Understanding Italian Opera

Opera is often regarded as the pinnacle of high art. A "Western" genre with global reach, it is where music and drama come together in unique ways, supported by stellar singers and spectacular scenic effects. Yet it is also patently absurd -- why should anyone break into song on the dramatic stage? -- and shrouded in mystique. In this engaging and entertaining guide, renowned music scholar Tim Carter unravels its many layers to offer a thorough introduction to Italian opera from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. Eschewing the technical musical detail that all too often dominates writing on opera, Carter begins instead where the composers themselves did: with the text. Walking readers through the relationship between music and poetry that lies at the heart of any opera, Carter then offers explorations of five of the most enduring and emblematic Italian operas: Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppea; Handel's Julius Caesar in Egypt; Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro; Verdi's Rigoletto; and Puccini's La Boheme. Shedding light on the creative collusions and collisions involved in bringing opera to the stage, the various, and varying, demands of the text and music, and the nature of its musical drama, Carter also shows how Italian opera has developed over the course of music history. Complete with synopses, cast lists, and suggested further reading for each work discussed, Understanding Italian Opera is a must-read for anyone with an interest in and love for this glorious art.

Tim Carter is David G. Frey Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He has published widely on music in late Renaissance and early Baroque Italy, Mozart's operas, and American musical theater in the 1930s and '40s. Previously on faculty at Royal Holloway, University of London, he frequently gives pre-performance lectures, and conducts adult-education workshops on opera in both the US and the UK.

Preface
1: What is Opera?
Some definitions
In praise of librettists
Italian versification
Poetic structures and musical consequences
Two examples from Mozart
An "exotic and irrational entertainment"?
2: Giovanni Francesco Busenello and Claudio Monteverdi,
L'incoronazione di Poppea (Venice, 1643)
Monteverdi in Venice
The first operas
"But here the matter is represented differently"
"Speaking" and "singing"
Seductive Poppea
Seneca's death
Ottavia in exile
Ecstasies of love
3: Nicola Francesco Haym and George Frideric Handel,
Giulio Cesare in Egitto (London, 1724)
Arcadian reforms
Adapting Bussani
Recitatives and arias
Some alternatives
"Fly, my heart, to the sweet enchantment"
Taming Cleopatra
Cesare returns
All's well...
4: Lorenzo da Ponte and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,
Le nozze di Figaro (Vienna, 1786)
... these Italian gentlemen are very civil to your face
Translating Beaumarchais
Aria forms
A duet, a trio, and a sextet
Finales
Readings and messages
5: Francesco Maria Piave and Giuseppe Verdi,
Rigoletto (Venice, 1851)
"Le Roi s'amuse"
Cantabiles and cabalettas
Duets
Arias and monologues
A quartet ... a storm ... and a death
6: Giuseppe Giacosa, Luigi Illica, and Giacomo Puccini,
La Bohème (Turin, 1896)
Bohemian rhapsodies
A publisher, two librettists, and a rival
A missing act
Verse and music
Formless forms?
Operatic realisms
Mimì dies
7: Afterthoughts