Opera e-bog

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. All these arguments are justified; only they are not logical - they are not in line 'with the original ideal of opera - the dramatic ideal. Now from time to time reformers have arisen that have brought opera back into line with these ideals, but the fundamental contra diction, the non-logic, cannot be overcome by reform -hence each successive reform represents a com promise with the ideal, and incidentally furnishes a starting point for fresh abuses. The problem was not solved, and, it seems, never will be. It is a problem based on a misunderstanding - a most magnificent ah surdity. Opera, as we know it and enjoy it to-day, dates from the first of these reforms - that of Gluck, at about the middle of the eighteenth century. All that lies before is technical development, groping around, degeneration and the triumph of decadence; a hundred and fifty years of seething activity from which there remains hardly a note. It was the age of the singers' domina tion over the composer. Two distinct species germi nated in this period: the tragic and the comic, opera seria and opera buffa. Florence, Mantua, Venice and Naples had been the seed-ground of the new art; Ger many produced the first great fruits: Gluck in the opera seria, Mozart in the opera buffa. In France, meanwhile, the scenically magnificent French ballet-opera of Lully and Rameau had attained to a monumental glory, while Germany and England were raising native works in close imitation of the Italian model.