# Arias and secco vs 'continuous' musical drama



## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

In another thread about Mozart the question of comparisons across epochs and styles came up and more precisely if '3 min aria + endless recitativo secco' was inferior, simpler, whatever compared to more continous mid-late 19th century opera. 
Let us set aside that opera by numbers also has choir or longer ensembles and that middle Verdi is in no way as symphonically composed as late Wagner, the distinction can certainly be made and there seems a historical development towards 'symphonic dramatic' form.
But is it better? Is it a weakness not only of Mozart but most operas from the 17th through the mid-19th century that they are mostly divided into musical numbers connected by secco or, maybe worse, spoken words without music. Or did both ways give us convincing masterworks?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I'd say that any way of structuring musically mediated drama can be done with inspiration and mastery, but through-composed music drama is a challenge that has attracted composers from Monteverdi on. The desire to exploit more and more of its artistic possibilities is understandable and predictable. No composer ever regarded secco recitative as intrinsically interesting no matter how skillfully he crafted it, and I sometimes wonder why it was ever preferred to spoken dialogue. But _accompanied_ recitative opens the door to new realms of expression through the incorporation of musical forms unusable in the aria/secco recitative model. It's my _personal _judgment (with which I expect no one, especially lovers of Mozart, to concur) that the best through-composed operas are indeed in some sense superior to those conforming to the earlier paradigm, with "best" implying that the composer has really been able to take advantage of the possibilities open to him and create worlds of expression previously unavailable to musical drama.

(I should add that there's plenty of through-composition in Mozart, and it's there that I think he's at his most interesting. Had he lived longer he would have been right on board with the developments in 19th-century opera.)


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Stephen Sondheim wrote one musical (_Passion_) in an "arioso" style, i.e. continual singing but something between an aria and recitative, and said it was easier than writing scenes with distinct songs.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

I would not say it i's a zero sum game but there seem to be tradeoffs. Accompagnato passages were added to Carmen soon but in the last decades we returned to the original style with spoken dialogues.
Pacing seems different with the strange phenomenon that through composed operas are often slower and more spacious when one could expect the opposite. Memorable melodies seem rarer or rather if they turn up in continous operas the structure gets at least for a section very close to the number style, like vissi d'arte or even Liebestod.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Kreisler jr said:


> I would not say it i's a zero sum game but there seem to be tradeoffs. Accompagnato passages were added to Carmen soon but in the last decades we returned to the original style with spoken dialogues.
> Pacing seems different with the strange phenomenon that through composed operas are often slower and more spacious when one could expect the opposite. Memorable melodies seem rarer or rather if they turn up in continous operas the structure gets at least for a section very close to the number style, like vissi d'arte or even Liebestod.


The question of pacing - not only the actual pace of musical or dramatic activity, but the subjective sense of movement - depends on the composer's style and expressive intent. I don't think it necessarily works as you suggest. _Tosca_ is mostly through-composed and seems fast-paced except when the action stops for an aria, while the second act love duet of _Tristan_ conveys the feeling of time in suspension, as experienced by the lovers. Baroque opera, with its da capo arias that require little or no action, tends to need a lot of stage business so as not to seem static.

It's certainly true that self-contained tunes may be more instantly memorable than complex orchestral passages (_may,_ since tunes can be uninspired and sound like a lot of other tunes that run together in the memory). I suppose it's easier to remember a neatly symmetrical tune such as "Celeste Aida" than an extended fantasy of motifs such as the first scene of _Die Walkure _where the orchestra spins out long, haunting melodies as Siegmund and Sieglinde contemplate each other, but my memory has no trouble retaining a wealth of thematic material from many through-composed works such as _Otello, Gotterdammerung, Parsifal, Salome, Turandot _and _Peter Grimes._ Motifs, short or not so short, are melodies too, and the striking character and memorability of leitmotifs in Wagner is essential to their musical usefulness and dramatic effectiveness. The way the strange melody of the shepherd's piping winds through and binds together the third act of _Tristan_ is not only musically brilliant and dramatically powerful but generative of sequences thoroughly memorable, even if difficult to sing in the shower (and for that matter onstage)!


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Kreisler jr said:


> In another thread about Mozart the question of comparisons across epochs and styles came up and more precisely if '3 min aria + endless recitativo secco' was inferior


You mean this? https://www.talkclassical.com/25874-honest-here-4-do-20.html#post2082384
I think someone is simply unhappy with the results of a TC game (Wagner vs Mozart) and having a hard time getting over it.
I acknowledge the advantages of the Wagnerian way as well.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Yes. But I think it is an interesting point that deserves a broader discussion. I am not an opera buff, there are many famous pieces I know only superficially. And I usually prefer opera on stage but am too lazy or too poor or too cheap to attend often. Of course I also grew up with the old textbook that opera started as great musical drama with Monteverdi, devolved into high baroque shallow and dramatically boring vocal display, was then saved by Gluck, improved by Mozart and the zenith was of course Wagner, late Verdi and maybe Strauss and Puccini etc.

