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50The Persistence of Greek Tragedy in the Art of Opera
Anna G. Piotrowska
As common known the ideals of Greek tragedy and music are closely connected. Perhaps the most significant moment for the restoration of the Greek tragedy in the realm of music was the creation of the modern notion of opera in the sixteenth century. However, also the publication of Friedrich Nietzsches book entitled The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music pie Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik) in 1871 marked the intrinsic link between the notion of Greek tragedy and modern musical culture. On the one hand the sixteenth century Italian imagination what the Greek tragedy must have looked and sounded like, and on the other hand the publication of the scholarly book prove the direct impact the Greek tragedy exercised on the development of the modern music and culture. Keywords: Art, musical culture, Greek tragedy, modern music
Присутствие греческой трагедии в искусстве оперы
А. Пиотровска
Как известно общие идеалы греческой трагедии и музыки тесно связаны между собой. Пожалуй, самым важным моментом для обнаружения греческой трагедии в области музыки было создание современного понятия оперы в XVI веке. И кроме того, издание книги Фридриха Ницше под названием «Рождение трагедии из духа музыки» (Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik) [11] в 1871 году устанавливает неразрывную связь между понятием греческой трагедии и современной музыкальной культурой. С одной стороны, греческая трагедия должна была выглядеть и звучать, как в итальянском воображении шестнадцатого века, а с другой стороны, издание научной книги доказывает непосредственное влияние греческой трагедии на развитие современной музыки и культуры.
Ключевые слова: искусство, музыкальная культура, греческая трагедия, современная музыка
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1. Resurrection of the Greek tragedy in the realm of music
Italian enthusiasm
It was the spurt of interest in the Greek tragedy in the late sixteenth century that entailed the creation of the musical genre later to become known under the name of opera. The world of ancient culture fascinated Italian intellectuals: Aldo Manuzio published (between 1502 and 1518) the entire corpus of tragedies, more and more translations from Latin to Italian became available. Finally the first attempt of producing an originally Italian classical tragedy was undertaken by Giovanni Trissino (1478-1550) in 1515 - his work entitled Sofonisba employed the dramatic techniques of Sophocles and Euripides.
By that time it was still Latin repertory that was staged more frequently. What is more, it seems that there was nothing new in the sole idea of combining music and drama as the medieval Christian liturgy had abounded with plays based on events from the Bible or Christian tradition. So the idea of reviving Aristotelian concept of the "total work" was cherished only among a few bookish men, especially those grouped in the formation called Florentine Camerata who chose Poetics by Aristotle and De Republica by Plato as the sources of their inspiration. The new genre - the 'resurrected' Greek tragedy was addressed to connoisseurs who could appreciate 'deep sighs and weeping' of which the composer Jacopo Peri (1561-1633) wrote in 1600 in the prologue to his Euridice (the first opera which survived in its entirety to the present day, alas, rarely if ever performed, treated rather as a kind of musicological curio).
What facilitated the conception of opera was the speculative assumption that dance and music were part and parcel of all Greek tragedies. The limited knowledge concerning the performance practice of Greek tragedies, especially the visual and aural effects, did not prevent the composers associated with Florentine Camerata from re-creating their own versions of Greek tragedy. Musical elements of early operas were modeled on the speculative imagination of what Greek tragedy could have been like. The famous sentence from Plato's De Republica that 'melodiam ex tribus constare: oratione, harmonia, lythmo' (223,4-234,1) became the basis for the new definition of music.
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Academics like Girolamo Mei (1519-1594) argued that the text of Greek tragedy was sung. Peri judged that 'ancient Greeks and Romans (who in the opinion of many sang their tragedies throughout in representing them upon the stage) had used the harmony surpassing that of ordinary speech, but falling so far below the melody of song as to take an intermediate form...' [8, p.374]. Consequently what distinguished the new genre from other dramatic forms was its structure indebted primary in the classical art of rhetoric. Abovementioned Peri paid a lot of attention to declamations, convinced that such a style of presenting musical material was indebted in ancient Greek monody. His contemporaries wrote that 'signor Peri discovered that artful manner of declaiming in song which Italy admires...[...]; he gives [...] such a grace, and imprints the emotions of the words on the hearers in such a way as to compel them to weep and rejoice as he will' [7, p.81]. The plain melody closely following the rhythmical patterns of the speech and attempting to reflect its intonation was accompanied by simple, rather scarce chords. Known as dramatic monody or stile reppresentativo (employed in recitatives) the new quality in opera - different from choral writings of renaissance madrigalists - assured dramatic expressiveness so far unheard of.
