Literary opera

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The literary opera is a term coined by Edgar Istel and describes the genre of opera that emerged in the 20th century , in which already existing stage works of the theater are set to music without significant changes - possibly abbreviations. The extended use of the term “literary opera”, which was still common up to around 1980, also for opera libretti on the basis of literarily significant dramas, novels and stories has been overtaken by recent research on the history of the opera libretto, as there has been recourse to literary material from the past since the libretto history The genre of opera in general was shaped.

definition

According to a more recent definition by Hans-Gerd Winter and Peter Petersen , the term “literary opera” means “a special form of music theater in which the libretto is based on a literary work whose linguistic, semantic and aesthetic structure is recognizable as a structural layer in the musical-dramatic work remains."

history

The literary opera only gained acceptance in European opera when the conventions of the metric of verse for the form of a libretto text disappeared with Richard Wagner and the well- composed dramatic large form he developed , and at the same time the personal union of libretto poet and composer appeared as the new norm of opera production. In the area of ​​Romance languages ​​in particular, the alliterative verse in Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen was perceived as prose text, since the syllable-counting verse metrics in French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese could not understand the consonant initials of the Germanic languages ​​as a verse element. Since the production of literary operas potentially makes the figure of the librettist superfluous, the genre was first able to establish itself in those operatic cultures in which professional librettism did not yet have a long tradition (Russia, Germany). The first examples of this dramaturgical process can be found in the history of French and Russian music in the 19th century. The first literary operas in European operatic history include Alexander Dargomyschski's opera The Stone Guest (based on Pushkin ) and Modest Mussorgsky's opera fragment The Marriage and Boris Godunov (also based on Pushkin).

In French and Italian opera, which had an established libretto tradition for centuries, the introduction of literary opera took place parallel to the discussions about the possibility of a prose libretto. Since the Italian tradition of operatic verse proved to be particularly resistant to the advance of libretto poetry in prose, the tradition of Italian literary opera could only survive thanks to the setting of the dramas Gabriele d'Annunzio - Alberto Franchetti , La figlia di Iorio (1906), Pietro Mascagni , Parisina (1913), Riccardo Zandonai , Francesca da Rimini (1914), Ildebrando Pizzetti , Fedra (1915) - permanently establish.

Charles Gounod , Pietro Mascagni , Claude Debussy , Richard Strauss and Alberto Franchetti were among the first composers outside Russia to set theater pieces directly to music . After the Second World War , the genre flourished, especially in Germany, and composers often resorted to historical theater plays. The production of literary operas continues to this day.

Literary operas based on theater texts

Literary operas based on novels and short stories

literature

  • Vincenzo Borghetti / Riccardo Pecci, Il bacio della sfinge. D'Annunzio, Pizzetti e "Fedra" , EDT, Torino 1998.
  • Carl Dahlhaus : From musical drama to literary opera. Essays on modern opera history. Revised new edition. Piper et al. a., Munich a. a. 1989, ISBN 3-7957-8238-4 ( Piper 8238 series ).
  • Albert Gier : The libretto. Theory and history of a music literary genre. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1998, ISBN 3-534-12368-9 . (Paperback: Insel, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-458-34366-0 )
  • Swantje Gostomzyk: literary opera at the end of the 20th century. An interdisciplinary study using the example of the operas by Detlev Glanert. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2009.
  • Adriana Guarnieri Corazzol, Musica e letteratura in Italia tra Ottocento e Novecento , Sansoni, Milano 2000.
  • Hugh MacDonald: The Prose Libretto , In: Cambridge Opera Journal 1, 1989, pp. 155-166.
  • Jürgen Maehder : The Origins of Italian "Literary Opera" ─ "Guglielmo Ratcliff", "La figlia di Iorio", "Parisina" and "Francesca da Rimini" , in: Arthur Groos / Roger Parker (eds.): Reading Opera , Princeton University Press, Princeton 1988, pp. 92-128.
  • Jürgen Maehder: Drammaturgia musicale e strutture narrative nel teatro musicale italiano della generazione dell'Ottanta , in: Mila De Santis (ed.): Alfredo Casella e l'Europa. Atti del Convegno internazionale di Studi a Siena , 7-9 giugno 2001, Olschki, Firenze 2003, pp. 223-248.
  • Jürgen Maehder: "Salome" by Oscar Wilde and Richard Strauss ─ The conditions in which the symphonic literary opera of the fin de siècle was created , in: Jürgen Kühnel / Ulrich Müller / Sigrid Schmidt (eds.): Richard Strauss, "Salome": material traditions, text and music , Mueller-Speiser, Anif / Salzburg 2013, pp. 55–107.
  • Peter Petersen : The term “literary opera” - a definition. In: Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 56, 1999, no. 1, pp. 52–70.
  • Olaf Roth: The opera libretti based on Dramen d'Annunzios , Peter Lang, Bern / Frankfurt / New York 1999.
  • Dörte Schmidt, Lenz in contemporary music theater. Literature opera as a compositional project with Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Friedrich Goldmann, Wolfgang Rihm and Michèle Reverdy , Stuttgart, Metzler, 1993.
  • Jürg Stenzl : Heinrich von Kleist's Penthesilea in the setting by Othmar Schoeck. In Günter Schnitzler (Ed.): Poetry and Music - Kaleidoscope of their Relationships. Klett-Cotta, 1979, p. 224 ff.
  • Richard Taruskin : Realism as Preached and Practiced - The Russian Opera Dialogue. In: Musical Quarterly, 56, 1970, pp. 431-454.
  • Almut Ullrich: The “literary opera” from 1970–1990. Texts and tendencies. Noetzel, Wilhelmshaven 1991, ISBN 3-7959-0617-2 ( publications on music research 11), (also: Aachen, Techn. Hochsch., Diss.).
  • Sigrid Wiesmann (Ed.): For and against the literary opera. On the situation after 1945. Laaber-Verlag, Laaber 1982, ISBN 3-921518-67-9 ( Thurnauer Schriften zum Musiktheater 6).

