A Short History of Opera, fourth edition

THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES saw the rise of independent schools of composition in many countries that had previously been tributary to the chief musical nations of Europe or that, like Spain and England, had been for a long time only on the periphery of the main developments. Opera played a leading part in the growth of musical nationalism, as the use of characteristic national subjects, often from patriotic motives, stimulated composers to seek an equally characteristic national expression in their music. National operas, as a rule, were not intended to be exportable, and indeed relatively few of these works, with some notable exceptions, have made their way into foreign countries. Nevertheless, national schools are important in the history of opera, and the present chapter presents a limited survey of their development from the seventeenth century through the early years of the twentieth century.¹

Native opera began to appear in Russia before the end of the eighteenth century.² It had been preceded, as in the countries of western Europe, by various types of drama that used music in incidental fashion; by religious mystery plays, going back to the sixteenth century or earlier; and by school dramas and court pageants in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. When the first public theater was opened at St. Petersburg in 1703, its offerings consisted for the most part of foreign plays, which occasionally used incidental music.

The record of Italian opera at the Russian court begins in 1731 with Calandro (1726), a commedia per musica by Giovanni Alberto Ristori (1692–1753). Under Catherine the Great (reigned 1762–96), St. Petersburg became as much of a cosmopolitan center for opera as London, with Galuppi, Paisiello, Cimarosa, Salieri, and others in residence for varying lengths of time, while many other Italians, as well as the leading composers of the French opéra comique and German Singspiel, were represented in the court’s repertoire. During the last quarter of the century, nearly 350 operas had their premieres in Russia, more than 30 new ones coming out in the year 1778 alone. Most of the operas by foreign composers that were performed in Russia were sung in their original languages, and even some by Russian and Ukranian composers had foreign-language librettos. For example, Dmitri Bortnyansky wrote comic operas to French texts after his return in 1779 to St. Petersburg from Italy, where during his years of study he had produced Italian operas. The first musician at the imperial court to present an opera in the Russian language was Francesco Araia (1709–70), the Italian composer and conductor of Italian operas at St. Petersburg from 1735 until the end of 1755, who created one opera in the Russian language in 1755, Tsefal i Prokris (Cephalus and Procris).

By the 1770s, however, operas with original Russian texts were being presented more frequently by native Russian composers; musical scores of about 30 such works composed before 1800 have been preserved, and the librettos of 40 more. Most of them are comic and some are satirical, with sentimental or fairy-tale elements appearing toward the end of the century. The usual form is spoken dialogue alternating with solo airs and ensembles. The plots typically introduce characteristic Russian scenes and persons and the music may draw on popular folk melodies. In one early comic opera entitled Mel’nik-koldun, obmanshchik i svat (The Miller-Magician, Deceiver, and Matchmaker, 1779) by Mikhail Sokolovsky (fl. c. 1750–80), all the songs were set to popular tunes, in the manner of the earliest French opéras comiques. More often, however, the composers incorporated folksong into their own more sophisticated style, which they had learned from Western examples or training. The leading composer of Russian opera before 1800 was the Italian-trained Evstigney Ipatovich Fomin (1761–1800), whose finest work was a melodrama, Orfey i Evridika (Orpheus and Euridice, 1792).³ Between 1786 and 1800 Fomin produced a half-dozen comic operas at St. Petersburg. Representative is Yamshchiki na podstave (The Coachmen, 1787); it had a score based entirely on folk material and included choruses in which the composer attempted to transcribe the authentic polyphony of Russian folksong.⁴ Russian opera was thus well under way by the end of the eighteenth century.

Under Alexander I (reigned 1801–25), a great upsurge of national sentiment, imbued in Russia as elsewhere with the spirit of Byronesque Romanticism, wonderfully encouraged the production of national opera. Curiously, one of the principal composers of Russian opera in the early nineteenth century was a versatile Venetian, Catterino Cavos (1775–1840), who went to St. Petersburg in 1799 and remained there for the rest of his life. He composed more than forty operas to Russian, French, or Italian texts. Among those on Russian themes and in the Russian language were Il’ya bogatir’ (Ilya the Hero, 1807), Ivan Susanin (1815), and Zharptitsa (The Firebird, 1822). Ivan Susanin is Cavos’s best work and one that remained a model of musical nationalism in Russia until Glinka’s opera on the same subject replaced it twenty years later.⁵ Cavos was also the conductor of the Russian Opera and in this position directed a number of Russian premieres of European operas. Among the native-born composers of the early and middle nineteenth century was Alexey Nikolaevich Verstovsky (1799–1862), whose chief opera, Askoldova mogila (Askold’s Grave, 1835), held the stage in Russia into the twentieth century.⁶

An important milestone in the history of Russian opera was the 1836 premiere performance at St. Petersburg (with Cavos conducting) of Zhizn za tsarya (A Life for the Tsar) by Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (1804–57).⁷ Although it has sometimes been regarded as the very foundation and source of Russian national opera, A Life for the Tsar owes its reputation in this respect more to its plot and its immense and long-continued popularity in Russia than to any consistent, strongly pronounced national qualities in the music, which indeed sounds for the most part as much French or Italian as Russian. Quotations from folksong occur in the opening of Susanin’s aria no. 3 and in the accompaniments to Susanin’s last two solo passages at the end of Act IV. The choral theme of the epilogue so took hold on popular fancy as to become almost a second national anthem, but, with few exceptions, melodies such as that of the Bridal Chorus in Act III, with its 5/4 meter (example 24.1) represent Glinka’s nearest approach in this score to a genuinely national idiom. Compensation may be found for the undistinguished quality of much of the music in the clear and varied orchestration, which was a model for all the later Russian nationalists, including Rimsky-Korsakov.

In his extensive use of recurring motives, Glinka was far in advance of any opera composer before Wagner.⁸ The quasi-folksong theme of the opening chorus of A Life for the Tsar is used as a leitmotif of Russian heroism, sung by Susanin in Act III as he defies the Polish conspirators. The Polish soldiers are characterized by themes in the national dance rhythms of the polonaise and the mazurka; first heard in the ball scene of Act II, they recur in Act II at the entrance of the Poles, and the mazurka rhythm is heard again at their appearance in Act IV. The opposing national motifs are contrasted in the orchestral introduction to the epilogue. Susanin’s last aria (Act IV) is to a large extent made up of previously heard themes, the recurrences here producing a purposeful dramatic effect. The theme of the final chorus, repeated again and again with cumulative power, has been subtly prepared by two or three statements earlier in the opera. This brilliant epilogue is not only a climax of patriotic emotion but also a fine example of the highly colored mass effects of sound and spectacle much beloved in Russian opera.⁹

Although A Life for the Tsar was more popular, the significant musical foundations for the future were laid in Glinka’s second and last opera, Ruslan i Lyudmila (Ruslan and Lyudmila, 1842).¹⁰ The libretto is a fantastic and incoherent fairy tale adapted from a poem by Pushkin; the music, in spite of some traces of Weber, is more original than that of Glinka’s earlier opera, and the musical characterizations are more definite. The system of recurring motifs here is almost nonexistent; the one important trace of it is the recurrent descending whole-tone scale associated with the wicked magician Chernomor and the forces of evil (example 24.2), possibly the earliest use of the whole-tone scale in European music. But at least five distinct styles or procedures characteristic of later Russian music appear in Ruslan: (1) the heroic, broad, solemn, declamatory style, with modal suggestions and archaic effect (introduction and song of the Bard in Act I); (2) the Russian lyrical style, with expressive melodic lines of a folk-like cast, delicately colored harmony featuring the lowered sixth or raised fifth, and chromatically moving inner voices (Finn’s ballad and Ruslan’s first aria in Act II); (3) depiction of fantastic occurrences by means of unusual harmonies, such as whole-tone passages or chord progressions pivoting about one note (scene of Lyudmila’s abduction, toward the end of Act I); (4) oriental atmosphere, sometimes using genuine oriental themes (Persian chorus at opening of Act III), sometimes original melodies (Ratmir’s romance in Act V), but always characterized by fanciful arabesque figures in the accompaniment and a languorous harmony and orchestration; and (5) the vividly colored choruses and dances, with glittering instrumentation and often daring harmonies (chorus in honor of Lel in the finale of Act I; Chernomor’s march and the following dances, especially the lezginka, in the finale of Act IV)—models for similar scenes in Borodin’s Prince Igor, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sadko, and even Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps.

The first important Russian opera after Ruslan was Rusalka (1856) by Aleksandr Sergeyevich Dargomïzhsky (1813–69);¹¹ the libretto is likewise on a text from Pushkin and somewhat similar in subject to Glinka’s work. That Pushkin’s writings so frequently form the basis for operatic compositions should come as no surprise to those familiar with his work. One person phrased his high regard for the author with these words: “Composing an opera on a subject by Pushkin—what an inviting idea; what a temptation that is for a Russian musician.”¹²

Musically, Rusalka spoke a language intentionally different from Ruslan, for Dargomïzhsky sought to develop the dramatic rather than the lyric aspects of a national Russian style. Rusalka achieved an important first step in that direction with its realistic declamation of the recitative, a style of declamation Dargomïzhsky proceeded to develop to the highest degree in his last opera, Kamennïy gost’ (The Stone Guest). This work was completed after Dargormïzhsky’s death by César Cui, orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov, and first performed in 1872. The libretto for The Stone Guest is, quite remarkably, nothing less than a word-for-word setting of the actual spoken drama of the same title by Pushkin, which is partially derived from the Don Juan story. Although this opera is no masterpiece and had little popular success, it influenced later Russian opera because of the composer’s attempt to write the entire work (except for some songs near the beginning of Act II) in a melodic recitative, a vocal line that would be in every detail the equivalent of the words. The result, though accurate in declamation and dramatic on occasion, lacks sharp characterization or melodic interest, and there is no compensation for the melodic poverty in the orchestral part, which is conceived as accompaniment rather than as continuous symphonic tissue. In his repudiation of set musical forms and his high respect for the words, Dargomïzhsky had arrived in his own way at certain features of the Wagnerian music drama, though there is no trace of Wagner in the musical substance. Harmonically, some interest attaches to Dargomïzhsky’s use of whole-tone scale fragments as motifs for the Statue; some passages are constructed entirely on this scale.

One of the more explicit and self-conscious disciples of Wagner in Russia was the critic and composer Alexander Nikolaevich Serov (1820–71),¹³ whose works add significantly to an understanding of that enigmatic period separating the 1830s and 1870s. Yudif (Judith, 1863), Rogneda (1865), and Vrazhya sila (The Power of Evil),¹⁴ completed by his widow and Nikolay Solovyov and first performed in 1871, are three quite different expressions of Serov’s operatic style. Judith, based on a story from the Apocrypha, was Serov’s first successful opera. The musical material, fashioned to complement scenarios rather than specific words, achieves a continuous flow of emotions through a flexibility of forms and tonal centers. In short, the opera shows the composer’s admiration for all the methods of grand opera of the Meyerbeer and early Wagner type. Rogneda was even more popular than Judith. It concerns the historical Vladimir the Great and his jealous wife, Rogneda, who is sentenced to death for attempted murder but, through the intervention of a chorus of Christian pilgrims, has her life spared. This is grand opera with a new and different degree of operatic realism, one that brought historical realism into the social realm of the theater. In Serov’s final work for the stage, there emerges yet another manifestation of realism—the incorporation of folk music as the vehicle of the musical drama. The Power of Evil is derived from Don’t Live as You’d Like To, But Live as God Commands, one of a group of plays from the 1850s by Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky. In this play, Ostrovsky used folksongs to clothe the dramatic events with an aura of national identity. Serov’s opera carries forth this nationalistic realism, combining authentic folksongs (mainly those found in Ostrovsky’s play) with adaptations of folksongs fashioned to meet the artistic needs of the score.¹⁵ Although Serov’s operas won little regard from musicians and critics during his life time,¹⁶ they were nevertheless popular enough with the public to remain in the repertoire of Russian opera companies until World War I.

From about the middle of the nineteenth century, Russian musicians were divided into two groups. In one were the professional, foreign-trained, and officially supported composers who were not primarily interested in musical nationalism but wished to see Russian musical life develop along the same hues as in Western Europe, particularly Germany. The head of this school was Anton Rubinstein (1829–94),¹⁷ a famous pianist and the founder and first director of the Imperial Conservatory at St. Petersburg. Of Rubinstein’s nineteen operas (eight on Russian and eleven on German texts), Demon (1875) had a considerable success both in Russia and abroad. Its libretto strongly recalls Wagner’s Fliegende Holländer, but the forms are conventional and the musical style is that of pre-Wagnerian Romanticism mingled with some oriental elements. Musically more interesting, though less popular, was Kupets Kalashnikov (The Merchant Kalashnikov, 1880). Rubinstein’s biblical operas, or rather stage oratorios, such as Die Makkabäer (The Maccabees, 1875), which had successful performances in Russia and abroad, are remembered now only for a few separate numbers.

The leading composer of the non-nationalist school was Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky (1840–93), in whom Slavic temperament and German training were leavened by lyrical genius and a lively appreciation of Italian opera and French ballet.¹⁸ Reckoned by bulk, if not also by musical excellence, Tchaikovsky’s achievement is as important in the field of opera as in that of the symphony. In three early works, he experimented with the then-fashionable nationalism—Voyevoda (The Provincial Governor, 1869),¹⁹ Oprichnik (1874), and Kuznets Vakula (Vakula the Smith, 1876), his only comic opera. Tchaikovsky composed Vakula the Smith for a competition and although he won, the opera did not fare well when produced. Tchaikovsky thought enough of the score, however, that he revised it in 1885 as Cherevichki (The Slippers, 1885) and in this version it has had numerous revivals.

At Moscow in 1879, Tchaikovsky produced his masterpiece, Yevgeny Onegin (Eugene Onegin).²⁰ With respect to both the libretto (after Pushkin) and the musical style, this is an old-fashioned Romantic opera, but the music is in Tchaikovsky’s happiest vein, with graceful melodies, expressive harmonies, transparent and imaginative orchestration—trite and living in expression without the hysterical emotionalism of some of the later symphonic works. The ballet music (particularly the waltz in Act II) is tuneful and charming, as are also the choruses in Act I. The character of the heroine, Tatyana, is delineated with especial sympathy, and that of Onegin himself is scarcely less vivid. Nowhere is this more evident than in the famous letter scene, the first section of the opera that Tchaikovsky composed. Here Tatyana reveals to Onegin her innermost thoughts and feelings.

Tchaikovsky’s next three operas were in a more heavily dramatic style. Orleanskaya deva (The Maid of Orleans, 1881), with a libretto after Schiller, was less successful than Mazepa (1884), from a poem by Pushkin.²¹ The real Ivan Mazeppa, a Cossack overlord, lived from 1640 to 1709. During Peter the Great’s campaign to reunite the Ukraine under Russian rule, Mazeppa considered the monarch an ally. That relationship changed some years later when Mazeppa decided he would usurp the leadership of the Ukraine by ousting the Russians from his native soil. He attempted to do this with the help of Sweden, but failed; Peter became so enraged with Mazeppa that he routed the Swedes and caused Mazeppa to go into exile. Mazepa is a dark and brooding historical opera that contains two of the composer’s finest dramatic moments: the monologue of Kochubey and the extremely pathetic final scene in which Maria sings a lullaby to the dying Andrei, whom she has mistaken for a sleeping child. Charodeyka (The Enchantress, 1887) had such a disappointing reception that Tchaikovsky returned to his more characteristic lyrical style for his last two operatic works: Pikovaya dama (The Queen of Spades, 1890), his most popular opera next to Eugene Onegin, and Iolanta (1892). In The Queen of Spades, based on a melodramatic tale by Pushkin, Tchaikovsky attained a more nearly perfect balance among dramatic declamation, lyrical expressiveness, and divertissement music (see especially the ballets in Act II) than in any of his other operas.²²

The struggle for Russian national music, begun by Glinka and Dargomïzhsky, was carried on after 1860 by a group of five composers: Balakirev, Cui, Musorgsky, Borodin, and Rimsky-Korsakov.²³ All were amateurs; only Rimsky-Korsakov—and he only at a comparatively late stage of his career—ever had a thorough conventional technical training in composition. Balakirev wrote no operas. César Antonovich Cui (1835–1918) wrote ten, but most of them are not Russian in subject or musical style.²⁴ Of these ten, the most interesting is the intensely romantic Vilyam Ratklif (William Ratcliff, 1869), the first opera by one of “the Five” to be staged. Initial reactions to Cui’s opera were decidedly unfavorable and the work was withdrawn from production. The Russian national opera in its highest development, therefore, is the work of only three of these five composers.

The lack of the usual technical musical education (which meant, at that time, a German conservatory training) had the effect of turning the nationalist composers to the resources of their own country for dramatic and musical material, and to their own instincts and national traditions for the means of shaping this material into operatic form. These conditions were especially important for Modest Petrovich Musorgsky (1839–81),²⁵ the most original of the group, who in Boris Godunov (St. Petersburg, 1874) created one of the great masterpieces of nineteenth-century opera, a monument of much that is most typical in Russian musical drama and at the same time an absolutely personal, inimitable work. Boris was first composed in 1868–69 and then this seven scene version was rewritten in 1871–72 and performed in 1874. In 1896, Rimsky-Korsakov prepared a thoroughly revised version with “corrections” of the harmony, improvements in the orchestration, a different order of scenes, and many cuts; the deleted portions were restored in a second revision (1908), and in this form the opera made its way into the repertoire of foreign opera houses. After the revolution of 1917, the composer’s own score was revived for performances in Russia, and this original version was published in 1928.

The libretto of Boris Godunov was prepared by Musorgsky himself, using as sources Pushkin’s drama of the same title and N. M. Karamzin’s History of the Russian Empire. The character of the half-mad emperor Boris (reigned 1598–1605), especially as sung and acted by Fyodor Shalyapin, is one of the most vivid in all opera. An equally potent force in the action is the cruel, anonymous mass of the Russian people—a force visibly present in the mighty crowd scenes but also invisibly working like the relentless pressure of Fate at every step toward the catastrophe of the drama. With grim poetic vision, Musorgsky set this primeval force in the closing scene of the opera over against the figure of the Idiot Boy, who, left alone at the last on a darkened stage, keens his lament: “Weep, ye people; soon the foe shall come, soon the gloom shall fall; woe to our land; weep, Russian folk, weep, hungry folk!”²⁶ One senses in such scenes the influence of the democratic ideals emerging in Russia during the sixties and seventies following the liberation of the serfs under Alexander II, ideals so eloquently expounded in the writings of Tolstoy. In comparison to the elemental power of most of Musorgsky’s opera, the love episode (Act III) seems both dramatically and musically a pale diversion—as does most of the love interest in Russian opera generally. In form, Boris Godunov is a series of detached scenes rather than a coherently developed plot, thus illustrating the Russian habit, in both musical and literary creation (compare Tolstoy’s War and Peace), of complete absorption in the present moment, leaving the total impression to be achieved by the cumulative impact of many separate effects.