That close connection between music and affections (known as the doctrine of affects) underlined the idea that certain types of music could be associated with particular states of mind or soul. Thus opera composers would choose suitable topics enabling spectators to undergo the moral purification by experiencing the feelings of fear and pity, alluding to the ancient concept of catharsis. The earliest operas derived their topics from mythology and the history of Greece and Rome, e.g. in 1597 Peri wrote Dafne with Ottavio Rinuccini's text. However, already by the time of Peri's own death his operas were considered old fashioned compared with the works by the generation of younger composers. In 1607 yet another version of Orpheus myth had its premiere: Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) presented his opera Orfeo. The subject of Orpheus had already been exploited by Peri and Guilio Caccini (ab. 1545-1618), also the member of Florentine Camerata. The story of Orpheus - the legendary musician grieving at the loss of his beloved wife - was of seminal importance for the composers of early operas, as not
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only referring immediately to the world of ancient myths teeming with gods, goddesses and half- gods, but also indicating the crucial role music plays in people's lives. The librettist of Monteverdi's opera - Allessandro Striggio clearly attempted to model Orfeo upon Greek tragedy. Opera Orfeo compelled to the aesthetics of affections - the basic figure used by Monteverdi was antitheton representing the contrast between the World and Underworld, life and death, happiness and suffering. To portrait this polarization the composer employed various musical means at his disposal such as harmony, melody or instruments. He also clearly distinguished between recitatives and arias (often in ABA form). While recitatives were thought to be the kernel of tragedy (pushing forward the plot), it was during the arias when the heroes could express their feelings and emotions (for example when Orpheus is begging for Euridice' return in the third act he performs the moving aria "Posenti spiriti").
Orfeo, especially its first two acts (out of five) included many allusions to the pastoral elements which were at that time well known at aristocratic courts as propagated among others in romances featuring conventional outlook on the country life. Hence the pastoral element easily found its way into operas, that were designed as a combination of various influences synthesizing the rediscovered Greek drama, dramatic monody and the pastoral element. The implementation of pastoral setting prompted introduction of such themes as conventional love among shepherds or idling in Arcadia (as evidenced by such early compositions as Dafhe by Peri).
Many early operas owed their origins to festive occasions as they were very expensive to stage and only rich patron could afford commissioning them as a proof their social status. For example, Peri's opera Euridice was composed for the wedding (by proxy) of Maria de Medici and king Henry IV of France. However, it would be blasphemous to claim that before operas were introduced at European courts, no other secular dramatic performances with music had been staged there. Indeed, drama and music were combined in various performances embellishing court banquets, princely birthdays, formal visits, royal weddings or other festivities. The resurrected Greek tragedy was merely one more, among many others, proposal providing entertainment at Italian courts. Furthermore, opera did not become the
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favourite genre right from the beginning, on the contrary, it was often seen as tedious', resembling 'chanting of the Passion' [4, p.351-352]. Still very popular - deep into the seventeenth century - continued to be intermedi, mascherate and dramatic ballets. As a new genre opera had to struggle for its place - even the name 'opera' appeared as late as 1647 as the title of a collection of librettos published by Prospero Bonarelli [7, p.248-249]. Earlier names indicating resurrected Greek tragedy included favola, dramma pastorale, tragedia and so on.
As the TDaroque art-form par excellence' [5, p. 13] opera developed in parallel in many centers: initially watched at princely chambers, soon it became performed for the more general public. In 1637 the first public theatre San Cassiano was opened in Venice. Thus, just like Greek tragedy, opera could cherished the status of a public genre. To please the audience, Venetian opera represented by Benedetto Ferrari (1597-1681), Francesco Manelli (ab. 1595-1670), Marco Marazzoli (1619-1662) and Monteverdi's pupil Francesco Cavalli (1602-1676), introduced scenes of hunting, battles, unexpected appearances of deceased and tended towards greater musical coherency. The most characteristic trait of Venetian school became the sound of trumpets. At the same time in Naples Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) returned to the older name 'dramma per musica' in an attempt to return to Greek origins of opera. The most radical turn towards Greek origins was, however, observed in France.
