Italian Aria Research Articles

Diva Plavalaguna’s Aria

In the opera episode of Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element (1997), the alien Diva Plavalaguna performs an aria in which a fragment of theMad scenefrom Act III of Gaetano Donizetti’s operaLucia di Lammermooris replaced by a vocalization composed by Eric Serra. This article examines the relationship of the vocalization to the opera number and the unified form of the aria, created by combining seemingly incompatible parts. The Diva’s aria, in a concise and elementary form, isla solita forma, the traditional form of the Italian aria of the first half of the nineteenth century. Even though most of Rossini’s, Bellini’s, and Donizetti’s operas — solo and ensemble — and many of Verdi’s numbers up to his mature operas, including his most popular arias, are based on this form,la solita formais often not perceived by the modern listener. The Diva’s aria, whose structure is wittily emphasized by its cinematic solution, offers a visualization and a lesson in hearing the central nineteenth-century operatic form. In addition, the article discusses nineteenth- and twentieth-century operatic practice, the way opera, and in particularLucia di Lammermoor, are performed, and the transformation of the operatic work from performance to performance, as well as from era to era. The inclusion of the vocalization in the aria of the Diva of Plavalaguna is considered in the context of the changes introduced into theMad sceneby the author of the opera and the opera divas of past centuries.

Music, Dance and Franco-Italian Cultural Exchange c. 1700: Michel Pignolet de Montéclair and the Prince de Vaudémont by Don Fader

Reviewed by: Music, Dance and Franco-Italian Cultural Exchange c. 1700: Michel Pignolet de Montéclair and the Prince de Vaudémont by Don Fader Michael Vincent Music, Dance and Franco-Italian Cultural Exchange c. 1700: Michel Pignolet de Montéclair and the Prince de Vaudémont. By Don Fader. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 2021. [xvii, 343 p. ISBN 9781783276288 (hard-cover), $115; ISBN 9781800102798 (e-book), price varies.] Illustrations, music examples, bibliography, appendixes, index. Music in the eighteenth century is known for its international contexts. From Joseph Haydn’s proclamation that his language is understood all over the world to the ubiquity of Italian opera in capital cities, the pan-European culture called “cosmopolitanism” helped music flourish across national boundaries (p. 1). Don Fader explores an early case of eighteenth-century cosmopolitanism in Music, Dance and Franco-Italian Cultural Exchange c. 1700. The book focuses on musical activities in the orbit of Charles-Henri de Lorraine, Prince de Vaudémont (1649–1723). The Lorrainese prince was culturally French but politically independent. He served as the governor of Milan from 1698 to 1706. Vaudémont was known for his military prowess and dancing skills. He impressed Louis XIV, who favored him personally even when they were at odds politically. The bulk of the book focuses on the cultural exchange that happened during Vaudémont’s Milanese period, when his court exchanged music and musicians between Paris, Germany, and other Italian courts. Much of the music examined comes from opera, but other genres considered include instrumental dance music, cantatas, and pedagogical treatises. Aligning with the book’s thesis that Vaudémont’s patronage resulted in a hybridization of French and Italian styles, the music that Fader examines demonstrates this cosmopolitan paradigm. The primary musical figure in the book is Michel Pignolet de Montéclair, who served as Vaudémont’s composer-in-residence and whom the prince sought out because of his cosmopolitan style and influence as a musician and publisher in France. This book is the first major published study on Montéclair, who composed instrumental and vocal music, wrote a violin method and other tutors, and was well known as a pedagogue. Along with Marc-Antoine Charpentier and André Campra, he was one of the first French composers to write an Italian aria. His early compositions appeared in well-known publications, which Fader analyzes and contextualizes. His music showed him as a composer at home in both French and Italian styles, which was ideal for Vaudémont’s taste and led to his employment with the prince. At its heart, the book is a documentary study of the musical activities that arose from Vaudémont’s patronage. Fader’s is the first major study of these documents, which include financial [End Page 61] records, correspondence, and other papers related to the prince’s holdings. Fader had his work cut out for him. Previously, there had been no major modern biography of the prince, perhaps owing to the difficulty of tracing scattered sources from an itinerant life. Furthermore, the Vaudémont papers at the Bibliothèque nationale de France consist of over one thousand sets of documents and have been combined with unrelated holdings from the nineteenth century. The book is therefore a major contribution to understanding the lives of two major historical figures, Vaudémont and Montéclair. Fader analyzes the vast collection of documents and insightfully reconstructs musical activ ities related to Vaudémont’s patronage. To cite one of many examples, he tracks the payment records of a Milanese violin band over the years 1698–1706 as they played for a number of occasions, including balls, royal birthdays, and other celebrations. The number of players varied as time went on, but Fader suggests that the frequent occurrences of twelve and twenty-four players meant that they modeled themselves on the French royal twenty-four violins. The first record of payment shows the band being paid “for the operas,” suggesting that the musicians were from the orchestra of the first major opera staged under Vaudémont’s patronage, La pros-perità di Elio Seiano, which ran from December 1698 to January 1699 (p. 65). Fader connects the band’s...