A striking feature of Musorgsky’s music is the way in which, in the declamation, the melodic line always manages to convey the emotion of the text in the most direct, compressed, and forcible manner imaginable (example 24.3). Perhaps the best examples of this are the two most familiar scenes of the opera, the last part of Act II (including the “clock scene”) and the farewell and death of Boris in Act IV. Here Musorgsky realized the ideal of dramatic, semi-melodic recitative that Glinka had foreshadowed in Ruslan and Lyudmila and that Dargomïzhsky had sought in The Stone Guest. Much of the same gloomy power, though with less violence, is displayed in the monastery scene at the beginning of Act I. A more songful idiom, equally characteristic of the composer, is heard in the first part of the inn scene (Act I, scene ii). Still more characteristic are the children’s songs in the first part of Act II—examples of a psychological insight and musical style in which Musorgsky is almost unique and which he had demonstrated in his song cycle Detskaya (The Nursery, composed 1870–72). In all these songs, whether declamatory or lyrical, the melodic line is the guiding factor. It is a style of melody that, with its peculiar intervals (especially the falling fourth at cadences), monotonous reiteration of patterns, irregularity of phrase structure, and archaic modal basis, has grown most intimately out of Russian folksong. To this melodic line the harmony is generally a mere added support, but it likewise is of a strongly personal type, blended of modal feeling, impressionistic—often childlike—fondness for the mere sound of certain combinations, an unconventional harmonic training, and (one suspects) the happy outcome of improvisation at the piano.

The harmony remains consonant and tonal; nevertheless, any effort to analyze a typical passage of Musorgsky according to textbook principles will show how completely foreign his methods were to the conventional practice of the nineteenth century. Not unrelated to the naïveté of his harmonies is Musorgsky’s reveling in raw, massive color effects. This trait is seen most clearly in the great crowd scene of the coronation, the orchestral introduction of which is also an example of the Russian mannerism of alternating chords pivoting on one common tone. The chorus itself in this scene is built on the same traditional tune that Beethoven used in his second “Razumovsky” Quartet.

In 1868, besides beginning the composition of Boris Godunov, Musorgsky also completed the piano-vocal score for Zhenit’ba (Marriage), an experimental chamber opera based on Gogol’s comedy of the same title. In his setting of Gogol’s colloquial prose, Musorgsky’s cardinal aim was realistic expression at all costs: truth before beauty, melodic recitative “true to life and not melodic in the classical sense … a sort of melody created by (human) speech … intelligently justified melody.”²⁷ To this end, he avoided conventional formulae, evolving a style as restrained, economical, and incapable of successful imitation as that of Debussy.

Of Musorgsky’s other operas, the principal one is Khovanshchina, a “people’s drama” on which he worked devotedly but spasmodically from 1873 un til the end of his life, leaving it unfinished after all. Completed and orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov, it was performed at St. Petersburg in 1886. Musorgsky here took for his subject the conflict of the old feudal regime and the sect of the Old Believers with the new westernizing tendencies in Russia during the first years after the accession of Peter the Great (1689). Both libretto and music are as intensely national as in Boris, but the drama moves less vigorously and the musical style in general is less well sustained.²⁸ Nevertheless, the best numbers—including the prelude, the crowd scenes, Shaklovity’s aria in Act III, and especially some of the choruses of the Old Believers, where Musorgsky seems to have distilled the very spirit of ancient Russian church style—are equal to anything elsewhere in his works.

By temperament, Musorgsky was inclined to depict predominantly that side of the Russian character that gives itself over to gloom and mysticism, to the emotions of violence, brutality, and madness that predominate in Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina. A different, though no less normal, aspect of the national personality comes to life in Knyaz lgor (Prince Igor), an opera by Alexander Porfirievich Borodin (1833–87) that had been in the making for at least eighteen years but was left unfinished at the composer’s death.²⁹ The libretto is by the composer, after a plan by the critic Vladimir Stasov;³⁰ the score was completed by Alexander Glazunov and Rimsky-Korsakov, and orchestrated by the latter, and was first performed at St. Petersburg in 1890. The story is taken from a medieval Russian epic (apparently genuine, though long suspected to be an eighteenth-century forgery), but the central plot is of little importance except to give occasion for the many episodic scenes that make up most of the opera. Some of these scenes are comic, others are love scenes, but a large place is also reserved for spectacle, dances, and choruses (for example, the well-known Polovtsian dances in Act II).

The musical ancestor of Prince Igor is Glinka’s Ruslan, and its principal descendant is Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sadko. The style of Prince Igor is predominantly lyric, with many of the arias in conventional Italian forms; there is some arioso writing, but little dramatic recitative in the manner of Dargomïzhsky. Indeed, the music is not dramatic at all in the sense in which Boris Godunov is dramatic; it does not so much embody a drama as present a series of musical tableaux to accompany and complete the stage pictures. In technical details also it is less unconventional than Musorgsky’s music; the most original portions are the oriental scenes, for which Borodin evolved an idiom partly based on Central Asian themes but fundamentally an outgrowth of an eighteen-year-long absorption in the subject and his study of all available musical and historical material. His ancestry (he was the illegitimate son of a Caucasian prince) may also have given him a particular bent toward this style, which, with its persistent rhythmic patterns, chromatic intervals, and melodic arabesques, dominates the second and third acts of the opera. Prince Igor, like Boris Godunov, makes some use of recurring motifs, but a more important source of unity is the derivation, unobtrusive but unmistakable, of many of the themes of Acts II and III from phrases in the melody of the first Polovtsian chorus.³¹

If Boris Godunov represents a darkly fanatical aspect of the Russian character and Prince Igor a cheerful, hearty one, then the picture is completed by the works of Nikolay Andreevich Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908),³² whose most characteristic operas reflect a fairy-tale world of fantasy, romance, and innocent humor. This individual musical and dramatic style of Rimsky-Korsakov was not arrived at without some experimentation, and even after it had been achieved, he still continued to experiment.³³ His first two operas, the grand historical drama Pskovityanka (The Maid of Pskov, 1873) and the peasant-life comedy Mayskaya noch (May Night, 1880), show the influence of Dargomïzh sky and Glinka.³⁴ The Maid of Pskov is in four acts made up of through-composed scenes. Especially noteworthy is the crowd scene of Act II, considered by many to be one of the most effective ever achieved in a Russian opera. In this Rimsky-Korsakov was following the somewhat radical ideas of a group of Russian composers known as “the Five,” who rejected the prevailing Italian opera styles and advocated the adoption of a vocabulary dependent on dramatic realism and nationalistic elements. In this Pskov crowd scene, the people are divided musically into five groupings, each simultaneously reacting to the events at hand. As the words and musical themes of these groups, expressed in choral recitative, clash, they generate the necessary dramatic tension that the scene requires. In May Night there are some obvious parodies of music in operas by Glinka and Musorgsky; for example, the village band recalls music from the finale of Ruslan and the chorus recalls choral music from the prologue to Boris Godonuv.

Snegurochka (The Snow Maiden, 1882), an opera based on a fairy legend with vaguely symbolic touches, was more spontaneous and original than the first two operas mentioned above, an indication that Rimsky-Korsakov was exploring new directions. Mlada (1892), in which some traces of Wagner may be seen, was adapted from a libretto that was to have been collectively composed by Cui, Musorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Borodin twenty years before, but this joint undertaking was never completed. Noch pered rozhdestvom (Christmas Eve, 1895) was, like May Night, taken from a story by Nikolai Gogol. Both these works are village tales, with love stories and comic-supernatural additions; in both, folksongs play an important part in shaping the musical material.³⁵

In 1898 appeared Rimsky-Korsakov’s masterpiece, Sadko,³⁶ an “opera legend,” a typical combination of the epic and fantastic in a libretto adapted jointly by the composer and V. I. Bielsky from an eleventh-century legend and drawing much of the musical material from Rimsky-Korsakov’s symphonic poem of the same title (1867, with revisions in 1869 and 1891). The score is rich in orchestral and harmonic effects, with the instrumental evocation of an un dulating sea and the whole-tone leitmotif for the sea-king’s daughter offering two examples. Sadko was followed by several experimental works: the one-act Motsart i Sal’yeri (Mozart and Salieri, 1898), Boyarïnya Vera Sheloga (The Noblewoman Vera Sheloga, 1898), and Tsarskaya nevesta (The Tsar’s Bride, 1899), the last a real tragedy with arias and concerted numbers in the Italian style, “the old operatic convention of the first half of the nineteenth century decked out with Wagnerian leitmotifs and Dargomïzhskian ‘melodic recitative’ and mildly flavoured here and there with the Russian folk-idiom.”³⁷ Skazka o Tsare Saltane (The Tale of Tsar Saltan, 1900), another fairy story, returned to distinctive national traits in both libretto and music. Serviliya (1902) and Pan Voyevoda (1904) were unsuccessful essays in more dramatic plots, with Wagnerian influence in the music. Kashchey bessmertnïy (Kaschey the Immortal, 1902) was also Wagnerian in technique, with declamatory lines and constant use of leitmotifs, as well as in the redemption idea woven into the legendary story; the music represents Rimsky-Korsakov’s extreme excursion in the direction of chromaticism and dissonance.

His last two operas were Skazanie o nevidimom grade Kitezhe i deve Fevronii (Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and The Maiden Fevroniya, 1907) and Zolotoy petushok (The Golden Cockerel, 1909). They were written in the shadow of the Russo-Japanese War, during a period of intense political and revolutionary turmoil, the effects of which weighed heavily upon the composer’s career. In 1905, when students (including those at the St. Petersburg Conservatory) protested against government policies and pressed their demands for reform, Rimsky-Korsakov openly endorsed their actions. This anti-government stand cost him his teaching position at the conservatory, but it did not silence his opera productions. Kitezh has been called “the Russian Parsifal,” because of its mystical and symbolical story, based on two ancient legends. But beyond an evident aspiration to combine features of pagan pantheism and orthodox Christianity in the figure of the heroine Fevroniya, the symbolism is vague and not of fundamental importance. The Golden Cockerel, from a humorous-fantastic tale of Pushkin, is more objective and ironic than Kitezh, even satirical, but equally unclear as to the detailed application of its moral.

Other than a gradual growth in complexity of idiom and an increasing skill in the fabrication of piquant harmonic and coloristic effects, there is little that can be called an evolution in Rimsky-Korsakov’s musical style through his fifteen operas—nothing remotely comparable to the change in Wagner from Die Feen to Parsifal. Rimsky-Korsakov was a lyrical and pictorial composer, resembling Mendelssohn in exquisiteness of detail as well as in the absence of strongly emotional and dramatic qualities. The realism of Musorgsky, found only in The Maid of Pskov, was not for him. Art, he once said, was “essentially the most enchanting and intoxicating of lies”—a statement that doubtless explains much in his own music.³⁸ The dramatic force of the last act of The Maid of Pskov and the serious musical characterization of Fevroniya in Kitezh are exceptional in his work; his most original, personal contribution, however, lies in another realm.

[He] must be granted the quite peculiar power of evoking a fantastic world entirely his own, half-real, half-supernatural, a world as limited, as distinctive and as delightful as the world of the Grimms’ fairy tales or as Alice’s Wonderland. It is a world in which the commonplace and matter-of-fact are inextricably confused with the fantastic, naivete with sophistication, the romantic with the humorous, and beauty with absurdity. He was not its inventor, of course; he owed it in the first place to Pushkin and Gogol. But he gave it a queer touch of his own, linking it with Slavonic antiquity and hinting at pantheistic symbolism, which makes it peculiarly his. And musically, of course, he reigns in it undisputed. He invented the perfect music for such a fantastic world: music insubstantial when it was matched with unreal things, deliciously lyrical when it touched reality, in both cases coloured from the most superb palette a musician has ever held.³⁹

For Rimsky-Korsakov, an opera was primarily a musical rather than a dramatic-literary work; hence the importance of musical design, which frequently dominates both the poetry and the scenic plan (for example, the rondo form in the fourth tableau of Sadko). Along with this there is usually a definite association of certain keys with certain moods and, in most of the operas, a consistent use of recurring motives. These are not, as in Wagner, the material out of which a symphonic fabric is developed but rather are melodic fragments (sometimes only a phrase from a large theme) or even inconspicuous harmonic progressions, woven into the opera in a kind of mosaic pattern; they are as often given to the voices as to the orchestra. In the harmony, two distinct idioms are usually found in each opera: one chromatic, fanciful, cunningly contrived, for the imaginary scenes and characters (example 24.4); and the other diatonic, solid, often modal, for the “real” world. The vocal parts, as usual in Russian opera, alternate between melodic recitative and closed aria-like forms. In his lyrical melodies, Rimsky-Korsakov owes much to the model of Glinka; his own melodies are elegant and graceful, though marked by certain persistently recurring formulae.

An important factor in his style is the extensive use of folk tunes and of original tunes of folksong type; the source or inspiration for many of these was his own collection of Russian folksongs, made in 1876. Church melodies are also occasionally used, notably in Kitezh. The oriental idiom, however, is much less extensive and less significant in Rimsky-Korsakov’s music than in that of either Balakirev or Borodin. Like all Russian opera composers, he excelled in the depiction of crowd scenes, especially in The Maid of Pskov (Act II), Sadko, Kitezh (Act II and finale), and the humorous ensembles in May Night, Christmas Eve, and Sadko. Above all, of course, he is distinguished for his mastery of orchestral effects, a virtuosity in the treatment of instrumental color such as few composers in history have equaled.

A number of other Russian opera composers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries can be only briefly mentioned. Eduard Nápravník (1893–1916), as conductor of the St. Petersburg Opera from 1869, was influential in bringing out the works of the native school; the most successful of his own operas was Dubrovsky (1895). A pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov, but influenced in opera by Tchaikovsky, was Anton Stepanovich Arensky (1861–1906), composer of Rafael (1894). Also under the influence of Tchaikovsky were the operatic works of Mikhail Mikhailovich Ippolitov-Ivanov (1859–1935), Alexander Tikhonovich Grechaninov (1864–1956), and Sergey Vasil’yevich Rakhmaninov (1873–1943).⁴⁰ Rakhmaninov, well-known as a conductor of Russian opera, contributed only three one-act works to the genre: Aleko, a student opera; and two operas that were given their premieres as a double bill at Moscow in 1906, Francesca da Rimini and Skupoy ritsar (The Miserly Knight).⁴¹ Sergey Ivanovich Taneyev (1856–1915) produced Oresteya (Oresteia, 1895), one of the first Russian operas with classical mythology as its subject. This three-act opera is in a severe contrapuntal style, with admixtures of Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky. Influence from the French impressionist movement is reflected in Russian opera in the works of Vladimir Ivanovich Rebikov (1866–1920).

Some of the Ukraine’s earliest operatic composers were Maxim Berezovsky (1745–77) and Dmitri Bortnyansky (1751–1825). Both worked in Italy before taking up residence in St. Petersburg. Although their models were Italian operas, they nevertheless were able to introduce aspects of their native culture into the scores, as exemplified by Bortnyansky’s use of Ukrainian monophonic chant and Ukrainian, as well as Russian, folksongs.

The next generation of composers includes Semyon Gulak-Artemovsky (1813–73), Petro Sokal’s’ky (1832–87), Petro Nistchynsky (1832–96), Mykola Arkas (1852–1909), and Mykola Lysenko (1842–1912). Their operas focused primarily on historical and peasant themes. Gulak-Artemovsky, who also happened to be one of the finest baritone singers of his era, composed a work that was long popular: Zaporozhets za Dunayem (A Cossack beyond the Danube, 1863), with spoken dialogue and simple harmonized songs and choruses. Sokal’s’ky wrote several operas, but none of them were accorded professional productions. Nevertheless, Osada Dubno (The Siege of Dubno), composed in 1878, proved to be an important example of national opera. The score was strongly influenced by the composer’s interest in collecting Russian and Ukrainian folk music, an interest not shown in either his Mazepa (incomplete) or Mayskaya noch (May Night), composed c. 1859 and 1876, respectively.

Lysenko, founder of the Ukrainian School of Music, laid the foundation for the creation of a Ukrainian national opera by using folk melodies in most of his works. His music was influenced by Rimsky-Korsakov, with whom he studied orchestration at St. Petersburg in the late 1870s, and by Musorgsky and his Ukrainian opera Sorochinskaya yarmarka (The Fair at Sorochintsï). Musorgsky worked on this opera from 1874 to 1881 but never completed it. Noteworthy is the type of recitative used in his score, for it is based solely upon Ukrainian folk melodies.⁴² Lysenko’s principal opera was the epic Tarns Bulba, the first Ukranian-language opera. It was composed between 1880 and 1891 but never staged during Lysenko’s lifetime. Taras Bulba was finally accorded its Ukranian premiere in 1924 at the Russian State Opera in Kharkiv. The score, noted for its Ukrainian melodies, was revised in the early 1920s by Leuko Reunts’ky (1889–1977), and it is in this form that the opera has remained in the Ukranian repertoire to the present day. In addition to several operas for children, Lysenko wrote two operas on librettos adapted from Nikolai Gogol, Rizdv’yana nich (Christmas Eve, 1883) and Utoplena, abo Mays’ka nich (The Drowned Maiden, or May Night, 1885), and two operettas, Chernomortsy (Black Sea Sailors, 1883) and Eneída (Aeneid, 1910).⁴³ His Natalka-Poltavka (Natalie from Poltava, 1889), a comedy, was also very popular.

Although the principal cities within the Ukraine were able to stage excellent operatic productions throughout the nineteenth century,⁴⁴ there was little opportunity to fully develop a national school of operatic composition until after the 1917 Revolution, principally because an official Russian decree, the “Ens Ukase” of 1876, forbid the cultivation of Ukrainian cultural activities. With the advent of the 1920s, a new wave of nationalism swept over the Ukraine and with it came significant contributions to the repertoire of national opera.⁴⁵

Tigran Tchukhatjian (1837–98), long credited as the founder of Armenian opera, actively campaigned to liberate Armenia from Turkish domination.⁴⁶ By so doing, he helped inject a spirit of nationalism into the arts.⁴⁷ His compositional style united western European music with eastern folk music of his native land. Of the several operas he composed between 1872 and 1891, only Arifi khardakhutyunê (The Inspector General, 1872), a comic opera after Gogol, and Zemire (1891), a lyrical “semiseria” opera with a libretto in the Turkish language, were staged in the nineteenth century. Excerpts from Tchukhatjian’s best-known opera, Arshak Erkrord (Arshak II), were performed during the composer’s lifetime, but a fully staged production was not mounted until 1945, three years after the recovery of his score, long believed to have been lost.⁴⁸

The early history of opera in Poland is similar to that in Russia, except that the importation of Italian operas began as early as 1628.⁴⁹ The first regular court opera was organized five years later, and by 1646 a dozen Italian operas and ballets had been presented.⁵⁰ A public opera theater was constructed at Warsaw in 1724, but the opere serie of Hasse and other Italian composers failed to win a large following. After 1765, however, a repertoire of French opéra comique and Italian opera (sometimes in Polish translation), produced in the renamed National Public Theater, proved more attractive.

The influence of an intense national spirit was evident in Polish opera from the 1770s onward. As in Russia, the first operas in Poland on national themes were in the form of spoken dialogue with songs interspersed. The earliest surviving example of such works is Nędza uszczęśliwiona (Sorrow Turned to Joy) by Maciej Kamieński (1734–1821), produced at Warsaw in 1778. Another notable early Polish opera is Cud mniemany (The Supposed Miracle, 1794) by Jan Stefani (1746–1829), a Singspiel in four acts.⁵¹ This, one of Poland’s most nationalistic operas, includes strophic arias and songs, with lyrics that underscore the Polish people’s longing to be freed from foreign domination. Some of the melodies in this opera that use Polish dance rhythms (the polonaise in particular) became so popular they have passed into the realm of national folksong. This opera continued to be in the repertoire to the end of the nineteenth century and has been revived many times since.

