OPERA AND DRAMA: DIFFERING VIEWS

…there is a long tradition associating opera with the

marvellous… it is clear that the composer, or his librettist,

must be able to condense…

This heightened style and its subsequent audience is discussed by Joseph Kerman in Opera as Drama, who compares the style of opera to its worth and subjectivity. Kerman recognises that ‘no distinction is drawn publicly between works like Orfeo and The Magic Flute’, describing opera as a huge umbrella with seemingly no sub-categories.

In Kerman’s book he discuses how the opera (or the musical aspect) plays to the drama on the stage – the music is used to develop and enhance the drama. This is demonstrated in the musical example shown on page 8 where the music reflects the agony of Desdemona. Tippett also has a similar view on the relationship between the music and the drama, stating that: ‘in opera the musical schemes are always dictated by the situations’

Although opera has been established as a marvellous and a heightened format of entertainment, Tippet later discusses the smaller, ‘little moments’ and the need for simplicity in order to engage the audience. This is seen in the naming of the characters of his opera, The Midsummer Marriage, where names such as Jack and Bella contrast against a more Americanized King Fisher. In this instance, the drama contrasts the opera as simple contrasts against the complexity of the score. Kerman comments upon this analysis of opera as drama and opera as a musical piece of entertainment, writing…

                        More popular writers on music eschew, indeed scorn,

any close analytic approach to opera. Having no dogma

and no intractable mass of detail, they lose the work of

art in other ways.

Although scholars, composers and music writers alike would argue the case of opera as drama, it seems there is no right or wrong answer. It is certain that opera could not function without drama, however, the necessity for combining these two genres for purposes of analysis seems somewhat contrived.

Bibliography

• Donington, Robert. ‘Part One: Principles’, in Opera and its Symbols: the unity of words, music and staging (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990)
• Kerman, Joseph. ‘Prologue’, in Opera as Drama (New York: Vintage Books, 1956; repr. London: Faber and Faber, 1989)
• Sutcliffe, Tom. ‘Believing in Opera’, in Believing in Opera (London: Faber and Faber, 1996)
• Tippet, Michael. ‘The birth of an opera’, in Meirion Bowen (ed.), Tippett on Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)