Now that we are in the romantic period we are and what is perhaps the golden age of the
opera.
You still will see a lot of Mozart operas performed today, but if
most of the opera repertoire comes from the nineteenth century
great stories, great music, What's not to love.
As we looked at Mozart, in The marriage of Figero, we saw that the characters in
that particular story were
servants and
their owned their masters
and that we saw a lot of um
satire about that.
If we had watched some other operas from that period of time,we still would have encounted many of the same kinds of
characters
and
just in different kinds of situations.
Once we get to the romantic period remember that this is a period of time where we
are interested in everyday sorts of people.
So, we see operas that have
uh... much broader range of character types.
we still have some
uh... historical kinds...
where we take historical characters from mythol.. mythological characters but for the
most part the operas that we see a lot today, have
real people kinds of characters.
Think about some of the really famous operas that are performed a lot,
Carmen
Carmen the cigarette seller who
flirts with soldiers and flirts with bull fighters
they'll most of us don't know any bull fighters, but if you lived in spain during that
period of time
those would have been the kinds of people you would know.
uh...
but on the other hand we have
some very exotic
kinds of characters which comes from that whole idea of exoticism that
we've already talked about.
So we take...we look at operas like Madame Butterfly,
which is set in Japan
or
um...
Aida,
which is set in Egypt, which doesn't seem like that exotic locale, but at that time
that was sort of
uh... that was kind of a cool place to go.
So, we see a lot of different kinds of characters,
a lot of different settings, so we're no longer stuck in Europe, we have operas
that are set all over the place, that leaves us with some really interesting
things
musically and uh...
and..I don't even know what word I want to use for this, but basically what you end up with things like
this
So we have Carmen,
who is a spanish character
and the entire opera sung in french
cause the composer was french.
Madame Butterfly,
everybody sing in italian, because the composer was italian.
So, you get some strange things like that,
where they're not singing a language that has anything to do with the country that
they're in.
But, you still know that
they were set in this particular country,
in particular time period
and you get a real sense of time and place.
that's not always true with some of those earlier operas.
uh.. you know.. the Marrage of Figero could have been anywhere over like two
hundred and fifty years span, because it's just got some royal people in a big
house.
that doesn't give us much definition
so we're getting much more clearly defined about where things are happening
So, up to this point we've been having operas
where you'd haver recette, recette, aria, aria aria, recette..throw in a chorus and you know
and off we go.
things were sort of
compartmentalized. And you could see where one thing starting one thing
stopped. Once we get into the romantic period
composers are more interested in making a seamless kind of production.
so we no longer see,
this is a recette... I'm telling you a story, this is the way that it goes...now I'm going to sing
beautifuly for you.
That doesn't happen.
Everything
flows so, even the dialogue sorts of parts
are much more interesting melodically,
they're accompanied by a much more of the orchestra, than we would have in the
classical period
and when we get to the arias,
they are more closely like conversations so, we're not having a lot of that
artificial
let's go back and say the same thing we already said
just because we can.
Once they've said what they're going to say
they move on.
So, that's one reason the operas are shorter when we get to the romantic period, they're not
repeating themselves a lot
and they're not um.. making these grand dramatic pauses just so we can do a
nice aria.
So, we're going to look at a bit of an opera and I'm leaving you the entire opera to
watch.
This opera is by Giacomo Puccini Who is an Italian composer
from right around the end of the nineteenth century.
The opera is La Boheme.
It's very, very famous.
It didn't start out that way,
When this opera first came out,
it really wasn't very well received
they thought that that there is just a little
too emotional and to dramatic for the time but it has definately stood the test of
time, because now is one of the most popular operas in the world.
So, La Boheme is another one of those where we have sort of a conflict of
information here.
It's set in paris,
but Puchini is Italian, So they're all going to sing beautifuly in Italian, these love French
characters that we have um.. in the story.
It has a very small cast in terms of
the.. the important characters
So, we have
four men who share an apartment,
and remember, we talked about the romantic period, this is the time when if you were an
artist
thats usually starving, these guys are the starving artists, so we've got a musician,
we have a writer,
we have a philosopher , there's a job description thats
guaranteed to bring in the big bucks,
and we have of visual artist so you get for different kinds of artists
living in this
really squalid kind of apartment.
