Critical edition (opera)

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A critical edition of an opera has been defined by American musicologist Philip Gossett as "an edition that bases itself wherever possible on the very finest and most accurate sources for an opera. That means that it must study the entire performance history of a work." [1]

Gossett continues:

In some cases of course we have an autograph manuscript, and that helps us, but it is also where many of the problems start, because composers are known to have made mistakes in their autograph manuscripts. And therefore we are required—we feel it is necessary—to intervene and to correct errors that sometimes have been perpetrated on these works by printed editions from the beginning, so they are just mistakes in the old editions, simple mistakes. [1]

The emergence of critical editions of many works from the 19th-century Italian operatic repertory did not begin until the 1950s and resulted from the revival of interest from that time forward in the bel canto era—early 1800s to approximately 1850 and known as the primo ottocento—written by Gioachino Rossini, Vincenzo Bellini, Gaetano Donizetti, and Giuseppe Verdi, in addition to many other relatively minor composers who composed many works. [2] But, as musicologist Ellen Rosand also notes, "the editing of operatic works from the 17th century, [3] the 18th century [4] and 19th century provides many considerable challenges.

In an online essay – "What is a critical edition?: Answers to Questions You Never Thought to Ask" – which focuses primarily on Rossini, musicologist Patricia Brauner of the Center for Italian Opera Studies at the University of Chicago explains several different aspects of a critical edition, including the process of producing published editions and the ultimate value of them for performers and conductors. [5]

Musicologists such as Gossett and Roger Parker represent parallel approaches to the works of the Italian bel canto era. The former is now General Editor of The Critical Edition of the Works of Giuseppe Verdi [6] at the University of Chicago's Center for Italian Opera Studies – in addition to being an acknowledged expert in preparing critical editions of the operas of Rossini – while the other is Professor of Music at King's College London and editor of many of the operas of Donizetti, [7] as well as having written extensively on Verdi. He is the founding co-editor (with Arthur Groos) of the Cambridge Opera Journal, and he continues as General Editor (with Gabriele Dotto, who headed the editorial division of Ricordi until 2001) of The Critical Edition of the Operas of Gaetano Donizetti published by Casa Ricordi of Milan.

Gossett clarifies how the existence of these editions may affect performances:

We don’t believe that everybody has to perform just what we do, because that’s not what they did in the nineteenth century, not what composers did or expected, but we do think that performers should base their work on the finest editions possible, and that’s what we try to produce. [1]

The pioneering work of the major Italian music publishing house, Casa Ricordi, reveals how extensive the company's involvement in restoring the work of 19th-century composers Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi has been. [8] Since 2007, the German publishing house Bärenreiter-Verlag has been producing editions of Rossini's operas, [9] having become the successor to the Fondazione Rossini Pesaro, which produced many editions between 1979 and 2005. Today, many are still published by Ricordi in Europe and in the US by the University of Chicago. [10]

Related Research Articles

Gioachino Rossini Italian opera composer (1792–1868)

Gioachino Antonio Rossini was an Italian composer who gained fame for his 39 operas, although he also wrote many songs, some chamber music and piano pieces, and some sacred music. He set new standards for both comic and serious opera before retiring from large-scale composition while still in his thirties, at the height of his popularity.

Gaetano Donizetti Italian opera composer (1797–1848)

Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti was an Italian composer, best known for his almost 70 operas. Along with Gioachino Rossini and Vincenzo Bellini, he was a leading composer of the bel canto opera style during the first half of the nineteenth century and a probable influence on other composers such as Giuseppe Verdi. Donizetti was born in Bergamo in Lombardy. At an early age he was taken up by Simon Mayr who enrolled him with a full scholarship in a school which he had set up. There he received detailed musical training. Mayr was instrumental in obtaining a place for Donizetti at the Bologna Academy, where, at the age of 19, he wrote his first one-act opera, the comedy Il Pigmalione, which may never have been performed during his lifetime.

<i>Belisario</i>

Belisario (Belisarius) is a tragedia lirica in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Salvadore Cammarano wrote the Italian libretto after Luigi Marchionni's adaptation of Eduard von Schenk's play, Belisarius, first staged in Munich in 1820 and then in Naples in 1826. The plot is loosely based on the life of the famous general Belisarius of the 6th century Byzantine Empire.

Casa Ricordi

Casa Ricordi is a publisher of primarily classical music and opera. Its classical repertoire represents one of the important sources in the world through its publishing of the work of the major 19th-century Italian composers such as Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, Vincenzo Bellini, Giuseppe Verdi, and, later in the century, Giacomo Puccini, composers with whom one or another of the Ricordi family came into close contact.

<i>La gazzetta</i> Rossini opera

La gazzetta, ossia Il matrimonio per concorso is an opera buffa by Gioachino Rossini. The libretto was by Giuseppe Palomba after Carlo Goldoni's play Il matrimonio per concorso of 1763. The opera satirizes the influence of newspapers on people's lives. There is critical disagreement as to its success, although the New England Conservatory's notes for their April 2013 production state that the opera "was an immediate hit, and showed Rossini at his comic best."

<i>Stiffelio</i> Opera by Giuseppe Verdi

Stiffelio is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, from an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. The origin of this was the novel Le pasteur d’hommes, by Émile Souvestre, which was published in 1838. This was adapted into the French play Le pasteur, ou L'évangile et le foyer by Souvestre together with Eugène Bourgeois. That play in turn translated into Italian by Gaetano Vestri as Stifellius; this formed the basis of Piave's libretto.

