Talk Like An Opera Geek attempts to decode the intriguing and intimidating lexicon of the opera house.
After the death in 1848 of Gaetano Donizetti (a virtual composing machine who cranked out over 60 operas in 27 years), one man alone, Giuseppe Verdi, changed the face of Italian opera in the 19th century.
Verdi broke new ground at almost every turn in his career. In such early successes as Ernani, he introduced a vibrant potency to music for lower male voices. In middle period works like Rigoletto and La Traviata, he deepened the richness of individual characters while broadening dramatic complexity. And in Verdi's late operas, he combined a new mastery of vocal expression with swift, taut pacing, turning Otello into a riveting thriller and Falstaff into a virtuosic, sparkling comedy.
Wagner The Game-Changer
Meanwhile, in Germany, Richard Wagner was turning opera on its head. Described by one observer as a "one man artistic movement," Wagner thought of himself (something he did a lot) as much more than a composer. He became an omnipotent creator who ruled over every aspect his expansive "music dramas," which he thought of as total works of art (Gesamtkunstwerke).
Wagner was unique in that he wrote all of his own librettos and obsessed over minute details of staging. He was the first to darken the house lights during performances, and the first to design a radically new opera house solely for his works. Wagner exploded the length, breadth and height of music theater, changing it forever. His gargantuan operas have inspired composers, authors, directors and even dictators.
Read More And Hear Some Music
The music itself, which can sound both ravishing and unsettling, was the subject of much controversy in its time. Even today, entire books have been written on the single, enigmatic chord that opens his opera Tristan und Isolde. And the intricate lexicon of repeating musical motives matched to the characters and plot devices in the epic 18-hour Ring cycle is another spectacular innovation still studied in depth.
Wagner remains a polarizing figure for his rabid anti-Semitism, freewheeling megalomania and his descendants' ties to Adolph Hitler.
Puccini The Hit-Maker
Born 45 years after both Verdi and Wagner, Giacomo Puccini would become another pillar of the world's opera houses. With sweepingly romantic melodies, his operas were stocked not with royalty and Nordic gods but with common people. He once said that the key to his success was placing "great sorrows in little souls."
Part of that success rests on the shoulders of Pietro Mascagni, who had a massive hit in 1890 with Cavalleria Rusticana, a tunefully melodramatic love story streaked with violence. It ushered in verismo, a style of operatic realism Puccini adopted and refined.
Puccini's most beloved opera, La bohème, deftly balances comedy and tragedy in a detailed score rich with effects, such as a passage at the top of Act 3 for flutes and harp that depicts falling snow. Puccini's orchestrations became more sophisticated with each new opera, culminating in the unfinished 1926 Turandot, with its Chinese melodies (both real and imagined) and modern harmonies.
Although Puccini's operas were occasionally accused of containing shallow music and characters, no Italian since has matched his irresistible tunes, orchestral palette and staying power.
Below are musical examples from this operatic triumvirate. Have your own favorite arias by Verdi, Wagner and Puccini? Tell us all about them in the comments section.
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