The speaking voice in opera.
I am strongly inclined to the belief that in one form or the other, preferably the accompanied, recitative is a necessary integer in the operatic sum. That it is possible to accustom one's self to the change alternately from speech to song we know from the experiences made with German, French, and English operas, but these were not true lyric dramas, but dramas with incidental music. To be a real lyric drama an opera ought to be musical throughout, the voice being maintained from beginning to end on an exalted plane. The tendency to drop into the speaking voice for the sake of dramatic effect shown by some tragic singers does not seem to me commendable. Wagner relates with enthusiasm how Madame Schroeder-Devrient in "Fidelio" was wont to give supreme emphasis to the phrase immediately preceding the trumpet signal in the dungeon scene ("Another step, and you are dead!") by speaking the last word "with an awful accent of despair." He then comments:
"The indescribable effect of this manifested itself to all like an agonizing plunge from one sphere into another, and its sublimity consisted in this, that with lightning quickness a glimpse was given to us of the nature of both spheres, of which one was the ideal, the other the real."
Wagner and Schroeder-Devrient.
I have heard a similar effect produced by Herr Niemann and Madame Lehmann, but could not convince myself that it was not an extremely venturesome experiment. Madame Schroeder-Devrient saw the beginning of the modern methods of dramatic expression, and it is easy to believe that a sudden change like that so well defined by Wagner, made with her sweeping voice and accompanied by her plastic and powerful acting, was really thrilling; but, I fancy, nevertheless, that only Beethoven and the intensity of feeling which pervades the scene saved the audience from a disturbing sense of the incongruity of the performance.
Early forms.
The dialogue of the Florentines.
An example from Peri.
The development which has taken place in the recitative has not only assisted in elevating opera to the dignity of a lyric drama by saving us from alternate contemplation of the two spheres of ideality and reality, but has also made the factor itself an eloquent vehicle of dramatic expression. Save that it had to forego the help of the instruments beyond a mere harmonic support, the stilo rappresentativo, or musica parlante, as the Florentines called their musical dialogue, approached the sustained recitative which we hear in the oratorio and grand opera more closely than it did the recitative secco. Ever and anon, already in the earliest works (the "Eurydice" of Rinuccini as composed by both Peri and Caccini) there are passages which sound like rudimentary melodies, but are charged with vital dramatic expression. Note the following phrase from Orpheus's monologue on being left in the infernal regions by Venus, from Peri's opera, performed A.D. 1600, in honor of the marriage of Maria de' Medici to Henry IV. of France:
