Operatic Subjects: The Evolution of Self in Modern Opera PDF
Preview Operatic Subjects: The Evolution of Self in Modern Opera
Operatic Subjects The Evolution of Self in Modem Opera SANDRA CORSE Operatic Subjects argues that opera is more than just a conservative and belated reflection of social, intellectual, and artistic trends; opera in its own way actively has contributed to the creation of the conceptual vocabulary of modernism. Particularly, this work maintains that opera has helped form our notions of what it means to be a self in Y twentieth-century western culture. This is B partially because since the nineteenth century A 6 B music has frequently been seen as inherently 1 8e1 expressive of inner emotional or intellectual Ir L 2 a u0 states. Equally important for the develop¬ C q A I ment of opera was the radical experimenta¬ LS M B tion and change, especially during the sec¬ y Ue n ond part of the nineteenth century, that oc¬ Pplo Not curred in spoken drama. In opera, drama and Cs O o music collided, competed, and cooperated in T B S the search for meaningful subjective expres¬ O B sion. in this way opera becomes in the mod¬ em period a site in which cultural construc¬ tions of the subject are explored by librettist, composer, and audience in often subtle but revealing ways. Operatic Subjects begins with an explora¬ tion of the meanings and forms of subjectiv¬ ity within the conceptual frames typical of modernism, then discusses the late works of Wagner, which were heavily influenced not only by Hegel’s conceptions of the self but also by subsequent writers, notably Nietzsche. The concept of the self Wagner found in these writers was immensely im¬ portant to his compositions, and in Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal he continued the work he had begun in the Ring cycle of alle¬ gorizing the self on stage and in its presenta¬ tion in music. The post-Wagnerian works examined in this book demonstrate a (Continued on back flap) Operatic Subjects The Evolution of Self in Modern Opera Sandra Corse Madison • Teaneck Fairleigh Dickinson University Press London: Associated University Presses © 2000 by Associated University Presses, Inc. All rights reserved. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use, or the internal or personal use of specific clients, is granted by the copyright owner, provided that a base fee of $10.00, plus eight cents per page, per copy is paid directly to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, Massachusetts 01923. [0-8386-3858-9/00 $10.00 + 80 pp, pc.) Associated University Presses 440 Forsgate Drive Cranbury, NJ 08512 Associated University Presses 16 Barter Street London WC1A 2AH, England Associated University Presses P.O. Box 338, Port Credit Mississauga, Ontario Canada L5G 4L8 The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Corse, Sandra. Operatic subjects : the evolution of self in modem opera / Sandra Corse, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-8386-3858-9 (alk. paper) 1. Opera—19th century. 2. Opera—20th century. 3. Subjectivity in opera. 4. Music—Philosophy and aesthetics. I. Title. ML1700.C73 2000 782.1—dc21 99-058593 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Contents Introduction: Opera, Modernism, and the Self 7 1. Subject, Subjectivity, and Opera 17 2. Operatic Form: Drama and Music 33 3. Wagner and the Self 49 4. Post-Wagnerian Opera: The Interior Self 76 5. Allegories of the Subject: Strauss and Hofmannsthal 99 6. Individual and Society: Berg and Weill 125 7. The Absent Center: Berg and Schoenberg 145 8. Minimalism and the Self: Glass and Adams 171 9. Conclusion: Heterogeneity of Persons and Sounds—Messiaen 192 Notes 207 Works Cited 221 Index 225 5 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.org/details/operaticsubjectsOOsand Introduction: Opera, Modernism, and the Self In the latter part of the nineteenth century, opera gradually developed into a genre that consciously addressed issues emerging in all the arts at the beginning of modernism. This change occurred largely through the works of giants of the genre such as Wagner and Verdi, and can be seen as framed by two popular settings of a single text, Shakespeare’s Othello. Verdi’s setting has remained important in opera houses around the world since its first production in 1887. But for a while it competed with a version created by Rossini and his librettist Berio that had held the stage since its completion in 1816. (In recent years, however, the Rossini work has begun to re¬ gain some of its previous popularity; today there seems to be room on the operatic stages of Europe and America for both works.) Both Rossini and Verdi were important Italian composers who found themselves implicated in the Wagnerian revolution in opera: Ros¬ sini because his work was often the paradigm against which Wagner worked both in his musical and his theoretical texts, and Verdi because he was particularly sensitive to the changes wrought in operatic forms by his German contemporary. It is interesting that both Rossini and Verdi chose to set Shake¬ speare’s Othello as an operatic text. They of course did so in part because Othello is in some ways the perfect operatic subject: it in¬ cludes a great love relationship, jealousy, rage, and the murder of a beautiful woman, as well as such standard “operatic” moments as crowd scenes and public ceremony. In addition to its concentrated love story, its murders, and its pomp, Othello’s importance as an operatic subject for Rossini and Verdi perhaps lies in elements first tapped by Shakespeare (who in turn borrowed the story from ear¬ lier sources) that penetrate a bit more deeply into the common psy¬ chology of audiences who have loved the play and the operas. However, the Rossini and Verdi settings, written near the beginning and end of the nineteenth century respectively, approach these 7 8 OPERATIC SUBJECTS psychological elements very differently. The Verdi-Boito version re¬ tains the main plot lines of the play, even though it rather de-em- phasizes the complexity of Shakespeare’s characterizations: Iago’s motivations are somewhat simplified while Desdemona is trans¬ formed from Shakespeare’s self-sufficient and strong-willed woman character into a passive, religious, almost saintly figure. By contrast, the Rossini-Berio version reconstructs Shakespeare’s drama of misplaced jealousy by transforming it into a drama hing¬ ing on the rivalry of two men for one woman (three men, if we count Jago). The Rossini and Verdi versions of the Othello story are different because they tell different tales of the self. Rossini’s story works with expressions of selfhood inherent in his own historical mo¬ ment, particularly those embedded in the genre of Italian opera. In his version, Desdemona is secretly engaged to Otello, but her father demands that she marry Rodrigo, here the son of the Doge and one who hates Otello because of the latter’s public successes. Jago, once a secret admirer of Desdemona, now seeks revenge against her for ignoring him and against Otello for his public privileges. Desdemona’s father intercepts a letter from Desdemona to Otello, but in order to keep her liaison a secret, she changes the name on the letter and pretends it is addressed to Rodrigo, whom her father then demands she marry. However, in true operatic fashion, Otello assumes that she wants to marry Rodrigo, and enraged with jeal¬ ousy and a sense of betrayal, comes into her room on the fateful night through a secret passage in the castle. At the end, after Jago has confessed to his own machinations, Rodrigo and Desdemona’s father change their minds, saying that they will allow her to marry Otello after all. But of course their change of heart is too late, for Otello, returning to his Shakespearian roots, has already killed himself after killing Desdemona. If this was a plot type more familiar to Italian opera audiences in 1816 than Shakespeare’s complex dramatic concerns, it also some¬ what derailed the thrust of Shakespeare’s story, which hinges on the sense of self in Othello himself, on his ability to define himself in a way that allows him to function as a responsible member of a social-political world that was in many ways alien to him. This sense of the importance of the self is missing from the Rossini- Berio version, where the characters, obeying the genre rules of early nineteenth-century Italian opera, rarely indulge in introspec-
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