A prolific if not especially distinguished composer was Józef Antoni Elsner (1769–1854); his Król Łokietek (King Lokietek, 1818) is a rescue opera with a libretto reminiscent of Les Deux Journées. Elsner, who was Chopin’s teacher, held an important position at the Opera in Warsaw, through which he extended his influence in the development of Polish opera. Another influential personage in the early nineteenth century was Karol Kurpiński (1785–1857), with Jadwiga królowa Polska (Jadwiga, Queen of Poland, 1814), a historical opera on an original Polish libretto, and Zabobon, czyli Krakowiacy i górale, or Nowe Krakowiaki (Superstition, or Krakovians and Mountaineers, also known by an alternative title, The New Cracovians, 1816), a work in popular style that was quite successful and important in establishing the national style.

The definitive creation of a Polish national school of opera, however, is owed to Stanisław Moniuszko (1819–72),⁵² whose famous Halka—first produced privately at Vilna in 1848, then publicly with a staged performance in 1854, and in its final four-act version at Warsaw in 1858—has remained a staple of the Polish opera theater to this day. Curiously, the music of Halka does not sound markedly “Polish,” at least to a foreigner. The style is rather that of early nineteenth-century Romanticism, remarkable for lyric grace of melody, with expressive but unsensational harmonies and transparent instrumentation; yet Halka, for all its disarming naïveté, is not devoid of real dramatic force. The conventional recitative-aria form of Moniuszko’s operas is modified by the use of transitional passages and recurring themes. Chorus numbers are especially dramatic, none more so than that sung in the first act and the Polish folksong and choral hymn in the fourth, an act that also contains a moving lament sung by Jontek and a preghiera (with solo cello accompaniment) by the title character. The opera centers on the engagement party and wedding of Janusz and Zofia, and on the plight of Halka, a humble village girl, who claims Janusz is the father of her child. Halka is in love with Janusz and refuses to admit that he is going to marry someone else until she sees the wedding party enter the church. At this moment, she resolves to take her own life by throwing herself off a precipice. This fateful action, however, does not cloud the concluding moments of the opera, which oddly enough ends in a major key, with the chorus singing a song in honor of the newly married couple. Other works by Moniuszko include Flis (The Raftsman, 1858), the comedy Hrabrina (The Countess, 1860), and the semicomic opera Straszny dwór (The Haunted Manor, 1865), which, next to Halka, is his best and most popular work. It makes considerable use of recurring motifs and places increased emphasis upon choral writing.

Owing to unfavorable political conditions, the promising work begun by Moniuszko did not come to complete fruition in the later part of the nineteenth century. One of the principal composers in this period was Władisław Żelenski (1837–1921), with Konrad Wallenrod (1885), a grand opera on a historical subject; Goplana (1896), a romantic fairy-tale opera with lyrical melodies and delicate orchestral colors; and Stara baśń (An Old Fairy Tale, 1907), in which the influences of both Weber and Wagner, of French grand opera, and especially of Polish folk elements are conspicuous.⁵³ Others who came to a greater or lesser degree under the Wagnerian spell were Zygmunt Noskowski (1846–1909), Henryk Jarecki (1846–1918), and Roman Statkowski (1859–1925). Jarecki, conductor at the important opera theater of Lwów, continued the nationalistic spirit of Moniuszko, his teacher, by writing operas based on Polish literature and history. Most of Jarecki’s scores, however, are no longer available for study. Noskowski, remembered especially for his writing of symphonic poems, moved into the realm of the music drama with his Hanusia, lub Dia świętej (Hanusia, or For the Holy Country) produced at Warsaw in 1890. His Livia Quintilla, performed at Lwów in 1898, was also successful. Statkowski’s Filenis (1903), a prize-winning work in an international competition, and Maria (1906) exhibit a style that was somewhere between pre-Wagnerian and the Wagnerian music drama.⁵⁴ This same generation of composers also included Ignace Jan Paderewski (1860–1941), more celebrated as a pianist than for his one opera, Manru (1901),⁵⁵ and Miecyslaw Soltys (1863–1929). A new generation showing more progressive tendencies began to be heard from after the restoration of Polish independence in 1919.

For two hundred years after the Battle of the White Mountain in 1620, the Czech lands of Moravia, Bohemia, and Silesia came under the cultural and political grip of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. A crushing blow to the region’s indigenous culture was dealt in the latter part of the eighteenth century, when Joseph II decreed the Czech language could no longer be taught in the schools. This meant that composers such as Bedřich Smetana (1824–84), Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904), and Zdeněk Fibich (1850–1900) grew up with German, instead of Czech, as their primary language, which explains why the librettos for some of their early operas were also in German. Not until the mid-nineteenth century did the Czech language successfully break the shackles of its former “peasant” status and become a part of the intellectual Czech National Revival. As cultural sanctions against the Czechs were eased, a wave of nationalism, originating in the villages, slowly crept over the country. The most significant focus of this rebirth of patriotism centered on two theaters where operas and plays in the Czech language were regularly featured: the Provisional Theater of Prague, which opened its doors in 1862, and the National Theater, which was built to replace that theater in 1881. The inaugural opera production for the National Theater was Smetana’s Libuše, a Czech opera based on the legendary title character, said to be the founder of Prague. With Libuše, Smetana proclaimed the glory of the Czech nation.

The history of opera in the Czech language has its beginnings in the mid-eighteenth century, in Moravia, where there developed a tradition of amateur operas. These simple dramatic works flourished until the end of the century and were intended for the entertainment of an uncultured audience, whose language was Czech at a time when German was the language of the middle class and aristocrats. In their use of historical subjects and regional dialects, the composers of these amateur operas anticipated the nationalist aspects of later Czech operas. Some of their works for the theater mirrored the Singspiel tradition, consisting of a few solos and duets interjected into the spoken dialogue; others, usually in two acts, contained many different kinds of numbers, linked by recitatives.⁵⁶

Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the high cultured audiences were entertained with operas drawn primarily from a repertory of German, Italian, and French works, usually staged in their original languages. Prior to 1750, the main centers for operatic productions were at Jaroměřice and Kroměříž in Moravia and at Český Krumlov in Bohemia.⁵⁷ Not until the 1820s did operas designed for the professional theaters begin to be performed in the Czech language. Of particular importance were the foreign-language operas that were translated into Czech. Early examples include Joseph Weigl’s Die Schweizerfamilie, the first full-length opera given in Czech; Weber’s Der Freischütz; Mozart’s Don Giovanni; and Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia.⁵⁸ Also in this decade, František Škroup (1801–62) came forth with what has since been considered the first “professional” opera in Czech by a Czech composer: Dráteník (The Tinker, 1926), a Singspiel produced at the Estates Theater in Prague.⁵⁹ Although most of his other operas were in German, Škroup did write one more Czech opera in 1835, Libušin sňatek (Libuše’s Marriage), but it was not staged in its complete and revised form until 1850. Libuše’s Marriage differed from The Tinker in its use of orchestrally accompanied recitatives and its inclusion of the chorus for a dramatically important role.

Unfortunately, this auspicious beginning for establishing Czech opera was short lived, for between the 1840s and 1860s an era of repressive censorship was once again imposed by the Habsburg realm, severely curtailing the creation of works in the Czech language and precipitating the 1848 Czech revolution against Austrian rule. Taking part in this uprising was Smetana, who wrote “March for the Prague Students’ Legion” to further their nationalistic cause.

The opening of the Provisional Theater in 1862 signaled a relaxation of Austrian censorship and the first work performed there was Cherubini’s Les Deux Journées (in a Czech translation), followed by a revival of Škroup’s The Tinker. The organizers of this new theater held a competition to encourage the creation of Czech operas; their intention was to have the winning works staged as inaugural events. Prizes were to be offered for two different types of opera: one was to be serious in content and based on the history of the Czech people; the other was to be of a less serious nature and related to the folk traditions of one of the country’s three regional provinces. In the absence of any opera scores submitted to the judges in 1862, the competition deadline was extended to 1863, the year in which Smetana submitted his historical opera Braniboři v Čechách (The Brandenburgers in Bohemia), for which he was awarded first prize. The opera’s production, however, was delayed until 1866, the same year and in the same theater that saw the premiere of Smetana’s second opera, Prodáná nevěsta (The Bartered Bride). Over the course of the next four years, The Bartered Bride was substantially revised—recitatives replaced spoken dialogue, and national dances and the men’s “drinking” chorus were added. In its revised form of 1870, this melodious comic opera, so permeated with the rhythms and spirit of national music, soon became famous all over the world, and it continues to hold its place as a repertory work. Although Smetana did not begin writing operas until late in his career, he nevertheless produced a wide variety of stage works, ranging from the comedies, The Bartered Bride and Dvě vdovy (The Two Widows, 1874), to the tragedies, The Brandenburgers, Dalibor (1868), and Libuše (composed 1872, performed 1881).⁶⁰ He also composed works in a mixed genre of comedy and tragedy: Hubička (The Kiss, 1876), a “folk” opera; Tajemstvi (The Secret, 1878), a “comic” opera; and Čertova stěna (The Devil’s Wall, 1882), a “comic-romantic” opera.⁶¹

Smetana’s serious operas, especially Dalibor and Libuše, were attacked by patriotic critics because in them are to be found certain procedures associated with Wagner, such as the use of leitmotifs and the declamatory character of the vocal parts. But the alleged Wagnerisms hardly ever penetrated to the substance of the music, which remained stoutly individual. Admittedly, formal arias are in short supply in Smetana’s operas; in The Bartered Bride, for example, there are only five. It is the ensembles and choruses that are the mainstay of his scores, with the duets, in particular, revealing the composer’s ability to create a wide range of emotions, as in the lovers’ duets in Acts I and III and the comic duets in Acts II and III of The Bartered Bride. The choruses in this same opera also are suggestive of folklike material and thereby contribute to its national character. Folksongs, per se, are seldom quoted in any of Smetana’s operas. Rather, it is the use of strophic songs (the lullabies in The Kiss) or strophic choruses (the men’s drinking song in The Bartered Bride), dances (the fast, duple-time polka, such as that which provides a unifying thread in The Two Widows, and the slower waltz-like sousedská), and folk settings (The Bartered Bride and The Kiss) that produce the “Czech” characteristics. Another feature of Smetana’s operas is the combination of dance and chorus, as represented in the double chorus in Act III of The Devil’s Wall, wherein the sousedská is danced by the men and the polka by the women.

The next generation of Czech composers includes Karel Sebor (1843–1903), whose Templáři na Moravě (Templars in Moravia) was performed at the Provisional Theater in 1865, a few months before Smetana’s The Brandenburgers was staged; it thereby qualifies as the first newly composed Czech opera to be produced in that theater since its opening in 1862.⁶² With a style reminiscent of Meyerbeer and Verdi, a gift for writing memorable melodies, and an inherently strong instinct for dramatic structure, Sebor gave every indication that the success he achieved with The Templars could be replicated in subsequent works for the stage. This, however, was not to be the case, and after the less than enthusiastic reception of his only comedy, Zmařená svatba (The Frustated Wedding, 1879), Šebor’s operatic career quickly faded.

Antonin Dvořák composed eleven operas and had plans for several more, which were left unfinished at the time of his death.⁶³ His first opera, Alfred, was set to a German libretto in 1870, but never staged in his lifetime. Among his other early operas, three are particularly notable: Šelma sedlák (The Cunning Peasant, 1878), Tvrdé palice (The Stubborn Lovers, 1881), and Dimitrij (1882). The first two are comedies and the third is a serious historical opera in four acts, set in Russia.

Among Dvořák’s later works is Jakobín (Jacobin, 1898), the story of Bohús, a Czech “prodigal son,” who returns home from living abroad and is reconciled to his father. This reconciliation was achieved by Julie singing a favorite song of Bohús’s deceased mother that softened the father’s heart toward his son. Throughout this opera, there are a number of other passages that emphasize the Czechs’ love of music, but none more telling than the scene at the beginning of Act II in which the choir-master rehearses the village choir in a cantata that supposedly is by Benda, the famous eighteenth-century Czech composer, but, in fact, was composed by Dvorák in a style reminiscent of the rural type of cantata commonly heard during the era when Benda lived. Jacobin was followed by a comedy, (Čert a Káča (The Devil and Kate, 1899), that shows Wagnerian influences. Here the orchestra provides the musical continuity in a setting that restricts set numbers to a few strophic songs. Noticeably lacking from this score are duets and large-scale ensembles.

Rusalka, a three-act fairy tale, is arguably the opera that was Dvořák’s greatest triumph of those he composed between 1889 and 1904, and its popularity has remained constant to the present day. The libretto is derived from several sources, including Friedrich de La Motte Fouqué’s Undine and Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid. This rather unusual fairy tale is about transgression: Rusalka longs to leave her world and cross over into another, but her transformation from a wave into a woman has its consequences. Among the finest solo numbers in the opera is Rusalka’s “Song to the Moon,” one of several lyrical interludes in an otherwise Wagnerian influenced score. Evidence of this influence extends from the harmonic and symphonic elements to the characterization of personalities through a series of motifs. Such is Rusalka’s motif, which is introduced in the prelude, repeated at her first appearance, and then heard in various contexts throughout the opera.

Another important Czech composer was the German-trained Zdeněk Fibich, a prolific composer who, more internationally minded than either Smetana or Dvořák, came fully under the influence of Romanticism and the Wagnerian music drama.⁶⁴ An experimental work was his classical trilogy Hippodamie (1888–91), consisting of three four-act works set entirely as a melodrama—that is, orchestral music accompanying or alternating with a spoken text, a form established by the eighteenth-century Bohemian composer Georg Benda (see chapter fifteen). This trilogy, based on Jaroslav Vrchlicky’s Hippodamie, after Euripides and Sophocles, was less than successful. By contrast, Nevěsta mesinská (The Bride of Messima, 1884), a music drama, was considered the finest Czech tragedy of the nineteenth century, while Šárka (1897), based on a story from Czech mythology, was his most popular opera. In Bouře (The Tempest, 1894), Fibich turned away from the declamatory style of The Bride of Messima that was devoid of set numbers and embraced a style that was dependent upon arias and duets. In so doing, he was able to give full expression to his exceptional gift as a melodist.

The librettist for Fibich’s final three operas—Hedy (1896), Šárka (1897), and Pád Arkuna (The Fall of Arkona, c. 1900)—was Anežka Schulzová, with whom he was very much in love. Šárka draws upon the mythic history of Bohemia, focusing on an event that is mentioned in a fourteenth-century Czech verse chronicle, the so-called maidens’ war.⁶⁵ An interesting feature of Hedy is the way the opera ends: Hedy stabs herself to death, but before the curtain falls, a young fisherman concludes the opera with an unaccompanied song (portions of which he had performed earlier in the opera).⁶⁶

The generation of composers working in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries includes Josef Bohuslav Foerster (1859–1951), whose most successful opera was Eva (1889). Several pupils of Fibich also made their mark in Bohemian opera. They include Karl Kovařovic (1862–1920), who became musical director of the National Theater in 1900, and Otakar Ostrcil (1879–1935), who succeeded Kovařovic as director of this same theater from 1920 until 1935. Kovařovic’s best-known work was Psohlavci (The Dogheads, 1898), a historically based opera about the 1695 rebellion instigated by the Chods, a group of Czechs who lived on the outermost western border of the country and whose emblem was a dog’s head. The Chods rebelled against the Habsburgs because their ancient traditions and privileges were being denied to them. Kovařovic wrote several more operas, but his popularity rested solely with The Dogheads and the incidental music he composed for The Excursion of Mr. Brouček from the Moon to the Exhibition (1894). Ostrčil is best remembered for Honzovro království (Johnny’s Kingdom, 1934), a musical play in seven scenes based upon Tolstoy’s The Tale of Ivan the Fool and His Two Brothers. The hero is “simple Johnny,” a classic prototype of the hero in many a Czech legend, whose generosity and goodness surmount the evil doings of his brothers and the devil. The score, in which the emphasis is placed on solo numbers and choruses, abounds with folksongs and Czech-related dance rhythms.

The founder of opera in Hungary was Ferenc Erkel (1810–93), whose Hunyady László (1844) holds the same position in its country as do A Life for the Tsar in Russia and Halka in Poland. Erkel’s other operas were almost equally popular, especially Bánk bán (1861).⁶⁷ Both Hunyady László and Bánk bán are historical operas, but in order to avoid censorship (for during the nineteenth century Hungary was not an independent nation) Erkel purposely chose to depict historical events in the distant past. Hunyady László is set in the fifteenth century and is concerned with an episode in the life of the János Hungadi family, of which the younger son, Matyás, was eventually to become one of the most memorable kings of Hungary during the Renaissance period. Bánk bán, set in the year 1213, is based upon a play published in 1820. The story deals with the disparity in power between the landed aristocracy and the foreign authorities who govern the land (in this case the queen’s regency) and the desperate measures taken by the former to avenge the actions of the latter. Erkel revised Bánk bán in 1939, and it is this version that has been performed outside Hungary. The opera relies heavily on folk melodies. Even the instrumental passages reflect the folk style, with the scoring requiring a cimbalon.

Another important national composer was Mihály Mosonyi (1814–70), whose last two operas were settings of Hungarian librettos: Szép Ilonka (Fair Ilonka), produced in 1861, and Álois, composed in 1862 but not staged until 1934.⁶⁸ Others of the early nationalist group were Andreas Bartay (1798–1856), whose Csel (The Trick, 1839) was the first original Hungarian comic opera, and August von Adelburg (1830–73), with the successful opera Zrinyi in 1868. Later nationalists included Jenö Hubay (1858–1937), a celebrated violinist and prolific composer, whose principal opera, A Cremonai Hegedüs (The Luthier of Cremona, 1894), is still given; and Ede Poldini (1869–1957), with the comic opera A csavargó és királylány (The Vagabond and the Princess, 1903). The works of Odön Mihalovich (1842–1929) were Germanic and Wagnerian in musical style, even when on Hungarian librettos, such as Toldi szerelme (Toldi’s Love, 1893). And a pronounced flavor of German Romanticism is heard in the operas of Géza Zichy (1849–1924), whose most ambitious undertaking was a trilogy on the life of Prince Rákóczi (produced at Budapest, 1905–12): Il Rákóczi Ferenc (1909), Nemo (1905), and Rodostó (1912).

Throughout the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century, opera companies from Italy, France, Germany, Russia, and some of the other Balkan countries performed some of the standard European opera repertoire in the principal cities in Romania. This repertoire was comprised of works by Salieri, Dittersdorf, Paisiello, Mozart, Rossini, Bellini, and Weber, among others. During this same period, works by Romanian composers were also presented, but the texts were usually in German, with a few notable exceptions in Hungarian. Vestiges of local color were injected into the theatrical productions by way of ballets or intermezzos that were based upon Romanian folklore. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the idea of a national opera repertoire gradually took hold, with native composers offering works that drew from Romania’s historical events; especially favored were those that had revolutionary plots.

The principal Romanian opera composers at the turn of the nineteenth century were George Stephănescu (1843–1925), with Mama soacră (The Mother-in-law, 1902), the most successful of his operas that were accorded staged productions; Eduard Caudella (1841–1924), whose Petra Rareş (1900) was one of the first Romanian national operas; and Sabin Drăgoi (1894–1968), a pupil of Dvořák and Janáček, with a sophisticated modern use of Romanian folksong in Napasta (The Plague, 1927). Interest in Romanian folk music and dances, modal melodies, and the improvisatory doina tradition at times extended beyond the borders of Romania. One such example can be found in Le Cobzar (1909; revised, 1912), a drame lyrique in one act by the French-Italian composer Gabrielle Ferrari (c. 1851–1921).

