Birth Of Opera Research Articles

Витальность музыки: от истоков к реалиям нон-классики

The subject of the article is the phenomenon of vitality in music. It is considered as a generic feature of music dating back to its origins and early forms. The historical evolution of musical vitality is briefly described, presented on individual examples, starting from the late Baroque, the works by I. Haydn, L. Beethoven, R. Wagner, A. Scriabin up to D. Shostakovich and the composers of the second half of the 20th — first third of the 21st centuries, to whom the main attention is paid. The purpose of the article is to identify specific, relatively stable forms of vitality’s manifestation which materialize both in individual elements of the musical language (such, for example, is the new monody that arose with the birth of opera at the beginning of the 17th century), and in integral phenomena of a systematic order. Among the stylistic events of the second kind, the article is specifically examined the concept of creation, the gesture of birth. Gradually, it crystallizes in music as thematic constant (based on biblical mythology, as in Haydn’s Creation of the World oratorio), but eventually emancipates from the plot basis, acquiring the universal significance. The result of the research is the identification of the mythological origins of the concept of creation; in some cases they come to the forefront (Introduction to the opera The Rhinegold by Wagner; Stimmung for six vocalists and electronics by K. Stockhausen). Another version of the concept of creation is formed in line with the romantic tradition. Then the birth of the world is associated with the lonely voice of the hero — the initial monologue of the solo instrument dramatically opposed to the orchestral mass (works of the concert genre by A. Schnittke, S. Gubaidulina, W. Lutosławski, B. Tishchenko, E. Denisov). In all such cases, the heightened sense of vitality is enhanced by special performing techniques. In the new music, the concept of creation is further developed and logically completed. The gesture of creation is no longer answered by the final statement of existence but by the gesture of destruction, annihilation of sound material — attenuation, acoustic extinction. The feeling of vitality in such compositions is specific, since musical material lives in them according to its own laws as if it doesn’t need a mirror of the subject (large orchestral compositions by Ch. Ives, Ya. Ksenakis, V. Tarnopolsky). The new music “brings to play” other non-classical aspects of vitality associated with threshold states on the verse of life and death. Starting with I. Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring the vitality of transgression becomes a noticeable phenomenon of contemporary music.

Girolamo Mei’s Interpretation of Tragic Katharsis as Culmination of His Aesthetic Thought

Abstract Girolamo Mei (1519–94) is known in the history of Western music as a humanist who stimulated the birth of the operatic form by his description of ancient tragedy. According to him, it was a wholly musical drama, with all the words sung from beginning to end. However, scholars have been silent about the details of his thought, including the way he conceived tragedy. As a result, the birth of opera has often been considered to be a product of a misunderstanding. However, his interpretation of the form of tragedy is firmly based on the words of Aristotle’s Poetics. It follows from this that his picture of ancient tragedy is a proper one. This paper deals with Mei’s intepretation of tragic katharsis, which corroborates and also is corroborated by his view of ancient tragedy and music, and which at the same time is the culmination of his aesthetic thought.

Vom Adamsspiel zur Adamsoper

The thesis of the birth of opera as a result of late humanistic reception of anti­quity at the turn of the 17th century has been a commonplace idea within the discussion of dramatic genres. Yet the dominant narrative of change or renewal tends to obscure phenomena of continuity and anachronism which are nonetheless relevant for the tradition of premodern theatre. Those residues of an outlasting dramatic tradition are the focus of this paper which is especially concerned with the transitions between the broad stream of medieval liturgical drama and early modern opera. It is to be shown how close the ties in particular are between the new genre of music theatre and the older theatrical models and their continuities. At the same time the specific achievements and innovations of the younger operatic genre can be accentuated even more distinctly. This paper will concentrate on a paradigmatic case from the early times of German music theatre, the Hamburg inaugural opera Adam from 1678, to demonstrate the characteristic links as well as transformations between the traditions of the medieval liturgical and early modern protestant drama and the operatic genre of the 17th century.

Opera and neuroscience.

