Shakespeare in Opera

Opera, ki jo je navdihnil Shakespeare

Počasnejši utrip opernih zapletov - rezultat petja dialoga in prekinitve akcije z arijami - nalaga poenostavitev. Skladatelji so se zato spopadli z nalogo, da zapolni vrzeli v večini Shakespearovih libretov. Njihova težava je, da, kot je poudaril WH Auden, v nasprotju z igrami, opere ne morejo preprosto predstaviti likov, ki so "potencialno dobri in slabi." Vendar ima opera še druge prednosti: glasba govori neposredno na čustva, njena sredstva pa se širijo z ansambelskim petjem in podporo orkestra. Tako omogočeno sočasno izražanje različnih idej in občutkov je bilo najprej v celoti uveljavljeno v Shakespearovi operi v Verdijevem Otellu (1887) in Falstaffu (1893), sestavljeni, ko je operna oblika dosegla svojo polno zrelost, tik pred glasbenimi revolucijami Richarda Straussa,Arnold Schoenberg in Igor Stravinski.

Prvi in ​​dokončni poskus izzivanja Rossinijevega dela je Otello edina Shakespearova opera, ki ustvari enak kritični odziv kot izvirnik, vključno s prepisom GB Shawa, da "namesto da je Otello italijanska opera napisana v slogu Shakespearea, je Othello igra napisal Shakespeare v slogu italijanske opere. " Verdijev libretist Arrigo Boito, skladatelj po svoje, je zavzel nasprotno stališče do Rossinijevega libretista in postavil celotno opero na Cipru. Sploh je opustil spopad med zaljubljencema in Desdemonovim očetom v Doževi palači, ki je zasedla toliko prejšnje opere. Namesto tega je Othellovo zgodbo o navijanju Desdemona prenesel v razširjen ljubezenski duet, enega najlepših v opernem kanonu. Jago (Iago), vse treme in kromatizem,izpoveduje njegov "Credo" - del v skladu s fascinacijo iz 19. stoletja z mefistofelskimi liki (Boito je sam napisal opero z imenom Mefistofele) - ki se zaključi z nihilistično črto "la morte è il nulla" ("smrt je ničesar"). Odkrito je po nekaterih Iagovih kvizističnih izjavah in "nepomembni malignosti", a vsekakor izstopa izven elizabetanskih konceptov in predstavlja izrazit zrak 19. stoletja. Propadanje Otellovega junaškega stasa, ki je bilo ugotovljeno v njegovi ariasti vhodni ariji (»Esultate«), je prikazano s postopnim prisvajanjem Jagovega sloga in izkrivljanjem Desdemona liričnih stavkov. V tradiciji italijanske opere Otello vključuje »državno sceno« z velikim finalom, v katerem omamljeni gledalci komentirajo strasti, ki nasprotujejo glavnim junakom, vendar, tako kot Rossinijevo zadnje dejanje,Verdijeva višina preprostosti in čustvenosti dosega za razliko od vsake opere, ki je bila prej. Pesma vrbe Desdemona, ki ji sledi Molitev, postane močno zatišje pred nevihtnim odpovedovanjem. Otello, ki so ga pogosto primerjali z Wagnerjevim Tristanom, umre zaradi prekinjene besede bacio (poljub), v vrtoglavem spominjanju na temo, razvito v prejšnjem ljubezenskem duetu.

The plot of Verdi’s Falstaff tightens The Merry Wives of Windsor while integrating elements from the Henry IV plays—such as Falstaff’s well-known speech on honour—which give more depth to the main character. Verdi was thus able to develop in parallel the comedy involving Falstaff and his acolytes on one side and Mistress Quickly and her friends on the other, as well as the darker undertones of the scenes involving the jealous Ford, and the lyrical development of the love-interest of Fenton and Nannetta. The final fugue, “Tutto nel mondo è burla,” is loosely based on the “Seven Ages of Man” speech from As You Like It (“all the world’s a stage” becomes “all the world’s a joke”). It celebrates against all evidence the victory of the “fat knight,” who both invokes and provokes the liberating force of laughter. Like Otello, Falstaff moves imperceptibly from aria to duet or ensemble, unhampered by recitative, as if Shakespearean inspiration had helped the old master to free himself from the conventions on which he had thrived.