One of the first composers of Croatian opera was Vatroslav Lisinskij (1819–54), with Ljubav i zloba (Love and Malice, 1846) and Porin (composed, 1851; staged, 1897). Ivan Zajc (1832–1914), known also as Giovanni von Zaytz, was director of opera at Zagreb for more than three decades. Representative of his several hundred works for the stage is Nikola Subic Zrinsk (1876). Among opera composers of importance in Serbia were Davorin Jenko (1835–1914), whose many works for the theater include Vracara (The Sorceress, 1882), the first Serbian operetta, and Stanislav Biničik (1872–1942), whose Na uranku (At Dawn, 1903), which makes use of Serbian folk music and augumented-interval scales, is considered the first Serbian national opera.⁶⁹

Opera performances in Greece by native composers can be dated from 1815, when Nikolaos Mantzaros’s (1795–1872) one-act buffo opera Don Crepuscolo had its premiere at the S. Giacomo Theater in Corfu. Other operas by this same composer were performed in the 1830s, and many of his scores have survived to the present day.⁷⁰ He founded a conservatory in Corfu, where he imparted to the next generation of composers his knowledge of Italian opera, gained primarily through his friendship with Zingarelli in Naples.

During the second half of the nineteenth century, a number of Greek operatic works were successfully staged, the scores noticeably influenced by productions of operas in Greece by Zingarelli, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi, along with those of resident Italian composers. Included among this generation of Greek composers was Spyridon Xyndas (1812–96), who actually studied with Mantzaro and Zingarelli, and Domenicos Padovanus (1817–92). Xyndas was acclaimed in his lifetime as both a virtuoso guitarist and as an Ionian opera composer. Unfortunately, only one of the eleven operas he composed between 1855 and 1893 is extant—O ypopsifios vouleftis (The Parliamentary Candidate, 1867); it is noteworthy for being the first known opera set to a Greek libretto. Modeled after the Italian buffo style, the score also draws heavily from Ionian and mainland Greek folk elements.⁷¹ The operas by Padovanus show a decided influence from the Italian bel canto style, a characteristic of operas by Donizetti and Bellini. Typical of Padovanus’s compositional style is his three-act opera Dirce, figlia di Aristodemo (1857).

Composers at the turn of the nineteenth century who are representative of the later Ionian school include Spyridon Samaras (1861–1917), who studied with Xyndas in Corfu as well as with Delibes and Massenet in Paris, and Dionyssios Lavrangas (c. 1860–1941), who studied first in Naples and then also with Delibes and Massenet. Samaras lived abroad for a number of years and earned an international reputation with productions of his operas in Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Turkey, and Egypt. Among his successes were Flora mirabilis (1886) at Milan, Medgé (1888) at Rome, and La martire (1894) at Naples. In these works, he showed interest in writing continuous music, even though his operas were structured according to set numbers. His opera scores, especially Rhea (1908) and its attendant intermezzo, foreshadow the style of writing usually equated with Puccini’s operas, and since these two composers shared the same librettists, it is entirely possible that Samaras and Puccini may have exerted some influence upon each other.⁷² When Samaras finally took up permanent residence in his homeland in 1911, he turned his attention to the writing of operettas, basing them on librettos with a national political agenda.

In his capacity as co-director of the Greek Opera in Athens, Lavrangas was constantly involved with operas by other composers. His own contributions to the Greek opera repertoire, however, include Ta dyo adelfia (The Two Brothers, 1900), his very popular Dido (1909), and O lytrotis (The Redeemer, 1934)–with the first named opera considered to be the first National School opera and the last named, regarded as an influential work in the history of Ionian School opera.⁷³

In Turkey, the advent of opera came in the form of Italian works produced there in the nineteenth century by Italian opera companies. The repertoire consisted primarily of works of Donizetti, Bellini, Rossini, and Verdi, with Armenian operas and French operettas added in the 1870s. Not until the 1930s was the basis for a national repertory firmly established with operas by Turkish composers.

In the seventeenth century the theater in The Hague is known to have produced French opera as early as 1681, and it continued to do so throughout the next century. By contrast, theaters in some of the others cities, such as Amsterdam, relied on German and Italian theater troupes for their productions. The earliest Dutch opera is De Triomfeerend min (Love’s Triumph), a zangspel by Carolus Hacquart (c. 1649–c. 1730), a work that was published in 1680 but not performed until 1920 at Arnhem. A few other late seventeenth-century operatic works are known to have been written, but the music for all of them is lost. The entire eighteenth century is devoid of any significant contributions by the Dutch to the opera literature, and therefore one looks to the following century for signs of nationalistic development of the genre.

During the nineteenth century, when the Netherlands was largely under the musical domination of Germany, few national operas were produced.⁷⁴ There was, however, considerable interest in Wagnerian music dramas; Tannhäuser came to the stage in Amsterdam before any productions of this opera were seen in Paris or London. In order to offer an environment that would help promote Dutch opera, a theater was built in 1888 for that express purpose—the Hollandse Opera of Amsterdam, designed specifically for “opera in the vernacular.”The inaugural production was Catharina en Lambert (1888) by Cornelis van der Linden (1839–1918). Another opera by this same composer that had some success was Leiden ontzet (The Relief of Leiden, 1893). Several important composers of the next generation, such as Jan Brandts-Buys (1868–1933), produced operas that were more German than Dutch, but national traits appeared in Johan Wagenaar’s (1862–1941) Doge van Venetie (The Doge of Venice, 1904) and De Cid (1916), both serious, but realistic-satiric, operas.

Flemish opera can be said to have begun with the 1896 production of De Herbergprinses by Jan Blockx (1851–1912).⁷⁵ This work exhibits the lyric gifts of its composer. In addition, the leitmotifs and symphonic commentary by the orchestra underscore Blockx’s indebtedness to Wagnerian principles of composition. Other operas that appeared at the turn of the century include De Bruid der Zee (The Bride of the Sea, 1901), also by Blockx, and Prinses Zonneschijn (1903) by Paul Gilson (1865–1942). This last-named opera is based on the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, here reworked into a German legend. The influence of Wagner on Gilson’s style of composition is most apparent in the orchestration. Effective writing for the chorus is another aspect of the score worth noting.

In 1703 the first public opera house opened in Copenhagen, and seven years later a new court theater was built in the Copenhagen castle. Prior to the construction of these new theaters, ballets and other types of dramatic entertainments took place in rooms set aside for that purpose at the royal palaces. Such was the venue for the 1689 staging of the first full-length opera by a Danish composer, Der vereinigte Götterstreit by Povl Christian Schindler (1648–1740), performed for the court in German; the occasion was a birthday celebration for King ChristianV. The opera concerns a dispute among the gods as to whether the gods of peace or the gods of war should protect the king. Jupiter resolves the dispute by declaring King Christian shall be protected by all the gods.

Among the German and Italian composers whose operatic works were brought to the stage in Copenhagen in the first half of the eighteenth century was Reinhard Keiser; he briefly held the unsalaried position of Royal Danish Kapellmeister while he was in residence there in the early 1720s.⁷⁶ Keiser composed or revised seven operas for production in Copenhagen; they included Cloris und Tirsis (1721), Psyche (1722), and Ulysses (1722). The last-named work, performed on the occasion of King Frederik IV’s birthday, is a Schau-Spiel and is considered to be one of Keiser’s masterpieces.

By the 1750s Italian operas and pasticcios were regularly performed at the Danish court by touring companies. One of the productions, staged in 1756, was Gram og Signe, a pasticcio said to have been arranged by Giuseppe Sarti and his librettist, N. K. Bredal, for the Danish-language performance.⁷⁷ Sarti first visited Copenhagen in 1753 as the director of Pietro Mingotti’s traveling opera troupe and in this capacity he arranged for productions of several of his previously composed operas, including Ciro riconosciuto (1754), performed there without recitatives. In 1755 he was appointed Kapellmeister at King Frederik V’s court and subsequently assumed the directorship of an Italian opera company that was also operating in Copenhagen. The number of his operas that came to the stage in Copenhagen is considerable, of which Issipile (1761) is a representative example.⁷⁸ Of particular interest are the various types of arias he was able to include in any given score. They range from the regular and modified da capo structures to rondo and dance forms, from bravura-styled arias to pastoral songs. Variety was also provided by the scoring, especially with the use of obbligato wind instruments to accentuate the mood of the texts.

Danish-language Singspiele began to flourish in the latter part of the eighteenth century, written for the most part by German-born composers.⁷⁹ Representative examples are Balders død (Balders’s Death, 1779) and Fiskerne (The Fishermen, 1780) by Johann Ernst Hartmann (1726–93)⁸⁰; Holger Danske (Ogier the Dane, 1789) and Dragedukken (The Dragon Doll, 1797) by Friedrich Ludwig Aemilius Kunzen (1761–1817); and Høstgildet (Harvest Home, 1790) and Peters bryllup (Peter’s Wedding, 1793) by Johann Abraham Peter Schulz (1747–1800). Johann Gottlieb Naumann also composed a Danish-language opera for performance at Copenhagen’s Royal Opera House when he served there in 1786 as guest conductor; his offering was Orpheus og Eurydike, a Singspiel arrangement of Calzabigi’s text.

The nineteenth century saw a continuation of interest in Singspiele, of which Sovedrikken (The Sleeping-Draught, 1809) and Ludlams Hule (Ludlam’s Cave, 1816) by the German-born Christoph E. F. Weyse (1774–1842) are notable examples. These works, composed by some of the earliest national composers, show strong influences from opéra comique and the music of Mozart and Dittersdorf. The man considered to be the greatest Danish composer of the first half of the nineteenth century, however, is Friedrich Kuhlau (1786–1832). He wrote five Singspiele, including the “rescue” opera Røverbogen (The Robbers’ Castle, 1814), Trylleharpen (The Magic Harp, 1817), and Lulu (1824), regarded as his most important work.⁸¹ Johan Peter Emilius Hartmann (1805–1900) also contributed to the repertoire with Ravnen (The Raven, 1832) and Liden Kirsten (Little Christine, 1846), works that show influences from Spohr and Weber.

Folk elements are very much a part of the last-named opera as they were of other important Romantic operas by Danish composers, among them Drot og marsk (King and Marshal, 1878) by Peter Heise, and Spanske studenter (The Spanish Students, 1883) an opéra comique by P. E. Lange-Müller (1850–1926). The most prolific Danish opera composer of this era and one whose operas were given performances outside of Denmark was August Enna (1859–1939). Representative works are Heksen (The Witch, 1892), one of the few Danish operas performed abroad, Kleopatra (1894), and Den lille pige med svovlstikkerne (The Match Girl, 1897).

Opera productions in Norway in the nineteenth century were provided either by foreign opera companies or by local Norwegian dramatic societies. The first Norwegian opera was Fjeldeventyret (A Mountain Adventure, 1825), a Singspiel by Waldemar Thrane (1790–1828).⁸² The success of the initial production and the subsequent popularity of some of its songs has helped to keep this folk comedy with spoken dialogue in the repertoire of the Norwegian National Opera. One of these songs, “Aagots fjeldsang,” became known far beyond the borders of Norway when presented by Jenny Lind on her international concert tours. What particularly captured the attention of audiences who attended performances of A Mountain Adventure was the inclusion of material that mirrored native folksongs. Thrane achieved this sound by carefully mimicking the intervals and rhythms characteristic of the instrumental music used to accompany folk dancing.

Beginning in the 1850s other offerings by Norwegian composers came to the stage: Fredkulla (The Peacemaker) by Martin Andreas Udbye (1820–99); Fra gamle Dage (Of Golden Days, 1894), the first of five operas by Johannes Haarklou (1847–1925); Kosakkerne (The Cossacks, 1897) by Catherinus Elling (1858–1942); and Lajla, one of four operas by Ole Olsen (1850–1927), which was performed at Christiania (now Olso) in 1908.

In the mid-seventeenth century, Queen Christina engaged an Italian troupe to provide entertainment for the court. Although their repertoire may not have included performances of complete operas, the troupe no doubt made the Swedish court aware of the general development of opera in Europe. The impact of this troupe on the cultural life of Sweden, however, was minimal at best, for not until the middle of the next century was there any conscious effort to develop opera by native composers. Settings by Arvid von Höpken (1710–78) of Metastasio’s Il re pastore (1752) and Catone in Utica (1753) were followed by the earliest attempt at an opera on a Swedish historical subject. This was Carl Stenborg’s (1752–1813) Konung Gustaf Adolphs Jagt (King Gustavus Adolphus’ Hunting Party, 1777). It is a “comedy mingled with songs” that imitates Henri Collet’s opéra comique La Partie de chasse de Henri IV, part of which had been used by Weisse and Hiller for their popular Singspiel Die Jagd in 1770.⁸³

In the 1750s Francesco Antonio Uttini (1723–95), together with other Italian musicians, came to Sweden at the invitation of Queen Lovisa. In addition to conducting the Italian company for their productions, Uttini also composed a number of operas that laid the foundation for the future development of operatic entertainment at the court. After staging his settings of Italian texts—La Galatea and Il re pastore in 1755, and L’eroe cinese in 1757–Uttini turned his attention to composing a grand opera, Thetis och Pelée, the first opera in the Swedish language, the production of which inaugurated the Royal Theater of Stockholm in 1773.⁸⁴

A contemporary of Uttini was the German-Swedish composer Joseph Martin Kraus (1756–92), who is sometimes referred to as “the Swedish Mozart.”⁸⁵ Kraus arrived at the court of Gustavus III in 1778 and, after a few years, gradually earned his place among Sweden’s important composers for the theater. He is best remembered for his grand opera, Aeneas i Cartago, eller Dido och Aeneas, a five-act lyric tragedy that was completed in 1782 but not performed until 1799. Kraus also composed the music for Soliman den andra, eller De tre sultaninnorina (Soliman II, or The Three Sultanas, 1788), a hybrid work that consists of ballet, music, and spoken dialogue. It represents one of the very few Swedish examples of an eighteenth-century “Turkish” opera.

Among other German composers that came to Sweden to serve Gustavus III was Johann Gottlieb Naumann;⁸⁶ he was invited not only to write operas but also to reform the Hofkapelle. His first work for the court was an operaballet, Amphion (1778), and in that same year he composed a three-act tragédie lyrique, Cora och Alonzo, the premiere of which inaugurated the Royal Opera House in Stockholm in 1782. A commission from the king to write a “nationalistic opera” brought forth Gustaf Wasa (1786), a tragédie lyrique that was nothing short of a piece of propaganda. The libretto by Johan Henrik Kellgren, based on a scenario devised by King Gustav III himself, was intended to stir the emotions of the nation in the impending war with Denmark and Russia. The plot is centered on the war of independence that Sweden waged with Denmark in the sixteenth century. Naumann’s opera maintained its popularity and its status as the foremost example of Swedish national opera for almost one hundred years. Not until 1874 did another opera come to the stage that could topple Gustaf Wasa from its honored position.

That opera was Ivar Hallström’s (1826–1901) Den Bergtagna (The Bride of the Mountain King).⁸⁷ After its highly acclaimed production in 1874, enlivened by its folk style and rich orchestration, this opera was immediately proclaimed the successor to Gustaf Wasa as the national opera of Sweden. The story revolves around a marriage that has been prearranged for the heroine; she, in turn, is determined to escape from parental control of her life, but in so doing, falls victim to a stranger, whom she discovers is the Mountain King. Among Hallström’s other successful operas is Vikingarne (The Vikings, 1877), set during the time of the Viking invasions of Normandy. In this opera, the orchestration aurally delineates the two opposing forces, with impressionistic scoring used for the French and a more Nordic sound for the Vikings. Several numbers in the opera reveal Hallström’s gift for intensely beautiful melodic writing, with the duet in Act II an especially good example. Among other Swedish composers of the early and mid-nineteenth century are Franz Berwald (1796–1868), J. N. Ahlström (1805–57), Adolf Lindblad (1801–78), and Johan August Södermann (1832–76).

In the latter part of the nineteenth century, nationalism was temporarily pushed aside by the desire of Swedish composers to emulate the Wagnerian music drama. Examples can be found in the early operas of Andreas Hallén (1846–1925), such as Harald Viking (Leipzig, 1881), though more independent traits are evident in his Waldemarsskatten (Waldemar’s Treasure), written for the opening of the Stockholm Opera House in 1899. One of the most influential Wagner propagandists in Sweden was Richard Henneberg (1853–1925). He came to Sweden in the 1870s, and given the important positions he held at various theaters in the country, such as that of Kapellmeister at the Mindre Theater in Bergen and Kapellmeister at the Hoftheater from 1885 until 1907, was instrumental in producing a number of Wagner’s operas, season after season. Henneberg is also remembered for his comic opera Drottningens Vallfart (Drottningen’s Pilgrimage, 1882), which enjoyed considerable success. An interesting combination of the Wagner style with national melodies is found in the operas of Wilhelm Stenhammar (1871–1927): Tirfing (1898) and Gildet på Solhaug (The Festival at Solhaug, Stuttgart, 1899). A more decisive step toward national opera, though still on a Wagnerian basis, was Arnljot (1910), with text and music by Olof Wilhelm Peterson-Berger (1867–1942). Both Natanaël Berg (1879–1957) and Kurt Atterberg (1887–1974) produced operas, though they were distinguished chiefly in the field of the symphony. A notable opera composer of their generation was Ture Rangström (1884–1947), who wrote Kronbruden (The Crown Bride, 1919), based on a drama by Strindberg. His style of composition echoes that of Debussy, but he infuses the declamatory writing with elements of indigenous folk music.

The history of music composition in Finland dates from 1790 with the founding of the Turku Music Society, but this early phase was rooted in the Viennese classical style. Among Finnish-born composers active at the turn of the eighteenth century was Bernhard Henrik Crusell (1775–1838), a famous clarinet virtuoso. Crusell suffered from a nervous disorder and sought a cure at the famous spa in Carlsbad. While there, he was commissioned by the court chapel to compose a Singspiel, Lilla slavinnan (The Little Slave Girl). For one of the soprano’s main arias in this opera, Crusell wrote an elaborate obbligato part for the clarinet, which the clarinetist is to play on stage. At the premiere in 1824, Crusell played the part himself. Although the premiere took place in Stockholm, the Finnish people nevertheless are proud to claim this as “the first opera by a Finnish-born composer.”⁸⁸

An opera that has been called “the first Finnish opera” is Kung Carls Jakt (King Charles’ Hunt).⁸⁹ It was composed by “the father of Finnish music,” the German-born Fredrik Pacius (1809–91), and had its premiere in Helsinki in 1852.⁹⁰ Several revisions of the opera were undertaken by the composer and his librettist, with the fourth and final version completed in 1879 and staged at Helsinki in 1880. Pacius came to Finland by way of Stockholm in 1835 and assumed the lectureship in music at the newly established campus of the University of Helsinki. In addition to his role as a professor, he was charged with the responsibility of organizing the concert life of the city. This was no small task, for a sufficient number of professional musicians were not readily available. In the course of his thirty-year tenure at the university, Pacius established many of Finland’s musical institutions that have continued to the present day.