Строфика и сонатность в итальянской оперной арии 1720–1730-х годов

At present, the theory of musical form is still dominated by the notion that elements of sonata form in composition began to penetrate into vocal genres or, more specifically, into the opera aria only by the end of the 18th century, when they had already been fully established in instrumental music. In the latest studies devoted to sonata forms, both in Russia and in other countries, there is no mention of the emergence or manifestation of the principles of sonata in opera and vocal music. Nevertheless, in Italian aria (both in serious and comic opera) the principles of sonata form have been forming intensively since the end of the 1720s, i.e., long before these processes were noted in instrumental music. The article analyzes the composition in a number of arias from serious and comic operas by Leonardo Vinci, Johann Adolph Hasse, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi and Gaetano Latilla. In these arias, the sonata principles are reflected in the compositional, thematic and tonal-harmonic planes. All arias are variants of the early two-part (binary) sonata form enclosed by the outer sections of the da capo. The conclusions are as follows: 1) sonata form in arias is based on interaction with the strophic arrangement of the poetic texts containing figurative contrast; 2) sonata form was established in stages, from a distinctly structured exposition (without clear signs of sonata in the second section of the form) to a full binary sonata form with thematic repetition and tonal subordination in the reprise, the priority role in this process played by comic opera. The article contains musical examples and tables. Keywords: sonata form, 18th century Italian opera aria, stanza

Entwicklung des Air mit Da capo von Lully bis Rameau und seinen französischen Zeitgenossen

The starting-point is the rudimentary Italian aria with da capo, respectively with a frame, which surrounds a much longer central part. This type widely spread in the 17th century gets the main form of Quinault’s and Lully’s monologue (the other one is through-composed). It remains present in the Italian opera in a small quantity when the classical aria da capo has already been the main type of aria, whereas in France its number decreases much slower and gets rare in the 1750th. The French cantata imported from Italy blazes the trail for the classical da capo aria firstly in the opera-ballet, then in the divertissements of the tragédie lyrique in Italian, soon also in French and slowly also in arias with dramatic content and expression in all types of French music theatre. The aria with da capo and the classical da capo aria are examined in detail in operas of Rameau and his contemporaries, especially their individual solutions of text, musical forms and expression. Finally J.-J. Rousseau’s typology of the da capo aria is examined, verified and criticized. (Autor)

Od prevajanja Molièra in Metastasia do uprizarjanja Micke in Matička: dolgo porajanje slovenske posvetne dramatike in gledališča

The article re-examines the formation of Slovenian secular drama and theatre. In 1669 or 1670, Fran Krsto Frankopan started to translate Molière’s comedy George Dandin, and probably around 1775, Jurij Japelj started to translate Metastasioʼs libretto Artaserse. The first secular play, entitled Opereta, was published by Anton Feliks Dev in 1780. After 1781, Anton Tomaž Linhart and Žiga Zois began to translate Italian arias, and these Slovenian songs were then performed by visiting German and Italian theatre troupes in Ljubljana. The first documented secular theatrical performance was a staging of Linhart’s Županova Micka (a translation of Richter’s comedy Die Feldmühle) in 1789 in Ljubljana. In 1790, Linhart’s Matiček se ženi (an adaptation of Beaumarchais’s comedy La Folle Journée ou le Mariage de Figaro) was published, but obviously not performed. After 1803, when Kopitar’s Tinček Petelinček (an adaptation of Kotzebue’s play Der Hahnenschlag) was staged in Ljubljana, the tradition of Slovenian theatre – despite many new original and translated plays – only continued in 1848.

Vocal Piano Accompaniment: A Constant Research Towards Emancipation (1)

This article represents the first one in a series of two that investigate the evolution of vocal piano accompaniment through history and the role of the piano in its relationship with the voice. The research method used is musical analysis focused on the piano part, both in itself and its link with the text and the vocal part. The research method used is musical analysis centred on the piano part, both in itself and its link with the text and the vocal part. Initially, some preliminary questions necessary to establish a starting point around the piano accompaniment are addressed. Then, by means of musical examples of different composers following a chronological order, the article investigates all those aspects that provide evidence of the change in the role of the piano in the correspondence between the piano and the voice. In this way we will observe the trajectory of piano accompaniment to the voice and we will see how Schubert conceived the piano in vocal works with piano accompaniment. This new conception will influence both contemporary and later composers. The treatment of this influence will be dealt with in the second article. In the present article we will establish the basis of the functioning of piano accompaniment in compositions prior to Schubert, starting from the Ancient Italian aria (the beginnings of piano accompaniment) to his first lieder. We will observe the different dialogue between voice and piano that starts from the dependence of the piano in the beginnings towards its participation in the final result of the work with a decisive role. Schubert will articulate this drift, as will be seen. However, the results and conclusions, taking into account the whole evolutionary perspective of piano accompaniment, will be presented in the second article.

