Opera libretto

At the opening, in 1875, 'Carmen' was considered a fall, which would be forgotten as soon as the scandal caused by the main character’s blatantly libertinism would vanish. But, 136 years after that, 'Carmen' is one of the most staged operas in the repertoire, and also one of the most cited operas in literature, film and even cartoons. For a time it has been the icon of the feminist movement and, also, the icon of South American Revolution.  The value, the reputation and the force of this operatic work comes undoubtedly from the music, but also from the strong fascination awaken in the audience by the main character. Considering this later fact as a dramatic virtue and opera as music in action, in this paper we will seek the changes made by the two librettists, Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy to Mérimée’s novel, by translating in librettist dramatic languages, and how this changes enhance Bizet music.

The studies relative to the translation of musical drama texts such as opera librettos, orators' and lieders texts belong to a research field that has not yet been adequately investigated (Weaver, 2010). Nevertheless, such types of text once translated may become a fundamental tool of extreme importance for opera comprehension and with time, would acquire a new and wider recognition (Vega Cernuda, 2012). Our work is focused on the tango-opera Y Borges cuenta que… (2007) by Luis Bacalov. Firstly, a review of the literature on the musical literary translation will be presented, specifically focusing on the Spanish language. Secondly, some intercultural and linguistic elements pointed out by the translation from Spanish into Italian from the  opera libretto program will be examined. The original text, which gets inspiration from two of Jorge Luis Borges’ works, shows some features which will be analyzed and justified according to the translation.

The article publishes the first "libretto" ever written. That is an unknown manuscript version of "Dafne" by Ottavio Rinuccini, the poet who then wrote "Euridice" (1600) the "opera in musica" staged at the wedding of Maria de' Medici and king Henry IV of France. The article, by analyzing the metric forms, reconsidering the theatrical genre, comparing the inedit text and what remains of its music, and shed new light on the cultural and social context which led to the birth of opera.

Polysemiotische Kommunikation ist per se kein neues Phänomen. Vielmehr stellt der kombinierte Einsatz heterogener semiotischer Ressourcen in allen Bereichen der interpersonalen Kommunikation den Normalfall dar. Auch im ästhetischen Kontext bildet die Polysemiotizität seit jeher die Grundlage für schöpferische Grenzüberschreitungen und sinnlich-ganzheitliche Erfahrungen – und dies tut sie nicht erst seit Wagners Vorstellung des alle großen Einzelkünste umfassenden Gesamtkunstwerks, wie dieser sie ab ca. 1850 in seinen polemisierenden Kunstschriften erörtert hat. Neu ist dagegen die wissenschatliche Ambition, solche Kommunikativen Prozesse vollumfänglich beschreiben zu wollen. Inwiefern eine Relektüre semiotischer ‚Klassiker‘ (Ferdinand de Saussure, Charles S. Peirce, Charles Morris und Karl Bühler) diesem Anliegen entgegenkommt, ist Gegenstand der vorliegenden Studie. Es wird sich im Besonderen der Frage gewidmet, welche Relationen zwischen den Konstituenten eines polysemiotischen Kommunikats bestehen können und was geschieht, wenn dieses Relationsgefüge – etwa im interkulturellen und interlingualen Transfer – notwendigerweise umdisponiert werden muss, um Akzeptanz bei einer neuen Zielrezipientenschaft zu erfahren. Veranschaulicht werden die Implikationen solcher jenseits von Sprach- und Kulturgrenzen ablaufender polysemiotischer Kommunikationsprozesse anhand von Beispielen v. a. aus dem Bereich der Librettoübersetzung.

Staged in February 1669 at the Teatro Colonna in Rome, Alessandro Melani’s L’empio punito is the first opera based on the legend of Don Giovanni. The production took place during the short period of prosperity for opera in Rome, under the pontificate of Giulio Rospigliosi, known as Clement IX. The opera was sponsored by Cardinal Flavio Chigi, Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna, Agostino Chigi, and Cardinal Giacomo Rospigliosi. The libretto was written by Filippo Acciaioli (in collaboration with Giovanni Filippo Apolloni), who, given his experience in the field, probably realized and directed the opera’s complex stage setting. The libretto has certain topoi that do not belong to the Don Giovanni tradition and quotes from earlier literary sources and opera libretti. The language and style both of the libretto and the music highlight the substantial comingling of very different stylistic registers.

"Venere prigioniera", pubblicata da Ricordi nel 1958, è tra le opere più rappresentative dell'ultimo Malipiero. Il breve saggio ne approfondisce il libretto, scritto dal compositore stesso: partendo dalla fonte primaria, il racconto "Giangurgolo" di Emanuel Gonzalès, si indaga il carattere della complessa riscrittura, con riferimenti alla letteratura gotica, francese e tedesca, che la contaminano (Eichendorff, Mérimée). Lo studio presenta anche un'analisi della figura del Conte di Villamediana, nella sua trasfigurazione fantastica.

