italic>Opera on Stage</italic>
 comprises three chapters that, taken together, constitute the best comprehensive survey currently available on the visual component of Italian opera. Mercedes Viale Ferrero’s masterly ‘Stage and Set’ is in two parts: the first, ‘Theatrical Spaces and Designers’, explores a number of issues surrounding the actual spaces where Italian opera has been performed in the past four centuries, and the imaginary spaces where the events represented on stage have taken place. The author investigates, among other topics, the relationship between theatrical spaces and operatic genres; the influence of different types of patronage and audience on the shape of theatrical buildings; the impact of technical innovations such as electric lighting on the conception and execution of sets; the evolution of the status accorded to set designers (it took them two centuries to be recognized as ‘artists’); the dynamic of originality and convention in the invention of scenes; and the interplay between scenography and visual culture at large, especially painting. These sections are often organized chronologically, and contain short histories of the topic under scrutiny; the survey of the critical reception of set designs is particularly illuminating.</p>

    <p>The second part of this long chapter, ‘The Evolution of Stage Design’, is a historical survey of Italian opera scenography in Italy. The author’s felicitous decision to shift constantly the point of view from which this history is told opens up space for several memorable medallions: particularly noteworthy are those dedicated to a great dynasty of set designers, the Bibienas; to the visual elements in the librettos of Felice Romani; and to the staging of Puccini’s operas. The last section discusses the fundamental role of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (founded in 1933) in promoting innovation in the visual conception of opera in Italy. In the twentieth century, however, it becomes impossible to separate the staging of Italian opera from the staging of opera <italic>tout court</italic>
, both in Italy and elsewhere, given the increasingly international repertory of opera houses around the world. This state of affairs is surely among the most important reasons why this chapter, as well as several others in these two volumes, pays relatively little attention to the last hundred years or so. In this regard, the emphasis in this chapter on the first three centuries of Italian opera is entirely justified.</p>

    <p>The second chapter, by Gerardo Guccini, is devoted to opera direction. As the author immediately warns, ‘the concept of theatre direction as an autonomous creative function carried out by the director’ (p. 125) did not reach Italian opera until the 1930s, but from then onwards the terms <italic>regia</italic>
 (direction) and <italic>regista</italic>
 (director) became widely used, appearing on the posters of La Scala, for example, from 1937. Therefore the chapter is divided into two sections. The first, ‘Stage Direction in Italian Opera’, surveys chronologically the conventions of onstage movement from the beginnings of opera in Italy, and the various figures responsible for it, from the <italic>maestro di scena</italic>
 to the librettist, and from the composer (Verdi perhaps the one who was most deeply involved in the visual aspect of the production of his operas, including the movement of singers and chorus onstage) to the conductor (Toscanini, famously, was keenly interested in all aspects of the performances he conducted). The second part of the chapter, ‘Opera Direction in Italy’, is of necessity much shorter, and discusses a few important Italian directors who have worked in opera in the last fifty years, the most famous and influential among them surely being Luchino Visconti.</p>

    <p>The third and last chapter of <italic>Opera on Stage</italic>
, ‘Theatrical Ballet and Italian Opera’ by Kathleen Kuzmick Hansell, amounts to a history of theatrical dance in Italy. As the author makes immediately clear, ‘Italian theatrical dance runs as a stream parallel to that of opera . . . in Italy, and in foreign centers holding to Italian traditions, staged ballets formed a vital but distinct form of musical theater’ (p. 177). Usually enacted on the same stage and as part of the same evening entertainment, ballets were as a rule completely independent of the operas with which they were performed. Therefore ‘a history of Italian theatrical dance necessarily considers the emergence and development of ballet <italic>and</italic>
 opera or ballet <italic>with</italic>
 opera but seldom presents a chronicle of ballets <italic>in</italic>
 opera’ (p. 178). Only a myopically work-oriented mentality would question the inclusion of a chapter on ballet in a history of Italian opera, which seems entirely justified within the more flexibly event-oriented stance adopted by the editors. This chapter follows the development of Italian theatrical dance in chronological fashion, from the rise of theatrical dance alongside public opera in Venice in the middle decades of the seventeenth century to the waning of the coupling of opera and ballet within an evening’s entertainment at the end of the nineteenth. This fascinating story highlights, among several other themes, how frequently and productively the discourses on ballet and opera intersected, perhaps never more productively than when the rise of pantomimic ballet accompanied the search for a ‘reform’ of opera in the second half of the eighteenth century—if asked to name a choreographer known to them from their studies, opera historians (not only Italian ones) will probably answer with the names of Jean-Georges Noverre and Gasparo Angiolini, who had a major impact on Calzabigi and Gluck’s Viennese operas of the 1760s.</p>

