This aria jigsaw had one major effect on most operas of this period: a composer's control over an opera was limited to individual arias. If that all seems faintly ludicrous to you then we agree, and to top it off almost every aria was in one musical form: da capo (which we’ll explore below). Each aria ends with the singer leaving the stage.No aria could be followed by another aria of the same type.No singer could sing two arias in a row.All the subordinate singers got fewer but every singer must have at least one.Top singers got four or five arias, at least one in each act.This orthodoxy was designed with rigid rules: Opera seria is a topic for another day, but suffice to say that for most of the 1700s almost all non-comic operas were opera seria. This formality of aria distribution was followed to an almost absurd degree during the 18th Century, a period when opera was dominated by the opera seria genre. Narrative drive took a back seat to semi-formal rules on what type, how many and which arias were to appear in an opera. Prior to Verdi, operas were essentially a huge collection of arias with maybe a duet or quartet tossed in for good measure (up to 40 or 50 arias in some, exceptionally long, operas!). This is a far from comprehensive definition but certainly for pre-Gluck music (roughly pre-1760) it covers most of our bases and despite Gluck’s innovations really covers us right through into early Verdi (the 1840s or so) and a bit beyond. It is a formalized song, often highly structured and full of repetition, that is designed as much to display the virtues of the singer as to enhance the narrative. So here goes.Īn aria in an opera is a set-piece song for a solo singer in which the character expresses an emotion or ideal that doesn’t necessarily drive the story forward. As you dive into opera and come across a vast range of aria types (some of which we’ll cover below) you’ll notice arias are often defined by their emotional content rather than their musical form.
How are we to define an aria in the context of opera? In these terms an aria is perhaps easier to understand in the context of the function it fulfils rather than its dictionary definition. This means no talking or recitative at all.
No arias doesn’t mean no singing, quite the opposite in fact, most works from this more recent period were written as sung-through works.
0 kommentar(er)
