1. Opera - Summary
l Looking at the nature of opera – what it is
that makes it so.
l How the form has changed over last 400
years.
l Relationship between words (libretto and
drama) and music.
l Developments in last thirty years.
l How is it paid for. What is the justification
for opera’s heavy subsidy relative to other
genres.

2. Test
l Takes up to an hour. Online.
l You see a short video clip or hear an audio
file (30sec typically). You can watch/listen
as many times as you like.
l There are normally 4 possibilities – you
chose one.
l E.g What country does the music

3. Resources
l Lindenberger, H. 2010. Situation Opera.
Period, Genre, reception, CUP
l Agid P. and Tarondeau J. 2010. The
Management of Opera. Macmillan
l Higgin, C. 2011. Arts Council England
funding cuts – the great axe falls, The
Guardian online 30 March

4. Essay Questions
l Should opera be subsidized? What are the
arguments for and against.
l
l Discuss some of the ways that modern
opera composers have reinterpreted the
relationship between words and music in
their works.
l

5. Your Definition of Opera
l ?

6. What makes opera opera?
l The word opera covers a broad expanse of genres. Light
opera, operetta, comic opera, opera sera, ballad opera,
tragic opera, semi-opera, etc. Today it tends to mean any
serious work that combines music and drama. In the past
distinctions were much more precise.
l One criteria of opera is that it is all sung – no spoken bits –
the music is continuous. But this rule is constantly being
broken and many of the forms we regard today like
Singspiel (Magic Flute) is full of speech.
l Opera also tends to mean a work that involves a
combination of media – not just music but music with
drama – and the latter involves libretto, plot, staging.

7. Music and Words
l At the centre of the combination of elements that
is opera - is the relationship between music and
words.
l A revaluation of the relationship brought about the
beginnings of the baroque and the inception of
opera itself.
l Each generation of opera composers re-negotiates
this relationship and it is fundamental problem of
opera.
l Its is fundamental uncompetitive – it cannot pay
for itself. How should it be funded?

8. Seventeenth Century
l The first opera composers (Monteverdi – Peri,
Caccini) strove for a balance between music and
words that put the words first.
l The clear declamation of words in recitative was
the fundamental goal and large parts of the first
operas were just recitative. The libretto was of
high importance and the starting point.
l By the late seventeenth-century the relationship
had changed so that the words were insignificant
and the singer’s arias and vocal technique were all
that mattered. Rise of the castrato and prima
donna.

9. Monteverdi

10. Move from Private to Public
l Early patrons paid for it.
l By 1630 the first public opera houses
opened up.
l By 1700 they were all over Europe – and
constantly underfunded and unable to
fubction without private and public subsidy.

11. Eighteenth-Century
l Baroque opera developed in distinct national
styles with Italian and particularly Neopolitan
opera as the standard genre.
l Librettos were `off the shelf’ and often silly –
always with a happy end – about Gods and heros
from antiquity – lots of clapping of the singers
throughout the show – and people talked and
chatted through bits that did not interest them –
the words were not of much importance.
l Reformers from Gluck to Mozart addressed all
these points.
l Handel ruined by Opera despite royal patronage

12. Ariodante

13. Mozart – Marriage of Figarol Used comic opera to develop the form.
l Worked very carefully alongside his librettist Da
Ponte to shape the music to the words.
l Characters from real life – using contemporary
plays to make biting social commentary.
l Short arias and lots of ensembles in which the
motives and characters of each person could be
contrasted.
l Plot very carefully constructed to work over a
compressed period of time (a couple of days) and
for all the bits to fall into place at the end.
l Underwritten by the Emperor and the Court.
l Public preferred lighter entertainment - Flute

14. Figaro – Beginning of Act 3

15. Nineteenth-Century Grand
Opera
l From Verdi to Puccini – a tradition in which the
singer’s role again rises in importance.
l The composer’s trick was to produce an opera in
which drama and music combine to great effect.
l Words less important again and the music (grand
tunes and orchestration) of great importance.
l No recitative and no spoken bits.
l Singers art – bell canto tradition – is what brings
in the audience. Singers role often tragic and the
audience is meant to empathise with their
situation.

16. La Traviata 1853

17. 20-th Century
l Many new traditions that ape operatic forms but
are not opera – musicals, cabaret, musical films
and films in general.
l New approach to the form taken by Philip Glass
with his trilogy of operas in the 1980s.
l Interest in progress over time and making
relationships between the many elements – ballet,
gesture, words, movement, music, staging,
progress though time – much loser so that
connections between elements are often incidental
and unforeseen.
l Increasingly elitest and Government funded – part
ot the prestige of a city or state.

