ANGLO-SAXON OPERA? ....... Arthur Butterworth
April 2003
Eighteenth century London society lionised Handel
and Italian opera. With the inevitable change of fashion however,
this declined. All great cities and most towns on the Continent,
especially Italy and Germany, have always boasted an opera house.
In Britain traditions have been different, and even at the present
time with several opera houses and more or less permanent companies
presenting regular performances it can hardly be said that we
have a comparable situation with other countries. There are very
many reasons that have brought this about. To explore them all
is a matter for considerable investigation and research into social,
cultural, religious, economic, and perhaps even political attitudes,
but probably most of all — the most obvious one — how we regard
music itself; what we think its purpose is. There is no lack of
literature on the subject. This brief essay merely suggests a
personal view; a view that will be vehemently challenged by ardent
opera buffs.
It seems reasonable to assume that most of the
early interest and delight in opera came about because of the
obvious pleasure in listening to the expressiveness of the human
voice. Most people at some time in life have been able to sing,
even if only in the most casual, modest or innocent way that children
unaffectedly do. Adult maturity however, brings with it a growing
sense of self-consciousness; a feint sense of vulnerability or
embarrassment at the notion of expressing ourselves in a too openly
emotional way. Singing in the easy-going company of a tavern or
pub, in a private drawing room within a small intimate circle
of friends, the exquisite art of Lieder, with its refined and
restrained utterance, or impersonally expressing our emotions
as part of a more anonymous body of a chorus, especially if that
is part of some religious rite, such as in oratorio, is one thing,
but the larger-than-life histrionics of the stage is quite a different
matter. Perhaps the way we regard this has something to do with
national temperament. The Italians always seen less afraid of
expressing their feelings through the voice. Certainly the essence
of Italian opera has ever regarded the beauty of the voice, bel
canto, as the paramount concern of opera. Sometime later German
opera began to acknowledge that the abstract instrumental sounds
of the orchestra might - just possibly - be able to characterise
a dramatic situation more subtly merely by the atmosphere that
abstract sound can arouse than any amount of vocal histrionics.
In a purely practical sense (and this is perhaps
the one that will cause most hotly-argued disagreement) it would
seem that unless one can clearly and unmistakably hear every word
that is sung, the whole point of a dramatic story is lost. Of
course, the obvious answer to this is that one should get to know
the story beforehand! But if this is the case, why bother with
singers at all — they only clutter up the situation — let the
orchestra "tell the story in its infinitely more subtle,
yet most penetrating manner of allusion and suggestion?
Wordsworth expressed the idea ("Intimations of
Immortality") that there are: .... "Thoughts that do
often lie too deep for tears" .... This might not inappropriately
be paraphrased: . . . "Thoughts that do often lie too deep
for words", ... Since ‘tears’ and ‘words’ are a way of
expressing our feelings they are both concerned with emotions.
Tears are imprecise and can be taken in infinite degrees of emotional
expression. On the other hand words (despite obvious double
entendre or any other hidden significance they might suggest)
are prosaic and earth-bound: basically they really mean exactly
what they say, and for the most part we understand them in this
way. So that one could say that some (dramatic) "thoughts are
too deep for words" and can be far more subtly expressed
through music. By its very nature abstract musical sounds have
no precise meaning and thus can soar to emotional heights that
words can rarely if ever attain. Poets, writers and all who use
words might well of course argue with this view. However, it is
worth remembering that while many poets have indeed appreciated
the enhancement that composers have brought to their poetry, probably
just as many have resented the ‘intrusion’ that composers have
brought to a writer’s personal and original way of expressing
what he or she has to say.
Considering British (probably more precisely
in this context ‘English’) temperament we have long been known
for the ‘stiff upper lip’ mentality, not allowing our emotions
to show too obviously, preferring understatement in most things.
Could this be a reason for our lesser enthusiasm for the too-overtly
expressed emotions of opera? We have always nurtured the relatively
plain-speaking of writers more than composers, preferring it to
the too-embellished musical accretions of opera. The theatre has
flourished far more with the spoken word (for one thing one can
always hear precisely what is being said). Despite the now quite
flourishing operatic interests in Britain - but still hardly to
be compared with Continental enthusiasm — it is perhaps not without
significance that the quality newspapers give infinitely more
space to reviewing stage plays than ever they do to opera.
"Thoughts that do often lie too deep for
words" have ever been, for this writer at least, far more
emotionally arousing and infinitely memorable in the concert hall:
the symphonies or concertos of Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Elgar,
Tschaikowsky, Sibelius; the chamber music of Schubert, or the
organ music of Bach than any amount of vocally exaggerated emotional
exhibitionism by singers who have to bawl and shout in order to
try to make themselves heard in an unnatural situation and so
cannot articulate their words clearly, and of course because they
merely like the noise their own voices make. There is a German
word: Gesamtkunstwerk which means a combination of all
the arts: words, drama, music, scenery, costumes, visual effects,
so that all these individual aspects of art come together. The
notion is interesting, but it more often than not results in an
absurd confusion of conflicting claims on our credulity.
Dr Johnson once wrote: "Opera is an exotic
and irrational entertainment"
The Second Piano Concerto or the Fourth Symphony
of Brahms, the symphonies of Elgar, Sibelius, Tschaikowsky or
Dvořák; Beethoven’s "Eroica”,
Mozart piano concertos, Bach’s Passacaglia in C minor for organ,
Schumman’s Piano Quintet, Vaughan Williams’ “Tallis Fantasia”
and countless other great instrumental music from Bach to the
twentieth century will always remain the most emotionally
stirring and uplifting sounds I have ever heard. But the so-called
most exotic and arousing love music of all time, said to be perceived
in "Tristan", means absolutely nothing to me.
Arthur Butterworth © 2003
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