I don't deny the achievements of Wagner and the limits of some of the other styles. But I don't think it is so simple. Considering all aspects, an opera like Figaro or Carmen can be as good or better as a 'continuous' piece. One could even argue that they would suffer when transformed in such a way, Carmen used to be performed with added accompagnato but nowadays we returned to spoken dialogue. Baroque opera has been revived with a success that hardly anyone would have believed only 30 or 40 years ago.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

There are times in Mozart and particularly Handle, where the recitatives can be the most exciting music from my experience.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Oversimplified: from baroque to Mozart and Rossini one has secco, accompagnato, arioso, aria/ensemble. Later in the most continuous opera there is mostly accompagnato and arioso. Duets are still frequent but real ensembles rare. There is one Meistersinger quintet in all of Wagner but many similar ensembles in Mozart, usually finals. 

Because secco is so reduced, anything more yields often a remarkable effect with very sparse means. Not opera but what I first think of here is the 'halo' for Christ in the SMP. Quick succession of recitative and arioso is used by Handel in the mad scenes of Bajazet in Tamerlano and the girl in Ariodante.


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

Seattleoperafan said:


> There are times in Mozart and particularly Handle, where the recitatives can be the most exciting music from my experience.


a few I can think of 
1) the lines preceding the beginning of O Don Fatale in Don Carlo
2) the interlude before and between Ben io t'invenni and Salgo Gia in Nabucco 
3) Tosca stabbing Scarpia 
4) the demonic chest voice of Azucena in the bits following Stride la Vampa and Condotta Ell'era in Ceppi


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## vivalagentenuova (Jun 11, 2019)

To me the beset form is the one that is most appropriate to the expressive needs of the piece. _Turandot_ is an interesting example because Puccini had developed a continuous arioso style very much in a Wagnerian vein but with this opera reverted somewhat towards a number opera form, with distinct choruses, arias, and ensembles. It still retains much of the feeling of being through composed (and some of the arias, like Nessun dorma, are joined to their surroundings in non-traditional ways), but the number opera form adds a sense of pageantry and artificiality that is highly appropriate to the way the story was conceived by Puccini, Adami, and Simoni. Act I has even been analyzed as a symphony in four parts, and there is a gran scena for Liu in Act III, and a concertato at the end of Act I.

Kreisler jr. I find your point about ensembles being lacking in through composed opera really interesting, because I do notice that and miss them, although I overall tend to prefer through composed pieces. Some of my favorite moments in through composed operas are ensembles that do crop up, such as the Meistersinger quintet and Bevo al tuo fresco sorriso from _La rondine_.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

I suspect that some aspects could be actually orthogonal to each other. Finales and ensembles are usually the most 'through composed', the longest and most involved, often not following simple da capo or other standard forms. So in a way they are together with free speech like accompagnato the closest to later forms. But they become quite rare despite even operettas like Fledermaus having some good ones.


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

I'm curious as to when _secco_ recitative was phased out. Later operas in _faux_-classical vein such as those from Stravinsky (_The Rake's Progress_) and Henze (_The English Cat_) notwithstanding, did the practice largely disappear with Rossini or was the method still employed for a while by others? If so, by whom?

Thanks in advance for any replies.


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

Kreisler jr said:


> But is it better? Is it a weakness not only of Mozart but most operas from the 17th through the mid-19th century that they are mostly divided into musical numbers connected by secco or, maybe worse, spoken words without music. Or did both ways give us convincing masterworks?


No. No 'weakness' at all. Yes.


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

I think Donizetti used it post Rossini, but Verdi never used it. The exact moment it ceased to be used, however, I'm not sure.

N.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Im not a fan of spoken dialog in opera, like *Carmen *or *Medee*, *Les contes d'Hoffman*, *Die Zauberflöte * and the like. Give me the _recitatives _ of Lachner, Giraud, etc.

Of course, there were no subsequent recitatives composed for the Mozart _singspiel_! - they simply cut off the dialog, like in the Kemplerer *Die Zauberflöte*.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

An interesting but obsolete (or not?) practice was to perform operas with recitatives or spoken dialogue in the language of the audience while singing the arias and ensembles in the language of the composer. This enables the audience to follow the plot, and eliminates the boredom and irritation of having to listen to recitative or speech in a foreign language while still preserving the integrity and full beauty of the music as written. I find sung translations to be barely tolerable or worse, and listening to dialogue in a language I don't speak annoying, so would find a revival of this custom agreeable in some cases. Anyone else?


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> An interesting but obsolete (or not?) practice was to perform operas with recitatives or spoken dialogue in the language of the audience while singing the arias and ensembles in the language of the composer. This enables the audience to follow the plot, and eliminates the boredom and irritation of having to listen to recitative or speech in a foreign language while still preserving the integrity and full beauty of the music as written. I find sung translations to be barely tolerable or worse, and listening to dialogue in a language I don't speak annoying, so would find a revival of this custom agreeable in some cases. Anyone else?


Unless I am miss-remembering, there was an example of this at San Francisco Opera in a performance of *Die Entführung aus dem Serail*. The characters spoke the dialog in English and sang in German. It was quite effective.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

None of the various ways composers deal with telling the story, and the musical sections. But I might have a slight preference for recitative-cabaletta/cavatina. But the arioso style can also be very evocative. Even spoken dialog is not a problem for me.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

MAS said:


> The characters spoke the dialog in English and sang in German. It was quite effective.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

hammeredklavier said:


>


The video does not play…


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

MAS said:


> The video does not play…


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

hammeredklavier said:


>


Thanks, hammeredklavier. Didn't know there was opera in Livermore! Besides Kevin Langan, a staple of the SF Opera, I'd never heard of the singers, who are quite good. And the English dialog/German arias and ensembles works very well.


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