Opera Outside Of The Opera House

The circulation of opera outside the opera house in the nineteenth century is emblematic of several shifting relationships. In terms of the purely musical, these changes illustrate a growing interest in opera as an inherently musical art form, rather than a mode of literary expression. In social terms, opera's presence in the homes and general sonosphere of the metropolis symbolises the complex interweaving of public and private binaries and the growing issues of modernity evident in the urban landscape of the nineteenth century. Following the reception and dissemination of opera in this period, one can glean powerful insights into the ears and minds of nineteenth century culture. Firstly, it is important to note the fact that opera as a genre is inextricably linked to a specific geography; indeed, "historically, no musical genre was probably more tethered to a specific location for its performance than opera." This association has both positive and negative repercussions. On the one hand, its location is imperative to the creation of a complete representation of opera. Opera, even if we take for granted its status as a specifically musical genre, is a visual genre. Especially in French theatre, for whom spectacle was incredibly important, it is the visual aspect that gives opera its individual status, over the oratorio, song cycle, etc. for example. Therefore, to take opera out of the opera house creates the potential of losing this facet. Additionally, this matter of (in)completeness is also evident in the potential loss of dramaturgy when the opera is removed from its location. In watching an opera at the opera house, the literal drama of the music - the plot, what is being sung - is evident. Indeed, this was perhaps the most important feature of opera in the first half of the century. Following eighteenth-century tastes, "for most enthusiasts in the eighteenth century, it was the libretto that constituted the printed representation of the opera outside of the opera house; it was the site of reference and memory for the operatic performance." Even into the nineteenth century, with operas such as Lucia di Lamermoor, it was true to say that before the opera had even arrived in Paris, it was known via its libretto and its sources. When talking of an opera at the end of the eighteenth century, it was as true to say that this could be in reference to the text as much as it would have been of the music. However, in the 1770s, a change towards music "beginning to be accepted as a powerful autonomous force of emotional expression, one that endowed opera with much of its visceral power" was certainly taking hold, in no small part thanks to the operatic reforms of Gluck and Calzabigi. Therefore, with the growing autonomy of music, the progression towards operatic music circulating outside of the opera house as an autonomous entity is logical. However, there are also negative aspects with regards to opera at the opera house. Firstly, although modes of listening were certainly changing in the nineteenth century, it is dubious, especially in the first half of the nineteenth century, as to whether the opera house was the best way to hear an operatic work. The opera house was as much a social location as it was an artistic one: a place for socialising as much as for listening to opera. Although changes did occur throughout the nineteenth century in terms of both modes of listening and the operatic clientele, the opera house was a potentially noisy place (in respects other than musical) and one primarily for the upper classes. In terms of these changing modes of listening, the more humble environment of the parlour may have been an appropriate setting for more active listening. On the one hand, music outside of the opera house "shifts the aesthetic focus away from the visual to the aural, and implicitly alters the identity of the art work itself." Rather than focussing on spectacle or dramaturgy, the emphasis is placed on the music directly. On the other hand, the social implications of the opera house and the parlour are very different. Although both sites marry music and socialising, the more intimate setting of the parlour invites a closer, more attentive listening. Indeed, it is perhaps this intimacy of the parlour that caused this change in modes of listening; "there is evidence that the rapt absorption and attentiveness that opera goers evinced in the nineteenth century was reinforced, if not actually inculcated, in the home through the playing of operatic music on the piano." Although undoubtedly private study of scores is important in this respect, the parlour as an operatic site was integral to the dissemination and understanding of opera in the nineteenth century. However, the very nature of this music is contestable. In taking an opera out of the opera house, the music is inherently changed. Firstly, there is the fact of instrumentation. Although orchestral arrangements of dances were common, much of the music was reduced for piano. Played on the piano, several aspects of an opera are changed. Not taking into account the potential disregard for the libretto, the downsizing from orchestra to piano changes the nature of the work. The orchestra, vehicle of the symphony, the opera, is a public forum. The piano, vehicle of lieder, the heart of the family home, is a much more personal, private instrument. This change from public to private changes the reception of the work, and can foster a much more personal relationship with it emotionally. Also, the ability to repeat, replay, examine closer, the score (or piano reduction) invites a closer relationship with the work as text, as well emotionally. But, with what is the audience/player fostering a relationship? Taking Lucia di Lamermoor as a case study, its prominence in nineteenth-century Paris is clear. Produced at several Paris opera houses, a mainstay at the Théâtre-Italien, and already familiar through its exotic Walter Scott source, Lucia had a tangible presence in the ears and minds of nineteenth-century Parisians. As with other operatic successes, Lucia also circulated widely in the more private milieus or the salon. However, this music was far from Donizetti's. Donizetti's music, written in same vein as his Italian predecessors, such as Rossini, follows Italian operatic convention. However, the "piano fantasies on the opera's themes [that] were played by visiting virtuosos [such] as Thalberg or Liszt" adapt the music widely. For example, looking at Liszt's Réminiscences de Lucia di Lamermoor, the emphasis on virtuosity is clear. Spread across three staves, with inserted cadenzas, the music takes on completely different characteristics. Whereas Donizetti's score follows Italian convention of melodic supremacy and simpler accompaniment, Liszt's transcri ption is a wildly virtuosic rendering. Inserted between rich transcri ptions of melodies are classic examples of Lisztian showmanship in the form of cadenzas. Additionally, in the second section of the work, after the first cadenza, Liszt introduces a new theme in the left hand with an incredibly virtuosic right