    <p>Thanks to their solidly structured argument and fluent prose and the notable expertise of their authors, these three chapters are still the best we have on the visual aspect of Italian opera. While no major rewriting has been attempted—it was not necessary—the footnote references and the bibliographic notes at the end of each chapter have been updated (significantly more so than in vol. 4). The translation by Kate Singleton is both accurate and idiomatic, except for an unfortunate confusion in Viale Ferrero’s chapter about ‘le didascalie sceniche di Felice Romani’ (p. 90), which refers to the stage directions found in Romani’s librettos and therefore cannot be translated as ‘Felice Romani’s production books’, especially since a few pages later ‘Verdi e le prime “disposizioni sceniche”’ is correctly translated as ‘Verdi and the early production books’—that is, the Italian equivalent of the French <italic>livrets de mise en scène</italic>
 (also frequently rendered in English as ‘staging manuals’). Perhaps the most rewarding aspect of the volume is, appropriately, its many images—134, to be precise. Although exclusively in black and white, they successfully transmit to the reader/viewer the fundamental role of the visual component in the operatic experience, and the crucial importance of images in preserving its historical and personal memory.</p>

    <p><italic>Opera in Theory and Practice, Image and Myth</italic>
 contains six chapters on general aspects of Italian opera that do not concern explicitly either production (and therefore could not be included in <italic>Opera Production and its Resources</italic>
) or the visual dimension (and therefore did not fit into <italic>Opera on Stage</italic>
). Two of them, Renato Di Benedetto’s ‘Poetics and Polemics’ (ch. 1) and Paolo Fabbri’s ‘Metrical and Formal Organization’ (ch. 3), are comparable to the chapters contained in the other two volumes in their intention to provide a detailed survey of a fundamental aspect of Italian opera: respectively, the critical discourse accompanying it through the centuries and the interaction between the metrical organization of the poetic text and the rhythmical structures of the music. Both are organized chronologically but contain detailed discussions of particularly illuminating moments or issues; both constitute very useful introductions to these topics and should become essential points of departure for future research.</p>

    <p>Three other chapters deal with the relationship between Italian opera and Italian culture and society from three different angles: Marzio Pieri discusses ‘Opera and Italian Literature’ (ch. 4); Roberto Leydi explores ‘The Dissemination and Popularization of Opera’ (ch. 5); and Giovanni Morelli considers the place of ‘Opera in Italian National Culture’ (ch. 6). Potentially the most interesting, unfortunately these three chapters are less than successful, broadly for the same reason: the inability or unwillingness of their authors to find a language capable of sustaining the weight of the objects of their enquiry, and to organize the material in such a way as to engage their readers in a cohesive, coherent, and stimulating argument. Pieri’s and Morelli’s are sometimes fascinating but mostly irritating ramblings from quotation to quotation, from title to title, from section to section, with links between paragraphs and sections optional. They should have indulged less in their writerly excesses and been more mindful of the nature of the whole project of the <italic>Storia dell’opera italiana</italic>
 and the types of reader it implies. I can only imagine the pain it must have cost Kenneth Chalmers to translate this convoluted, overwritten, self-indulgent prose into English. He has done an excellent job, and these chapters certainly make more sense in English than in the original Italian. Still, he could not rewrite them, and they remain a sadly lost opportunity: the histories of the relationship between Italian opera and Italian literature and of the decidedly uneasy place of opera in Italian national culture remain to be written.</p>

    <p>Leydi’s prose is much more reader-friendly than Pieri’s and Morelli’s, and his chapter contains a very significant amount of fascinating data on the myriad ways in which opera travelled beyond the opera house and into the everyday lives of Italians. The author places too much faith in the capacity of the data to speak for itself, however, and he often leaves readers adrift in a sea of facts that they will find difficult if not impossible to interpret, especially if they are not deeply immersed in Italian culture and society. Let us take one of Leydi’s instances of the presence of nineteenth-century Italian opera in working-class culture, that of the <italic>incatenatura</italic>
, or chain, basically a genre of popular song containing a sequence of fragments from other songs, including operatic ones, juxtaposed for comic effect. I was rather moved that a dialect song from the province of Brescia, where I grew up, was included, and I admire Chalmers’s faultless English translation. But I cannot help wondering how many other readers of the English text would be able to detect, on the one hand, the references to <italic>Aida</italic>
 and <italic>Il trovatore</italic>
 (fairly obvious to the operatically literate, but how many students are?) and, on the other, the mention of the ‘pónt de Calvisà’ (‘the bridge of Calvisano’, a village south-east of Brescia) as the proverbial place where we <italic>bresciani</italic>
 ritually send each other to fuck off (‘a cagà’—literally ‘to shit’—which rhymes with ‘Calvisà’). In the next song quoted by Leydi, in Milanese dialect, I knew that the lines ‘Una rondine non fa primavera / e di sera, Salomè, / tutti i gatti sono bigi, lo sai, / chi sa mai’ come from an operetta (from vague memories of my two great-aunts, born <italic>c</italic>
.1910, singing them when I was a child), but was at a loss to say which one, until, after a laborious internet search, I found out that they come from <italic>Scugnizza</italic>
, with text by Carlo Lombardo and music by Pasquale Mario Costa, premiered in Turin in 1922 and hugely successful in pre-war Italy. It is unhelpful—to say the least—to leave readers to figure out all this by themselves, especially since so much interpretative mileage (high vs. low, regional vs. national, interpenetration and miscegenation of genres in popular culture—take your pick) could have been obtained from some sensible annotation. Why was I not surprised to find no sign of bibliographic notes at the end of Pieri’s, Morelli’s, and Leydi’s chapters? Needless to say, Di Benedetto’s and Fabbri’s offer detailed and helpful ones.</p>