William Ashbrook was an American musicologist, writer, journalist, and academic. He was perhaps best noted as a historian, researcher and popularizer of the works of Italian opera composer Gaetano Donizetti.

<i>Dom Sébastien</i>

Dom Sébastien, Roi de Portugal is a French grand opera in five acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The libretto was written by Eugène Scribe, based on Paul Foucher's play Don Sébastien de Portugal which premiered at the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin on 9 November 1838 It is a historic-fiction about King Sebastian of Portugal (1554–1578) and his ill-fated 1578 expedition to Morocco. The opera premiered on 13 November 1843 at the Salle Le Peletier of the Paris Opéra. This was the last opera that Donizetti completed before going insane as a result of syphilis.

<i>Rita</i> (opera)

Deux Hommes et une femme, also known as Rita, is an opéra comique in one act, composed by Gaetano Donizetti to a French libretto by Gustave Vaëz. The opera, a domestic comedy consisting of eight musical numbers connected by spoken dialogue, was completed in 1841. Never performed in Donizetti's lifetime, it premiered posthumously at the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 7 May 1860.

<i>Gianni di Parigi</i>

Gianni di Parigi is an 1839 melodramma comico in two acts with music by Gaetano Donizetti to a libretto by Felice Romani, which had previously been set by Francesco Morlacchi in 1818 and by Giovanni Antonio Speranza in 1836.

<i>Il signor Bruschino</i>

Il signor Bruschino, ossia Il figlio per azzardo(Signor Bruschino, or The Accidental Son) is a one act operatic farce by Gioachino Rossini to a libretto by Giuseppe Maria Foppa, based upon the 1809 play Le fils par hasard, ou ruse et folie by René de Chazet and Maurice Ourry. The opera was first performed in Venice at the Teatro San Moisè on 27 January 1813.

Roger Parker is an English musicologist and, since January 2007, has been Thurston Dart Professor of Music at King's College London. His work has centred on opera. Between 2006 and 2010, while Professor of Music at Gresham College, London, Parker presented four series of free public lectures, one example being "Verdi and Milan" in 2007 which is available on video.

Giovanni Ricordi

Giovanni Ricordi was an Italian violinist and the founder of the classical music publishing company Casa Ricordi. The musicologist Philip Gossett described him as "a genius and positive force in the history of Italian opera".

<i>Zelmira</i>

Zelmira is an opera in two acts by Gioachino Rossini to a libretto by Andrea Leone Tottola. Based on the French play, Zelmire by de Belloy, it was the last of the composer's Neapolitan operas. Stendhal called its music Teutonic, comparing it with La clemenza di Tito but remarking: "...while Mozart would probably, had he lived, have grown completely Italian, Rossini may well, by the end of his career, have become more German than Beethoven himself!"

<i>Maometto II</i>

Maometto II is an 1820 opera in two acts by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto by Cesare della Valle. Set in the 1470s during a time of war between the Turks and Venetians, the work was commissioned by the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples. Della Valle based his libretto on his earlier play Anna Erizo. The name of the title character, Maometto II, refers to the real-life Ottoman Sultan and conqueror of Constantinople Mehmed II, who lived from 1432 to 1481.

<i>Lequivoco stravagante</i>

L'equivoco stravagante is an operatic dramma giocoso in two acts by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto by Gaetano Gasbarri. It was Rossini's first attempt at writing a full two-act opera.

Philip Gossett

Philip Gossett was an American musicologist and historian, and Robert W. Reneker Distinguished Service Professor of Music at the University of Chicago. His lifelong interest in 19th-century Italian opera began with listening to Metropolitan Opera broadcasts in his youth. Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera, a major work on the subject, won the Otto Kinkeldey Award of the American Musicological Society as best book on music of 2006.

In 19th-century Italian opera, la solita forma is the formal design of scenes found during the bel canto era of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti up to the late operas of Verdi. The English phrase—"multipartite form"—is most often used by American musicologist Philip Gossett, beginning with a 1974 essay, where referring to a general framework of melodramatic scene types, especially duets. Each scene gradually progresses from an opening static lyric moment to a finale through several standard musical tempos and set pieces, gradually adding characters and adding or unraveling complexity in the plot.

Kathleen Kuzmick Hansell, née Kuzmick, is an American musicologist and organist. Amongst her publications are pioneering research on the role of dance in 18th century opera and critical editions of opera scores by Mozart, Rossini, and Verdi.

References

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Luiz Gazzola, "Exclusive Opera Lively Interview with Italian Opera scholar Dr. Philip Gossett" on operalively.com. 17 June 2012. Retrieved 26 September 2013
  2. Parker, Roger (1998), "The 19th and 20th centuries", in Sadie, Vol. Two, pp. 14—16
  3. Rosand 1998, pp. 11—13
  4. Rosand 1998, pp 13—14
  5. Brauner, Patricia. "What is a critical edition?". Archived from the original on 2014-11-02.
  6. Critical editions of Verdi's operas published by the University of Chicago Archived 2003-12-15 at the Wayback Machine on humanities.uchicago.edu
  7. Parker, "The Critical Editions of Gaetano Donizetti's Operas" on ricordi.it
  8. Universal Music Publishing Classical Critical Editions website
  9. "Works of Giacchino Rossini" on hum.uchicago.edu
  10. List of critical editions produced under the Fondazione Rossini, 1979 to 2005 on hum.uchicago.edu

Sources