# When was the harpsichord dropped from opera?



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Seeing it was a staple of the Baroque, I'm interested in knowing when it was dropped and who was responsible.


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## Belowpar (Jan 14, 2015)

I don't know but I'd like to thank whoever was responsible.


When I saw WNO at Milton Keynes perform Figaro this year, they doubled the Harpsichord with a Cello and it transformed the sound and feeling completely. Is this in any way authentic? Has anyone else experienced it? To me it felt like a major problem solved.


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## Delicious Manager (Jul 16, 2008)

The use of the harpsichord in opera (for recitatives especially) continued will into the 18th century after the Baroque period had ended. It faded out of use (but not in all places all at once, obviously) during the 1780s and 1790s.


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## Don Fatale (Aug 31, 2009)

First opera without harpsichord? Anybody?


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

When people started listening to the thing.

When pianists rioted.

When the belief that the instrument was panacea was proven incorrect and soon took the devilish associations that have lingered to this day.

Scarcity of wood. 

Makers, tuners, players and audience all went insane.

Termites.

Haydn's firm lobbied against it.

A cat fell on one and PETA got involved.

The Pope couldn't find a bathroom, he had eaten cauliflower, Rome had to be evacuated.

The Universe software bugged, erasing all knowledge of it; what we know is a masterful reconstruction by the Period Instrument Consortium from a single unresolved device found in a cave with a body inside and some blood over what seemed to be keys.


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## Delicious Manager (Jul 16, 2008)

Don Fatale said:


> First opera without harpsichord? Anybody?


I think you're going to have a problem getting an answer to this as it's more a question of performance TRADITION than what might have been specified by the composer. You'd have to have all the programmes for all the opera houses of Europe to be able to guess at an answer.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Maybe one day a harpsichordist failed to show up for the performance, and everyone noticed the music sounded better.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Couchie said:


> Seeing it was a staple of the Baroque, I'm interested in knowing when it was dropped and who was responsible.


Legit question, the answer my friend .......you get the score


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Well, someone had to drop it. I can't imagine an harpsichord in a Rossini opera.


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## Delicious Manager (Jul 16, 2008)

Florestan said:


> Well, someone had to drop it. I can't imagine an harpsichord in a Rossini opera.


If you look up the thread, I have already said its use was fading fading by the 1780s and 90s, thereby precluding any possibility of a harpsichord in Rossini.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Delicious Manager said:


> If you look up the thread, I have already said its use was fading fading by the 1780s and 90s, thereby precluding any possibility of a harpsichord in Rossini.


My point is slightly different, that it would not work in Rossini anyway, so probably a good thing it was dropped before that.

But it would have been more coherent had I quoted your post in making my comment.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Did Mozart use a harpsichord of fortepiano in his operas?

One answer I got B&W a Dr Andrews:

Towards the end of the 18th century, the harpsichord was firmly on its way out (although it retained a residual function as an accompaniment to recitative in opera), and both Mozart and Haydn transferred their energies to fortepiano writing.
Nevertheless, Mozart didn't by any means ABANDON his playing of the harpsichord, and even played late works on the instrument. From research, I understand this to include his Piano Concerto No.26 (the so called "Coronation" concerto) written in 1788, three years before his death.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Belowpar said:


> I don't know but I'd like to thank whoever was responsible.
> 
> When I saw WNO at Milton Keynes perform Figaro this year, they doubled the Harpsichord with a Cello and it transformed the sound and feeling completely. Is this in any way authentic? Has anyone else experienced it? To me it felt like a major problem solved.


In Baroque opera the same continuo part is typically specified for harpsichord, cello, and bass. The cello and bass typically play as-written, but the harpsichordist fills out the specified melodic line to taste with chords, trills, arpeggios, and other "filler". This can be notated on the score by the harpsichordist ahead of time or improvised on the spot. My thinking is that as the size of operatic orchestras grew during the classical period and music got altogether louder, the delicate harpsichord was found to be less and less suitable?


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

So what instrument(s) did Rossini tend to use for his recitatives in the early 19th century? My recording of The Barber of Seville contains what sounds very much like the harpsichord to me.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

elgars ghost said:


> So what instrument(s) did Rossini tend to use for his recitatives in the early 19th century? My recording of The Barber of Seville contains what sounds very much like the harpsichord to me.


Yes I wonder that too.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Perhaps there is harpsichord in Paisiello's Barber of Seville.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I’d guess that harpsichords were replaced as continuo instruments by fortepianos as performing companies switched over, not so much per composers’ instructions. Fortepianos were already becoming popular even in the 1740s, and the harpsichord had pretty well disappeared by the 1780s.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

elgars ghost said:


> So what instrument(s) did Rossini tend to use for his recitatives in the early 19th century? My recording of The Barber of Seville contains what sounds very much like the harpsichord to me.


It have been discussed before apparently it is forte piano.
I don´t like them anyway.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Looking at the Barber score on IMSLP, only a grand staff with chords accompanies the recitative, implying a keyboard instrument without specifying which one. It seems composers (whom and when?) started scoring orchestral accompaniment for the recitative, making a keyboard instrument obsolete. Verdi blurred the recitative/aria lines and Wagner did away with such notions altogether, the rest is history I guess.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

KenOC said:


> I'd guess that harpsichords were replaced as continuo instruments by fortepianos as performing companies switched over, not so much per composers' instructions. Fortepianos were already becoming popular even in the 1740s, and the harpsichord had pretty well disappeared by the 1780s.


Right. The transition from harpsichord to fortepiano was not abrupt, the choice of one or the other as a continuo instrument was often ad hoc, and composers had been accustomed since the early Baroque to having a variety of instruments play continuo parts and probably didn't usually care what instrument was used in a given performance. Both harpsichords and early pianos were extremely variable in sound, but in accompanying rectitative the tone hardly matters. We may justifiably use them interchangeably in performing late 18th-century operas.


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## Der Fliegende Amerikaner (Feb 26, 2011)

Here is a performance where Fabio Luisi not only conducts the orchestra but also plays the harpsichord (see bottom of page 2):

http://www.metopera.org/uploadedFil...Playbill/Don_Giovanni/Oct 29 Don Giovanni.pdf

http://www.metopera.org/Season/On-Demand/opera/?upc=811357014837

_Mariusz Kwiecien in the title role of the world's most notorious lover leads a starry lineup of refined Mozartians in Michael Grandage's elegant 2011 production. Luca Pisaroni sings Leporello, Giovanni's servant who both admires and hates his master. Marina Rebeka as Donna Anna, Barbara Frittoli as Donna Elvira, and Mojca Erdmann as Zerlina are the trio of women seduced by Giovanni. Ramón Vargas plays Don Ottavio, Anna's fiancé, and Joshua Bloom as Masetto and Štefan Kocán as the Commendatore round you the cast. *Met Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi leads the orchestra and plays harpsichord continuo.*_


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

Belowpar said:


> I don't know but I'd like to thank whoever was responsible.
> 
> When I saw WNO at Milton Keynes perform Figaro this year, they doubled the Harpsichord with a Cello and it transformed the sound and feeling completely. Is this in any way authentic? Has anyone else experienced it? To me it felt like a major problem solved.


I like the harpsichord but don't think it sounds right in any opera written after Mozart's time. I have not heard a whole performance of FIGARO with cello "support," but hasn't it _always_ been customary to use the cello in certain parts of the opera (e.g. in the recitative leading up to "Se voul ballare")?


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