Falling in love with Baroque opera
Sunday, June 15th, 2008Over the past few years, I’ve started to go to performances of Baroque operas, particularly the operas of Handel. I’m delighted that these operas are getting performances these days, and that there are so many fantastic singers that have the ability to sing them.
It took me a while to understand how the genre works, since the first operas that I had come to know were Wagners, and those are almost the complete opposite, in terms of the way that the story is communicated. In Wagner, there are few moments that qualify as an “aria”…mostly what happens is that the characters on stage sing the dialogue back and forth at each other, and the orchestra provides commentary and clarification. It’s that layering of thematic material that makes repeated hearing of The Ring so rewarding.
But I digress. The way that the story is told in Baroque opera goes differently. The dialogue is sung, usually in fairly simple phrases with minimal accompaniment as recitativo. And all the “plot” happens in these understated parts.
But then, one character [or occasionally a duet] will break off and let loose with an aria. The content of the aria is not plot–rather it’s psychological insight about how the character is feeling about the situation at hand. The musical structure is usually ABA. That is, there is an opening part, a contrasting middle, and then the opening part “repeats”. The technical term is a da capo aria–meaning “from the top”. Part of the tradition of these operas is that the singer is supposed to ornament the repetition. I suppose that some listeners hear that as only more beautiful singing–and more technically demanding–but to me the main function is to intensify the emotional content of the aria.
As preparation for the upcoming run of Handel’s Ariodante the San Francisco Opera offered several occasions to learn more about it. One is their Insight Panel Discussion, where several of the people involved with the productions discuss the opera. In this case, the panel consisted of the conductor Patrick Summers, mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, and bass Eric Owen.
Patrick Summers explicitly compared Handel to Shakespeare as two great psychological dramatists. And he explicitly compared the arias in Handel to the soliloquies in Shakespeare. He even said that they run about the same length. But he pointed out that, in the case of Handel, the text is usually only a line or two. What takes time is that the aria tends to look at the words from several directions, using the musical accompaniment to amplify the emotional meaning.
Susan Graham gave the example of the aria “Scherza infida…”, in which Ariodante is reacting to the [false, as it turns out] news that his bride-to-be has been unfaithful. Ms. Graham said that she probably says the words “scherza infida”–mock me, faithless one–several dozen times over the course of the six minutes of the aria. But each one, with its musical setting, is communicating a different emotional color that moves through–anger, disappointment, sorrow, bitterness, resignation and on and on. Here’s Anne Sophie von Otter singing the aria. And here’s an amazing version from Philippe Jaroussky, a male soprano.
In thinking about why the form of Baroque opera doesn’t seem too unfamiliar, I finally realized that it’s actually the same idea as the pre-Sondheim Broadway musical–there’s some dialogue where the plot is moving forward, then the emotion gets to be just too much, and the characters break into song. I know it’s a bit of a stretch to think of Guys and Dolls and L’Incoronazione di Poppea at the same time, but they do have something in common.
I got to see the final dress rehearsal for the SF Opera production, and it was totally fantastic! And, I get to see if for real at the end of the month.
Bob