{"id":29,"date":"2009-02-08T18:38:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-08T23:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/jeffclef\/2009\/02\/08\/i-have-not-made-my-opera-unnatural-throughout-the-beggar-skewers-italian-opera\/"},"modified":"2009-02-19T20:25:21","modified_gmt":"2009-02-20T01:25:21","slug":"i-have-not-made-my-opera-unnatural-throughout-the-beggar-skewers-italian-opera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jeffclef\/2009\/02\/08\/i-have-not-made-my-opera-unnatural-throughout-the-beggar-skewers-italian-opera\/","title":{"rendered":"“I have not made my opera unnatural throughout”: The Beggar Skewers Italian Opera"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reposted from a blog entry<\/a> I wrote for an English course that I was TF’ing.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the introduction to The Beggar’s Opera<\/em>, a beggar steps forward to say “he has not made my opera throughout unnatural like those in vogue; for I have no recitative.” What does he mean by this?<\/p>\n

He’s poking fun at the Italian opera convention of recitative<\/em><\/strong>, a form of declamation which is halfway between speaking and singing and is characterized by bare-bones accompaniment. Italian opera composers would use recitative<\/em> when they wanted to advance the plot, usually by setting dialogue. They would use arias<\/em><\/strong> (airs<\/em> in English) to freeze the action and expand on what the actors were feeling (love, heartbreak, joy, anger), very often through the Petrarchan “similes” mentioned by the beggar: “the swallow, the moth, the bee, the ship, the flower, etc.”<\/p>\n

Below is an excerpt from one of the more extreme examples of accompanied recitative<\/em>, which is half way between recitative and aria, and accompanied by orchestra. It’s taken from Gay’s earlier libretto for Handel, Acis and Galatea<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Download<\/em><\/a> Handel\/Gay: “I rage\u2014I melt\u2014I burn!” (0:25)<\/b><\/p>\n

And here’s a straighter example of recitative used to set dialogue between two characters, also taken from Acis and Galatea<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Download<\/em><\/a> Handel\/Gay: “Whither fairest, art thou running” (0:20)<\/b><\/p>\n

How does Handel convey each of the three verbs in the first example? What do you think English audiences might have found “unnatural” about recitative? Feel free to leave a comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reposted from a blog entry I wrote for an English course that I was TF’ing. In the introduction to The Beggar’s Opera, a beggar steps forward to say “he has not made my opera throughout unnatural like those in vogue; for I have no recitative.” What does he mean by this? He’s poking fun at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2047,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jeffclef\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jeffclef\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jeffclef\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jeffclef\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2047"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jeffclef\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jeffclef\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jeffclef\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jeffclef\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jeffclef\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}