What is opera?

Summary

‘What is opera?’

The question was posed to participants of a master class, all of them young opera singers. Their answer: silence. Only after some encouragement did they hesitantly proffer a few suggestions. One of them said: ‘Connecting words and music’. Another: ‘Grand emotions, publicly performed’. A third (he'd probably been reading about Wagner) ventured: ‘The Gesamtkunstwerk’ (‘The total work of art’). The right answer – actually the simple answer – didn't come.

‘Favola per musica’ or ‘dramma per musica’ was the name of this new art form when it was invented some 400 years ago in Florence. And this expresses exactly what opera is. Telling a story through music – no, not ‘telling’: enacting it! A plot expressed through music. Music is opera's principal means of expression, as is the playwright's text in a play. In ballet it's the rhythmic motions of the body, and in film it's the moving images (hence ‘movie’). In opera, music is thus a function of the action. It serves to express it.

Some might already be raising their eyebrows at this. ‘Music serves? Doesn't he know that music reigns in opera?’ We're not that far yet. ‘Prima la musica – poi le parole’ (‘First the music – then the words’). This centuries-old dispute is pointless. Both music and words are dependent on the story, the action that initiates them. One could well imagine an ‘improvisation-opera’ in which the story is set out with just a few words – like in the commedia dell'arte – and all participants enact the story through improvised music. I once had a rehearsal pianist who was a gifted pedagogue, and when the singers’ acting was awkward, he didn't play what was in the score, but instead improvised music, mimicking their affected behaviour. The ensuing laughter in itself answered the question about the relationship between music and the stage action. Or consider silent movies. The pianist would sit in front of the cinema screen and improvise music to match the images.