Web links

Wiktionary: literary opera  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Edgar Istel, The Libretto. Nature, structure and effect of the opera book together with a dramaturgical analysis of the libretto by Figaros Hochzeit , Schuster & Loeffler, Berlin / Leipzig 1914, DNB 361009720 .
  2. ^ Albert Gier : The libretto. Theory and history of a music literary genre. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1998, ISBN 3-534-12368-9 . (Paperback: Insel, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-458-34366-0 )
  3. ^ Hans-Gerd Winter and Peter Petersen : An overview of the Büchner operas. At the same time a contribution to the discussion on the literary opera. In: Büchner operas. Georg Büchner in the music of the 20th century. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1997, pp. 6-31; Peter Petersen: The term “literary opera” - a definition. In: Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 56, 1999, pp. 52–70. For a discussion see also Swantje Gostomzyk: Literature Opera at the End of the 20th Century. An interdisciplinary study using the example of the operas by Detlev Glanert. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2009.
  4. ↑ Jürgen Maehder , manifestations of the Wagnérisme in the Italian opera des fin de siècle , in: Annegret Fauser / Manuela Schwartz (eds.): From Wagner to Wagnérisme. Music, literature, art, politics , Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 1999, pp. 575–621.
  5. ↑ Jürgen Maehder : "Salome" by Oscar Wilde and Richard Strauss - The conditions of origin of the symphonic literary opera of the fin de siècle , in: Jürgen Kühnel / Ulrich Müller / Sigrid Schmidt (eds.): Richard Strauss, "Salome": StofftradITION, text and Musik , Mueller-Speiser, Anif / Salzburg 2013, pp. 55–107.
  6. ↑ Richard Taruskin : Realism as Preached and Practiced - The Russian Opera Dialogue. In: Musical Quarterly 56, 1970, pp. 431-454; Jürg Stenzl : Heinrich von Kleist's Penthesilea in the setting by Othmar Schoeck. In Günter Schnitzler: Poetry and Music - Kaleidoscope of their Relationships. Klett-Cotta, 1979, p. 224 ff.
  7. ^ Hugh MacDonald: The Prose Libretto , In: Cambridge Opera Journal 1, 1989, pp. 155-166.
  8. ↑ Jürgen Maehder : The Origins of Italian "Literary Opera " - "Guglielmo Ratcliff", "La figlia di Iorio", "Parisina" and "Francesca da Rimini" , in: Arthur Groos / Roger Parker (eds.): Reading Opera , Princeton University Press, Princeton 1988, pp. 92-128.
  9. ^ Hugh MacDonald: The Prose Libretto , In: Cambridge Opera Journal 1, 1989, pp. 155-166.