As I research a program note on selections from Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto, I’m giving some thought to the sea-change in our perception of opera over the years. Consider a modern audience at the Met or the SF Opera or La Scala or just about anywhere: we sit in the dark, maintaining a decorous silence (well, usually) while we pay close attention to every moment of the show going on in front of us. That makes sense given the ticket prices—what is the per-note price for La Bohème, Row H center, at the SF Opera on a Saturday night, anyway?
I saw a Handel opera recently at one of the big houses and again I was impressed how we just sat there and patiently read the supertitles during the recitative scenes, despite the show being about nothing particularly interesting, and the plot so filled with holes that it wouldn’t make a decent Ed Wood film. They didn’t have supertitles in Handel’s day. And despite what folks might think, Handel’s audience in London didn’t understand Italian, and especially not the sung variety with all its vowel-y exaggerations and near-absent consonants. Only the tiniest fraction of Handel’s audience could have followed the story along. Maybe they had a word-book, but then how much attention could they have given to the performance?
Then again, they didn’t have to pay much attention. The plots were drawn from history and familiar mythological subjects. Imagine a big room filled with Roman soldiers. An older man, obviously the commander, stands in the middle of the room. Some folks enter with a rolled-up carpet. They unfurl said carpet and out pops a teenaged girl dolled up like Nefertiti. Now, even allowing that the tony society crowd that made up much of Handel’s audience contained few potential Rhodes scholars, I should think that the classics-heavy education of the era would be sufficient for all of them to recognize Julius Caesar and Cleopatra. To tell the truth they’d probably do better than we would under similar circumstances. Back then folks actually read literature as part of their education, whereas nowadays we just give the kids computers so they can play World of Warcraft and download porn.
But even if they could tell Hannibal from a handsaw, 18th century audiences really didn’t need to be all that familiar with the plot of the opera because they weren’t just sitting there watching it. Opera houses were meeting places and social centers much more than temples to the muses. That’s why every two-bit one-horse town in Italy had one; it wasn’t because the country was full of opera queens.
Wealthier families maintained a box at the local opera house where they tended to park, night after night. Only a few shows were in repertory during a season and so an individual opera might run for two dozen times or so. Take a good look at the layout of an 18th century opera house and you’ll notice that those boxes aren’t designed to provide a good view of the stage—they’re for looking across the way to the other boxes. Italian audiences were notoriously noisy and inattentive, but it takes no great stretch to figure that English audiences weren’t much better. From time to time folks might have paid attention to a particularly famous and/or good singer, or a popular aria, but otherwise they chatted, ate, eavesdropped, gossiped, drank, flirted, etc.
Which explains a lot about opera seria and its endless recitatives. I’m going to speak bluntly here and point out that recitative is utterly boring to just about anybody except a professional singer or the most hardcore opera queen on the planet—and even then, it’s all about the performer and the technique involved, and not the actual recitative. A little recitative goes a very long way, especially when you don’t understand the language (as was the case with Handel’s English audiences.) But seria are absolutely brimful with recitative, endless harpsichord-accompanied gabble about Hercules-this and Artemis-that and I-love-you-that. At least when the arias start up you’ve got the orchestra and the music to keep you busy, even though the text itself descends from minimal intellectual content to absolutely no content at all. I love you, reads the text of one aria. I hate you, reads the text of another. I’m mad at you says the revenge aria. I’m a big mean bastard says the bass/heavy aria. I’m a cute young nymph says the ingenue aria.
I’m not advocating going back to the circus atmosphere of 18th century opera, mind you. We don’t need it any more since we have the family room with the TV running 24/7. That provides more or less the same service as the opera house of yore. But opera wasn’t the only genre that has undergone a sea change during its journey from public entertainment to art.
There’s a great letter from Beethoven to his student Ferdinand Ries concerning a forthcoming piano recital featuring some of Beethoven’s sonatas. Beethoven suggests a mix ‘n’ match approach to his sonatas, taking the first movement from one sonata and the last from another, or perhaps leaving out movements if Ries worries that the audience might not be comfortable with the length or even the content. Such a letter coming from a modern piano teacher to one of his students would probably result in his immediate dismissal from his conservatory position. But there was nothing untoward about such reassembly in Beethoven’s day. Or consider Mozart’s surviving concert programs, with a symphony cut apart and used to bookened a concert, or the finale repeated as a closer. Consider that on-the-spot encores of particularly felicitious movements were common in Mozart’s day, which means that applause between movements was the norm.
Not nowadays, though. What a bunch of stuffed shirts we are. For a forthcoming faculty recital, I have programmed Haydn’s sonata in E-flat Major, H 16:28. It’s a marvelous mid-period Haydn sonata, but it lacks a slow movement. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it as it is, but nonetheless I’m considering borrowing the slow movement from XVI:38—in C Minor and I think perfectly suited for my needs—instead of just going without a slow movement altogether. It’s a sign of the times that, while I think musically it’s a very good idea indeed, I’m wondering just how much backlash will result. Maybe we’ve progressed enough in our understanding of Haydn’s era to recognize a common practice when we hear it.
But no hookers working the parterre during my recital. A boy’s gotta draw the line somewhere.