The Birth of an Opera

November 26, 2012
Drawing on letters, memoirs, and personal accounts by composers, librettists, performers, and producers, music historian Rose (Berlioz Remembered) allows these primary sources to chronicle the contexts, controversies, failures, and triumphs of 15 popular operas. Far from a staid history of opera, Rose's reflectionsâwhich originated over 50 years ago as a series of radio programs on the BBCâillustrate the human forces, including the contention between composers and librettists and the contention between audience and actors, that comprise the backgrounds of these operas. For example, in Monteverdi's 17th century L'incoronazione di Poppea, the librettist Busenello, recognizing opera as entertainment for the middle-classes rather than simply a spectacle performed solely for the king and his court, "wove into the historical core of his drama the popular elements that Venetian audiences demanded." Rose observes that Monteverdi's opera is the first opera in which composer and librettist "create a musical drama in which human ambition, human instincts, and human frailty are allowed to run their natural course to an end that accepts, for good or ill, the overwhelming power of Love." Bizet's Carmen was a disaster, Rose says, for hostile audiences found the music completely void of melody. Rose's entertaining book reveals new aspects of favorite operas for opera buffs and provides a nice introduction to opera for new listeners.

December 15, 2012
Full-scale portrait of an art form compiled from thumbnail sketches across four centuries. This close-up approach turns out to be an excellent way to spotlight key moments in the history of opera, although music writer Rose (Berlioz Remembered, 2001, etc.) modestly aspires only "to re-create as nearly as possible the circumstances in which fifteen individual masterpieces have been put together." Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea, created in the early days of a new genre, "achieved for the first time in history the fusion of drama, text and music that was always to be at the heart of opera." Gluck's Alceste restored the balance in that fusion by taming the vocal excesses of Italian opera, paving the way for later masterpieces like Berlioz's Les Troyens. The radical harmonic and thematic structure of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde "led progressively but inexorably" to Schoenberg's atonalism and to challenging 20th-century works like Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande. The personal stories are marvelous: music publisher Giulio Ricordi scheming to put together an aging, cranky Verdi with Young Turk Arrigo Boito to create Otello; the horrified manager in Paris, confronted with Bizet's groundbreaking Carmen, declaring, "Death at the Opera-Comique!...such a thing has never happened...do you hear, never!" When Rose writes, "There is no more human opera than The Marriage of Figaro," he is identifying the characteristic that for him defines opera even more than great orchestrations or spectacular vocalizing: the creation of great characters whose inner lives and connections to our common emotions are made palpable in music. Based on a series of radio programs that originally aired on the BBC, these renderings let us hear the unmediated voices of the composers, librettists and others by drawing on letters, memoirs and other primary documents to bring to vivid life the process of making art. Intelligent and entertaining--a treat for opera aficionados and newcomers alike.

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February 15, 2013

Rose (Berlioz Remembered) draws from a series of BBC radio programs he co-created with Hanns Hammelmann, which aired from 1955 to 1971 and focused on the genesis of 15 operas from the 17th to the 20th centuries. He excerpts contemporary sources such as letters from composers to librettists, as well as the views of conductors, opera house managers, critics, and other luminaries, while filling in the historical context. Many of the operas chosen are milestones in the genre such as Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, and while certain choices might surprise the reader (Wolfgang Mozart's Idomeneo?), the supporting documentation shows why they are all of interest. Accompanying engravings and photographs are illuminating and the bibliography is a useful blend of historic and recent titles. Unfortunately, musical examples are absent--these would have enhanced the work. VERDICT While the book's origins in radio means it flows like a traditional history, it still provides readers with fascinating background on the operas included and the creative processes behind them. A worthy complement to such earlier books as Thomas Kelly's First Nights at the Opera.--Barry Zaslow, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, Ohio

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2013
Rose's preeminently browsable book revives a concept first essayed in a series of BBC broadcasts. Each piece in the book follows a classic opera from inspiration to opening night (in the case of Fidelio, nights; it doesn't have four overtures by accident). Generally, a composer casts about for a vehicle to adapt, a librettist gives him one and starts versifying it, a theater is persuaded to produce the finished product (if the composer has proven box-office potency, this step can come first), divas and divos are cast, rehearsals commence, and the curtain rises. Would that it always, or ever, was that straightforward. Rose adapts the form of the broadcasts by casting each chapter as a kind of script, in which the narrative spine is fleshed out by the remarks of composer, librettist, impresario, singers, conductors, critics, and friends as gleaned from letters, memoirs, and other sources. Fifteen works, including two Mozarts, Tristan und Isolde, Carmen, and Turandot, receive this treatment, emerging from it as gloriously as they do in good performances.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)