So, they're..they're the core group of four guys,
and then we have two major female characters,
one is Mimi, who is a woman whose job description is that she embroiders flowers,
so she she makes flowers
and the other woman who...Musetta,
who i can only describe as a professional flirt,
and she finds men who will take care of her so she's uh... she's always in
usually looking pretty good because she's got somebody who's taking care of her
and that was not an uncommon
thing for women at that period of time to find a wealthy man
who would take care of them.
um.. set them up with a house, pay for their clothes,
provide them with carriages.
that's Musseta, so Musseta
is... is sort of um..
an outsized character because she's just this big
and now here i am, love me or not, take.. take-it-or-leave-it and Mimi, who is
umn a very sort of quiet woman.
So, the whole story revolves around these two women
and these four men
and their inter-relationships.
Now, there are some great big scenes in this operas well.
um.. opera goers like their big scenes.
Their... their biggest scene is in the second act where
the six of them have gone
um.. into Paris, they are in Paris, they have gone out to eat, it's Christmas Eve,
so there's lots of people in the streets,
there's a parade,
and if you do a really big production, the one you're going to watch is
from metropolitan opera, so it is really big.
They actually have a horse and carraige trott across the stage and
uh... lots of children running around so so it creates this massive crowd scene. There is
even a marching band that comes through for the parade so,
you won't see that kind of lavish production everywhere, but
that's.. that's what the composer sorta had in mind so,
we have this very intimate group of six
and then we have this one great big scene where we have a ton of
people on the stage.
Uh... as you watch the video of it.. uh.. I'll say for one thing you can skip
through the curtain calls this is the metropolitan, so there is a curtain call after
every act and everybody comes out so you could speed through that if you want to
hasten your
path through this particular opera,
but its
uh...
the orchestra is
wonderful
and as you listen you will see
that they're playing almost all the time
and that that there's no big overture either so remember all the other
operas in the past, we had a big overture at the beginning, that got everybody settled
down, well
this overture, the whole overtures soemthing like
dum dum dum
that's it.
the curtain comes up and the action starts.
So, we cut out a lot of that, I won't say it's extraneous because a lot of those overtures are
absolutely beautiful,
but, Puccini doesn't feel that we didn't really need to set up the story, the story was
going to be very clear just from the
what's on the stage and the music that you get.
So you're not getting a whole lot of orchestra by itself.
We're going to watch just a very small segment of this is in the third act
so Mimi is the.. the woman who will be doing most of the singing, she is
the.. the embroiderer of flowers
and so we know at this point that she's dying.
So, she has come
to this um...
place
on the outskirts of Paris, where she knows that Rudolfo, who is to her love
interest,
that he's working there he's..he's the um..writer so he's gone to this place to work
and she's come to him.
They have um.. a very, on again, off again relationship they're... they're..
either very happy together or they're fighting,
so,
this.. it's... sorta your basic
soap opera, sort of story,
but, as you listen to this,
look at how
the dialogue happens here.
We're no longer just sort of
saying the words and and in not a particularlly, interesting, melodic way even when they are just
talking to each other
the dialogue is sung beautifully and the orchestra is contributing to that it's not
just
something to sort of hold them up while they are singing it.
So let's look at this particular segment of the opera
(Opera Playing)
Ok, you can get a good sense, even from that little segment
they're basically having a conversation, she comes in, she asks this woman if
Marcello is there, Marcello is the gentleman that you see. He is Rodolpho's
roomate
and
it.. she's singing beautifully but you know it's not an aria.. there's..
they're just talking
and when Marcello comes out they continue their conversation,
but, the thing that reall makes it romantic, is the
sudden change of things, you know it's like, everythings like this
(rawr) all of a sudden it's like that.
So, the.. the very dramatic changes that we talked about in terms of romantic style
sudden changes of dynamic sudden changes of style.
You just get to see all of that in just like three minutes here,
in this opera.
And how..i mean we've got like two hours of that if you get the entire opera.. watch the entire opera. So,
it's no longer clearly defined that we are now this is recette, this is aria
everything flows together
the storyline just continued seamlessly
and we get a good sense of that,
as we look at
opera ... uh
at a little more detail in just a minute, we'll
look at composers like Verdi and Wagner, who
went beyond this. They probably would not like this piece at all. They did
some very different kinds of things
and we will look at how,
Wagner in particular,
takes
the opera and does something really new and interesting with it.
So, I hope you enjoy La Boheme. Watch the whole thing, again you can skip through all
the curtain calls and
uh... enjoy the beauty of
the Metropolitan Opera's production,
obviously they put lots of money into it, people applaud when the scenery comes up
because the scenery is so amazing.
So, enjoy it
and we'll be back to talk about more opera in a minute.