MARIE-JUSTINE FAVART, NÉE DURONCERAY: SOME NEW BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS

Marie-Justine-Benoîte Duronceray was an extraordinary, multi-talented artist, described by Bruce Alan Brown as a singer, actor, dancer and dramatist. Her performances on the Paris stage between 1745 and 1771 met with general enthusiasm, and her pioneering of realistic stage costume was influential. Her mastery of the modern Italian aria, linked with Italianate acting style, was crucial to the development of modern opéra comique. Biographers and others have recounted her life, creatively linked with that of her husband, the dramatist Charles-Simon Favart, and images, sometimes capturing a role that she played, have been reproduced; a sculpted likeness can be found in the Louvre. Figure 1 celebrates Marie-Justine in 1753, an eventful year during which she even appeared at Fontainebleau opposite Marie Fel and Pierre Jélyotte, in La Coquette trompée (with music by Antoine Dauvergne and text by C.-S.

Die musiktheoretische Ergründung der Arienform in italienischen Opern des 18. Jahrhunderts und die Umgestaltung des Fachs Formenlehre

The paper focuses on the issue of the role played by the 18 th Century Italian aria within the general system of musical forms. This question is relevant for both music theory and pedagogy. Did the aria influence instrumental genres or was it the opposite? Throughout the history of professional musical education in Russia (from the 19 th century to the present day), both general music theory and courses in musical form have usually been based on instrumental music. However, studies in recent decades show that, in the process of crystallization of a number of structures and principles of composition in the first half of the 18th century, the aria takes a prominent position. Among these are such principles as the ritornello , which underlies the Baroque concerto; principles of recapitulation and ternary form that became established in Italian arias in the 1680s (earlier than in the instrumental genres), as well as the principle of thematic contrast . Italian opera played a key role in the formation of classical musical Thematik (Ger.) - not only in its lexical topoi , but also in the treatment of homophony, metric and syntactic periodicity, and the fractionality of motivic structure. The development of the two-subjects sonata form took place within the framework of da capo arias simultaneously with instrumental music (1720-1750s). The Italian aria played a decisive role in the birth of the sonata form with two initial sections typical of the classic concerto. In the musical form course for musicologists and musicians-performers at the Russian Gnessins Academy of Music, I discuss the theory and history of music forms during the 17 th and 18 th centuries, taking into account all these factors. This method introduces significant adjustments in the traditional practice of music form teaching in Russia, thereby bringing the understanding of students closer to the real processes that occurred in the music history of the 18 th century.

The Brain of Opera Singers: Experience-Dependent Changes in Functional Activation

Several studies have shown that motor-skill training over extended time periods results in reorganization of neural networks and changes in brain morphology. Yet, little is known about training-induced adaptive changes in the vocal system, which is largely subserved by intrinsic reflex mechanisms. We investigated highly accomplished opera singers, conservatory level vocal students, and laymen during overt singing of an Italian aria in a neuroimaging experiment. We provide the first evidence that the training of vocal skills is accompanied by increased functional activation of bilateral primary somatosensory cortex representing articulators and larynx. Opera singers showed additional activation in right primary sensorimotor cortex. Further training-related activation comprised the inferior parietal lobe and bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. At the subcortical level, expert singers showed increased activation in the basal ganglia, the thalamus, and the cerebellum. A regression analysis of functional activation with accumulated singing practice confirmed that vocal skills training correlates with increased activity of a cortical network for enhanced kinesthetic motor control and sensorimotor guidance together with increased involvement of implicit motor memory areas at the subcortical and cerebellar level. Our findings may have ramifications for both voice rehabilitation and deliberate practice of other implicit motor skills that require interoception.