"Venere prigioniera", published by Ricordi in 1958, is one of the most representative works of the second artistic phase of Malipiero. The short essay explores the libretto, written by the composer himself: starting from the primary source, the short story "Giangurgolo" by Emanuel Gonzalès, the complex rewriting is investigated with references to Gothic, French and German literature, which contaminate it (Eichendorff, Mérimée). The study also presents an analysis of the fantastic transfiguration of the Count of Villamediana.

Errata corrige: nella pagina di apertura (p. 133), si corregga con "[...] il mayoral Zarreguy e il suo accompagnatore attraversano [...]"; nella stessa pagina, si corregga ancora con "[...] Elisabetta di Borbone, moglie di Filippo IV [...]".

Antonín Dvořák composed his last opera after 15 months of searching a new operatic topic. He decided for Jaroslav Vrchlický's libretto Armida from 1888, wchich was written after T. Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered. The genesis of the opera consist of a few compositional phases (first sketches, consistent sketch, full score). On stage wasn't Armida successful. It's first performance in 1904 was embarrassed and for the next performance at the stage of National Theatre in Prague Armida had to wait till 1928. Editional history of the opera includes only the vocal score (1941, 1951), full score still waits for its publication.

Based on Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor, Michael Balfe’s Falstaff, created in 1838 for London’s Italian opera audiences, is the work of an Italian librettist, Manfredo Maggioni, and an Irish composer, a first in a theatre where only Italian maestri were commissioned for new works. Balfe’s and Maggioni’s combined efforts resulted in a truly genuine Italian opera buffa. Not only is it sung in Italian but it also respects the structural codes, vocal and scenic practices which make it recognizable as an opera buffa on the aesthetic stage of the time, and above all on the English stage. The issue of rewriting implies here a reflection on the intimately linked processes of production and reception. Through the study of the libretto and score, its contextualization, as well as contemporary accounts, we will be both concerned with questioning the expectations of Falstaff’s London public and with circumscribing the frontiers of an aesthetic category named “Italian opera”. The term defines itself far from the Italian peninsula at the moment when it comes into contact with non Italian-speaking spectators. As a result of cultural exchanges on the European scale, Falstaff aims both at pleasing Her Majesty’s Theatre’s audiences and, if possible, at gaining international fame as an authentic opera buffa. Yet the opera only obtained a “succès d’estime”, and was never performed again. It nevertheless represents an essential step not only in the works of its composer but in the history of opera in England itself.

"Su una struttura conforme alle convenzioni operistiche italiane, Enea nel Lazio innesta soluzioni drammaturgicamente innovative, organizzate in una forma spettacolare coerente e originale. Il ripensamento di topoi teatrali e letterari alla luce dell'erudizione antiquaria, l'impiego della danza in funzione narrativa, il ruolo di primo piano rivestito dalla scenotecnica, dai movimenti e dalle macchine convergono a dare vita a una drammaturgia incentrata sul primato non della musica né delle parole; bensì dell'azione.
La relazione si propone di illustrare, attraverso il caso emblematico di Enea nel Lazio, gli aspetti visivi in cui si esprime l'esperimento riformista torinese nel secondo Settecento, e come mediante il loro apporto questa si connoti come strumento di affermazione della Corte sabauda e giustificazione del potere regio.

Second opera of Turin's Teatro Regio 1760 carnival season, Tommaso Traetta's Enea nel Lazio,
composed on a libretto by Vittorio Amedeo Cigna, represents a significant moment among the
several attempts of operatic reform occurred during the second half of the eighteenth century.
In a structure consistent with the Italian opera seria conventions, Enea nel Lazio introduces
elements of an innovative dramaturgy, organized in a coherent and original form. The
reformulation of theatrical and literary topoi through the filter of antiquarian erudition, the narrative
use of dance, the role played by scenography, staging and machinery converge to define a drama
based on the primacy not of the music or the word, but of the action.
The report aims to illustrate, through the emblematic case of Enea nel Lazio, the visual aspects
of Turin's Teatro Regio reformed operas, and their use as an instrument of affirmation of the Court
and justification of the royal power.
"

At the beginning of the Twentieth Century the Italian philologist Ettore Romagnoli popularised ancient classical culture through his work as translator and director of performances of Greek and Roman dramas. In his plays he attempted to reproduce the unity of the arts that belonged to the mousikē technē and to achieve a modern recreation of ancient sounds and rhythms. The paper aims to analyse the translation of Euripides’ 'Bacchae' by Romagnoli (1912), comparing it with his studies on Greek music and tragedy and with operas. On the one hand, Romagnoli’s translation in Italian verses is based on the musicological theories about the close relationship between music and metrics in ancient Greek poetry; on the other, the adoption of operatic language to translate specific lines of Euripides’ drama is probably oriented to the Italian audience, which would have recognised conventional expressions from the libretti or from famous arias.

