Of really great composers who advanced this drama per musica, one of the earliest and most important was Claudio Monteverde. He imbued it with his musicianship and originality, employing particular effects for each scene and for each character, his object being to unite the varying sentiment of the poem with his music. In his operas, the first of which was “Orfeo,” new and less cramped forms of accompaniment, giving singers greater freedom in dramatic action, followed such reforms as a better use of rhythm and more truthful illustration of sentiments, whilst an increased orchestral force was added to other means of expression.
The Italian Church writers began to compose operas, and in the seventeenth century we find the recitation form receiving new vigour and truthfulness of detail at the hands of, amongst others, Cavalli (whose real name was Caletti-Bruni), Cesti, and Alessandro Scarlatti, Carissimi’s greatest pupil. Scarlatti did much for the opera. He is supposed to have invented the short interludes for instruments between the vocal phrases, and he certainly introduced the first complete form of aria, known as the “Scarlatti-form,” which, however, with its tiresomely exact repetitions, seems to us quite artificial, and anything but dramatic. About his time recitativo, as we know it, was separated from the aria parlante.
Succeeding Scarlatti, came the pupils of his Neapolitan school, amongst whom were Durante, Buononcini, Porpora, Jomelli, and others, and with them we reach a period during which the opera-form sadly deteriorated.
Composers had broken away from the ecclesiastical forms—nay, more, the chorus had become of no importance, but, instead, the new aria, which might have taken an advantageous position as a means for occasional soliloquy and meditation, without interference with the dramatic story, now usurped the place of the latter altogether, and an opera meant nothing more than a string of arias in set form, an excuse for showing off the best voices to the greatest advantage, the most successful work being that one which pandered most to the vanity of the singers, who altered and embellished the melodies of their mechanical slave, the composer.
Dramatic significance was fast disappearing, and a reformer was sadly needed, and that reformer appeared early in the eighteenth century in the person of Gluck, a Bohemian, who, after studying in Italy and writing several operas after the traditional Italian models, settled in Vienna, and there worked out his great ideas of regeneration and reform.
His “Orfeo,” produced in 1762, created a great sensation, and in Alceste (1766) we find him, to quote his own preface to it, “avoiding the abuses which have been introduced through the mistaken vanity of singers and the excessive complaisance of composers, and which, from the most splendid and beautiful of all public exhibitions, has reduced the opera to the most tiresome and ridiculous of spectacles.”
He considered that music should second poetry, by strengthening the expression of the sentiments and the interest of the situations, and adds, “I have therefore carefully avoided interrupting a singer in the warmth of dialogue, in order to wait for a tedious ritornel; or stopping him during one of his sentences to display the agility of his voice in a large vocal passage.” He greatly increases the importance of the introduction or overture, making it foreshadow the nature of the coming drama.
Composers were either too hardened or too cowardly to at once follow and imitate his excellent reforms, and great disputings and much rancour ensued, Gluck being opposed by the singers and the old school headed by Piccini.
We will leave this opera seria for a moment, restored to its high position in art, and glance at a lighter form, the opera buffa, or comic opera, which may be traced to the little entr’actes, or intermezzi, given as a sort of relaxation between the acts of plays, as early as the sixteenth century. At first, madrigals, or favourite instrumental solos, were used for this purpose; later on, when operatic forms appeared, you find scenas or duets, in which the chief idea was to raise a laugh, very often at the expense of good taste. Scarlatti’s pupils developed these intermezzi, and gave them such artistic importance that they grew to be rivals to the grand opera, and eventually held their own position as opera buffa. Pergolesi was most successful in this style, and his “La Serva Padrona” (1746), one of the earliest specimens, was a great favourite. The accompaniment was for string quartett only, and there were but two dramatis personæ. His fellow student, Leonardo Vinci, wrote several comic operas, and further on, Nicolo Piccini, whom we have just left opposing Gluck in Paris, made many advances in opera buffa, giving greater contrasts and more elaborate and effective finales than his forerunners. In fact, he was stronger in this sort of composition than in opera seria, to which latter we now return.
We find at the end of the eighteenth century the brilliant and successful works of Paisiello, a rival, at that time, of Mozart. At the same period Sarti, Salieri, Cimarosa, Paër, Righini, and others wrote operas.