The libretto for King Charles’ Hunt, by Zacharias Topelius, is loosely based on a historical event—the visit of the young King Charles XI of Sweden to the Åland islands in 1671. The text is in Swedish and concerns a period of history when Finland was a province of Sweden.⁹¹ The opera is structured like a Singspiel, but in addition to the spoken dialogue,⁹² there are passages of orchestrally accompanied recitative and two scenes of melodrama. The score is strongly influenced by Italian and German operas of the period, especially those that had already been performed in Helsinki by foreign touring companies whose itinerary passed through Finland en route from Stockholm to St. Petersburg.⁹³ It also has many scenes that reflect the Finnish culture. The market scene, in particular, shows a woman strumming the Finnish kantele and a blind musician playing a traditional Finnish march tune. The heroine of the opera is Leonora, whose discovery of a conspiracy to usurp power and take over the rule of Sweden is reported to the king who, in turn, grants Leonora’s plea to have the death sentence against her lover, Jonathan, commuted.⁹⁴ An essential role is played by the chorus, not only in this score but also in another of Pacius’s operas, Die Loreley (1887). For the final choral number of King Charles’ Hunt, Pacius wrote a patriotic hymn of praise, which includes these words: “Thou land of our love, we sing to thee.”

From its beginnings in the fifteenth century, the Spanish secular theater, like the Italian, called on music to adorn and supplement the spoken dialogue of its dramas.⁹⁵ Most of the plays of Juan del Encina (1469?–c. 1529) end with a villancico, a little song for four voices (somewhat similar to the Italian frottola) that was both sung and danced.⁹⁶ The plays of Gil Vicente (d. 1557) and Diego Sanchez de Badajoz (1479–c. 1550) commonly used music, not only at the beginning and the end but sometimes also intermingled with the action. In the sixteenth century there also flourished the ensalada (literally “salad,” that is, “hodgepodge”), a humorous type of piece reflecting popular scenes and character types and having many features in common with the Italian madrigal comedy.⁹⁷ Among the Spanish dramas of the next century, a few were sung throughout. The earliest was Lope de Vega’s La selva sin amor (1629), the music and composer of which are not known.

During the seventeenth century, the Golden Age of Spanish drama, there arose the characteristic national zarzuela.⁹⁸ The name comes from the Palacio de la Zarzuela, a hunting lodge near Madrid that was refurbished by Philip IV in 1634. It housed a new theater, where pieces called fiestas de la Zarzuela were first performed. The zarzuela of this period, of which Pedro Calderón’s El golfo de las Sirenas (1657) is a typical example, was in two acts, usually on pastoral or mythological subjects and with emphasis on very elaborate scenic effects.⁹⁹ It used spoken dialogue but also included much music in the form of solos, dialogues, dances, and choruses. In general plan, it corresponded most closely to the contemporary comedy ballet of Molière and Lully, but its vitality and significance were greater. All the major Spanish playwrights of the seventeenth century interested themselves in the zarzuela and similar forms, such as the comedia harmonica (comedy with music), the egloga (pastorale), and the auto sacramentale (a religious play). Most of the musical scores of these plays seem to have been lost, and if we may judge from the published examples of those that survive, it is a loss greatly to be regretted.

An important zarzuela composer serving the court at Madrid during the seventeenth century was Juan Hidalgo (c. 1612–85). He is remembered especially for his collaborations with Calderón, but surviving examples of his music, beginning with Triunfos de amor y fortuna (1658), show that he also was associated with a number of other dramatists. Of particular interest is Hidalgo’s music for Juan Vélez de Guevara’s Los celos hacen estrellas (1672), one of the earliest zarzuelas for which most of the original music is extant. Equally important is Hidalgo’s setting of Calderón’s Celos aun del aire matan (1660), considered by many to be the earliest score of a Spanish opera to have survived intact.¹⁰⁰ The music for this work in three acts consists chiefly of solo songs in through-composed or strophic forms (coplas) and simple songs in dancelike triple meter (seguidillas), with frequently recurring themes connected by secco recitatives; there are also brief homophonic choruses. Mistaken identities and physical transformations (for example, Aura is transformed into a breeze) make for a delightful theatrical entertainment.¹⁰¹

Although Italian opera was known to Hidalgo, its influence upon his music was modest in comparison with that exercised by the zarzuelas of Sebastián Durón (1650–1720), who was appointed to the court as Hidalgo’s successor in 1691. Durón’s late Baroque style of writing contains a mixture of Spanish and Italian elements. Typically Spanish is his use of women instead of castrati to sing the male roles in the soprano range, his inclusion of guitars, castanets, and the vihuela de arco in the instrumental scoring, his continuation of the strophic forms for the solo songs, and his conspicuous flavoring of the musical fabric with syncopation (in a unique form of notation) rhythmically suggestive of various Spanish dances. Balancing these indigenous traits are elements drawn from Italian opera that focused on closer text-music relationships.¹⁰² They include instrumentally accompanied recitatives, bolder harmonic progressions in the basso continuo, melismatic rather than syllabic vocal lines, and the gradual introduction of da capo arias and concerted ensembles.

The historical career of the zarzuela is strikingly parallel to that of the national English and German operas of the same period. In the course of the eighteenth century, after attaining the height of its first phase of development around 1700, the zarzuela was temporarily abandoned, owing to the popularity of Italian opera and drama in Madrid. Beginning in 1703 with the arrival of an Italian company of actors and continuing throughout the reign of Philip V (1700–1746), interest and support for Italian theatrical entertainment increased at the court while that for the zarzuela heroica declined.¹⁰³ In addition to the Italian operas of Hasse, Pergolesi, Salieri, Sarti, Cimarosa, and Jommelli produced at the court theaters, operas by Italians who settled in Madrid also found favor with the king. For example, Francesco Corselli (c. 1702–78), who came to Madrid in 1734 to serve as maestro de capilla, began entertaining the court with the staging of his Alessandro nell’Indie in 1738. Italian opera troupes eventually gained access to the public theaters of Spain, but their performances met with varying degrees of success, for they encountered intense rivalry from their Spanish counterparts. By the 1760s a reaction to foreign influence gave rise to a new spirit of nationalism, which found expression in the zarzuela burlesca and the tonadilla.¹⁰⁴

The musical numbers in the zarzuelas and plays of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries appeared in various forms, some of which developed considerable importance of their own. Among these was the entremés (intermezzo), which was usually performed as an interlude between the acts of a play.¹⁰⁵ Frequently the entremés ended with a song called a tonadilla (diminutive of tonada, a word applied in the seventeenth century to a solo song with accompaniment). About the middle of the eighteenth century, this finale of the entremés, this tonadilla, began to be expanded to include two or more separate numbers, and even a little dramatic framework. Eventually the tonadilla, thus expanded, was detached from the entremés and launched on a career of its own; it flourished especially at Madrid throughout the second half of the eighteenth century as the national Spanish form, corresponding to the English ballad opera or the French opéra comique.¹⁰⁶ One of the earliest composers, though not the originator, of the tonadilla was Luis Misón (d. 1766), who established the independence of the form and the use of the orchestra for accompaniment.¹⁰⁷ The chief later composers were Pablo Esteve y Grimau (d. 1794) and Blas de Laserna (1751–1816).

The tonadilla was usually performed between the first and second acts of a comedy; it was seldom more than twenty minutes long and consisted almost entirely of solo songs or dialogues, sometimes with dancing and with occasional short spoken phrases. The later tonadillas became longer and had a larger proportion of spoken parts, though they still kept to the basic plan of a series of songs in contrasting tempos, with occasional duets or ensembles. There were no independent instrumental pieces, though a full orchestra was nearly always used for accompaniment. The cast of singers might comprise one to six persons, or even more in the tonadilla generale. The solo tonadillas were mostly on satirical or narrative texts; the others usually consisted of a short comic episode, with scenes and character types from familiar daily life, ending (especially in the later period) with a general moral reflection. In form, the tonadilla was divided into three parts, the introducción, coplas, and final, the last usually consisting of seguidillas of various types, which might be both sung and danced. Seguidillas were also sometimes inserted in the coplas (the body of the tonadilla) by way of interludes.

The music of the early tonadillas was simple, tuneful, and with marked dancelike rhythms, closely derived from folksong, as can be seen in example 24.5, from Misón’s Una mesoñera y un arriero (c. 1757). Later it became slightly more sophisticated, often giving evidence of the popularity of Italian opera at Madrid by the inclusion of recitatives and arias in Italian style and even with Italian texts. By the nineteenth century the national Spanish element had practically disappeared, being replaced by an imitation of Italian opera buffa music. Tonadillas were still produced during the first half of the nineteenth century, but the form finally gave way to a new type of zarzuela in about 1850, the so-called grand zarzuela.¹⁰⁸

The first signs of reaction against the reign of Italian opera and French opéra comique in Spanish theaters appeared in the satirical writings of Manuel Breton de los Herreros and in the works of a resident Italian composer Basilio Basili, who in the late 1830s and early 1840s brought out at Madrid a number of comic operas in Spanish. These two men, in collaboration, produced El novio y el concierto (1839), a one-act farcical composition labeled a zarzuela-comedia, thus reviving the ancient Spanish designation. Other farcical zarzuelas by Basili followed, and within a decade the new zarzuela was flourishing in a form derived from the eighteenth-century tonadilla, using music of a light, popular, national style with a mixture of some French and Italian elements. Many of the early librettos were from French sources—an instance of the influence France has constantly exerted on national Spanish music.

The leading composer of this first period of the revival was Francisco Asenjo Barbieri (1823–94), who produced more than seventy zarzuelas between 1850 and 1880.¹⁰⁹ They include Gloria y peluca (1850), Pan y toros (1864), a classic work of this type, and El barberillo de Lavapiés (1874), a lively work that mimics Rossini, especially when the barber, a tenor cómico, sings an aria that is similar to “Largo al factotum.”¹¹⁰ The score also abounds with seguidillas, tiranas, and boleros. These and other zarzuelas of Barbieri were long popular and have been influential in the development of national music in both Spain and Latin America. The principal contemporaries of Barbieri were Rafael José María Hernando (1822–88), Joaquin Gaztambide (1822–70), Pascual Emilio Arrieta y Corera (1823–94), and Cristóbal Oudrid y Segura (1829–77), who produced in El molinero de Subiza (1870) one of the most popular zarzuelas of that year.

In 1856 the Teatro de la Zarzuela was founded by a group of writers in Madrid to enhance and encourage performance of their works. Two distinct types of zarzuela developed at Madrid, corresponding to the two types of French opéra comique that evolved during the nineteenth century. One was the zarzuela grande, usually in three acts, which might be on a serious subject and even in some cases approach the scale and style of grand opera. Barbieri’s Jugar con fuego (1851) and El barberillo de Lavapiés (1874) are important early examples. Both are set in Goya’s Madrid and include national songs (such as a zapateado or a calaseras) and dances. The other type was the género chico—comic, popular, informal, often quite ephemeral pieces in one act, which were produced in immense numbers throughout the century and indeed have continued up to the present day. Most composers of the later nineteenth century wrote zarzuelas of both types. Some of the most popular works of the género chico were La gran vía (1886),¹¹¹ by Federico Chueca (1846–1908) in collaboration with Joaquín Valverde (1846–1910); La viejecita (1897) by Manuel Fernandez-Caballero (1835–1906); La bruja (1887) and La revoltosa (1897) by Ruperto Chapí y Lorente (1851–1909); and above all La verbena de la paloma (1894) by Tomás Bretón y Hernández (1850–1923), a work considered to be “the most perfect of all zarzuelas.”¹¹²

Along with the rise of the popular zarzuela came a growing desire for a national serious opera in Spain. Spanish composers of the earlier nineteenth century had rarely used Spanish texts or national subjects for their opere serie, and their music seldom had anything differentiating it from the contemporary Italian style. A solitary early crusader for Spanish opera was Joaquín Espín y Guillén (1812–81), one act of whose Padilla, o El asedio de Medina was performed at Madrid in 1845. Later in the century, however, the zarzuela composers interested themselves in the task of creating a more permanent and artistic form of national lyric drama than could be made of the género chico pieces to which they owed their popular success. Barbieri had definite ideas on the subject, which he expressed in his writings as music critic for La illustración. Although his own opera Il buon tempore was not performed, his campaign for a national operatic repertoire bore fruit in the works of his contemporaries. Arrieta y Correa, who had composed a number of Italian operas and a great many zarzuelas, expanded his two-act zarzuela Marina (1855) in 1871 into a three-act Spanish opera with recitatives, a work that continues to hold the stage in repertory even though it is a pale imitation of Italian opera. Chapí y Lorente wrote several serious zarzuelas, including La tempestad (1882) and Curro Vargas (1898), as well as operas, such as Margarita la tornera (1909), but his genius was for the comic rather than the serious, although the popularity of his serious zarzuelas has endured into the twenty-first century. Bretón, who had also written Italian operas, composed a Spanish opera, La Dolores, in 1895. Still another composer of this period was Emilio Serrano y Ruiz (1850–1939), with the operas Irene de Otranto in 1891 and Gonzalo de Córdoba (to his own text) in 1898.

The honorable title of “father of modern Spanish music” belongs to Felipe Pedrell (1841–1922), a distinguished scholar, composer of operatic, symphonic, and choral works, and a teacher of most of the Spanish composers of the following generation.¹¹³ Pedrell combined a deep feeling for the qualities of Spanish folksong and the great Spanish music of the past with a romantic-mystical temperament, which led him frequently onto paths where the general public could not follow. He was a greater idealist than composer, and his beneficent influence on Spanish music is out of all proportion to the very slight outward success of his own works. He was dubbed “the Spanish Wagner” and his most successful opera was called “the Spanish Tristan.” These encomiums exaggerate the resemblance of his work to Wagner’s. That there was some influence is unquestionable, but the examples of Glinka, Musorgsky, and the other Russian opera composers were at least as potent. As a matter of fact, if comparisons must be made, the composer whom Pedrell most closely resembles is D’Indy. The likeness is one of both temperament and musical style: each was irresistibly drawn into the orbit of Wagner; each, being an ardent nationalist and an artist of high ethical purpose, adapted the technique of the music drama for his own aims; and each succeeded in being individual in spite of this debt. On the one hand, D’Indy was a better technician than Pedrell and was more at home in the realm of purely musical expression; Pedrell, on the other hand, drew his musical idiom from more varied sources.

Pedrell wrote ten operas,¹¹⁴ the most important of which is Los Pirineos, a trilogy in three acts with prologue, composed to a Catalan text by Victor Balaguer in 1890–91 and first performed in Italian translation at Barcelona in 1902.¹¹⁵ The poem offers a number of effective scenes, but on the whole its nature is more that of an epic than of a dramatic work. Pedrell’s setting is unified by the use of leitmotifs. An idea of his style may be gained from an excerpt from the funeral march in the second act, illustrated in example 24.6. The orchestra has a much less conspicuous position than in Wagner, and the voice parts are nearly always melodic. An important proportion of the score is given over to set pieces, which appear in great variety. The composer’s scholarly conscience is shown in his evident care to reproduce as authentically as possible the oriental idiom in the solos of the heroine, “Moon-Ray”; the scene of the Love Court in Act I offers modern adaptations of trouvère and troubadour art forms—tenso, lai, and sirventes. There are quotations from plainsong and from sixteenth-century Spanish church composers, and the excellent choral writing throughout the opera should be especially mentioned. The prologue in particular would make a very effective concert number for a choral society.

It is too much to claim that Pedrell is to be numbered among the greatest opera composers. His dramatic sense often failed him. Too many pages of Los Pirineos are thin in inspiration; they are repetitious and lacking in rhythmic vitality and variety. But, out of a sincere artist’s soul, enough moments of greatness have emerged to make this work an honor to its composer and his country and to entitle it to at least an occasional performance, even if in a shortened version.

The national spirit Pedrell did so much to inspire achieved worldwide recognition in the piano music of two of his pupils, Isaac Albéniz (1860–1909) and Enrique Granados (1867–1916).¹¹⁶ Both composers essayed opera, but with only limited success. Albéniz, apparently under a mistaken notion of his own gifts, and also instigated by a wealthy English patron who fancied himself a dramatic author, devoted several years to writing operas in a heavy, pseudo-Wagnerian style before finally obtaining a notable success with Pepita Jiménez, a lyric comedy in one act. For the first production in Barcelona (1896), the English libretto was translated into Italian. The setting for this opera is a feast day celebration in an Andalusian village. To capture the mood of the religious festival, the composer introduces music and dance native to the region, performed by both a children’s chorus and a regular chorus. The plot centers on Pepita, a young girl in her teens who marries her wealthy eighty-year-old uncle. Upon his death three years later, various suitors try to win Pepita’s affection, but she has little interest in any of them until she chances to meet the son of one of her suitors, who happens to be a seminarian. He resists her advances, but when he overhears derogatory remarks about Pepita made by one of the suitors she has rejected, he engages that man in a duel and wounds him. Pepita confesses her love for the seminarian, but realizing that she should not stand in the way of his calling, she locks herself in her room to brood over her fate. The seminarian, fearing she will commit suicide, confesses he is in love with her; finally, the couple are united. When the opera was revived in Brussels in 1905, it was fashioned into a two-act version, and when it was revived again in 1964 in Lisbon at the Teatro de la Zarzuela, the opera was presented in a three-act version, only this time the opera was given a tragic ending, with Pepita commiting suicide.

Granados contributed significantly to the revitalization of native opera, both in Spain and in Catalonia, where Pedrell had founded a regional school. His first major operatic success came with María del Carmen (1898), a three-act drama that portrays realistically Spanish life in a provincial town, ripe with jealous relationships. The inclusion of at least one readily recognizable folksong and the presence, on stage, of mandolins and guitars to accompany the final chorus of Act II adds a touch of local color to a score that abounds in melodies written in a folk style. Recitatives connect the arias and ensembles; orchestral preludes introduce each of the acts.

For his Catalan operas, Petraca (c. 1900) and Follet (1903), Granados turned to Apeles Mestres for his librettos. In these operas and in the shorter works, such as the operettas Picard (1901) and Gaziel (1906), Granados either includes actual Catalan folksongs or writes new material in imitation of the folksong style of the Catalan region. Like many of his contemporaries, Granados was interested in trying to re-create the spirit of eighteenth-century Madrid, in particular the low life of that city’s streets, as typified in the paintings of Francisco Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828). He accomplished this in his principal opera, Goyescas (1916), the music for which was expanded from a suite of piano pieces of the same title. The premiere of Goyescas was scheduled for the Paris Opéra, but the advent of World War I caused the initial performance to be moved to the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.

One of the leading figures in the regional school of Catalonia was Jaime Pahissa (1880–1969), composer of La presó de Lleida (1906), later rewritten as a three-act opera under the title La princesa Margarida (1928), and Gala Placidia (1913). Other Catalan composers are Enric Morera (1865–1942), with Emporium, (1906);Juan Lamote de Grignon (1872–1949), with Hesperia (1907);Juan Manén (1883–1971), with Nerón y Acté (1928); and Amadeo Vives 1871–1932), with his operas Erida d’Uriac (1900), written in Catalan, and Maruxa (1914), and with his zarzuela Doña Francisquita (1923), which draws upon a comedy of Lope de Vega.

