#opera overture

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Jean-Philippe Rameau (1686-1764) - Ouverture from “Platée.” Performed by Christophe Rousset/Les Talens Lyriques on period instruments.

[mikrokosmos]

Strauss - Overture for the Prologue of Ariadne auf Naxos (1912)

I keep coming back to Richard Strauss' less 'popular' operas. During his lifetime many of them were somewhat dismissed for their 'conservative' writing. It seems that Strauss was going into a more jarring and angst ridden Modernism with his operas Salome (1905) and Elektra (1908), but then betrayed that direction with the very gushy romantic Rosenkavalier (1910). I think this lower opinion of Strauss has more to do with the time he lived in rather than the music itself. Not to mention that this 'heavy/lighthearted' florid style continued through both World Wars. It's hard for me not to love his music because of it's unusual mix of being hyper-romantic and also clear and easy to follow. What Strauss did was the seemingly impossible task of synthesizing Wagner (free floating harmonies, thick orchestral textures, and long scale structure) with Mozart (clarity, grace, lyricism, and more grounded functioning tonality). This is the opening of Strauss' comic opera Ariadne auf Naxos. The confusing title for this post is due to the opera's structure; It is an opera within an opera. The opera is in two parts, first part is the prologue which gives us the backstory where a composer has been hired to stage one of his operas at some very super rich Viennese man's house. He is deeply offended to learn that the patron has also hired a burlesque dance troop to perform after his opera. Offended because (and I'm pretty sure Strauss is satirizing the Romantic-minded young artist who takes his own work too seriously) his opera, Ariadne of Naxos, is supposed to be a super serious tragedy and having a burlesque dance afterward shows how the patron and audience don't care that much for 'serious' art, and may even look forward to the half naked women more than the Grecian music-drama. The opera company and dance company argue over who gets to play first. The situation gets worse when the patron's butler informs everyone that his dinner party ended up going later than expected, and since he's paid for both acts already and wants them to perform, he decided he wants the opera and the burlesque to happen at the same time. The composer is angry but his teacher encourages him to comply. And the lead of the burlesque show, a risqué comedian named Zerbinetta, charms him into changing the opera to include scenes for her. The second part is the opera Ariadne of Naxos, where Ariadne has been abandoned on the isle of Naxos by her former lover and hero Theseus. Zerbinetta and other nymphs (the burlesque dancers) try to sing and cheer Ariadne up but they can't get her out of her depression. Zerbinetta tells her the best way to get over one man is to find another, and encourages her to flirt with a clown Harlequin. But then a stranger comes to the island, who turns out to be Bacchus the god of wine, chaos, and 'hedonism'. Ariadne and Bacchus fall in love, the end. Despite how this opera is somewhat minuscule (in comparison to all opera ever, let alone Strauss'), it is the genius combination of Wagner (a 'super-serious' philosophical music-drama based on classical antiquity where love transfigures the soul), Mozart (lighthearted comedy, flirting between men and women who don't understand each other, and an optimistic idealization of a classical pastorale) and Strauss (a metafictional story about an opera within the opera where characters discuss the nature of opera and relationship between artist and audience, the kinds of themes that would be best exemplified in Capriccio). But really the only reason I'm sharing this is because the main melody is stuck in my head, the perfect Straussian melody; optimistic and upbeat, goofy-sounding accidentals, very sentimental writing based on subtle diatonic dissonances, and coming back again and again in different waves of great orchestral writing.

[musicainextenso]

For the end of Famous Overtures Week, I thought [maybe too ironically] to share a “grand finale” type overture, one that was very lively and bombastic and fun. And when I think of “fun orchestral music”, the Russians always come to mind. This is the overture to Glinka’s opera Ruslan and Lyudmila, which was based off of a Pushkin poem with the same name. The opera is a bit of a fairy tale, where at the feast of the title couple’s wedding, thunder crashes and the lights go out and Lyudmila is taken away by some evil magic forces! And so her father, the Prince of Kiev, offers her hand in marriage to any man who could find her, and we follow a few different galant suitors who go on magical and fantastical misadventures along their quest to save Lyudmila. Which is such a bizarre story to think about it, I mean how cruel is that to Ruslan? That his marriage would be void if some other guy happens to find her first? But that’s a digression, spoiler alert Ruslan saves her in the end. While the opera itself is rarely performed, the overture stood out as Glinka’s most popular piece.

