Today is Mozart's birthday and Verdi's deathday, so hows about we celebrate them a bit?
Mozart and Verdi, along with Puccini, form opera's Big Three composers. Verdi and Puccini, along with Rossini, form the big three Italian opera composers, and Rossini joins with Donizetti and Bellini to make the Bel Canto triumvirate. Puccini, meanwhile, goes verismo with Mascagni and Leoncavello, each of whose most famous work relies on a double bill with the other's most famous work. But I've strayed too far.
The Big Three trend continues, as each Mozart, Verdi, and Puccini have a big three set of operas, plus one more, written near the end of their careers, that are among the world's most popular. Of those twelve operas, you can pretty much guarantee that at least one of them will feature in any opera season. (Puccini's also got a little three in Il Trittico, but that's beside the point.)
Mozart's big three are his collaborations with Lorenzo Da Ponte. Le Nozze Di Figaro, Cosi Fan Tutte, and Don Giovanni. They were all written consecutively, so let's go through them in order.
MOZART: BIG THREEItem 1: Le Nozze Di Figaro is indisputably a comedy. It's hilarious, though it drags a bit in Act IV, and is always a crowd pleaser. The plot can be summed up in two words: Hilarity ensues. Highlights include
the whole opening scene,
Cosa Sento,
Non Piu Andrai,
Voi Che Sapete,
Venite Inginocchiatevi, and, of course,
Sull'aria.
Item 2: Don Giovanni is not quite a comedy, and not quite a comedy, but it is quite awesome, featuring one of the
greatest penultimate scenes in all opera. In fact, it's so awesome, that the
actual last scene is sometimes cut because it's such a dramatic letdown after the awesomeness that is the Commendatore scene. Other highlights include
Madamina Il Catologo E Questo(the catalogue aria),
this whole scene with Zerlina and Masetto,
La Ci Darem La Mano,
Fin Ch'han Dal Vino, and every scene with Donna Elvira. Especially in productions that have her storm on stage with a musket. Man that [mezzo] soprano is awesome!
Item 3: Cosi Fan Tutte is another comedy, but a much weaker one, I think. All three Mozart-Da Ponte collaborations are around three hours long, but Figaro and Giovanni have enough plot to actually fill those three hours. Figaro feels drawn out in Act IV, and Giovanni in the last scene, but Cosi is just drawn out all the way through. Given that it has few characters and even fewer sets, I wouldn't be surprised if Cosi was written on a budget. That said, it's fun, and has some catchy tunes. Also, I love that overture. Cosi gets a lot of flack for being sexist, and while it certainly is, arguments can be made that the men are just as bad as the women, and Despina just as right as Don Alfonso. Also, Despina is indisputably the best character in the piece, and Alfonso's kind of a jerk, so there's that. But if you want to really complain about sexism, just wait for the next item on the list! Cosi doesn't really have any numbers that stand out to me as highlights, but I do have soft spots for
Donne Mie La Fante A Tanti and
In Uomini In Soldati. The first is Guglielmo talking about how horrible women are, and the second is Despina talking about how horrible men are. So I'd say it just about evens out. And all ends happily, so I can't care to complain. Especially after sitting through three hours of delightful nothing.
MOZART'S PLUS ONE: Die Zauberflote, or The Magic Flute, is one of those operas everyone's heard of, along with Carmen and The Barber Of Seville. Go on. Just try to tell me you've never heard of it. Strict definitionists may say it's not technically an opera, but rather, a singspiel, which is like a grand German operetta, not to be confused with regular German operettas, which most major opera companies seem perfectly content producing despite a seemingly unnatural aversion to the works of Arthur Sullivan, but that's another story. Whatever it is, The Magic Flute is awesome, and also rather sexist. I mean, pretty much the only reason Sarastro gives for Tamino not being able to trust the Queen Of The Night is that she's a woman. (Of course, the main argument for being unable to trust Sarastro is that he's a bass, so it goes both ways.) Some people try to paint the Queen Of The Night as a sort of morally ambiguous anti-hero, and therefore a strong female protagonist. I say she's the villain. I don't say this out of sexism, but out of acknowledgement of the fact that she sings
one of the finest villain songs ever penned. You go on and watch that and try to tell me she's the hero. She's the villain, and the best villain among all the Big Twelve operas! The Magic Flute also features
Papageno, who pretty much defines the archetype of comic baritone sidekick. Other highlights include
O Zittre Nicht,
Dies Bildnis (because I need to get Florez on here somehow),
O Isis Und Osiris, and
Pa Pa Pa Pa Pa Pa Pa...Now we come to Verdi. And Verdi's awesome. Because Verdi.
