Opera: A History in Documents (review)

Opera: A History in Documents follows a plan common to books of its kind. They gather together "readings," comparatively short extracts from a variety of sources that deal with one or another facet of a single broad subject. The excerpts appear in generally chronological order, and the editor, acting as master of ceremonies, introduces each separately. So history is represented in a series of clearly identified verbal snapshots, which offer discrete glimpses of the past.

What makes a successful anthology of this sort comes from the mix of ingredients that the compiler decides on—and here Piero Weiss's talents shine forth. Of course, he cannot avoid certain historic milestones (e.g., Rinuccini, Peri, and Caccini writing on L'Euridice, and Gluck on his search for "a beautiful simplicity" [p. 120]), nor omit the passages that enfold such well-known dicta as Monteverdi's saying that "harmonies imitate [the] very essence" of his characters (p. 25) and Mozart's emphasizing that sometimes operatic music "must forget itself" (p. 131). A number of prominent writers on opera—Dryden, Saint-Évremond, Président de Brosses, Metastasio, Rousseau, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Berlioz, Wagner, Nietzsche, and Brecht—make expected appearances, but occasionally even the high-toned theorizers and generalizers among them are shown getting down to cases, as when Wagner praises Auber's La muette de Portici and Metastasio advises Hasse on the application of recitative. The tact with which Weiss makes his choices is perhaps best seen in the Rousseau entry; Jean-Jacques's philosophizing and polemics alike are left to other anthologists while Weiss offers us some wonderfully entertaining moments from the Confessions.

The richness of this volume can in part be indicated by numbers alone. Fifty-two items are tallied on the contents page, and three "interludes" enlarge the count. In addition, quite a few of the enumerated entries comprise more than one document. A work or its reception can be reported from divergent perspectives (e.g., conflicting reviews of Boris Godunov and a singer's taking issue with Stendhal's remarks on the first performance of Rossini's Barbiere). Similarly, exchanges between composer and librettist are exemplified in the coverage of Verdi's Otello, Puccini's La bohème, Strauss's DerRosenkavalier, and Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress. Now and again a composite entry joins disparate materials. This occurs, for instance, when Shostakovich's businesslike description of his Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk is paired with the official denunciation of that theretofore well-received work. Probably the most jolting change of tone in the volume marks the entry on Stefano Landi's Roman opera Sant'Alessio; there a dignified and fairly detailed summary of the action, a text taken from the contemporary score of 1634, is followed by an eye-witness account of the almost drooling response by "men of the purple" to the "perfectly beautiful" actors, that is, to the "beardless" youths who "played women . . . or angels" (p. 33).

Although the spotlight often falls on the making of individual operas or on incidents surrounding them, room is found, too, for more schematic handling of ideas. The lucid discussions by Pier Jacopo Martello (from 1715, on Italian opera) and Abramo Basevi (from 1859, on Verdi) are rightly welcomed into this compilation. Moreover, several celebrated literary-operatic controversies that involved both men of letters and musicians are given their due; these include the threefold querelles touching French opera in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the clash between the Spectator's essayists (Addison and Steele) and Handelians in London. Seeing the attention given to these disputes, the reader may anticipate a comparable section documenting Meyerbeer's putative merits and demerits. Since Weiss's scholarly sophistication would have had him come up with the choicest commentaries by, say, Heine, Berlioz, and Schumann, the Meyerbeerian wars are missed. Contrariwise, just one presence needs to be questioned; surrounded by all manner of writings on operatic matters, the isolated...