Today on Musica in Extenso,

Mikhail Glinka

Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila

Darrell Ang conducting the National Singapore Youth Orchestra

We hope you enjoyed this latest edition of our Famous Overtures Week series, here on Musica in Extenso

- Nick O.

[mikrokosmos]

Wagner - Overture to The Flying Dutchman (1843)

Der fliegende Holländer. Wagner was an eccentric composer though his life and a “True Romantic” in that he had very large ambitions and ideas of what music can do, and was very caught up in weird philosophy about art. The Flying Dutchman is an earlier opera that is the first example of trying out these heavy concepts, using the themes of transformation through the power of love, and using the supernatural as a backdrop to human drama. Even so I would argue that this opera isn’t as well executed as his later ones will be, but it is good at being atmospheric and the overture is popular. It opens with a main motif sounding like hunting horns that evokes the sea, swelling with waves. This drifts off and we settle in a more reflective passage, but timpani and the ocean motif come back with anxious strings, sliding up and down chromatically to again make us think of waves. A ghostly ship and crew, a favorite trope of Gothic literature. The storm subsides for now and we have a more playful dance intertwined with the ocean motif. The drama builds up into a more triumphant ending with the might of the full orchestra, leading us into the curtain raising and the beginning of the action. Even outside the context of the story it is a “grand” sound and can be easily thought of as a concert Overture.

JMW Turner - Peace - Burial at Sea (1842)

[mikrokosmos]

Marschner - Overture to Der Vampyr

13 Pieces for Halloween, no.7. The name “Marschner” isn’t well known today. He was an important figure in German opera during the 19th century, and he was admired by Beethoven and Mendelssohn, and became an influence to Wagner. His opera Der Vampyr is based off of the book “The Vampyre” by John William Polidori, a Romantic writer who is considered to be the father of Vampire fiction. Before Count Dracula, there was Lord Ruthven. Polidori worked with Lord Byron, and while in Switzerland they hung out with another major poet, Percy Shelley, his fiancee Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, and her step sister Claire Clairmont. Famously, the group were stuck in a lodge because of a thunderstorm, and after reading ghost stories, Lord Byron suggested they all make up scary stories to tell to each other. The most iconic work to be born out of this evening would be Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. The other was Polidori’s The Vampyre. If this doesn’t fit for Halloween, I don’t know what does. Like most Gothic novels, the work follows a young woman who has been seduced by a mysterious figure, and she grows suspicious of him. The more time she spends with him, the slowly she starts to uncover the dark secrets he’s been hiding. Spoiler alert: he’s a vampire. Shocking I know. Marschner’s setting of the work keeps the novelty drama that comes with the new retelling of old legends, and the overture opens with a very dramatic, chromatic, and unstable theme [no surprise that Wagner would be inspired], before switching to a more noble and lighthearted theme. The two contrasting ideas wrestle with each other through grand orchestral writing until the rocking climax that then begins the story.

[musicainextenso]

I don’t think it’s possible to bring up “famous opera overtures” and not talk about Rossini. His famous operatic melodies, perfectly written into his overtures, have become cultural staples in our culture, and we continue to hear his music in popular culture today. The funny thing I learned was that Rossini always kept his overtures for last, enough that on the DAY OF the first public performance of this opera, the opera director kept him locked in his room where he’d write the overture, and as each page were completed he’d hand it out the window to copyists who would rush to to make copies so the orchestra could rehearse in time before the evening. Think of how stressful that must have been! Anyway, my personal favorite of Rossini’s overtures comes from the Thieving Magpie, a family drama in which an “innocent” magpie seals a set of spoons, causing all kinds of misunderstandings and havoc.

Rossini - Overture to La gazza ladra

Beyond it’s earworm melodies, the overture is unique in its use of a kettle drum at the opening.

Stay tuned this week for more famous opera overtures, here on Musica in Extenso! - Nick O.

[lesser-known-composers]

Music I like :

Richard Strauss Guntram (beginning) : Act One: Overture ·

Conductor : Eve Queler

Hungarian State Orchestra

[lesser-known-composers]

Zdeněk Fibich (1850 – 1900) - Šárka. Opera in 3 Acts, Op. 51 - Overture · ·

Filharmonie Brno/Jan Štych