VERDI: BIG THREEItem 1: Rigoletto is a tragedy. Verdi did tragedy. That's not true. He did write two comedies, one at the beginning of his career and a failure, and one at the end of his career, a success. But after his first comedy bombed, Verdi vowed never to compose again. That didn't last long, because when he was shown the libretto of
Nabucco, he mulled over it a while, and little bits of it started sticking out at him, and he wrote the opera, verse by verse, line by line, until it became
awesome. Just to be clear, while Verdi never did write another comedy until
Falstaff, Nabucco isn't a tragedy either. It does end happily, with the villain defeated and the other villain reformed and nobody dead. There just aren't any laughs along the way. Rigoletto, however, is a tragedy, and true to form, gives us
one of the most misleading-sounding villain songs ever. (Just a note, the song is the Duke of Mantua justifying his womanizing. Womanizing which over the course of the opera gets two named characters killed, and probably more before curtain. He's kind of got a Don Giovanni thing going. But man that aria is catchy!) Other highlights include
Questa O Quella (if this opera weren't unfair enough, the villain gets not one, not two, but
three awesome villain arias, one at the beginning of each act),
Caro Nome,
Tutte Le Feste Al Tempio, Si Vendetta (you should know at this point while that I'm not a fan of this Vegas-themed production of the opera, I am a fan of Diana Damrau, hence my linking these videos),
Bella Figlia Dell'amore, and, because none of these scenes really yell tragedy, throw in
the storm scene as well. A duke, a jester, an assassin, you interested yet?
Item 2: Il Trovatore. Not much to say here. It's Verdi. It's a tragedy. It's awesome. It's the source of the
Anvil Chorus. Other highlights include
Tacea La Notte Placida,
D'amor Sull'ali Rosee, and
Di Quella PiraItem 3: La Traviata is much smaller than most of Verdi's other works. No grand historical setting, no schemes for vengeance, no particularly noteworthy tenor arias. It's also one of the most popular operas in the world, and one of the most often performed. I can't say I'm surprised. It's got a small cast, the sets can be fairly simple, and it's awesome. Puccini's La Boheme is notable for being an opera about normal everyday people doing normal everyday things. La Traviata is an upper class La Boheme. The characters are well respected members of society (well, not quite Violetta, but you get the point) who fall subject to love, misunderstanding, and disease. Oh so much disease. Highlights include
Libiamo,
Sempre Libera,
Di Provenza (yes, Germont is a baritone; Domingo's just that awesome) and
Addio Del Passato.
VERDI'S PLUS ONE: Aida is the A of opera. (The B and C are Boheme and Carmen.) This is Verdi at his grandest. Well, not quite, arguments can be made for
Don Carlo and
Macbeth and
Otello, but of his main four, Aida is the grandest by far, with it's full four acts, foreign historical setting, and complete tragedy at the end. Well, not quite. See, we never actually see them die on stage. We only see them being buried alive as the curtain falls. For all we know, the moment the curtain closes, Godzilla comes on stage and rescues them. And that is what I choose to believe. I don't like that so many opera companies try to abridge the show by cutting out the Godzilla scene. I mean, it's a long opera, but nowhere near as long as anything by
Wagner! When I was younger, my parents took my sister and I to see Aida on the understanding that we'd probably only stick around for the first two acts, since it's so long. But my sister and I enjoyed it so much that we decided to stick around for the whole thing. I remember Act IV very clearly, but Act III, funnily enough, is a total blank. Highlights from Aida include
Gloria All'Egitto,
O Patria Mia (that oboe...), and
Celeste Aida. It doesn't take much listening to know that this is something different. Something big. Something awesome. Aida was toward the point where Verdi starting morphing into what Puccini would eventually become. Verdi was very much a transitional composer. His earlier operas, all the way through La Traviata, are reminiscent of a Bel Canto style. Not so much Rossini, but I can hear the Donizetti in there. But then he got bigger, grander. Then Aida happened, and opera was never the same again. Actually that's not quite true. That's not how transitions in art movements work. I mean, even Macbeth has it's Mozart moments. But you know what I mean.
Outside of the operas, Verdi's most famous for his
Requiem. Mozart also has a
Requiem. Both are famous, and deservedly so.
Mozart didn't actually finish his requiem. He died too soon. Even its most famous movement, the
Lacrimosa he only sketched the first few bars of. It was completed to general satisfaction by Sussmayr. Compared to most of Mozart's other works, it's surprisingly grim and Romantic-sounding. Part of that is probably due to Sussmayr's completing it, but you could hear Mozart getting more Romantic toward the end of his career. Don Giovanni and Die Zauberflote both show shades of it, and the requiem brings it to a head.
Verdi's requiem started as an effort to get all the biggest composers in Italy at the time to write a collaborative requiem commemorating Rossini's death. He wrote the
Libera Me, but the project never really got off the ground. So Verdi took his Libera Me and stuck it in his own requiem. It was critiqued as being too operatic, too dramatic for church music (that Dies Irae...) but then, if you don't want your requiem to be dramatic, don't have Giuseppe lousy' Verdi write it.
Happy birthday to Mozart, and a great nod to Verdi. These two composers altered the face of opera for their time, and both went out with a game-changing requiem.
- but here it goes.
- but here it goes.
I'm such a bubblehead.
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