Independent regional development is characteristic of Spanish music, but the only extensive regional opera outside Catalonia is found in the Basque country. The outstanding composer here was José María Usandizaga (1887–1915), with the nationalistic Mendi-Mendyian (1910) and the successful Puccinian melodramatic opera Lasgolondrinas (1914). Another Basque composer was Jesús Guridi (1886–1961), whose national folk opera Mirentxu (1915) was followed in 1926 by Amaya, a more ambitious work with some Wagnerian traits, and El caserio, a successful zarzuela. One of the last important zarzuelas to be composed in Spain was La tabernera del puerto (1936) by Pablo Sorozábal (1897–1988).

A resurgence of interest in the zarzuela repertoire began during the last two decades of the twentieth century, allowing many of the classics of bygone eras to be revived for productions in major opera houses. Admittedly, many of the zarzuelas are centered on nationalistic themes and therefore are especially popular in Spanish-speaking countries. Nevertheless, as this revival gathers momentum, the zarzuela is also being welcomed by audiences outside of Spanish-speaking countries.¹¹⁷

The early history of dramatic music in Portugal is similar to that of Spain, except that there was no distinct national form of as great importance as the tonadilla.¹¹⁸ The first opera in Portuguese was La vida do grande D. Quixote de la Mancha (1733) by Antonio José da Silva (1705–39), an isolated attempt that led to nothing. Italian opera came to Portugal as early as 1682, but its flourishing period began only in about 1720, and it continued well into the eighteenth century with productions of operas by Niccolò Jommelli and David Perez, including the premiere of Perez’s most important opera, Solimano (1757). Of the Portuguese composers who devoted themselves to writing in the Italian style, the chief was Marcos Antonio Portugal (1762–1830), whose thirty-five opere serie were widely performed in Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They include his Fernando nel Messico, a three-act opera seria that was first produced in Venice (1798) and then enjoyed additional productions in London (1803) and Lisbon (1805). He was also the composer of twenty-one comic operas to Portuguese texts.

By the turn of the century, the era of the court-sponsored opera ended and that of the bourgeoise opera house began, with the principal houses located in Lisbon and Oporto. Italian and French opera continued to dominate the Portuguese stage throughout the nineteenth century; Eurico (1870) by Miguel Pereira (1843–1901), with Italian text arranged from a Portuguese novel, is typical of this tendency. Native composers only occasionally adopted their own language or musical idiom, except for comic pieces. In this genre, however, there were successful works by Antonio Luiz Miró (d. 1853), A marqueza (1848); Guilherme Cossoul (1828–80), A cisterna do diablo (1850); Francisco Alves Rente (1851–91), Verde gaio (1876); and Domingo Cyriaco de Car doso (1846–1900), O burro do Senhor Alcaide (1891). An outstanding nationalist composer was Alfredo Keil (1850–1907). Three of his operas—Susana (1883), Donna Bianca (1888), and Irene (1893)—have Italian texts; Serrana (1899), an opera comica, has a Portuguese libretto, the first major opera to use that language. The principal later composer of operas in Portugal was Rui Coelho (1892–1986), whose works span the period from 1913, beginning with O serão da infanta, to 1970.

Opera in Spanish America has been for the most part an offshoot of Italian and Spanish opera.¹¹⁹ In the colonial period, missionaries promoted plays with music, and at large centers (for example, at Lima, Peru) there were performances with music of the works of Calderón and other Spanish dramatists. The earliest extant opera composed in the New World seems to have been La púrpura de la rosa, a one-act multi-scene work based on a libretto by Calderón, with music by Tomás de Torrejón y Velasco (1644–1728).¹²⁰ La púrpura de la rosa was commissioned to celebrate the birthday of Philip V and was performed in 1701 at the viceroyal palace in Lima.¹²¹ The beginning of the eighteenth century also saw the introduction of Italian opera (translated into Spanish), interesting examples of which include El mejor escudo de Perseo (Lima, 1701) by Rogue Ceruti (c. 1683–1760), and La Partenope (Mexico City, 1711), with a libretto by Silvio Stampiglia and music by the Mexican composer Manuel de Zumaya (c. 1678–1756).¹²² A few tonadillas were brought from Spain during this colonial period, but they exerted little influence over the Italian-dominated theatrical events.

Regular seasons of opera did not begin in Latin America before the second quarter of the nineteenth century, a period marked by expressions of national independence. Italian opera continued to dominate the stage during the first half of the century, but at the same time the production of operas by native composers increased significantly. In Brazil the initial phase of this nationalistic activity was sparked by Le due gemelle (1809) by José Mauricio (1767–1830),¹²³ which is the earliest example (no longer extant) of an opera by a Brazilian composer, and by Marcos Portugal’s revivals of his Italian operas created originally for Lisbon and other cities of Europe. These revivals included L’oro non compra amore in 1811, the year of Portugal’s arrival in Brazil, and Artaserse in 1812. Portugal, well known on both sides of the Atlantic for his Portuguese comic operas, wrote A saloia namorada specifically for production in Brazil in 1812.

The establishment of a national opera company in 1857 moved Brazil closer to its goal of presenting operas by native composers, as evidenced by the 1860 production of A noite de Sãn João by Elias Alvares Lôbo (1834–1901). The most famous Latin American opera composer of the nineteenth century was Antonio Carlos Gomes (1836–96), a Brazilian who studied in Italy and produced operas on both sides of the Atlantic.¹²⁴ His A noite do castelo (Rio de Janiero, 1861), in the style of Italian opera, tells of a Portuguese crusader, Henrique, who, upon returning home from his conquests, discovers his fiancé is married to Fernando. The marriage took place because it was believed Henrique had died in battle, but this explanation does little to calm the crusader’s rage. He challenges Fernando to a duel, fatally wounds him, and then is himself killed by the father of his fiancée. In 1864 Gomes brought forth another opera for Rio de Janiero, Joana de Flandres, before traveling to Milan, Italy, where his two comedies on librettos by Antonio Scalvini were staged. They were followed by what many consider to be his masterpiece, the opera-ballet Il Guarany, which had successful productions in Milan and Rio de Janiero in the same year, 1870; to this day Il Guarany has retained its popularity in Brazil and Italy. Although Gomes chose national subjects for some of his operas and also endeavored to introduce national elements in his music—for example, in Lo schiavo (Rio de Janeiro, 1889)—he was too strongly inclined to the Italian style to be entirely successful in promoting a nationalistic style. This Italian style is most evident in his highly successful Salvator Rosa (Genoa, 1874); its lyricism, orchestration, and dramatic sensibility show the strong influence of the Italian masters from Rossini to Verdi, with whose works Gomes was well acquainted.

A like inclination to the Italian style is evident in the music of Henrique Eulalio Gurjão (1833–85), whose best-known opera was Idalia (1881), and in that of Leopold Miguez (1850–1902), who was influenced by Wagner in Os Saldunes (1901). Even the nationalistic composer Alberto Nepomuceno (1864–1920), whose instrumental works promoted a national musical identity for Brazil, did not develop an independent musical style in his operas.

In Mexico, Italian opera was first introduced in 1830 by a visiting troupe, and later in the century Italian troupes were engaged to perform native operas. One such production was of Catalina de Guisa (Mexico City, 1859), with a libretto by Felice Romani and music by Cenobio Paniagua y Vasques (1821–82), the first Mexican to have an opera staged in the capital city. Catalina de Guisa is set in France at the time of the Huguenot wars and tells the tale of a woman falsely accused of infidelity by her husband, who then murders her suspected lover. Among Paniagua’s pupils who became successful opera composers is Melesio Morales, whose Ildegonda (Mexico City, 1865) was also brought to the stage in Italy. German Romanticism is characteristic of the music of Riccardo Castro Herrera (1864–1907) in La légende de Rudel (1906), though national themes had appeared in his earlier Atzimba (1900).

With the advent of Mexican independence in 1821, national elements began to appear in operas that otherwise reflected the traditional Italian models. Guatimotzín (1871) by Aniceto Ortega del Villar (1825–75) is one of the first examples in this category. Guatimotzín is a distinguished national opera that tells of the heroic defense of Mexico by the last of the Aztec rulers. It is in one act with nine scenes and makes considerable use of popular melodies. Another national historical opera is Tata Vasco (1941) by Miguel Bernal Jiménez (b. 1910);it includes many choral scenes and draws musical material from diverse sources, including Gregorian chant and Indian melodies.¹²⁵

In Argentina, tonadillas and zarzuelas were produced in the eighteenth-century theaters of Buenos Aires, but by the second decade of the next century, Italian and French operas were vying for the public’s attention. Despite the foreign influence in the theater, a number of Argentine composers were successful in their use of national subjects and Spanish American settings, as in La indigena (1862) by Vinceslao Fumi (1823–1880) and in Pampa (1897) and Yupanki (1899) by Arturo Berutti (1862–1938). During the early part of his career, Berutti spent several years in Italy, where his first three operas were performed in 1892, 1893, and 1895, respectively. After his return to Buenos Aires in 1895, he composed five more operas, all of them strongly influenced by the Italian operas that were being staged in his native city at the turn of the century. Berutti has been acclaimed one of Argentina’s outstanding opera composers, a reputation based in part on the success of his last opera, the epic Gli eroi (1919), after V. F. López’s La loca de la guardia. His compositions, however, reflect an international, rather than a national, style.

MANY OF THE FAVORITE Spanish zarzuelas were brought to the New World and inspired similar works by local composers in all Latin American countries. Thus the Venezuelan José Angel Montero (1839–81) produced fifteen zarzuelas, as well as an opera, Virginia (1873). In Columbia, zarzuelas and similar pieces were composed by Juan Crisóstomo Osorio y Ricaurte (1863–87) and Santos Cifuentes (1870–1932). In Mexico there was a popular comic opera Keofar (1893) by Felipe Villanueva (1862–93), and in Argentina, Francisco Hargreaves (1849–1900) composed Una noche en Loreto (1890), which represents a regional type of zarzuela. Argentinian folk music material is used in Una noche en Loreto but is noticeably lacking in two other operas by Hargreaves, La gatta bianca (Milan, 1875) and El vampiro (1876).

Other Latin American opera composers in this period were in Columbia, Augusto Azzali, Lhidiac (1893), and José María Ponce de León (1846–82), Ester and Florinda; in Peru, Daniel Alomias Robles (1871–1942), Illa-Cori, and Teodoro Valcárcel (1900–1942), Suray-Surita, a ballet opera; in Chile, Eleodoro Ortíz de Zarate (1865–1953), La fioraia di Lugano (1895), with Italian text; and in Cuba, Eduardo Sanches de Fuentes (1874–1944), Dolorosa (1910) and Kabelia (1942).

The nineteenth century was a time when serious opera was universally understood to mean Italian opera, that “exotic and irrational entertainment,” which the British had been patronizing ever since the days of Samuel Johnson.¹²⁶ The theater at Covent Garden in London, for example, was almost exclusively devoted to the staging of Italian opera, even going so far as to mount French or German operas in Italian translations. Nor were those productions necessarily faithful to the original scores, as evidenced by the adaptations of Henry Bishop (1781–1855), director of music for Covent Garden (1810–24), who was not shy about inserting some of his own music into the productions. With few exceptions, almost the only English musical stage works to have any success at all in the nineteenth century were those of the light variety, by Balfe, Wallace, Benedict, and (later) Sullivan. One of those exceptions was an opera by John Barnett (1802–90), whose Mountain Sylph (1823) was sung throughout, thereby earning the distinction of being the first English opera since Arne’s Artaxerxes of 1762.

Michael Balfe (1808–70), Irish by birth, settled in England and became an advocate for English opera. Notable among his many English-language works for the stage are The Siege of Rochelle (1835), The Maid of Artois (1836), and The Bohemian Girl (1843), one of few nineteenth-century British operas to gain international recognition.¹²⁷ The Bohemian Girl is a ballad opera in three acts, fashioned from Joseph Mazilier’s and Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-George’s ballet-pantomime La Gypsy that, in turn, was based on Miguel de Cervantes’ short story La gitanilla.¹²⁸ The setting is eighteenth-century Austria, where Thaddeus (a Polish nobleman) has sought refuge with a band of gypsies. While there he saves the life of a young child, the daughter of Count Arnheim, governor of Pressburg. When he and the leader of the gypsies are invited to a banquet in their honor given by the count, they encounter considerable trouble, for they refuse to drink a toast to the emperor. The gypsy leader is imprisoned, and Thaddeus returns to the gypsies, but not until he has kidnapped the count’s daughter. The story continues after a time lapse of twelve years, with Thaddeus falling in love with the daughter and marrying her, after revealing his true identity to the count. A subplot involving the gypsies’ plan to kill the bride at the wedding feast is thwarted and the requisite happy ending prevails.

The style of composition in The Bohemian Girl shows a strong influence from Rossini, as do other Balfe works for the stage such as Falstaff (1838) and The Knight of the Leopard, which was left unfinished at the time of the composer’s death. Michael Costa completed the score, and its first production as Il talismano was in 1874 and as The Talisman, for a New York City production, in 1875. Perhaps the most well-conceived of Balfe’s operas is Les Quatre Fils Aymon (1844), presented that same year for London as The Castle Aymon, or The Four Brothers, which contained a number of memorable ballads.

Vincent Wallace (1812–65), also of Irish birth, brought to the London stage Maritana (1845), the only one of his operas to achieve international success, perhaps owing to a score that draws upon elements of Spanish gypsy music. Other composers of English opera in the middle of the nineteenth century were Edward James Loder (1813–65), whose Night Dancers (1846) was highly praised by Hogarth;¹²⁹ George Alexander MacFarren (1813–87), with twelve operas, of which the most successful was Robin Hood (1860); and Julius Benedict (1804–85), whose Lily of Killarney (1862) on an Irish subject is still remembered.

In 1875 two opera companies were formed. One was the Carl Rosa Opera Company, a touring company that commissioned a few English works, including several from Arthur Goring Thomas (1850–92). His Esmeralda and Nadeshda were given at London in 1883 and 1885, respectively. The other was Richard D’Oyly Carte’s company, which produced and promoted the Gilbert and Sullivan “Savoy operas,” so named for the Savoy Theater in which they were regularly performed. Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900) brought to the stage his first comic opera, Cox and Box, in 1867. This was three years before he and William S. Gilbert (1836–1911) met and formed their collaborative partnership, from which arose an exceptional series of operettas, full of wit and humor, with music that is melodious and memorable.¹³⁰ From Trial by Jury (1875) to The Grand Duke (1896), the Gilbert and Sullivan repertoire was a theatrical triumph for the London theaters at the end of the nineteenth century, and it has continued to the present day to provide delightful entertainment for audiences around the world. In the early 1890s Sullivan broke away from this partnership for a few years in order to delve into writing grand opera. His Ivanhoe made a great stir at its first production in 1891 but since that time it has largely been forgotten.¹³¹ The following year he brought forth Haddon Hall (1892), a work that gives the clearest indication that he was forging a significant change in his compositional style. He dispenses with the spoken dialogue in favor of having continuous music throughout and, in so doing, is able to sustain the dramatic tension of important scenes, such as the finale of Act II.

The vogue for Wagner—signaled by the establishment of a London branch of the Wagner Society, which published a journal entitled Meister from 1888 to 1895, and furthered by the circumstance that most of the leading English composers of the generation of the 1840s and 1850s received their training in Germany—was reflected in the numerous English operas on national historical or “Nordic” legendary subjects and in a musical style obviously inspired from Bayreuth. Perhaps the most zealous English disciple of Wagner was Frederick Corder (1852–1935), who wrote Nordisca (1887) and Ossian (1905). Other operas of a German-Romantic cast were produced in England (and in some instances also in Germany) by Frederick Cowen (1852–1935), Alexander Campbell Mackenzie (1847–1935), and Charles Villiers Stanford (1852–1924). Cowen’s Pauline (1876) was commissioned by the Carl Rosa Opera Company; his Thorgrim and two other operas were produced at London in the 1890s. Mackenzie’s Colomba, first heard at London in 1883, was later produced in Germany; his most successful opera was The Cricket on the Hearth, composed around 1900 and first performed in 1914. Stanford attempted to create an English Meistersinger in The Canterbury Pilgrims (1884), but was better known for his comic opera Shamus O’Brien (1896), possibly inspired by The Lily of Killarney (1862). His Much Ado about Nothing made a favorable impression at its first performance in 1901 and has since been revived.¹³²

The revival of Celtic literature in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century led to a number of opera librettos on Celtic legends.¹³³ Welsh subjects, for example, attracted Joseph Parry (1841–1903) and inspired him to incorporate traditional Welsh folk tunes into his opera scores. Parry’s Blodwen (1878) is a romantic tale set in fourteenth-century Wales, and his Arianwen (1890) is set in eighteenth-century Wales. Welsh subjects also attracted Granville Bantock (1868–1946), in Caedmar (1892) and The Seal Woman (1924); and Arwel Hughes (1909–88), in Menna (1953), a tragedy in three acts based on a Welsh folk legend, and Serch yw’r doctor (Love’s the Doctor, 1960) after Molière—possibly the first opera in the Welsh language. Another Welsh composer, Grace Williams (1906–72), turned to French literature for her opera The Parlour (1966), which is an adaptation of Guy de Maupassant’s short story En famille.

Scottish legends or stories were used by Hamish MacCunn (1868–1916) in Jeanie Deans (Edinburgh, 1894), from Walter Scott’s Heart of Midlothian, and in Diarmid (London, 1897). They were also used by Alick Maclean (1872–1936) in Quentin Durward (composed in 1892–93), which did not receive a performance until 1920. When it did, the opera was hailed as the first “new” British opera to reach the stage since the 1890s.

The early history of opera in the United States is similar to that in the other nations of the Western Hemisphere.¹³⁴(translated into Spanish), It began in colonial times with the importation of comic operas from Europe (in this case, English ballad opera instead of the Spanish zarzuela). During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, fashion successively favored Italian opera, French grand opera, and German music drama. Tentative and unsuccessful efforts were made by native composers to imitate the musical style currently in vogue, sometimes applying it to “American” subjects, the Native Americans and the Puritan colonists being the two most common sources of material for librettos. Prizes were offered and awarded; new operas by American composers were produced with fanfare, given a few performances, then shelved and forgotten. A few experimental works on a small scale were produced, but the American public showed little interest in them, preferring to hear Il barbiere di Siviglia, Il trovatore, Les Huguenots, or Die Walküre in sumptuous settings and sung by high profile (and highly paid) foreign stars. In a word, American opera remained, until well into the twentieth century, simply a longed-for but unrealized ideal.

It is possible that the first opera performance in the United States took place as early as 1703, but the earliest date that can, at this point in time, be substantiated is 1735, when Colley Cibber’s Flora, or Hob in the Well was presented at Charleston, South Carolina. This ballad opera, with music by John Hippesley, was first staged at London in 1729. Charles Coffey’s The Devil to Pay was presented in Charleston in 1736. What is believed to be the first ballad opera by an American composer was James Ralph’s The Fashionable Lady, or Harlequin’s Opera, but its 1730 premiere was staged not in Philadelphia, where the composer had resided before immigrating to England in 1724, but in London.

