Opera at the Crossroads of Tradition and Reform in Gluck's Vienna Amber Youell Submitted in ...

390 Pages·2012·6.96 MB·English

Opera at the Crossroads of Tradition and Reform in Gluck’s Vienna

Amber Youell

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the
Requirements for the degree
of Doctor of Philosophy
in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

2012
© 2012
Amber Youell
All Rights Reserved
ABSTRACT

Opera at the Crossroads of Tradition and Reform in Gluck’s Vienna

Amber Youell

Operatic history is riddled with reform. Although at the discursive level all operatic reforms share
similar motivations, their execution in practice yields extremely different results, each indicative of
the time and place in which they occur. Despite their claims to pan-historical aesthetic truth and
timeless ideals, operatic reforms are highly specific indicators of their generation’s individual needs,
desires, and fears. My dissertation explores what the mid-eighteenth-century reform, pioneered most
famously by Gluck and Calzabigi, can tell us about opera and its composers, audiences and
performers in Habsburg Vienna. I interpret both reformed and unreformed Italian opera seria in
1760s Vienna through four different but intersecting conceptual lenses: luxury and economics,
political representation, theories of body and communication, and a performer’s voice. Opera played
an important role in a widespread debate over luxury that pervaded Western Europe, an issue that
comprised not only changing economics but paradigmatic shifts in social behavior. In the field of
medicine, new scientific observation began to transform the ways that people viewed emotion and
communication, and the ways these were expressed in opera. The nature of sovereignty itself was
slowly shifting from absolutist models, requiring both new modes of government and new operatic
representation. Yet individual singer’s voices, such as that of Gaetano Guadagni, still played a vital
role in shaping composition and aesthetics. Vienna in the 1760s experienced a flowering of diverse
approaches to the problem of opera by a network of performers and composers who blurred the
lines between tradition and progress and make us rethink the meanings of reform.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
List of Tables, Figures, and Examples ii

List of Citation Abbreviations iv

Acknowledgments v

Dedication vii

Introduction 1

Chapter 1: The Opera Seria of Maria Theresa’s Court and Galant Aesthetics 23

Chapter 2: Reforming Operatic Luxury 51

Chapter 3: Sympathy, Sonnenfels, and the Reform of Operatic Performance 106

Chapter 4: The Voice of Orpheus: Gaetano Guadagni and the Reform 147

Chapter 5: The Reform and Sovereign Representation: The 1765 Wedding of Joseph II 215

Epilogue 271

Bibliography 282

Appendix: Arias for Guadagni 304
1. “Saperti basti o cara” Il trionfo di Clelia (Metastasio/Hasse, 1762) 304
2. “Dei di Roma” Il trionfo di Clelia 308
3. “Questa è la bella face” Romolo ed Ersilia (Metastasio/Hasse, 1765) 312
4. “Ah per pieta placatevi” Ifigenia in Tauride (Coltellini/Traetta, 1763) 317
5. “Per quei vezzosi rai” Alcide negli orti esperidi (Metastasio/de Majo, 1764) 319
6. “Superbo di me stesso” L’olimpiade (Metastasio/Gassmann, 1764) 323
7. “Fidati, in van si cela” Alcide negli orti esperidi 337
8. “De’ folgori di Giove” Il trionfo di Clelia 340
9. “Qual destra omicida” Ifigenia in Tauride 344
10. “Se cerca, se dice” L’olimpiade 352
11. “Mi straziano il core” Alcide negli orti esperidi 363
12. “Resta, o cara, e per timore” Il trionfo di Clelia 368
13. “O dio dov’è la morte?” Ifigenia in Tauride 371
14. “V’intendo amici numi” Ifigenia in Tauride 374
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LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES AND EXAMPLES

Introduction Page

Table 1: Opera seria produced at the Viennese court theater, 1760-1771 19

Chapter 1

Table 1: Sample Quarterly and Commission Payments, in Florins, for Viennese Theater
Personnel, 1757-1763 38
Example 1: Cadence galant 45
Example 2: “Sò che pietade miseri,” Ifigenia in Tauride (Coltellini/Traetta), mm. 1-43 46
Example 3: “Frena l’ingiuste lagrime,” Ifigenia in Tauride, mm. 1-45 48

Chapter 2

Example 1: “Ferma Alcide! arresta i passi,” (Metastasio/Hasse), mm. 1-31 84
Example 2: “Non verranno a turbarti i riposi,” mm. 71-87, vocal line and bass 88
Example 3: “Mira entrambe, e dimmi poi,” mm. 58-70, vocal line and bass 91
Example 4: “Ah, che fai? T’arresta Alcide!” mm. 1-30, vocal line and bass 94
Example 5: “Quell’onda che ruina,” mm. 11-40, vocal line and bass 96

