OPERA The Italian Opera Company of Chicago

Tchaikovsky once opined that the ability to compose purely musical pieces, like symphonies, concertos and string quartets, required a higher level of genius than the composition of opera. He said nothing specifically about compositions that may be classified as “program music,” which constitute such a significant body of the musical literature of the Romantic period. Directly inspired by some kind of idea or story, these works are more closely related to opera than to “pure” music. Now Tchaikovsky was certainly well qualified to voice his opinion because he composed both purely musical works and operas (as well as “program music” like the 1812 Overture) that are among the finest of their genre. Many critics have agreed with Tchaikovsky over the years, and the assertion that composers of opera and program music are not as talented as composers of “pure” music seems to have become an idea that is routinely accepted as truth. Thus, opera aficionados, especially those who are not all that keen on symphonies, concertos and chamber music, are often regarded as second class music lovers by the concert-hall elite, who claim to understand sonata or symphonic form, but couldn’t tell you the difference between recitativo and ritornello.

When we say “opera” today, we usually mean mainly 19th Century- or Romantic opera. As to rating a level of musical genius, with our deepest apologies to Tchaikovsky, one cannot disregard the period of which we are speaking. We might agree with Tchaikovsky if we were specifically discussing the Baroque or Classical periods, when the most creative composers sought not so much to stamp their works with a unique individuality as to achieve the perfect Form. The opera composers of these times routinely produced works that merely provided the framework for the “real” music, the brilliant, but (to us, at least) dramatically meaningless, improvisations of the castrati. But in the Romantic period, we can resolutely argue that the most enduring operas and program music indicated a level of musical genius that was unsurpassed. To understand just why this is we must first come to grips with the meaning of the Romantic Impulse, that vital creative stream that characterized so much of the art of the 19th- and early 20th centuries.

It is essential to realize that most of Romantic art represented a total contradiction to the intellectual view of the time, a very materialist outlook that engendered Marxism, Darwinism and Freudianism. In the 19th century, it was widely accepted that everything could be understood rationally and that every human problem could be solved by applying some kind of scientific method. This mindset unleashed the talents of all manner of men and (significantly) women such that utterly staggering technological advances, unimagined in earlier times, had a profound and mostly positive impact on the standard of living for virtually all people.

Perhaps it was the awesome suddenness of so many societal changes that overwhelmed people to such an extent that they simply couldn’t psychologically handle it all, and they sought to escape from reality in the art of the time. Romantic literature and drama represented a world where the heart definitely took precedence over the mind. The characters in the novels of such writers as Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy, Feodor Dostoevsky and Victor Hugo routinely acted not out of reason, but from obsessive love, or chivalry run amok, even though such action would probably lead to death or destruction (as it often did). The poetry of the period was similar. The works of such men as Schiller, Pushkin, Poe, Keats, Tennyson and Byron (who lived and died like one of his characters) depicted a world that was far different from the “real” one. The same was true in the opera house and the theater – the more fantastic the better. (Even symphonies inspired by “fantastic” visions found a very receptive audience in the concert hall.) Before we approach the realm of opera, let us consider the nature of music itself.

Of course, music cannot be defined rationally. It is a language of the spirit, not of the senses. It does not come from reason or speculation, yet it is not “irrational.” It is ultra logical, but logic of a kind that cannot be described in physical or intellectual terms. For a Romantic Age individual, the experience of listening to “pure” music was an escape from reason. Thus came the great instrumental virtuosos, artists like Beethoven, Paganini, Liszt, Joachim and Rachmaninoff, who made the musical experience profoundly exciting. But many people demanded more from music than just a temporary flight to they-knew-not-where. They wanted to experience from music a different, yet understandable, reality than the one they lived in.

And so composers of the Romantic period regularly tried to express all manner of rational things – ideas, events, personalities, etc. – through the medium of instrumental or “Progam” music. Although this concept is not totally confined to the 19th century (Vivaldi composed a group of four concertos called the Four Seasons based on a poem he wrote), the most popular examples of program music were created in this period. Beethoven composed his 3rd Symphony to depict his idealized view of Napoleon (although the composer tore up the title page of the manuscript that initially bore Napoleon’s name, shortly after his hero declared himself Emperor of Europe. He re-titled the piece “To the memory of a once-heroic man”, hence the appellation, Eroica). A few years later, Beethoven composed a 6th Symphony, known as the Pastoral, which includes short verbal descriptions of things, like “The gathering of Happy Peasants” and “Scene at a Brook.” Many of the most popular and enduring works of the Romantic composers that are regularly performed in today’s concert halls, are examples of program music – the Lieder of Schubert, Schumann and Brahms, Berlioz’ Sinfonie Fantastique, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, Moussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain and Pictures at an Exhibition, Saint-Säens’ Danse Macabre, Smetana’s Moldau, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherezade, Debussy’s La Mer and the tone poems of Richard Strauss. One could even make a good case that all of Wagner’s operas are program music, given that the orchestra is his most important voice.

But the ultimate Romantic musical offering was opera. Here the literary and musical streams of the period were united in such a way as to express a way of life that was diametrically opposed to the way people were supposed to live. And commonly in Romantic opera it the women characters were far superior in strength of will, moral fortitude and scope of imagination than men. While in the real world, men and women were taught to choose their mates based on rational principals such as the ability to make a good living or the probability of being a good parent, in most operas men and women were linked by obsessive and forbidden love impulses. In the real world, a powerful figure like Bellini’s Norma would have let Adalgisa take all the blame. Donizetti’s Lucia would have humbly consented to marry Arturo for the good of her family. Verdi’s Violetta, if she allowed herself to fall in love with Alfredo, would have told Germont to go to hell. Samson, of course, would never tell Dalila the secret of his strength. Don Jose, after his fling with Carmen, would have married Micaëla. Cio-cio san would realize her mistake in carrying the torch for Pinkerton and would have married Prince Yamadori. It would be an interesting exercise to likewise rationalize the relationships in virtually all Romantic operas.

Regarding the level of genius it takes to compose opera, first consider that the only instrument that directly carries music to the listener is the human voice. Does it really require less talent for a composer to conceive of a work based on a given literary subject and express this idea musically through human voices, than to create a symphony of instrumental music based on some abstract notion purely from one’s soul? This is a question that can never be answered satisfactorily. But to create the special kind of music that can be effectively delivered directly from one person to another requires a very great genius indeed – the kind of genius that dominated the Romantic period.