Opera is the most complete form of theatrical representation, characterized by musical accompaniment, both instrumental and vocal. It has played an important role in sociocultural spheres, affecting the various social strata and reflecting customs and ideas in different centuries. Composers have created pieces that have also shown the development of medicine. Since the birth of opera in seventeenth century in Italy, neuroscience has played an important role in influencing the representation of madness and neurological aspects. From the Folly of the Renaissance, a path toward a representation of madness was developed, initially linked to the myths of classical antiquity. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, madness was represented as comical or funny, of a loving nature and influenced by the spread of the Commedia dell'Arte (Comedy of Art). In the nineteenth century, with the rise of the first scientific theories of the mind, insanity took more precise connotations and was separated from other psychiatric and neurological diseases. The operas of the twentieth century depicted psychiatric and neurological diseases, taking into account newer medical and scientific discoveries.

Who Can Write An Opera? F.C. Bressand and the Baroque Opera Libretto

Abstract The German opera librettist of the seventeenth century wielded a surprising amount of power. The birth of opera in Germany is marked by authorial practices that seem peculiar by current standards, the interpretation of which is complicated by the disappearance of virtually all opera scores from this period. The libretti, however, were consistently preserved and published—as operas or singspiels—under the name of the librettist. The genre of texts written for operatic setting was a recognized literary form in itself. The German opera librettist stood in a tradition that reached back to the medieval Minnesingers and that was rearticulated in the poetics of Martin Opitz. Through the example of F. C. Bressand, a prominent Baroque librettist who has now nearly been forgotten, I argue that the authorial dynamic between opera composers and librettists was the reverse of that which has since prevailed: the librettist was considered the primary author. (ESH)

Who Can Write An Opera? F.C. Bressand and the Baroque Opera Libretto

The German opera librettist of the seventeenth century wielded a surprising amount of power. The birth of opera in Germany is marked by authorial practices that seem peculiar by current standards, the interpretation of which is complicated by the disappearance of virtually all opera scores from this period. The libretti, however, were consistently preserved and published—as operas or singspiels—under the name of the librettist. The genre of texts written for operatic setting was a recognized literary form in itself. The German opera librettist stood in a tradition that reached back to the medieval Minnesingers and that was rearticulated in the poetics of Martin Opitz. Through the example of F. C. Bressand, a prominent Baroque librettist who has now nearly been forgotten, I argue that the authorial dynamic between opera composers and librettists was the reverse of that which has since prevailed: the librettist was considered the primary author.

The Birth of Opera and the New Science

Since its birth in 1600 opera has been interpreted as an attempt to revive Greek tragedies in its marvelous music. Its provocative presentation of action and narration entirely in music has been seen as a manifestation of the enchanted universe of sixteenth-century hermeticism. Viewed as a final homage to the magical incantations of the premodern era, late Renaissance operas have been interpreted as the culmination rather than the dissolution of Renaissance culture. This paper proposes that the relationship between the natural and the supernatural in early opera represents a rational mediation between the real and the unreal rather than an enchanted bond between these realms. The paper situates the birth of opera in the context of the epistemological shift of the new science and suggests that opera played a key role in the transition from the old to the modern notions of meaning and truth.

The Birth of Opera in the History of Modern Mongolian Theatre : The Reason Why "The Three Sad Hills" Gained Popularity as a National Opera

The Birth of Opera in the History of Modern Mongolian Theatre : The Reason Why "The Three Sad Hills" Gained Popularity as a National Opera

The Myth of the "Birth of Opera" in the Florentine Camerata Debunked by Emilio de'Cavalieri: A Commemorative Lecture

The Myth of the "Birth of Opera" in the Florentine Camerata Debunked by Emilio de'Cavalieri: A Commemorative Lecture

The Myth of the "Birth of Opera" in the Florentine Camerata Debunked by Emilio de'Cavalieri: A Commemorative Lecture

1University of Regensburg

Florentine Humanism and the Birth of Opera: The Roots of Operatic "Conventions"

Florentine Humanism and the Birth of Opera: The Roots of Operatic "Conventions"

The birth of opera

The birth of opera

The Birth of Opera

The Birth of Opera

Orpheus, Ovid and Opera

It was in the Shakespeare year of 1964 that I first realized to what extent my work on English stage music lacked foundation and depth without a better knowledge of the practices of dramatic music in Italy. Even at that early stage I recognized that the key plot for intermedi and the first operas was the story of Orpheus which looms so impressively, both in quantity and in quality, at the birth of opera. Indeed, it is a plot that continues to act as a springboard for the imagination of composers of operas and ballets, even after the seventeenth century, as witnessed by the works of Gluck, Offenbach and Stravinsky.