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Table 1: Serious Italian operas premiered in Vienna, 1762-1765, with cast lists 153
Table 2: Arias newly composed for Guadagni between 1762 and 1765 156
Example 1: “Saperti basti,” Il trionfo di Clelia (Hasse), mm. 20-45, vocal line 163
Example 2: “Dei di Roma, ah perdonate” Il trionfo di Clelia (Hasse), mm. 22-42, vocal line 165
Example 3: “Deh placatevi con me” Orfeo ed Euridice (Gluck), mm. 1-15, vocal line 167
Example 4: “Ah per pietà placatevi,” Ifigenia in Tauride (Traetta), mm. 4-18, vocal line 168
Example 5: “Superbo di me stesso,” L’Olimpiade (Gassmann), mm. 26-52, vocal line 170
Example 6: “Qual destra omicida” (Traetta), mm. 1-25, vocal line 175
Example 7: Excerpts from “Qual destra omicida” (Traetta) 177
Example 8: “Per quei vezzosi rai,” (De Majo), mm. 26-34, vocal line 181
Table 3: Arias and Accompagnati in Il trionfo di Clelia (Hasse) 185
Example 9: “Resta o cara e per timore” (Hasse), mm. 34-41, vocal line 187
Example 10: “Mille dubbi mi destano in petto” (Hasse), mm. 25-53, vocal line and bass 189
Example 11: “De’ folgori di Giove” (Hasse), mm. 18-38, vocal line 192
Table 4: Arias and Accompagnati in Ifigenia in Tauride (Traetta) 197
Example 12: “V’intendo amici numi” (Traetta), mm. 23-45, vocal line 201

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Chapter 5

Table 1: Habsburg Wedding Theatrical Entertainments from 1708 to 1769 235
Table 2: Arias of Il Parnaso confuso (Metastasio/Gluck) 244
Table 3: Arias and Choruses in Il trionfo d’Amore (Metastasio/Gassmann) 245
Table 4: Structural Analysis of Telemaco (Cotellini/Gluck) 253

Epilogue

Figure 1: Photo of Alcide al bivio, Morningside Opera production, 2009 281

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LIST OF CITATION ABBREVIATIONS

Gluck in Wien Croll, Gerhard and Monica Woitas, eds. Kongressbericht: Gluck in Wien
(Gluck-Studien I). Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1989.

Gluck und Opernreform Hortschansky, Klaus, ed. Christoph Willibald Gluck und die
Opernreform (Wege der Forschung, vol. 613). Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1989.

Gluck: Portrait Howard, Patricia. Gluck: An Eighteenth-Century Portrait in Letters
and Documents. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am delighted to have the opportunity to thank the many people who were vital to the
conceptualization and completion of this dissertation. It has been an absolute honor to work with
my dissertation advisor, Elaine Sisman. Her stupendous knowledge of the eighteenth century has
been an irreplaceable resource, and her critical guidance has shaped the way I think about the
production of scholarship. I have never left a conversation with her without an “aha” moment. I
cannot thank her enough for her support of both my scholarship and my performance, and
especially for helping me pull back this dissertation from the brink of the academic underworld.
Other professors at Columbia have had a profound impact on my dissertation. Karen
Henson, a masterful teacher and unmatched editor, helped form some of my foundational
methodologies as a scholar and encouraged me to take the risks I never would have taken otherwise.
Giuseppe Gerbino, whose court culture course was one of my favorite at Columbia, always caused
me to rethink my arguments in terms of large-scale historical trajectories and wider points of cultural
reference. I would also like to thank Susan Boynton, Walter Frisch, and David Cohen for their
insights during editing and conversation, and Ellen Gray for encouraging me to explore the ways
performance could function as scholarship.
I have greatly benefited from the resources of the Whiting Foundation, without which the
completion of this dissertation would have been impossible. Further, I would like to thank the staff
at several libraries for their courtesy, assistance, and advice: the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek,
the Theatermuseum Wien, the various branches of the Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, The Morgan
Library and New York Public Library, and especially Elizabeth Davis and Nick Patterson in the
Music and Arts Library at Columbia.
Of course my colleagues at Columbia were an unending source of support and helpful
criticism. Sean Parr was my “scholarship buddy” for most of my Columbia tenure, and I could not
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have completed this dissertation without his encouragement, editing, and advice. Karen Hiles helped
me redefine my dissertation at several critical junctures, and was my cheerful guide as I learned to
navigate the archival sources in Vienna. Brooke Bryant, Juliet Forshaw, Kristy Riggs, Brett Umlauf,
and Ryan Dohoney were also invaluable sources of insight. I would like to thank especially Michael
Shaw, my partner as well as colleague, who endured seemingly endless editing of musical examples,
continual chapter read-throughs, multiple runs to the Columbia libraries, and a very stressed
roommate.
I would also like to thank the multitude who made possible the performance of Alcide al bivio
that forms the touchstone of my entire dissertation process. I thank the Italian Academy at
Columbia for lending us their exquisitely classical space, the Music Department and Collegium
Musicum for their resources and support, the Gatsby Foundation for their generous gift, and
especially my collaborators: Annie Holt, Mark Seto, Sarah Meyers, Brett Umlauf, Brooke Bryant,
Sean Parr, and many, many others.
Finally, I would like to thank my family for never letting me give up on this very long
process, and especially my parents for dealing with a seemingly endlessly dissertating daughter.
Again, Michael Shaw was my untiring and uncomplaining helper and counselor throughout. And my
daughter Nike, though the source of my delay, was my little muse who never stopped inspiring.

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DEDICATION

To Apollo and Nike

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