18. Einstein
l Time element: 5 hours long, no intermission, audience can
come and go.
l 3 images – a train; a trail; a spaceship.
l Stream of consciousness poetry – developed from the
speech of a boy with special learning difficulties – idiot
savant. Quite unrelated to Einstein’s life and works.
l Pitch Logic unfolding over a great expanse of time.
Simple chords and scalar patterns are repeated
continuously over lengthy time periods and transformed by
intricate variation. Additive and Subtractive process is at
work.

19. Music for Einstein
l Heavily amplified flutes, organ, keyboards
and voices move in and out of the busy yet
static fabric. At the opening A, G, C are
played, then chords imposed on them. Then
chorus holds the chords by singing the
number of beats each is held for.
Sometimes the chords are arpeggiated in
various ways and the chords may be
elongated or shortened.

20. Einstein

21. More Einstein
l There is no conventional plot. On the Beach was a film
about the catastrophic aftermath of atomic war.
l Einstein is distanced from the other performers by sitting
midway between the action onstage and the musicians in
the pit.
l The singers gesticulate as they sing the solfege for the
notes they sing, and dancers dance in passages that may or
may not have a connection with the other events unfolding.
l The scenes reappear in different ways and orders in the
course of the performance.

22. Akenaten

23. Satygraha
l Two layers more conventional in some respects – but also continue the
separation of elements which come together only incidentally
l Satygraha – in ancient language (Sanskrit that no one understands).
l The acts are in very different stages in Gandhi’s life and in each there
is no conventional idea of progression of plot.
l Music is very repetitive and circulatory.
More a musical mediation of aspects of Gandhi’s message to the world
than a drama in various mediums both visual and aural.
Arguably the words are one of the least important of the elements – in
contrast to the beginnings of opera which was a attempt to revive the
power of words when combined with music –

25. Opera
l 400 years – one of most contrast forms around.
l Change of demand – until middle 19th C always
new – however now dominated by old repertoire.
l Audiences shrinking – competition with other
media. Also audiences are typically old. 60!
l In Europe up to 80% state funded. ENO raises
50% itself. In America there is very little state
funding – private donations and high prices.
l Accused of elitism.

26. How should opera be funded?
l Opera has always been too expensive to be
commercially viable.
l Even in the 18th century it was kept going
with patronage rather than ticket sales.
l Yet it absorbs a large chunk of arts funding
from public money (far more than
orchestras or any other art form e.g. dance)
– especially gets government grants. Is this
right?

27. Slice of the Cake
l Arts Council money
l Eats up a large amounts of lottery money –
recent refit of Covent Garden
l The Royal Opera House in London
reopened in 1999 after a £214m, three-year
redevelopment, helped by £78.5m from the
lottery fund.

28. The Royal Opera
l Royal Opera House received £26,961,420 in
2008/2009, £27,689,378 in 2009/2010,
£28,294,806 in 2010/2011 and £26,342,464
in 2011/2012.
l As a national portfolio organisation, Royal
Opera House was offered £25,208,100 in
2012/2013, £25,787,886 in 2013/2014 and
£26,430,076 in 2014/2015. This was subject
to a funding agreement being agreed.

29. Outreach
l However opera only appeals to a minority
of often affluent people.
l Seats are often hugely subsidised.
l Why does the poor man who buys lottery
tickets and pays a large percentage of his
income in taxes subsidise the tickets of the
rich man who pays a small percentage of his
salary in taxes and does not buy lottery
tickets?

30. Arguments for
l London is a major capital and must have
good opera if it is to attract tourists and
bring in wealthy foreigners to stay.
l Part of the national heritage.
l Part of the national culture – we would all
lose without it.
l We can hear it on the radio for free and it is
sometimes televised –
l Arts for arts sake?

31. Against?
l Interests too few to justify the costs.
People are interested in popular culture
now.
l It is heritage not art? We should move on
not get stuck with the old stuff. Digital age
etc – we should be developing new art
forms – not holding on to ones developed c.
1600.
l It is all silly – and the singing is wobbly and
unpleasant to listen to anyway.

32. The Future
l Opera does always seem to survive – but
will it always.
l Recent developments – apps.
l Live screenings from the Met in cinemas.
l Outreach work and education projects.
l Trying to attract younger audiences.