This research has been aimed at preparing a critical edition of the libretto of “San Bonifatio” (1638), one of the hagiographical opera written by Giulio Rospigliosi (1600-1669) and staged at the papal court of Urban VIII Barberini. Preliminary based on a selection among the surviving manuscript witnesses—and in anticipation of a monograph which will include the integral collation of all the sources—the text’s philological study has been followed by a critical analysis. The libretto has been explored for how it was the ‘sounding board’ for other works, topoi and literary models, that layered and settled on the theatrical culture of Baroque Rome. Subsequently, the text has been contextualised and analysed with historiographical categories, tracing in it the ideological elements which can be read as the acme and the vehicle for a specific political design of the Barberini patronage.

Il libretto del mistero "Maria Egiziaca", scritto, nel 1931, dal poeta romano Claudio Guastalla per Ottorino Respighi, è un'originale ricostruzione del racconto della santa di Alessandria d'Egitto, contenuto ne "Le vite dei Santi Padri" di Fra' Domenico Cavalca. Piccolo capolavoro del 'falso antico', ispirato alla ricerca letteraria di Gabriele D'Annunzio, "Maria Egiziaca" presenta brani narrativi non contenuti nel testo originale, risalenti a tradizioni agiografiche parallele e rintracciabili in precedenti commedie barocche. I testi delle arie sono costruiti con interpolazioni di Rinaldo d'Aquino e di inni sacri latini. La messa in scena, ideata dallo stesso Guastalla e realizzata da Nicola Alexandrovich Benois, recupera la tradizione del mistero medievale, ma si riallaccia anche alle sperimentazioni di Léon Bakst per "Le martyre de Saint Sébastien" di Claude Debussy. Il saggio analizza nel dettaglio la costruzione musicale del dramma, evidenziando la ricerca dell'equilibrio tra sonorità tradizionali e di avanguardia: la sintesi stilistica che caratterizza l'ultima fase della creatività lirica e teatrale di Respighi trova, in "Maria Egiziaca", un perfetto equilibrio tra ispirazione e forma, in memoria di mondi musicali lontani ed eterogenei tra loro. Idee barocche, sonorità novecentesche e rimandi modali dialogano con assoluta disinvoltura, fondendosi nello stile espressivo originale e personale dell'autore.

The libretto of the «miracle play» "Maria Egiziaca", conceived by the Roman poet Claudio Guastalla for Ottorino Respighi in 1931, is an original reconstruction of the account of the saint of Alessandria of Egypt, contained in "Le vite dei Santi Padri" by Fra' Domenico Cavalca. A small masterpiece of ‘falso antico’, inspired by the literary research of Gabriele D'Annunzio, "Maria Egiziaca" presents narrative passages not contained in the original text, sourced by Cavalca, dating back to parallel hagiographic traditions and traceable in previous baroque plays. The texts of the arias are built with interpolations of Rinaldo d’Aquino and sacred Latin hymns. The mise-en-scène, inspired by Guastalla himself and realised by Nicola Alexandrovich Benois, recovers the tradition of the medieval mystery but it also reconnects to more recent experiments by Léon Bakst for "Le martyre de Saint Sébastien" by Claude Debussy. The essay analyses in detail the musical construction of the drama, highlighting the research of the balance between traditional and Avant-Garde sounds: the stylistic synthesis that characterises the last phase of Respighi’s lyrical and theatrical creativity finds, in "Maria Egiziaca", a perfect balance between inspiration and form, in memory of musical worlds that are distant and heterogeneous from each other. Baroque ideas, 20th-century sounds, and modal references, converse with each other with absolute ease, coalescing into Respighi’s original and personal expressive style.

Η παρούσα μελέτη κάνει μια διακειμενική και συγκριτισμική ανάλυση στο παραμυθόδραμα του 18ου του Γάρλο Γκότσι, στις πηγές του,  και στη σύγχρονη διασκευή του σε λιμπρέτο για όπερα από τον Πάολο Μποζίζιο. Κατατίθενται ιστορικά στοιχεία και η εργασία έχει ως βάση της, τη δραματουργική και μουσικολογική προσέγγιση των έργων και των εννοιών.