Culture of Opera Buffa in Mozart's Vienna

by Hunter, Mary

• ISBN13: 9780691058122
• ISBN10: 0691058121
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781400822751
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-04-12
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

Mozart's comic operas are among the masterworks of Western civilization, and yet the musical environment in which Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte wrote these now-popular operas has received little critical attention. In this richly detailed book, Mary Hunter offers a sweeping, synthetic view of opera buffa in the lively theatrical world of late-eighteenth-century Vienna. Opera buffa (Italian-language comic opera) persistently entertained audiences at a time when Joseph was striving for a German national theater. Hunter attributes opera buffa's success to its ability to provide "sheer" pleasure and hence explores how the genre functioned as entertainment. She argues that opera buffa, like mainstream film today, projects a social world both recognizable and distinct from reality. It raises important issues while containing them in the "merely entertaining" frame of the occasion, as well as presenting them as a series of easily identifiable dramatic and musical conventions. Exploring nearly eighty comic operas, Hunter shows how the arias and ensembles convey a multifaceted picture of the repertory's social values and habits. In a concluding chapter, she discussesCos" fan tutteas a work profoundly concerned with the conventions of its repertory and with the larger idea of convention itself and reveals the ways Mozart and da Ponte pointedly converse with their immediate contemporaries.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments	xi	(4)
Editorial Policies	xv	(2)
Abbreviations	xvii
INTRODUCTION	3	(24)
Theatrical Conversations	3	(3)
Opera Buffa's Place in Viennese Entertainment	6	(9)
German Theatre as a Context for Opera Buffa	7	(6)
Audiences for Opera Buffa	13	(2)
Viennese Opera Buffa as a Repertory	15	(3)
The Poetics of Entertainment	18	(4)
Opera Buffa as Pleasure	19	(1)
Opera Buffa's Politics	20	(2)
The Social Values of Closed Musical Numbers	22	(2)
Mozart "in Context"	24	(3)
PART ONE: Opera Buffa as Entertainment	27	(68)
CHAPTER ONE Opera Buffa as Sheer Pleasure	27	(25)
Decontextualization: The Pleasures of the Ending	28	(2)
The Pleasures of the Familiar	30	(12)
Familiar Sources	31	(2)
The Suggestion of Novelty	33	(1)
Models and Archetypes: Familiarity and Convention	34	(2)
Musical Familiarity and Predictability	36	(4)
Plot Archetypes	40	(2)
The Pleasures of Performance	42	(10)
Performed Performances	46	(6)
CHAPTER TWO Opera Buffa's Conservative Frameworks	52	(19)
Realism and Distance	54	(2)
Hierarchy in and around Opera Buffa	56	(11)
The Reinforcement of Hierarchy as a Principle	58	(9)
Affirming Stability	67	(4)
CHAPTER THREE Opera Buffa's Social Reversals	71	(24)
Challenging Hierarchy: Uncrowning the King	73	(6)
Servants in Control: Emphasizing Entertainment	79	(5)
Sentimental Heroines and the Power of Suffering	84	(11)
PART TWO: The Closed Musical Numbers of Opera Buffa and Their Social Implications	95	(152)
CHAPTER FOUR Arias: Some Issues	95	(15)
Type and Character	95	(7)
Form and Character	102	(1)
Arias and Individuality: Performance and Subjectivity in Aria-Endings	103	(7)
CHAPTER FIVE Class and Gender in Arias: Five Aria Types	110	(46)
The Buffa Aria	110	(16)
The Serva/Contadina Aria	126	(11)
Seria Arias: The Statement of Nobility	137	(3)
Seria Arias: The Rage Aria	140	(6)
Rage and Gender	144	(2)
The Sentimental Statement	146	(9)
Conclusion	155	(1)
CHAPTER SIX Ensembles	156	(40)
Some Issues	156	(5)
Numbers	157	(1)
Ensembles and Form	158	(2)
Social Configurations	160	(1)
Mid-Act Ensembles	161	(35)
Smaller Ensembles: A Duet and a Trio	162	(13)
Larger Ensembles: A Quartet	175	(21)
CHAPTER SEVEN Beginning and Ending Together: Introduzioni and Finales	196	(51)
Introduzioni	197	(13)
The Ternary Structures of Introduzioni	198	(11)
Functions of Introduzioni	209	(1)
Finales	210	(17)
Dramatic and Musical Structures in Finales	211	(5)
Social Structures in Finales	216	(7)
Finale Endings	223	(4)
Appendix A: Annotated Text of I filosofi immaginari: Second-Act Finale	227	(7)
Appendix B: Annotated Text of Fra i due litiganti il terzo gode: Second-Act Finale	234	(13)
PART THREE: Cosi Fan Tutte le Opere? A Masterwork in Context	247	(52)
CHAPTER EIGHT Cosi fan tutte in Conversation	247	(26)
L'arbore di Diana and Cosi fan tutte	250	(7)
La grotta di Trofonio and Cosi fan tutte	257	(16)
Don Alfonso, Trofonio, and Flosofia	264	(5)
Text and Music in Trofonio and Cosi	269	(4)
CHAPTER NINE Cosi fan tutte and Convention	273	(26)
A Double-Edged Convention Embraced: Despina	274	(4)
Self-Conscious Conventions: Aria Types	278	(4)
Conventions Reconfigured: The Household and the Happy End	282	(3)
Cosi, Convention, and Comedy: Musical Beauty and the Relations between Text and Music	285	(11)
Conclusion	296	(3)
APPENDIX ONE Operas Consulted	299	(6)
APPENDIX TWO Musical Forms in Opera Buffa Arias	305	(4)
APPENDIX THREE Plot Summaries for I finti eredi, Le gare generose, and L'incognita perseguitata	309	(4)
Works Cited	313	(10)
Index	323