French skepticism
The French criticism of Italian opera sparked in the late seventeenth century the first attempt at the operatic reform. The Parisian audience was acquainted with frills and foams of Italian style, for example exposed to it in Robert Cambert's setting of Pierre Perrin's Pomone staged in 1671 in Academie Royale de Musique. Yet, the style was much criticized and the French undertook an attempt to create their own opera, indebted to typical French genres such as comédies-ballets. It was an Italian born composer Jean Baptiste Lully (1632-1687), who was in charge of supervising the musical theatre at the court of Louis the XIV. He tried to refer directly to Greek tragedy, in what can be tagged as the earliest forms of French opera known as tragédie lyrique or tragédie en musique. First of all, unity of action, place and
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time he tried to observe the unityof time and place with unity of action as a key factor [3, p.2]. Secondly, operas by Lully primary exploited melo -declamation; thirdly, the important role was attributed to choruses inherited from the ancient tragedy. Choral parts - commenting on the action - were meticulously elaborated in the variety of forms, of which chaconne was perhaps the most complicated1. Finally, the tragédies lyriques borrowed from Greek tragedies the topics usually drawn from mythology. The main conflict of the plot, as envisaged by the main supplier of Lully's libretti Philip Quinalt (1635-1688), customarily orbited around issues of love and honour (Alceste, Thesee, Isis, Persee, Amadis or Armide). What brought tragédies lyriques even closer to the Greek tragedies was the way they were staged, in a sophisticated manner involving spectacular effects achieved by the means of special machinery. The 'deux ex machina' solutions were inspired by the ancient theatre and remarkably contributed to the attractiveness of tragédies lyriques.
By the eighteenth century opera had come a long way from the original concept of monody coupled with pastoral conventions - supposedly imitating an ancient Greek tragedy to such elaborated forms. Original references to the Greek tragedy lost their impact, although many composers, like Johann Adolph Hasse's (1699-1783) still alluded to classical topics. The effort of purging opera and returning to Greek sources was initially undertaken by two renowned librettists: Apostolo Zeno (1668-1750) and the poet Pietro Metastasio (1698-1782). However, it was the composer Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787), in cooperation with his peer, the librettist Ranier da Calzabigi (1714-1795), who managed in the second half of the eighteenth century to introduce more substantial reforms of the opera with the aim of bringing back its Greek purity. The reform was intended to rekindle principles of the musical drama which originated as the modern version of Greek tragedy. In his operas Gluck preferred mythological themes as attested by Orfeo ed Euridice (1762), Alceste (1767), or Iphigenie en Tauride (1779) modeled on Euripides. Furthermore, he insisted that the appearance of the ballet needed justification by the dramaturgy.
1 In England Henry Purcell (1659-95) like Lully in Prance also attributed the special role to the choruses: the only surviving opera of Purcell Dido and Aeneas (1689) is the mixture of Italian and French influences.
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This plea was unanimous with what Jean-Georges Novarre (1720-1810) - the ballet master and the author of the treatise on ballet - postulated: the return to the natural expressiveness of Greek dance which was supposed to convey dramatic message rather than be a mere presentation of abstract figures [2, p.222].
Sempre viva
In the course of further development of opera and the appearance of variety of styles (to name but a few: grand opera, national opera, verismo, etc.), the Greek references lost their impact, but were never - however - completely abandoned. For example, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the third act of his opera Idomenco, re di Creta (1780) introduced the chorus with warning and commenting role. In the nineteenth century Hector Berlioz referred to the antiquity in his masterpiece Les Troyennes (1863). In the twentieth century the Greek topics returned in Gabriel Faure's Penelope (1913), Milhaud's Medee (1939) or Gian Francesco Malipiero's Ecuba (1941). The myth of Orestes was exploited by Ernest Krenek in his Das leben des Orst (1930) and by Darius Milhaud who used the drama of Aeschylus in Paul Claudel's (1868-1955) translation for his Orestee (1927) [2, p.574-575].