By the 1750s The Beggar’s Opera and several similar works were presented in New York, and a like repertoire of ballad operas was heard at Annapolis, Philadelphia, and Williamsburg (Virginia). Noteworthy was the staging of The Beggar’s Opera in Upper Marlborough (Maryland), for it was the first American production to have orchestral accompaniment for the singers. All during the latter half of the eighteenth century there were seasons of opera, fairly regularly at New York and sporadically at other places, with the total number in proportion to the population actually greater than at any period since. Most of the works so presented were English comic operas, such as Thomas Arne’s Love in a Village, Charles Dibdin’s The Padlock, and Stephen Storace’s No Song, No Supper.¹³⁵ There were also masques, pantomimes, and ballets, and a few French opéras comiques (by Grétry, Monsigny, and Philidor), usually presented in translation, with the music more or less extensively altered and adapted by English and American arrangers.¹³⁶

Examples of American opera did not appear until the second half of the eighteenth century. One of the earliest was The Disappointment; or, The Force of Credulity, a comic opera in two acts, presumably by Andrew Barton of Philadelphia. The anonymous libretto was published in 1767 and although a performance of the opera was announced for that same year, it never took place. Several popular tunes were introduced in the score, including “Yankee Doodle,” which was wed to lyrics in the Pennsylvania-German dialect. Among the very few American operas to be staged in the eighteenth century were May Day in Town (1787) by Royall Tyler (1757–1826), and Darby’s Return by William Dunlap (1766–1839), the New York premiere of which, on November 24, 1789, was attended by the newly elected president George Washington.

American operas of this early period were of a type similar to The Beggar’s Opera, with characters and dialects appropriate to the American locale. Toward the end of the century, there were imitations and adaptations of popular plays, such as Dunlap’s The Archers (1796), with original music by the English-born composer Benjamin Carr (1768–1831).¹³⁷ Still other “entertainments” were on patriotic themes, with battle scenes and allegorical tableaux. None of these pieces had continuous music; most, in fact, were merely plays with incidental songs. The composers (or arrangers) included Francis Hopkinson (1737–91),¹³⁸ Alexander Reinagle (1756–1809), Victor Pelissier (c. 1740—c. 1820), Raynor Taylor (1747–1825), and James Hewitt (1770–1827). Pelissier, a native of France, came to America around 1792 and produced several plays with music at New York in 1796, among them Edwin and Angelina.

In 1808 an “operatic melo-drame” by J. N. Barker entitled The Indian Princess was performed at Philadelphia; like the earlier examples mentioned, this was a play (the first extant one on the popular story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith) with musical numbers composed by John Bray (1782–1822), including descriptive instrumental pieces, songs, and choruses. A work that pushed the limits of the traditional English ballad opera in the direction of a full-blown American opera was The Enterprise, or Love and Pleasure by Arthur Clifton (1784?—1832); it was staged at Baltimore in 1822.¹³⁹ These are but two examples of many such operatic entertainments that dot the history of the American stage in the early part of the nineteenth century.¹⁴⁰

At the turn of the century, French opera, both grand and comic, flourished at New Orleans, beginning with Grétry’s Silvain (1770) in 1796 and continuing with operas by Dalayrac, Dezède, and Méhul.¹⁴¹ By 1810 a permanent opera company was operating in New Orleans, and twenty years later a second opera company was established there. The first company, founded by John Davis, was committed to productions in French. Among the offerings were operas of Boieldieu and Auber, French versions of Paisiello’s and Rossini’s settings of Il barbiere di Siviglia, and Weber’s Der Freischütz. Davis also toured with his company during the summer months (1827–33), bringing a French repertoire to Philadelphia, New York, and other northern cities.¹⁴² The second company, founded by James Caldwell, initially presented musical farces and operas in English and then expanded the repertoire to include operas (sung in Italian) by Mozart, Bellini, Donizetti, and Rossini. Both companies produced Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable in 1835, and four years later the Davis company gave the American premiere of Les Huguenots, also by Meyerbeer.

As early as 1817 audiences at New York’s Park Theater were introduced to English adaptations of Italian opera, beginning with Henry Bishop’s version of Don Giovanni (as The Libertine) and followed by Il barbiere di Siviglia (as The Barber of Seville) and La Cenerentola (as Cinderella).¹⁴³ Not until 1825 did this same theater begin to offer regular seasons of Italian opera, sung in Italian. The first of these productions was Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, performed by the Manuel García company from Italy. Also produced in this inaugural season was Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and on hand for the initial performance was the librettist of this opera, Lorenzo Da Ponte, who was then professor of Italian language and literature at Columbia University, having come to New York in 1805.¹⁴⁴ Through Da Ponte’s efforts other Italian operas, such as Rossini’s La Cenerentola and Bellini’s Il pirata, were brought to the New York stage by way of another troupe from Italy. From the 1820s on through the first half of the century, the uneven career of foreign opera in the United States becomes too complicated to follow here even in outline, the more so since our chief concern in this section is not with “opera in America” but with “American opera.”

Italian opera continued to be staged throughout the second half of the century, often with little interest from the public. In New York, for example, productions at the Academy of Music shortly after the midpoint of the century seldom attracted a full house. In fact, a production of Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia on February 4, 1861, with “a strong cast,” played to “an audience which hardly filled a third of the seats.”¹⁴⁵ A notable exception to this lack of interest came later that same month when large audiences supported nine performances of Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera at the Academy. On the night of February 19, 1861, however, the attraction was not solely for Verdi’s opera. It was rumored that President-elect Lincoln, en route to his inauguration in Washington, would make a brief stop in New York that would include that evening’s performance. An excerpt from a reporter’s description of the scene in the theater is quoted below:

We did not go to the opera to see Mr. Lincoln, we went there to hear the charming music of “Un ballo in Maschera” and as we were there first, we consider that our new President came to see us, and we tender him our thanks for the distinguished complement. There was a brilliant assemblage present and a most unusual display of female beauty, enough to dazzle any one unaccustomed to the magnificent features of metropolitan society. There was but little apparent excitement, but countless fair heads were turned to the right and to the left, as though undecided in which quarter the expected apparition would appear. But the Introduction passed over and no sign being given, the audience settled down to listen to the music. Brignoli sang most charmingly, and Miss Hinkley warbled her Arietta like a bird. We were silently enjoying all this, when a buzz and burr aroused us, and turning to the left, we beheld one thousand double-barreled opera-glasses all turned in one direction to the right. We followed the stream of glances, and saw the largest amount of President the country has yet afforded…. we think we saw seven feet of President—at least calculating from the knees upwards…. The remainder of the music in the first act went for nothing.¹⁴⁶

The first publicly performed opera with continuous music by a native American composer was Leonora by William Henry Fry (1813–64).¹⁴⁷ The libretto was adapted by his brother, Joseph Fry, from The Lady of Lyons, a popular play by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Leonora is an opera of considerable competence and musical interest, modeled on the styles of Donizetti, Meyerbeer, and Bellini, whose Norma exerted an especially notable influence. In the preface to the vocal score, Fry defended his use of recitative, claiming that English opera, with its spoken dialogue, distorted “proper uniformity of style.” He also acknowledged that a successful opera was dependent upon a libretto that allowed for ample situations when “the genius of melody” could intrude upon the words. Leonora enjoyed a successful run in Philadelphia in 1845, but when it was produced in New York in 1858, the score failed to attract any interest. Fry wrote another opera, Notre-Dame de Paris, which was given at Philadelphia in 1864, shortly before his death.

At the same time that Fry was bringing to the stage an opera in the English language, so too were the many English-language troupes who were regularly touring throughout the United States between the 1840s and 1860s. Some of the earliest touring companies, such as the Pyne and Harrison English Opera Company, were from England; included in their repertoire were Bellini’s The Sleepwalker, Donizetti’s The Daughter of the Regiment, Wallace’s Maritana, and Auber’s Crown Diamonds. One of the most important of the American touring companies was the American Opera Company, with a repertoire of operas by Mozart, Meyerbeer, Verdi, and even Wagner—all in English translation. The American Opera Company’s tours took place primarily during the late 1880s and were distinguished by the high quality of the productions.

Another American composer of this period was George Frederick Bristow (1825–98), whose Rip Van Winkle (New York, 1855) was arranged from Washington Irving’s tale, with added love scenes and other episodes. This opera is in three acts, with spoken dialogue; the music is conventional, a lame imitation of the fashionable European light-opera style. Also based on a Washington Irving tale was Sleepy Hollow, or The Headless Horseman (1879) by Max Maretzek (1821–97), a Czech-born composer who immigrated to America in 1848.

Uncle Remus by Henry F. Gilbert (1868–1962) also shares a place in the history of American opera on native themes. Although the opera was never completed, the extant materials (dating from 1905 to 1912) clearly demonstrate the successful role folktales and music could have in the creation of an art form for the stage. The libretto (also incomplete) by Charles Johnston was drawn from the Uncle Remus stories of Joel Chandler Harris. It was designed as a series of set-numbers with spoken dialogue and required a narrator (Uncle Remus), an enigmatic personification of Nature (Miss Meadows), and a cast of animal characters. Black song and Afro-American melodies are incorporated into Gilbert’s score (portions of which survive in other works, such as his 1909 Comedy Overture on Negro Themes), providing a suitable accompaniment for the regional dialect retained in the text.¹⁴⁸

Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, American audiences were introduced to a considerable number of German operas. Revolutionary events in Europe in 1848 caused a wave of German musicians to immigrate and with them came a repertoire of German-language opera. Prior to the 1880s much of this repertoire was confined to a few theaters, such as New York’s Stadt Theater (situated on the site of the former Bowery amphitheater), which catered to the city’s newly established German community. Representative of the works performed at this theater within a single season, that of 1862, are Fidelio, Der Freischütz, Tannhäuser, Die Zauberflöte, and the American premiere of Mozart’s Die Entführung aus Serail. After the 1860s this repertoire was regularly produced at theaters not only in New York but also in other cities, such as Cincinnati, where there was a significant community of German immigrants.

Of the many German-descended or German-trained American composers in the later nineteenth century, one of the most important in the field of opera was Walter Damrosch (1862–1950),¹⁴⁹ whose first success was with The Scarlet Letter (1896), based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel of the same title and fashioned into a libretto by Hawthorne’s son-in-law George Parsons Lathrop. The opera had an American subject, but the score was distinctly European. Damrosch’s music is pleasantly put together and technically well fashioned, but it does not depart from the style of late nineteenth-century German Romanticism. A rather more original score, though one still strongly suggestive of Wagner, is that by John Knowles Paine (1839–1906) for Azara, an opera that was published but never staged.¹⁵⁰ Although the seven operas of George Whitefield Chadwick (1854–1931) attracted comparatively little attention outside his native Boston, those of his pupils—Converse, Hadley, and Parker—were more widely recognized (see chapter twenty-nine).

On October 22, 1883, the newly built Metropolitan Opera House opened its doors with a production of Gounod’s Faust (sung in Italian), and throughout its inaugural season similar Italian-language productions were offered. New York audiences, however, were not drawn to the Italian repertoire, and the Metropolitan Opera suffered a financial crisis during its first year of operation. In an effort to appeal to a wider public, the management decided to concentrate solely on German-language operas in its forthcoming seasons, thereby precluding any possibility that the Metropolitan Opera would consider producing works by American composers for the foreseeable future.

Interest in the writing of American comic operas and operettas can be traced to the craze Americans had for the operatic works of William S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, whose H. M. S. Pinafore, produced in the United States in 1878, quickly and completely captured the fancy of theatergoers from one end of the country to the other. Gilbert and Sullivan capitalized on this unbridled enthusiasm by presenting the premiere of The Pirates of Penzance at New York instead of London; it took place at the Fifth Avenue Theater on December 31, 1879. With the release of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado (1885), enthusiasm for this work, with its exotic locale and Japanese costumes, sparked yet another craze, this time for things Japanese. The operas of Gilbert and Sullivan were witty; they addressed down-to-earth subject matter; and they offered music that was memorable and expertly wed to the lyrics. But these operas did more than meet the entertainment needs of Americans; they focused attention on English-language operas and helped to restore a bond between England and the United States—a bond shattered by events of a century earlier. They also greatly influenced the future of American musical theater.

The American productions of Jacques Offenbach’s La Belle Hélène (1864) and The Grand Duchess of Gérolstein (1867), Franz von Suppé’s Fatinitza (1879), Johann Strauss’s The Gypsy Baron (1885), and similar works also played an influential role in shaping the future of the American musical theater. Among the many American composers who showed interest in writing operettas and light operas in English were Reginald De Koven (1859–1920), John Philip Sousa (1854–1932), and Victor Herbert (1859–1924). De Koven’s Robin Hood (1890) was one of the first comic operas to achieve an unqualified success in America, and it maintained its popularity well into the first half of the twentieth century.¹⁵¹ De Koven’s other operas faded from view almost as soon as they were brought to the stage.

Throughout his long and illustrious career, Sousa toured extensively with his band and brought his instrumental music to audiences in many different countries, earning for himself the title “the March King.” In addition to his martial music, Sousa also composed many songs and more than a dozen operettas, yet this aspect of his career has all too often been overlooked. In his role as a conductor of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, Sousa learned firsthand the fundamentals of writing for the theater, and from Sullivan’s orchestration he derived models for his own scores. Sousa’s operas, of which El Capitán, The Charlatan (1898), and The American Maid, or The Glassblowers (1913)¹⁵² are representative, were not only successful when first staged but have also continued to enjoy a limited number of revivals. The American Maid is set in nineteenth-century Victorian America at the time of the Spanish-American War. The cast, including an impoverished heiress and a financier, end up in Cuba, and the lieto fine is accompanied by the strains of a typical Sousa march. In this work, he combined the European opera tradition with elements drawn from Gillbert and Sullivan and from American popular music, even early ragtime. Viewed from a present-day perspective, Sousa appears to have been a master in the creation of American comic opera. He, however, considered Victor Herbert to be the master of this art form, an opinion he expressed in an autobiographical essay: “Herbert, I am sure, wrote more light operas of high quality than any other composer in Europe or America.”¹⁵³

Herbert had a varied career, as a composer of operettas and operas and as a conductor of a symphony orchestra.¹⁵⁴ The number of operettas he wrote to entertain the public in the years from 1894 until his death is exceptionally large. From The Wizard of the Nile (1895)—a success at home and abroad, earning the distinction of being the first operetta by an American composer to be given in Vienna and Prague—to Orange Blossoms (1922), his works in this genre enjoyed considerable success, but none more so perhaps than Naughty Marietta (1910). Set in eighteenth-century New Orleans, the story tells of a noble young lady coming to America to escape from her engagement to a man in Europe. The plot is very weak but the score, with its five or more “hit” songs, proved to be the magic that kept this particular work before the public for a considerable length of time, and it has enjoyed revivals not only in Broadway-type theaters but also at the New York City Opera. Given his dedication to the operetta genre and his derogatory remarks about grand opera, there was little in the course of Herbert’s career to suggest that he would be interested in composing operas, but by the second decade of the twentieth century he had brought to the stage Natoma (1911) and Madeleine (1914), and both had performances at the Metropolitan Opera. Madeleine is a one-act opera, set in eighteenth-century France, and although it contains some of Herbert’s most advanced music, it has not enjoyed revivals past those given shortly after its premiere. Natoma is a full-length opera set in California during the so-called Mission period. Here, too, the score does credit to the composer, but since the libretto left much to be desired, the run of performances in Chicago and other cities after the premiere did not lead to future revivals.

2. For works on Russian opera, see Bernandt, Slovar’ oper; Iarustovskii, Dramaturgiia russkoi opernoi klassiki; Findeisen, “The Earliest Russian Operas”; Seaman, “The National Element in Early Russian Opera”; Selden, “Early Roots of Russian Opera”; Mooser, Opéras, intermezzos, ballets; Karlinsky, “Russian Comic Opera”; Berkov, ed., Russkaia komediia; Druskin, Ocherki po istorii russkoi muzyki (1790–1825). For general histories of Russian music, see Seaman, History of Russian Music; Abraham, On Russian Music; idem, Slavonic and Romantic Music: Essays and Studies; idem, Essays on Russian and East European Music; Taruskin, Opera and Drama in Russia as Preached and Practiced in the 1860s; M. Brown, ed., Russian and Soviet Music; Asaf’ev, Russkaia muzyka ot nachala XIX stoletiia; Campbell, ed., Russians on Russian Music. See also additional titles in the Russian Music Studies series (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research, 1981–).

4. The Russian title may also be translated as The Postdrivers. This opera was revived at Moscow in 1977.

5. An important difference between these two works is Glinka’s departure form the lieto fine tradition of early nineteenth-century Russian opera. Cavos spares the life of the heroine; Glinka allows the tragic denouement in Act IV to proceed to its logical conclusion.

6. Askold’s Grave was staged at New York in 1869, the first Russian opera to be performed in America.

7. The original title of this opera was Ivan Susanin. On Glinka’s operas, see D. Brown, Glinka: A Biographical and Critical Study; Protopopov, Ivan Susanin Glinki; Orlova, Glinka’s Life in Music; and studies by Livanova, ed., Stasov, and Dmitriev.

8. See Serov, “The Role of the Simple Motive through … Glinka’s Opera A Life for the Tsar.”

9. The march-anthem that concludes the epilogue cannot fail to stir nationalist feelings when words such as “Slav’sya, slav’sya, svyataya Rus” (“Glory, glory, Holy Rus”) are sung.

11. See Pekelis, A. S. Dargomyzhskii i ego okruzhenie; Serov, Rusalka, opera A. S. Dargomyzhskogo.; Baker, “Dargomïzhsky, Realism, and The Stone Guest.”

12. Quoted from Campbell’s translation of Laroche’s “Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin in the Conservatoire Production,” in his Russians on Russian Music, 245.

13. Abraham, “The Operas of Serov”; Gozenpud, Russkii opernyi teatr; Taruskin, Opera and Drama in Russia; biography by Khubov.

14. Vrazhya sila has been variously translated as Hostile Power (see Abraham’s “The Operas of Serov”), The Power of Evil (see Grout, 3rd ed. of A Short History of Opera), and The Power of the Fiend (see The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, s. v. “Solov’yov”).

15. For a table listing these folksong sources, see Taruskin, Opera and Drama in Russia, 171.

16. One of his critics was Vladimir Vasil’evich Stasov (1824–1906); see note 30 below.

18. D. Brown, Tchaikovsky: A Biographical and Critical Study; Warrach, Tchaikovsky; Abraham, ed., Tchaikovsky: A Symposium; Iarustovskii, Opernaia dramaturgiia Chaikovskogo; Muzykal’noe nasledie Chaikovskogo. See also Tchaikovsky, Diaries; Zagiba, Tschaikovskij; Al’shvang, P. I. Chaikovskii; Berliand-Chernaia, Pushkin i Chaikovskii.

21. Portions of Pushin’s verse-tale, Poltava (from which the Mazepa libretto is derived), are based upon letters exchanged between Mazeppa and Maria (his young lady friend) that were newly discovered in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

22. See Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music; L’Avant-scène opéra, no. 43 (1982) on Eugene Onegin and nos. 119–20 (1989) on The Queen of Spades.

23. Livanova, Stasov i russkaia klassicheskaia opera; Seroff, The Mighty Five.

24. Cui, La Musique en Russie (1880), is the source of many misconceptions concerning the Russian national school. See Taruskin, Opera and Drama in Russia, for a discussion of Cui as opera reformer, critic, and composer. See also Abraham, “Heine, Queuille, and William Ratcliff”; Kyui, Izbrannye stat’i.

25. Biographical studies by Seroff and Orlova. See also M. Brown, ed., Musorgsky: In Memoriam, 1881–1981; Leyda and Bertensson, eds., The Musorgsky Reader; Godet, En marge de Boris Godounof; Taruskin, Musorgsky: Eight Essays and an Epilogue; idem, “Musorgsky vs. Musorgsky: The Versions of Boris Godunov”; Szabolcsi, Bausteine zu einer Geschichte der Melodie.