Credited with being the only successful setting of Shakespeare’s words, Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1960) shares a nostalgia for Elizabethan England with two earlier, Falstaff-inspired works: Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Sir John in Love (1929) and Gustav Holst’s At the Boar’s Head (1925). Both of these integrate “old English melodies,” while Frederick Delius’s A Village Romeo and Juliet (1900–01) transposes the mythical “star-crossed lovers” into a supposedly more realistic context.

Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the work of a mature opera composer who was able to devise the libretto himself, with the help of Peter Pears (who sang the part of Lysander), trimming the play without altering the text and making bold choices in the musical treatment of the characters. Opening in the woods with the fairies, in a musical atmosphere akin to that of Ravel’s L’Enfant et les sortilèges, Britten takes his audience without mediation into the world of the supernatural, where misrule and desire are given free rein. Britten’s fascination with the alternation and occasional interaction between three groups of very different characters provides the key to the opera: the fairies seem to embody nostalgia, sung as they are by boys accompanied by harps and percussion, while the role of Oberon is devolved to a countertenor, Titania to a coloratura—perhaps a subtle reference to Mozart’s Queen of the Night (in Die Zauberflöte [The Magic Flute]). It is interesting to note that the part of Oberon was written for Alfred Deller, the performer who played an essential part in the rediscovery of the countertenor tessitura and the popularization of the Elizabethan repertoire. Puck, the mediator between the three worlds of court, country, and supernatural and between the stage world and the audience, is a spoken role usually devolved to a teenager. The roles of the lovers, on the other hand, are characterized by an absence of arias or set pieces, making them hard to tell apart, following Shakespeare’s deliberately confusing design but also in the spirit of the first acts of Mozart’s Così fan tutte. Finally, the Mechanicals, whom Britten called the Rustics, provide the composer with a delightful opportunity for parody, underlined by the use of brass and bassoon. The opera ends with marriage and reconciliation at the court of Theseus and Hippolyta, but the musical climax is the love scene between Titania and Bottom, at the very heart of the piece. The gradual blending of two radically opposed musical styles into the most exquisitely lyrical language can be deciphered as a musical interpretation of Victor Hugo’s Shakespeare-inspired theory that the sublime is often born of the grotesque.

Eminent recent European adaptations include Aribert Reimann’s Lear (1978), based on an extraordinarily austere rendering of Shakespeare’s hitherto unadapted play, and Luciano Berio’s Un re in ascolto (1984; A King Listens), a reflection on creation and the complex workings of memory that is based on The Tempest. The French composer Pascal Dusapin’s Roméo et Juliette (1988) is a metatheatrical opera built around a rehearsal of Shakespeare’s play. Wintermärchen (1999) by the Belgian composer Philippe Boesmans (born 1936) is an adaptation in German of The Winter’s Tale, a kaleidoscopic work that develops the game of contrasts provided by the Shakespearean plot. One great originality of the new version of The Tempest by Thomas Adès (born 1971), first performed at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in 2004, resides in its libretto by Meredith Oakes, a completely rewritten text following the original plot but allowing an English-speaking composer to benefit from the same distance as Continental musicians working with translations. Adès adopts an eminently lyrical and introspective approach, with a gentle Caliban who seems to be Prospero’s doppelgänger. The opera, which in 2005 won an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera, is notable for the instrumental treatment of the part of Ariel, whose coloratura vocalizing contributes to create the supernatural atmosphere that underscores the whole piece.

More than 200 operas based on Shakespeare’s plays have been written since 1945, but very few of them have remained in repertory. Coming a few years after Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate (1948; a lighthearted version of The Taming of the Shrew), Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story (1957) was a landmark at the frontier between musical and opera that transposed the story of Romeo and Juliet to a mid-20th-century New York torn apart by rival gangs, but it circumvented many key elements of the Shakespearean original, most notably Juliet’s suicide.