Paris had now become the center of operatic activity, and the performance there of Daniel François Esprit Auber's La Muette de Portici ( The Mute Girl of Portici, 1828), also known after its hero as Masaniello, Gioacchino Rossini's Guillaume Tell ( William Tell, 1829), Giacomo Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable (1831), and Jacques Halévy's La Juive ( The Jewess, 1835) established the grand opera tradition. Extensive use was made of plots involving rescue. Outstanding examples are by Luigi Cherubini, Étienne Nicolas Méhul, Jean François Lesueur, and Gasparo Spontini. The culmination of this technique was Der Ring des Nibelungen ( The Ring of the Nibelungs), a tetralogy composed of Das Rheingold (1869), Die Walküre (1870), Siegfried (1876), and Götterdämmerung (1876).Īfter the French Revolution (1789), spectacular and melodramatic operas became popular. The set pieces of the Italian school were put aside in favor of leitmotifs (leading motifs) that were used to identify individual characters and situations and present a continuous flow of music, at times almost symphonic in nature, which was uninterrupted by recitative. ![]() Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868), Wagner's only comic opera, used the real-life cobbler and poet Hans Sachs as the central character. In the romantic tradition, he turned to medieval lore for Tannhäuser (1845) and to tales of chivalry and knighthood for Lohengrin (1850), Tristan und Isolde (1865), and Parsifal (1882). Wagner's early operas, such as Rienzi (1842), based on Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel of the same name, and Der Fliegende Holländer ( The Flying Dutchman, 1843) are Italian-style operas, with arias, duets, trios, and choral pieces. These operas, although somewhat limited in melodic invention, fused in their plots the natural and the supernatural and paved the way for the grandiose music dramas of Richard Wagner, who also wrote his own librettos. Hoffmann's Undine (1816) and Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz (1821) and Oberon (1826). ![]() But it was Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, which rested on the foundations of singspiel, that was really the point of departure for German romantic opera-for E. 1814), is set against the background of French rescue opera and the theme of personal freedom versus political tyranny. Ludwig van Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio (1805, rev. Hero worship, a return to nature, idealism, and fantasy are elements of late 18th-century romanticism that found their way into 19th-century German opera.
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