    <p>The second chapter of <italic>Opera in Theory and Practice, Image and Myth</italic>
 is ‘The Dramaturgy of Italian Opera’ by Carl Dahlhaus, which, at almost eighty pages, constitutes a short monograph on its own, and is alone worth the price of the book. The reception in English-speaking countries of Dahlhaus’s work on opera has by and large ignored this seminal late text, typically referring instead to the pages devoted to opera in his <italic>Nineteenth-Century Music</italic>
 (1989). In comparison with this and other earlier publications, ‘The Dramaturgy of Italian Opera’ shows a more alert awareness of the specificities of opera as a theatrical genre and of the very significant role played by convention in its production, consumption, and critical exegesis—conventions of all kinds are unavoidable in a genre that requires the concerted efforts of so many different individuals to be brought into being. Far from being limited to Italian opera, ‘The Dramaturgy of Italian Opera’ is in reality a short treatise on operatic dramaturgy <italic>tout court</italic>
, since the Italian tradition is explored and explained through systematic comparison with other national traditions of opera. Perhaps unavoidably, Wagner is almost as frequently mentioned as Verdi, but Mozart’s Singspiels, Meyerbeer’s <italic>grands opéras</italic>
, Weill and Brecht’s <italic>Mahagonny</italic>
, and Ligeti’s <italic>Aventures</italic>
 and <italic>Nouvelles Aventures</italic>
 make repeated appearances as well.</p>

    <p>Dahlhaus organizes his discussion around issues, such as the definition and scope of the concept of musical dramaturgy (this section is substantially similar to his article ‘What is a Musical Drama?’, <italic>Cambridge Opera Journal</italic>
, 1 (1989), 95–111), the operatic repercussions of the distinction between <italic>fabula</italic>
 and intrigue, the relationship between text and work, the importance and functions of stage music, the organization and consumption of time on the operatic stage, the challenges and opportunities of simultaneous singing by different characters, and so on. These micro-treatises are occasionally too short to do justice to the topic under scrutiny: the final section, ‘Questions of Genres’, for example, contains no discussion of the differences between specific operatic genres, focusing instead on the relationship between some genres and their literary equivalents. However, ‘The Dramaturgy of Italian Opera’ is typically full of illuminating aperçus and bold insights, and is clearly intended to get readers thinking about some fundamental issues regarding opera: at least in my case, it has succeeded brilliantly, judging from fifteen years of regular returns to it. Its belated but no less welcome English translation (executed with her customary expertise and fluency by Mary Whittall directly from Dahlhaus’s original German rather than the Italian translation) should make it required reading for anybody interested in the dramaturgy of opera in the English-speaking world. The only slight disappointment is that the bibliographic note has not been updated. Of course Dahlhaus was unfortunately no longer available to do this, but surely somebody at the University of Chicago Press should have taken the trouble to change the very first reference from the Italian anthology <italic>La drammaturgia musicale</italic>
 (ed. Lorenzo Bianconi) to the original versions of the essays included in it, especially as several of them first appeared in English (those by Daniel Heartz, Piero Weiss, Pierluigi Petrobelli, Reinhard Strohm, David Rosen, Harold S. Powers, Michael F. Robinson, and Leo Treitler). What is more, readers should have been alerted to the fact that this bibliography was compiled in the mid-1980s, just in case they take it as a point of departure for their forays into the world of operatic dramaturgy (here, of course, I have students rather than scholars in mind), since this world has changed considerably in the meantime.</p>

    <p>The best section of <italic>Opera in Theory and Practice, Image and Myth</italic>
 is without doubt the thirty-five images related to the Act III quartet in Verdi’s <italic>Rigoletto</italic>
, ‘Bella figlia dell’amore’. They constitute a wonderfully rich visual history of this hugely famous piece, from the equivalent pages in Hugo’s play <italic>Le Roi s’amuse</italic>
 to early libretto drafts, from Verdi’s autograph score to the printed piano-vocal reduction, and from early stage designs to stills taken from recent filmic adaptations of the opera, reminding us of the myriad ways in which the operatic phenomenon can be observed, and of the many different kinds of pleasure that we can draw from it.</p>

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