PHARMACY FOR THE BODY AND SOUL: DUTCH SONGBOOKS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Mention sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Dutch vocal music and the knowledgeable music lover usually thinks immediately of the brilliant polyphonic creations of famous Flemish masters like Josquin des Prez, Adrian Willaert and Orlande de Lassus. And they did indeed write compositions that still appeal to the imagination. Take Josquin’s polyphonic, chirping El Grillo, a relatively simple but effective piece that can entice even the most a-musical twenty-first-century student into the world of the Renaissance. Those familiar with the Baroque will recall Jan Pietersz Sweelinck, the organist of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam and a composer of bewitching instrumental and vocal music, including his four books of polyphonic Pseaumes de David (1604–21) to the texts of Clément Marot and Theodore Bèze, which are still being performed regularly. Perhaps, too, the French, Latin and Italian arias by Constantijn Huygens from his Pathodia sacra et profana (1647). But it is then that the singing seems to stop in the Low Countries. The names of the composers, at least, are barely known beyond our borders.

Overt and imagined singing of an Italian aria

Activation maps of 16 professional classical singers were evaluated during overt singing and imagined singing of an Italian aria utilizing a sparse sampling functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) technique. Overt singing involved bilateral primary and secondary sensorimotor and auditory cortices but also areas associated with speech and language production. Activation magnitude within the gyri of Heschl (A1) was comparable in both hemispheres. Subcortical motor areas (cerebellum, thalamus, medulla and basal ganglia) were active too. Areas associated with emotional processing showed slight (anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula) activation. Cerebral activation sites during imagined singing were centered on fronto-parietal areas and involved primary and secondary sensorimotor areas in both hemispheres. Areas processing emotions showed intense activation (ACC and bilateral insula, hippocampus and anterior temporal poles, bilateral amygdala). Imagery showed no significant activation in A1. Overt minus imagined singing revealed increased activation in cortical (bilateral primary motor; M1) and subcortical (right cerebellar hemisphere, medulla) motor as well as in sensory areas (primary somatosensory cortex, bilateral A1). Imagined minus overt singing showed enhanced activity in the medial Brodmann's area 6, the ventrolateral and medial prefrontal cortex (PFC), the anterior cingulate cortex and the inferior parietal lobe. Additionally, Wernicke's area and Brocca's area and their homologues were increasingly active during imagery. We conclude that imagined and overt singing involves partly different brain systems in professional singers with more prefrontal and limbic activation and a larger network of higher order associative functions during imagery.

Singing Voice Identification Using Spectral Envelope Estimation

In this paper, we present a spectrum-based system for singer identification that operates for the ideal case in which audio samples contain only the singer's voice. Our method begins with the computation of a robust estimate of the spectral envelope called the composite transfer function (CTF). The CTF is derived from the instantaneous amplitude and frequency of the sinusoidal partials which make up the vocal signal. Unlike traditional source-filter theory , the CTF does not explicitly separate the spectral characteristics of the vocal source and the vocal tract filter. The principal components of the CTFs are used as features for a quadratic classifier to identify singers. The approach is validated on a database containing samples from twelve classically trained singers. In cross validation experiments, test set accuracies of approximately 95% are found for a baseline case. The classifier's performance is not degraded when different vowels are included in classifier training and evaluation. Restricting the frequency range of the CTFs and using a test set containing samples extracted from solo performances of Italian arias reduces the test set accuracy to 70-80%.

Eighteenth-Century Models of French Recitative

As a repertory where recitative and air were not always delineated and where lyrical, mellifluous recitative was the most essential element, eighteenth-century French opera confronts historians and critics with a situation rather different from that of other operatic repertories. Whereas we can delve with relative confidence into questions about the style, shape and content of da capo arias, for example, we are confronted in French opera with a host of nagging details that make even the simplest assertions problematic. How did composers and audiences think about recitative and air? How and to what extent did the distinction between the two matter to them? Given that purely musical values, the kind informing Italian arias, resided elsewhere in French opera – primarily in its divertissements – how did one judge the musical content of recitative and to what end?

One Hundred Venetian Arias of the Late Seicento in the Bodleian Library

The rise of aria books in the later seventeenth century parallels, in an uncanny but apparently accidental way, the rise of journalism. The vast journalistic networks that developed in that century aimed to communicate to readers elsewhere long series of short messages about the events of one place. Coherent accounts on any one subject were rare in the great swirl of items that moved with remarkable efficiency from one power center to another. As a phenomenon, aria books of the later seventeenth century present some similar qualities. Long series of short excerpts garnered from recent performances, compiled more with a sense of urgency than of purpose, fill many if not most sources of this kind. Readers at a distance that precluded attendance at a performance seem to have been the main constituents of the intended audience. The arias were copied with a haste and randomness of order that suggests that the compilers had no interest in providing a sense of complete works but only in crystallizing specific moments. No country had a monopoly on aria books. Numerous examples containing quotations from English and French works from the middle of the seventeenth century survive. Italian aria books from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, as their contents came to be indexed, prove increasingly valuable in preserving extracts from works that are otherwise lost.