26. References are to Musorgsky’s 1874 version, a piano-vocal score published by Chester (London, 1926).

27. Letter to Stasov, December 25, 1876, in Leyda and Bertensson. eds., The Musorgsky Reader, 353.

29. See Dianin, Borodin; Kuhn, ed., Alexander Borodin; Bobéth, Borodin und seine Oper Fürst Igor; Taruskin, Opera and Drama in Russia; Robinson, “If You Are Afraid of Wolves, Don’t Go into the Forest: On the History of Borodin’s Prince Igor.”

30. The important role played by Stasov in the shaping of cultural ideas in Russia during the second half of the nineteenth century is explored in Olkhovsky, Vladimir Stasov and Russian National Culture. Borodin did not fully complete the libretto before his death, thereby making the task of completing the score all the more difficult.

32. Seaman, Nikolai Andreevich Rimsky-Korsakov: A Guide to Research; Gozenpud, N. A. Rimskii-Korsakov; Hofmann, Rimski-Korsakov; Uvarova et al., eds., Opery N. A. Rimskogo-Korsakova: Putevoditel [A Guide to Rimsky-Korsakov’s Operas]; Abraham, Essays on Russian and East European Music (with reprints of his “Satire and Symbolism in The Golden Cockerel”; “Rimsky-Korsakov’s First Opera”; and “Rimsky-Korsakov’s Gogol Operas”); Griffiths, A Critical Study of the Music of Rimsky-Korsakov.

33. Rimsky-Korsakov’s operas fall into several distinct categories: historical/realistic; fairy tales; Gogol related operas; epics; and experimental, in which he explores non-Russian styles, as in the Chopin-styled Pan Voyevoda and the Italian-styled, Motsart i Sal’yeri.

34. There are three versions of The Maid of Pskov, with more than twenty years separating the first (1873) from the third (1895). See Abraham, “Pskovityanka.”

35. The subject of Christmas Eve is the same as that of Tchaikovsky’s Vakula the Smith. See Taylor, Gogolian Interludes.

40. See Belza, ed., S. V. Rakhmaninov i russkaia opera; Norris, Rakhmaninov; idem, “Rakhmaninov’s Student Opera.”

41. He started composing a fourth opera, Monna Vanna, based on Maeterlinck’s play of the same title, but never completed more than a piano-vocal score of Act I.

42. Rimsky-Korsakov arranged a section of this peasant comedy by Musorgsky, that of the music for St. John’s Eve, for orchestra. This excerpt is entitled A Night on Bald Mountain.

43. Both Christmas Eve and Black Sea Sailors had their premieres in Kharkiv.

44. A notable exception was the staging of Taras Bulba, for the demands of this production could not be accommodated by the modest resources of these theaters.

45. For works on Ukrainian operas and composers, see Arkhymovych, Ukraïns’ka klasychna opera; idem, Shiakhy rozvytku ukraïns’koï radians’koï opery; Dovzhenko, Narysy z istorii ukraïns’koï radians’koï muzyky. For music, see Ukrainskaia klassicheskaia muzyka; Antologiia klassicheskoi muzyki narodov SSSR (Moscow: Muzgiz, 1955, no. 1).

46. Ironically, Tchukhatjian is also credited with establishing a national operatic tradition in Turkey; his Zemire had its premiere in Constantinople.

47. See Geodakyan, T. Tchukhatjian i evo opera Arshak Vtoroy; idem, Traditsii i sovremennosti voprosy armianskoi muzyki.

48. A fully staged production of Arshak II, sung in Armenian with English supertitles, was mounted by San Francisco Opera in September 2001.

49. Gli amori di Aci e Galatea by Santi Orlandi (d. 1619) is the first opera performed in Poland (1628) for which there is substantial information. That this may not be the first such performance, however, comes from the preface to Il gran natale di Christo Salvator Nostro (Florence, 1625), in which the author mentions a libretto (no title given) by Jacopo Cicognini was set to music and performed there prior to 1628. See Hill, “Pellegrino Mutij e la nascente monodia in Polonia.”

50. On the music of Central and Eastern Europe, see Samson, “East Central Europe: The Struggle for National Identity.”Works on the history of opera in Poland include Michałowski, Opery polskie (catalog and chronology, 1788–1953); Glowacki, “The History of Polish Opera.” On the period before Moniuszko, see Bernacki, Teatr, dramat i muzyka za Stanisława Augusta; Zetowski, “Teoria polskiej opery narodowej”; and Abraham, “The Early Development of Opera in Poland.”

51. See Nowak-Romanowicz, Klasycyzm, 1750–1830: Historia muzyki polskiej, vol. 4.

52. See Maciejewski, Moniuszko: Father of Polish Opera; Prosnak, Moniuszko. See also Abraham, “The Operas of Stanisław Moniuszko” and studies by Pozniak, and Rudziński.

53. See Paderewski, “Konrad Wallenrod”; Niewiadomski, “W. Żelenski i jego Goplana.”

56. For an in depth study of Czech opera, see Tyrrell, Czech Opera. See also Teuber, Geschichte des Prager Theaters; Hoza, Opera na Slovensku; Adler, Handbuch der Musikgeschichte.

57. For his private theatrical establishment in Jaroměřice, Graf Johann Adam Questenberg revived operas (in Italian) that had premiered in Vienna at the court of Charles VI; he also commissioned new works, such as František Míča’s L’origine di Jaromerzi in Moravia (1730).

60. The Two Widows was staged the same year that Smetana went deaf, but this affliction did not hinder him from completing three more operas. Viola (a comic opera begun in 1874) was left incomplete at his death.

63. See Smaczny, “A Study of the First Six Operas of Antonín Dvořák”; Burghauser and Brabcovç, eds., Dvořák dramatik.

64. Hudec, Zdenřk Fibich (with an extensive bibliography); Abraham, “The Operas of Zdeněk Fibich”; Jiránek, Zdenřk Fibich.

65. This same mythic tale was taken up by Janáček in his first opera, which is also entitled Sárka.

67. See Eősze, Az opera útja, 465–96;Véber, Ungarische Elemente in der Opernmusik Ferenc Erkels.

68. Bónis, Mosonyi Mihály; idem, “Die ungarischen Opern M. Mosonyis”; and articles in Zenetudományi tanulmanyok (1954–1961).

70. Of the more than one hundred operas by Greek composers that were available for study and performance prior to the 1950s, less than half that number survived the destruction wrought by World War II and by the earthquake that occurred in Greece in 1953.

71. For more on Greek opera, in general, and on the Greek opera composers cited, in particular, see The New Grove Dictionary of Opera.

72. This possibility is suggested by George Leotsakos. S. v. “Samaras” in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, 4:156–57.

73. Lavrangas wrote two other operas: Ena paramythi (A Fairy Tale), completed in 1930 but never staged, and Fakanapas, a two-act comic opera that eventually was staged in Athens in 1950.

74. Reeser, Een eeuw Nederlandse muziek [1815–1915]; Bottenheim, De opera in Nederland; Dresden, Het muziekleven in Nederland sinds 1880.

75. For a historical overview of music in Belgium up to the mid-twentieth century, see Clossen and Van den Borren, eds., La Musique en Belgique; Wangermée, La Musique belge contemporaine; and Van den Borren, Geschiedenis van de muziek in de Nederlanden. See also F. Blockx, Jan Blockx.

77. Although this pasticcio contains some of Sarti’s arias, the extent of Sarti’s involvement in creating Gram og Signe is not known.

78. Most of the operas by Sarti that were staged in Copenhagen were set to librettos by Metastasio.

80. Baler’s Death, based on Norse mythology, makes use of an off-stage chorus and a backstage chamber orchestra (in addition to the pit orchestra) and includes some fine arias, ensembles, and choruses. The Fishermen, set in a peasant village, includes many simple songs suggestive of Danish folk material.

83. See Lindström, “Vårt första nationalla Sångspel.” Stenborg was a well-known singer who had leading roles in theatrical works staged in Stockholm; among these works were Handel’s Acis and Galatea, Uttini’s Thetis och Pelée, and Gluck’s Orfeo. Stenborg also composed music for nine stage works, most of them parodies of operas in the Stockholm repertoire. For example, he provided the music for Caspar och Dorothea, a three-act parody of Handel’s Acis and Galatea.

84. See Tegen,” Thetis och Pelée: An Opera’s Successive Transformations. “The 1773 score was revised for a production in 1791 to the extent that all semblance of the original has been distorted.

85. For a catalog of his works, see Boer, Joseph Martin Kraus (1756–1792): A Systematic Thematic Catalogue of His Musical Works and Source Study. See also Engländer, Joseph Martin Kraus und die Gustavianische Oper.

86. For more on Naumann, see chapter thirteen. See also essays by Åstrand and Schyberg.

88. Salmenhaara, “Birth of a National and Musical Culture in Finland,” 25. The first opera performed by Finns in their homeland was Weber’s Der Freischütz at Viipuri (now Vyborg) in 1829.

89. This was the first opera composed in Finland, but the text of the opera was Swedish, the native language of the librettist. See Aho et al., Finnish Music, 28.

90. Granberg, introductory essay to the 1991 Finlandia CD recording of Kung Carls Jakt, 11. See also Djupsjöbacka,” The Hunt of King Charles—a Finnish Monument.”

91. Finland was a province of Sweden from the Middle Ages until 1809, when, as the spoils of war, it became a Grand Duchy of Russia. Not until the end of World War I did Finland gain its independence.

93. An example of an opera staged by one of these touring companies is Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore.

94. The choice of Leonora for the heroine’s name was perhaps intentionally done to signal a parallel that exists between her role and that of Leonora in Fidelio.

95. Shergold, A History of the Spanish Stage; Martín Moreno, Historia de la musica española.

96. Examples of the music may be found in Asenjo y Barbieri, Cancionero musical. See also Subirá, La participación musical; Livermore, “The Spanish Dramatists”; Beau, “Die Musik im Werk des Gil Vicente.”

98. Cotarelo y Mori, Historia de la zarzuela; Sage, “Nouvelles lumières sur la genèse de l’opéra”; Muñoz, Historia de la zarzuela y el género chico.

100. Act I came to light in 1933, followed by the discovery of a skeleton score of the opera (for voice and unfigured bass) in 1942. A production based on a modern edition took place at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires in 1982. Since then, other productions have taken place in Madrid. See the edition by Subirá. See also Ursprung,” Celos“; Pitts, “Don Juan Hidalgo”; Stein, Songs of Mortals, Dialogues of the Gods: Music and Theatre in Seventeenth-Century Spain.

101. Some categorize Celos aun del aire matan as a zarzuela, and indeed a clear differentiation between the terms “opera” and “zarzuela” was not observed during the seventeenth century. For example, Calderón’s La púrpura de la rosa (1660) was initially called an opera but later, when printed, was designated a “fiesta de la Zarzuela.” For a discussion of the terminology, see Bussey, French and Italian Influence on the Zarzuela, 1700–1770, chap. 1.

102. Bussey, French and Italian Influence on the Zarzuela, 1700–1770, chap. 2.

103. Cotarelo y Mori, Orígenes; Carmena y Millán, Crónica de la ópera italiana; Virella Cassañes, La ópera en Barcelona.

105. Cotarelo y Mori, ed., Colección de entremeses. The form was also known as a sainete.

106. The chief study of the tonadilla is Subirá’s La tonadilla escénica, which contains many musical examples. Further examples may be found in the same author’s Tonadillas teatrales inéditas and Los maestros de la tonndilla escénica. See also Pedrell, Cancionero musical, vol. 4, for a modern edition.

107. Antonio Guerrero (c. 1710–76) is the first to be credited with incorporating tonadillas in his plays.

108. For studies of early Spanish opera, see Soriano Fuertes, Historia de la música española; Mitjana y Gordón, “La Musique en Espagne” (with many musical examples), in Lavignac, Encyclopédie, 4:2003–257; idem, Histoire du développement du théâtre; Pedrell, Teatro lírico español (many musical examples); Subirá, Historia de la música teatral en España; Chase, The Music of Spain.

109. See Olmedilla, El maestro Barbieri y su tiempo; Chase, “Barbieri and the Spanish zarzuela.” Barbieri also composed works that blended the style of the opéra comique with vaudeville, as in his one-act intermezzo, El niño (1859) and in his full-length opéra bouffe Robinsón (1870).

111. This was one of the earliest zarzuelas to be performed in non-Spanish speaking cities, such as Vienna, London, and Paris.

113. See Pedrell, Jornadas postreras (autobiography); Subirá, “Felipe Pedrell”; studies by Tebaldini, Curzon, and Istel.

114. Two of his comedies, Eda (1884) and Little Carmen (in English), were commissioned for performances in New York City.

115. Pedrell was so anxious to have this trilogy understood that he wrote a book, Por nuestra música, to explain the opera. The prologue received its initial performance in 1897 in Venice.

116. On Albéniz and his opera Pepita Jiménez, see studies by Clark; on Granados, see studies by Boladeres Ibern, and Larrad.

117. For a history of the zarzuela and its eventual impact on the American stage, see Sturman, Zarzuela, Spanish Operetta, American Stage.

118. See Theatro comico portuguez; Brito, Opera in Portugal in the Eighteenth Century; Brito and Cranmer, Crónicas da vida musical portuguesa; Chase, “The Music of Portugal,” in his The Music of Spain (chap. 28); Vieira, Diccionario biographico de musicos portuguezes; Fonseco Benevides, O real theatro de S. Carlos de Lisboa.

119. Chase, A Guide to the Music of Latin America; Béhague, Music in Latin America (with annotated bibliography); Kuss, Latin American Music: An Annotated Bibliography; Stevenson, Music in Mexico; idem, The Music of Peru; Fiorda Kelly, Cronología de las óperas; Acquarone, História da música brasileira; Corrêa de Azevedo, 150 anos de música no Brasil; Sixto Prieto, “El Perú en la música escénica” (with bibliography of scores and librettos of operas, ballets, etc., the subjects of which relate to Peru); Saldívar, História de la música en México. See also Handbook of Latin American Studies; Boletín latino-americano de música; Rivista brasileira de música; Latin American Music Review; Yearbook for Inter-American Musical Research.

120. Another opera based upon the same libretto is Juan Hidalgo’s Celos aun del aire matan (1660), which is discussed above. For a study of La púrpura de la rosa, see Cardona, et al., Pédro Calderón de la Barca.

121. Stevenson, Foundations of New World Opera (includes a facsimile and transcription of the opera).

122. The libretto for the 1711 production was printed in Italian and Spanish; the score for this full-length opera has not survived. For an interesting comparison of early eighteenth-century versions of La Partenope, see Freeman, “The Travels of Partenope,” and Stevenson, “Opera Beginnings in the New World.” See also Baqueiro Fóster, “La música” (part 3), for a survey of opera in Mexico from 1711 to 1960.

123. The composer’s full name is José Maurício Nunes Garcia, but in Brazil he uses the surname Maurício.

124. Kaufman, “Antonio Carlos Gomes.” Rivista brasileira de música published a special issue (1936) dedicated to Carlos Gomes.

125. See Stevenson, Music in Mexico, chap. 4; Barros Sierra, “Tata Vasco y su partitura.”

127. For example, productions were staged at New York and Philadelphia in 1844, at Madrid in 1845, and at Vienna in 1846.

128. The Bohemian Girl underwent a number of revisions and transformations. They include the Italian version entitled La zingara, with recitatives replacing the spoken dialogue; La zingara was presented at Her Majesty’s Theatre at London in 1858, and a French version entitled La Bohémienne, with a new text by Saint-Georges, at Paris in 1869.

130. See Dunhill, Sullivan’s Comic Operas; Godwin, Gilbert & Sullivan: A Critical Appreciation of the Savoy Operas; Wren, A Most Ingenious Paradox: The Art of Gilbert and Sullivan; White, The History of English Opera.

134. General works include The New Grove Dictionary of American Music; Ritter, Music in America; Hipsher, American Opera; Krehbiel, Chapters of Opera; Howard, Our American Music; Dizikes, Opera in America; Ewen, Complete Book of the American Musical Theater; Hamm, Music in the New World; Hitchcock, Music in the United States. See also Virga, The American Opera to 1790; Sonneck, Early Concert Life in America; idem, Early Opera in America; Wegelin, Early American Plays; idem, Micah Hawkins; Mates, The American Musical Stage before 1800. For regionally specialized studies, see Carson; Davis; Gagey; Mattfeld; and Moore.

135. Many of these English comic operas crossed the Atlantic a few years after their initial productions. For example, Arne’s Love in the Village had its London premiere in 1762 and by 1768 it had become part of the regular repertoire in America.

136. Among the masques was Henry Lawes’s Comus (1630), presented at the Southwork Theater in Philadelphia in 1770. Another setting of Milton’s Comus, this one by Thomas Arne dating from 1738, had its first American production at New York in 1848.

138. Hopkinson’s America Independent; or, the Temple of Minerva (1781), an “oratorical entertainment,” does have continuous music, but there is some question as to whether or not the work was intended for the stage. All that is known is that The Temple of Minerva was performed for the French minister, before a group of invited guests that included George and Martha Washington.

139. For the music of The Enterprise, see Schleifer, ed., American Opera and Music for the Stage.

140. Tammany (New York, 1794), with music by Hewitt, and The Aethiop (Philadelphia 1814), with music by Taylor, were also highly acclaimed productions.

142. For a study of traveling opera troupes in the United States, see Preston, Opera on the Road.

143. For a study of opera in English in nineteenth-century New York, see Ahlquist, Democracy at the Opera: Music, Theater, and Culture in New York City, 1815–60.

144. See Da Ponte, Storia incredible ma vera, in which he discusses the history of an Italian opera company brought to America by Giacomo Montresor in August 1832.

145. “Our Weekly Gossip,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (February 16, 1861), 195.

146. “Our Weekly Gossip: The President at the Academy of Music,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspa per (March 2, 1861), 227, col. 1. As the curtain fell at the end of the first act, there was great applause and shouts of “Lincoln! Lincoln!” The curtain then rose to reveal all the performing artists and chorus of the academy; they led the audience in the singing of the national anthem, as a huge flag was unfurled from the proscenium. Lincoln reportedly departed the theater before the conclusion of the third act of the opera and therefore did not witness the assassination of the protagonist, a ruler. The coincidence of this opera’s tragic ending with Lincoln’s own death a short time later did not go unnoticed by the public.

147. Fry was a music critic for the New York Tribune, and in this capacity wrote about the production of Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera cited above. See Upton, William Henry Fry: American Journalist and Composer-Critic; E. Smith, “William Henry Fry’s Leonora.”

148. Longyear and Longyear, “Henry Gilbert’s Unfinished Uncle Remus Opera.”

149. Walter Damrosch was the son of the conductor Leopold Damrosch, who introduced German-language opera to the Metropolitan Opera, beginning with the 1884–85 season and continuing, with great acclaim, for another seven seasons. Included in his productions were the first performances at the Metropolitan of many of Wagner’s operas.

150. An abridged concert version with orchestral accompaniment was performed in 1907, one year after the composer’s death. A vocal score of Azara was published in 1901 and a full orchestral score, in 1908.

151. For the music of Robin Hood, see Schleifer, ed., American Opera and Music for the Stage.

152. This operetta’s title was originally The Glassblowers, but later renamed The American Maid (or Girl).

153. Quoted in Bordman, American Operetta, 59. See also Bierley, The Works of John Philip Sousa.