2023-12-06 20:05:38
« It’s a thought…”, the complaint that Giuseppe Verdi entrusted to the Hebrews in his opera Nabucco, has almost become a national anthem in Italy. The very name of this major lyric composer of the 19th century was brandished as an emblem of the unification of the country: “ Long live Greens! » (1). This means that Italy has long placed itself under the banner of opera. Today, it can only rejoice at its inclusion in the Intangible Heritage of Humanity. As, a few years ago, this was the case for Jamaican reggae.
Opera, this theatrical form where the characters sing throughout the plot (hence its name “dramma per musica”), appeared in Florence around 1570, within a circle of learned aristocrats. , the Camerata of Count Giovanni de’Bardi, eager to revive a mythical Greek tragedy. The genre is carried by the wings of a new, “representative” music, where the polyphonic profusion is refined in favor of an accompanied melody, entrusted to an instrument (in the concerto) or a voice (in the opera) .
Monteverdi and Orfeo
The first big names to have illustrated it were those of Italian musicians: Jacopo Peri, Giulio Caccini or Claudio Monteverdi whoseOrpheusobvious heir to the madrigal (a cappella vocal polyphonic form), would be the first true opera, created in Mantua in 1607.
From Venice to Naples, all the cities of the peninsula will soon inaugurate places and methods specific to these shows. Outside the church or the courtyard, a new space dedicated to the opera is now accessible to any amateur upon payment. In 1637, the Teatro San Cassino in Venice opened its doors.
Italian artists will soon travel across Europe and “convert” local musicians, such as Handel, ensuring the diffusion of Italian opera from London to Vienna or Dresden. Only France showed its “resistance”, even if it was the Italian Lully who founded a competing genre, that of “tragedy in music”.
Nationalities but Italy still and always
Around 1750, the presence in Paris of a troupe from Naples with its repertoire had triggered the virulent Querelle des Bouffons. Certainly, at the end of the 18th century, national opera schools and theaters developed to flourish with Weber then Wagner in Germany, Tchaikovsky or Mussorgsky in Russia… But it is indeed its Italian roots and foundations which still characterize the opera. Thus the vocabulary used to differentiate the types of voice: soprano, tenor or bass, when in French singing we spoke of above, high-counter or waist… As for the stars of the lyrical art whose popularity has crossed the limits of the repertoire classical, they are overwhelmingly Italian, like Caruso or Pavarotti, or assimilated to the Italian repertoire, like Maria Callas.
Guaranteed success
The lyrical works on which opera houses rely to ensure public success are Italian too! They are signed Rossini, Verdi and Puccini: The Barber of Seville, The Traviata or Tosca. Not only are they everywhere and always on stage, but some of their tunes occupy the first places in the lyrical hit parade with the Make way for the factotum or theAir of Slander of Barbierthe exhilarating and gray Toasts of The Traviata or Art livesa sublime and vain plea addressed by Floria Tosca to the detestable police chief Scarpia.
Because, emerging from the aristocratic circles of its origin, opera has become the privileged vector (the only one perhaps?) for the dissemination of so-called “learned” music. Its essential ingredient, the human voice, is in fact the best shared and we have often, and rightly, insisted on the popular origin of many singers. Like the Bohemian Consuelo created by George Sand or the Signora Tinti born under the pen of Balzac – “ this illustrious singer was a simple inn servant, whose marvelous voice had surprised a great Italian lord while traveling » (2) – who were already flourishing their genius, natural and spontaneous, under the gold of the theaters.
(1) V (Victor) E (Emanuel) R (Re) D (D’) I (Italy)
(2) Honoré de Balzac, Massimila Doni
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