hand arpeggiated accompaniment, which pushes the work on to its pyrotechnic ending. Moreover, one can imagine that the piano transcri ption published is only a scratch on what Liszt may have performed in person. Therefore, the music from these operas heard in salons may have borne little or no resemblance in tone or content to the original. However, these transcri ptions were not the only or primary way in which operatic music found its way into the home. The rise of piano manufacturing in the nineteenth century led to the piano becoming the heart of the home. Indeed, France and Britain were leading figures in nineteenth-century piano manufacturing; for example, "Broadwood in London produced no fewer than 1,000 square pianos per annum during the first half century, and by 1850 the total world output was probably about 50,000 pianos a year, nearly half of them made in England, which shared a generally acknowledged leadership of the industry with France." Alongside the rise of the piano as a domestic instrument, publishers, seeing a gap in the market, soon followed with piano transcri ptions and piano-vocal scores. Although these scores were not unique to the nineteenth century, with Ballard and Baussen's successful forays into the field the century before, they gained enormous popularity in the nineteenth century and were extremely lucrative for both composer and publisher. In contrast to the transcri ptions of Liszt and Thalberg, these bore a truer relation to their operatic predecessors, and therefore they gave "the broader mass of amateur opera enthusiasts - the 'dilettantes' - [...] a practical means of reproducing the music they may or may not have heard on the stage or in semi-private salon recitals." Indeed, in Paris these piano-vocal scores, when paired with the available "printed orchestral parts, various iterations of the libretto, and a staging manual," could give quite an accurate portrayal of the opera, albeit on smaller scale, at the home. In England, however, the dramaturgy was lost. The fashion for "cabinet" operas, in which the vocal line was subsumed within the piano texture with no text at all, gave a musical representation with no dramatic counterpart. In this sense, both music and drama were compromised in the movement of opera from the opera house to the home. One the one hand, this shows an emphasis on music over text. However, issues such as these also raise deep-rooted questions surrounding the ontological status of music itself, addressing a growing question in the nineteenth century of what constitutes a "work." Does a work exist in performance, or in score? If score, can a piano-vocal or cabinet arrangement suffice? If any "score can be only an imperfect representation of a piece," then can the piano-vocal score be stand equal to the orchestral score as yet another "imperfect representation?" These questions reflect changing modes of listening in the nineteenth century - no longer did a work last only the hours in which it was performed, but rather listening to a work took years, decades, centuries. Liszt evinced these ideals, saying that there should be "the publication at low cost of the most remarkable works of all ancient and modern composers, from the Renaissance of music to the present day . [and that it] could have the title MUSICAL PANTHEON." Thus the publication of operatic arrangements can be seen as aiding the assistance of the growing nineteenth-century musical museum. The commodification of music as a physical entity, score as gospel, as artifact, led to the growing preoccupation with music as something more than simply performance. From the humble piano-vocal score, we can assess changing relationships within the very nature of the reception of music. There is a second reason for why this music was desired to be replayed, however, and one that deals more closely with the social, rather than the musical, climate of the nineteenth century. Although the circulation of piano-vocal scores marks a growing predominance of understanding music as score-based and something worthy of time, of study, it also acts as a sign of a preoccupation with modernity, of halting time. The vogue for musical annuals in Britain well illustrates this. "These keepsakes were the progeny of private albums, commonplace compilations and musical scrapbooks kept as intensely personal acts of remembrance and commemoration:" remembrance of the passing year, of another year gone. In his article, James Davies emphasises the relationship between cultural and personal memory, the commodification of this memory, and the role that femininity and gendered readings of these annuals might hold. Although these observations are incredibly insightful, I believe there is another way in which these annuals might reflect the nineteenth-century urban landscape. In a world where speed dominated, with the Industrial Revolution, train travel, and the like, there was a decided endeavour to engage with the past, to keep hold of it in some sense, in order to deal with the present, which was so rapidly becoming past as time pushed on into the future. In this way, "the music book, in other words, acts in such a way as to fix experience in a permanent, though decaying, state of memorability;" experience need not be lost in the flurry of modern life, but can be maintained in some way. This is illustrated in the uncertain role of the annual for nineteenth-century owners, for it is not "clear whether these albums were principally to play, look at or keep." If simply to keep, these books, rather than expressing an emerging preoccupation with canonical listening, act as physical markers of bygone times, even if these times are only months before. In a society moving at unprecedented speeds, these small footholds in time provided reassurance for the urban milieu. This essay has dealt with only a small facet of the nature of operatic music outside the opera house in the nineteenth century. Not only have I neglected the potentially reflexive relationship between the public and the private - the opera house acting as a private public space, and the existence of operatic music in the private parlour allowing for more public discourse on the matter; but I have also for the most part ignored classism that may have precluded the lower classes ever hearing opera in the opera house or the parlour. For them, street music and public concerts, like those of Puitneuf in Paris or those in public gardens in London, or even transcri ptions of secular operatic numbers set to religious texts in church, may have been the only way many people heard these works. However, I believe the changing relationships of music to text and of public and private provide an interesting angle for this topic. The piano-vocal score marks an interest in the music of the opera as paramount in operatic production, and is emblematic of the different modes of listening circulating in the nineteenth century. Moreover, these scores, transcri ptions of music previously only ever heard in a public forum, provide deeply personal solace for study and for general well-being for contemporaries dealing with urban life.