Indeed, in the 20th century the rekindled interest in ancient tragedies brought about the fruits in the form of new musical spectacles. The composer Arthur Honegger set in 1927 Antigone to Jean Cocteau'a (1889-1963) libretto (freely adopting from Sophocles), and the same year saw the birth of Igor Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex set to the libretto by the same author, based on the Sophocles tragedy translated into Latin by Father Jean Danielou. In Stravinsky's modern version of Greek tragedy the ancient Greek social values, be it spiritual or political were reminded. The work resembled the opera-oratorio with the action narrated between the scenes, while magically conveying the feeling of the ancient tragedy, antique, impersonal, yet eternally significant' [2, p.569]. While resurrecting Greek ideals composers went to so much trouble as to exploit the Greek scales in their operas as Albert Roussel (1869-1937) did in his one act lyric opera La naissance de la lyre (1926) with libretto by Theodore Reinach from Sopholces's Ichneutai. In the same year the
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Polish composer Karol Szymaiiowski (1882-1937) contributed to operatic repertoire with his medieval drama King Roger based on Bacchae by Euripides mirroring the conflict between serenely rational Apollo and passionately irrational Dionysus.
The tendency of setting music to Greek tragedy continued: from 1941 till 1949 Carl Orff (1895-1982) was occupied with work on Antigonae - setting of Sophocles's tragedy by Hoderlein. The composer's goal was to reclaim the tragedy of ancient Greece for the contemporary musical language. In 1959 Orff decided to set music to another Greek tragedy, namely Oedipus Tyrarm by Sophocles, experimenting with different forms of vocal delivery varying from ordinary speech, stylized speech to semi-speech.
The persistence of antiquity was also evidenced in American musical culture of the twentieth century. But decidedly one of the most interesting attempts of resurrecting the Greek tragedy was undertaken in Greece by Mikis Theodorakis (b. 1925): in 1946 he wrote the symphonic poem Prometheus Bound, followed two years later by the Oedipus Tyrannus for string orchestra. Not only did Theodorakis write articles on the relationship between ancient drama and the modern Greek interpretation of it, but he also found practical solutions of particular problems of setting choruses to music. While Theodorakis longed to compose a trilogy of operas based on ancient Greek tragedy, it was Manolis Kalomiris (1883-1962) whose opera Protomastoros (1916) was believed to be the first opera by a Greek composer written on a Greek subject.
The twentieth first century interest of contemporary composers in ancient tragedy is reflected in a variety of works, among others in such projects as so called The Oresteia Project: Expanding Audiences for a Contemporary Opera by Andrew Earle Simpson which was delivered at the College Music Society National Conference, September 2002 (Kansas City, MO)1.
2. The role of Greek tragedy for musical culture
1 See: music.cua.edu/agamemnon/cms.cfm. Accessed: 22 March 2016.
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The ideals of Greek tragedy turned out inspirational for Frederic Nietzsche who set to prove the fundamental place of music among other arts in his treatise Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik (The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music) published in 1871. Nietzsche tied the art of music and Greek tragedy as close as to claim their intrinsic link suggesting primordial character of music influencing all other dramatic forms of human expression.
In the essay the philosopher emphasized the role of two driving forces: Apollonian and Dionysian; the first symbolizing order, formality, deliberateness and moderateness, the second standing for passion and primary instincts. In Nietzschean theory the emotional power of sounds was attached to Dionysian element. Hence the genesis of Greek tragedy was associated with music. At the beginning of the Greek tragedy there were choruses dancing and singing during the rites praising the god Dionysus and moaning over the sacrifice of a goat. These initially quintessen-tially Dionysian performances were imitated among others by Euripides who deprived the original pure tragedy from its musical expressiveness.
