A Great Period of Italian Opera
Domenico Cimarosa was the last great Italian opera composer of the 18th century and when he died in 1801, it marked the end of an epoch. Ancient feudal social structures that had already been questioned by the French Revolution were finally brought to collapse by Napoleon who swept across the whole of Europe like a tornado. New territorial states that were created under French rule transformed the consciousness of nations with lasting effect. After Napoleon’s defeat and exile, even though the powers of the Congress of Vienna tried to turn the wheel of history backwards once again, they could no longer halt the new national movements. For years Italy had been a plaything of the European great powers but even there the path began to clear towards national unity.
Modern laws were introduced and new cultural influences came through French rule, but under the economic burdens of the Napoleonic wars the old classes who supported culture were eroded. Italian opera as a social point of crystallisation and popular entertainment medium could not evade the radical changes. Theatre laws based on the French model tried to establish the same genre of operas in Naples that were fashionable in Paris. Moreover, the use of castrati was finally prohibited which meant that Giambattista Velluti became the last exponent of his kind, representing a type of interpretation that had dominated the opera stage for two hundred years and which finally became a thing of the past. Nevertheless, the art of singing of the castrati continued to live on in the singing style of the early 19th century, and that is why this epoch is nowadays generally known (although it is somewhat misleading) as that of Bel canto. It was only towards the middle of the century when the prevailing ideal of voices changed increasingly to take on a more powerful, romantic and dramatic tone quality that the sound and the art of improvisation of the castrati was gradually forgotten.
Ultimately it was again an Italian, Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868), who, when he appeared on the scene, seemed to have the ability to follow on from Cimarosa’s famous days of Italian opera. Rossini’s first great success, La pietra del paragone (1812, Teatro alla Scala, Milan) launched his career, in the course of which he managed to create a frenzy of enthusiasm throughout Europe thanks to the effervescent rhythms and brilliant virtuosity of his works. By the time that Rossini – still in his best years – retired from his active career as an opera composer in 1829, Italy had already produced two more composers of European standing: Gaetano Donizetti (1797–1848) and Vincenzo Bellini (1801–1835). Bellini, with his opera Il pirata (Milan 1827), succeeded in creating a new type of opera which went down in history as a melodramma romantico. At the same time new subjects, especially from French and English contemporary literature, were explored for Italian opera, and old dramaturgical structures which were no longer in keeping with the times were finally replaced by new ones. The model of opera seria from the 18th century, consisting of recitative and aria, gave way to a more complex pattern that offered greater scope for a varied play of passions. This was known as scena ed aria and provided a new basis for the former kind of Italian style number opera. The distinction between aria and ensemble became blurred, and musical and scenically attractive choral scenes gained in importance. Opening and final scenes were given greater emphasis corresponding to what opera buffa had already demonstrated before the turn of the century.
Felice Romani (1788–1865) was the most important librettist of that time which for opera history was so full of anticipation. He created a great number of successful libretti which were set to music by all the renowned composers of his time. He not only wrote the text for Vincenzo Bellini’s Il pirata, but also for Gaetano Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore (1831) and Lucrezia Borgia (1833). Romani also wrote the libretto for Saverio Mercadante’s opera I due Figaro, which is on the programme of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival in 2011.
Saverio Mercadante was born in 1795 in Altamura in Apulia; thus he belongs to the same generation as Gaetano Donizetti. Although Mercadante was famous in his time and respected as a musical authority, nowadays he is known practically only to specialists. It was probably detrimental to his later fame that he began his career as a successor to the superior Rossini; he also had to measure his popularity with that of Vincenzo Bellini, and finally at a mature age had to face competition from another great opera talent, Giuseppe Verdi. Nevertheless, Mercadante is one of the most important 19th-century Italian composers, and not only because of his versatility.
He trained in Naples and in 1819 already celebrated his first great success as an opera composer at the Teatro San Carlo. A few years later he also made an international name for himself. At the instigation of the impresario Domenico Barbaja, who at that time was also director of the Kärntnertortheater, Mercadante was invited to Vienna in 1824, but with little success. His serious operas were characterised by the Neapolitan musical language, and measured against Rossini’s achievements, they were described by the Viennese critics as “backward”. This criticism moved Mercadante to orient himself increasingly towards Vincenzo Bellini and the melodramma romantico which he had realised. For the further development of Mercadante’s personal style this was a decisive step with far-reaching consequences.
Up until the late 1830s Mercadante devoted himself from time to time to comic opera. I due Figaro, a melodramma buffo, whose libretto Romani based on a comedy, which for its part used motifs by Beaumarchais, was first performed in 1835 in Madrid. It shows clearly that Rossini’s buffa operas were certainly not the last in the glorious history of the genre. Mercadante’s I due Figaro is an interesting re-discovery that offers new insights into a great period of Italian opera.
Daniel Brandenburg