One of the impulses that drove Nietzsche to writing his essay was the inspiration exercised on him by Richard Wagner's (1813-1883) and his operas, which - as the philosopher believed - revived the Dionysian element of ancient tragedy. In music and writings of Wagner Nietzsche discovered the re - birth of Dionysian spirit in the nineteenth century German culture. Indeed Wagner dreamt of composing a total work of art called 'Gesamtkunstwerk' which would comprise not only music but other arts like dance, painting and architecture as well. In his 1851 essay Oper und Drama (Opera and Drama) Wagner viewed music and poetry as equal partners, as two aspects of the same musical stage work. Eveiy detail of the work was designed to serve the same dramatic purpose. He emphasized an intimate connection between music and community as his ideals were indebted in the idealized vision of the ancient Greek being a noble and beautiful theatre, combining religious aspects, syncretic qualities and synthetic values appealing to the whole community [1, p. 19]. Wagner wrote that "with the Greeks the perfect work of art, the drama, was the abstract arid epitome of all that was expressible in the Grecian nature' [9, p.63].
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Wagner felt that the music drama was appointed to become Greek tragedy in a measure still vaster and more complete than the ancient model. Sensitive to the artistic virtues of Greek tragedy, he saw that among all vital sources which richly sustained it, myth was the most powerful' [6, p.81]. For Wagner the Greek tragedy was the artistic embodiment of the spirit and contents of Greek mythos' - the dramatic representation of a mythic action [10, p.89]. But in his own works Wagner drew inspiration from Teutonic mythology rather than the Greek one. Greek models were adopted to explore the inner world of rage, arrogance and rapacity. In extolling Wagner's music as a return to the ideals of Greek tragedy Nietzsche praised the redemption achieved through these operas, particularly the opera Tristan and Isolde.
The cult of Wagner was continued in the works of Richard Strauss (1864-1949) whose musical dramas were reminiscent of Wagnerian ideals. Strauss's best known opera Elektra (1909) was based on the libretto being a modern equivalent of Sopho-cles's tragedy provided by Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929). Hofmannsthal also wrote the libretto after Euripides for Egon Wellesz's (1885-1974) one act Alekstis (1924) with important role of choruses presenting long melodic lines often in unison.
These early twentieth century versions of Greek tragedies paid special attention to morbid and extreme sides of human nature alluding to Nietzschean finding that already ancient Greeks understood the essence of human life ruled by the fundamental duality between Dionysian and Apollonian elements.
*
Opera, as conceived in the sixteenth century, was originally thought of as a version of Greek tragedy. Since then, similarities between the two genres have been often analyzed in a number of ways as they seem evident for musicologists and classicists. In the twenty first century we still discover that the impact of the Greek tragedy on opera - its past, present and possibly also future - is not only undeniable, but also appears as promising as ever: not only as a field of scholarly research but also as a source of inspiration for composers of new musical (not only stage) works.
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Notes
1. Goldman A., Sprinchorn E. Introduction', in: Wagner R. Wagner on Music and Drama, (transi. A. Ashton Ellis), New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1964.
2. Grout D. J. A Short History of Opera, New York: Columbia University Press, 2nd ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1965.
3. Newman J. Jean-Baptiste de Lully and his Tragédies Lyriques, UMI Research Press, 1979.
4. Palisca С. V. Musical Asides in Cavalieri's Correspondence', The Musical Quarterly 49 (1963).
5. Robinson M. F. Opera Before Mozart, London: Hutchinson, 1966,
6. Schrade L. Tragedy in the Art of Music, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1964.
7. Solerti A. Le origini del melodrama. .Reprint, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1969. Originally published Turin: Bocca, 1903.
8. Strunk О. Source Readings in Music History, New York: Norton, 1950.
9. Wagner R. 'Contrast between the present-day theatre and the Greek', in: Wagner R. Wagner on Music and Drama, (transi. A. Ashton Ellis), New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1964.
10. Wagner R. "Myth as it relates to the folk and to art', in: Wagner R. Wagner on Music and Drama, (transi. A. Ashton Ellis), New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1964.
11. Ницше Ф. В. Рождение трагедии из духа музыки (Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik) / Фридрих Ницше; [пер. с нем. Г. А. Рачинского]. Санкт-Петербург: Азбука [и др.], 2014. 219 с.
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