Michel Legrand (1932-2019): 6-10/1/25

[french frank]

Of course the more one is interested in an opera, the more one wants to know about what's being said beyond the "essentials of the plot". It's the same as with Shakespeare, Strindberg or Pinter.

No, it's exactly the opposite. Without the words you don't have Shakespeare, Strindberg or Pinter at all. In opera without the words you still have the music of Verdi, Mozart, Wagner. And you still have the plot. And the staging.

[vinteuil]

I suppose one of my all-time favourite opera composers is Rameau.

I just cannot imagine how it would work in English : it is so dependent on French rhythms and cadences, irreproducible in English

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[Ein Heldenleben]

No, it's exactly the opposite. Without the words you don't have Shakespeare, Strindberg or Pinter at all. In opera without the words you still have the music of Verdi, Mozart, Wagner. And you still have the plot. And the staging.

Not so sure . I reckon a mimed performance of King Lear could be made to sort of work

[vinteuil]

Not so sure . I reckon a mimed performance of King Lear could be made to sort of work

... probably as adequately as a mimed performance of Der Ring des Nibelungen

[Pulcinella]

... probably as adequately as a mimed performance of Der Ring des Nibelungen

But at least he features in it.

[Master Jacques]

No, it's exactly the opposite. Without the words you don't have Shakespeare, Strindberg or Pinter at all. In opera without the words you still have the music of Verdi, Mozart, Wagner. And you still have the plot. And the staging.

Not so, with respect - though perhaps you're being impishly provocative, here!

Without the words you simply do not have the operatic music of Verdi and Mozart. Marriage of Figaro Act 2 finale, sans text? No musical sense to it at all. And Wagner spent many years fashioning his texts before deriving music based on them. There's no plot without words to hang them on. Modern stageings still rely on text and stage directions more than scores, as is quite logical.

In opera, music exists to illuminate and power the words: ('prime le parole...', not Salieri's satirical reversal, offered for fun.) Without words, you're left with an overture, or whatever, plus a few marches and ballets to tap your feet to. Even Wagner's magnificent preludes evoke and explicitly counterpoint the texts to come later. The melodies of Mozart are moulded to verbal phrases (which it is the translator's job to emulate), and can't exist without reference to those words.

It's interesting to read Charles Rosen on Beethoven's Piano Sonatas, where exactly the same process (the operatic "aria" impulse) dictates many of the composer's procedures. Those themes rely on words - even if they're generally unspoken. Though in cases such as "es muss sein!", in the last string quartet, the connection is self-evident.

Something else to consider: there is no form of theatre which hasn't used music, to lesser or greater degree. This includes Shakespeare and Strindberg, many of whose plays are inconceivable without it. The RSC still retains a permanent musical ensemble, which is used in every production, playing new musical scores. You cannot separate music and theatre, even in "straight" plays.

[Serial_Apologist]

No, it's exactly the opposite. Without the words you don't have Shakespeare, Strindberg or Pinter at all. In opera without the words you still have the music of Verdi, Mozart, Wagner. And you still have the plot. And the staging.

On first impressions, yes. But, as with finding out in greater depth about anything, with motivation one's knowledge and/or love of an opera might be more informed once one is more aware of its text; and there can be the added conceit of communicating this to others.

[vinteuil]

Without the words you simply do not have the operatic music of Verdi and Mozart. Marriage of Figaro Act 2 finale, sans text? No musical sense to it at all. .

... plenty of musical sense, as the various wind-band and other almost contemporaneous orchestral transcriptions prove

I know quite a few people who love orchestral music but cannot abide singing who get great pleasure from the various 'Wagner without words' orchestral transcriptions...

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[Serial_Apologist]

I suppose one of my all-time favourite opera composers is Rameau.

I just cannot imagine how it would work in English : it is so dependent on French rhythms and cadences, irreproducible in English

.

Again we agree! Wagner's theories regarding the need he saw to re-unite the long lasting fissure between musical and verbal language must have overlooked the fact that mutual inter-penetration of these two sources of human communication would have evolved concurrently. It is probably no coincidence that of all earlier French composers Rameau was his favourite - in Ravel's case it was Couperin. As I understand it Wagner's musical language would become more akin to prose than aligned in rhythm and phrase structure to the poetry his criticism was primarily directed towards, and secondarily earlier German composers such as Schumann whose phrase structurings he saw as stilted by over-reliance on pre-existing poetic conventions.

[Serial_Apologist]

... plenty of musical sense, as the various wind-band and other almost contemporaneous orchestral transcriptions prove

I know quite a few people who love orchestral music but cannot abide singing who get great pleasure from the various 'Wagner without words' orchestral transcriptions...

.

.

Someone once wrote that the Ring cycle is essentially one gigantic symphony which can be approached and appreciated as such without its "distracting" plot!

[Master Jacques]

... plenty of musical sense, as the various wind-band and other almost contemporaneous orchestral transcriptions prove

I know quite a few people who love orchestral music but cannot abide singing who get great pleasure from the various 'Wagner without words' orchestral transcriptions...

"Classical Pops" (in the form of band and ballroom arrangements of orchestral passages) of course had their place, for people unable to hear the original scores. There's not much call for them now. And I don't think people who "cannot abide singing" sound as if opera has much to offer them in the first place, so their whims may be safely discounted.

I ask you also, what sense does the Act II Finale of The Marriage of Figaro have, shorn of its text?

[Master Jacques]

Someone once wrote that the Ring cycle is essentially one gigantic symphony which can be approached and appreciated as such without its "distracting" plot!

Did they? Wondrous nonsense, if it's true! Who was this "someone"? Any such idea is quite patently absurd - like the oft-repeated nonsense speaking of Siegfried as "the scherzo of The Ring". A scherzo, incidentally, featuring spooky woods, poisoning, murders, fights to the death with dragons, nightmare-sequences and pathological fear of women. Yes, that sort of scherzo.

[Master Jacques]

Not so sure . I reckon a mimed performance of King Lear could be made to sort of work

We certainly have Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet (Cranko version especially) to bear out your thought royally.

[Master Jacques]

I suppose one of my all-time favourite opera composers is Rameau.

I just cannot imagine how it would work in English : it is so dependent on French rhythms and cadences, irreproducible in English.

I don't need to imagine it. I've seen it. Most recently, Castor and Pollux at ENO (2011, Kosky, Curnyn) was critically received, for sure, but absolutely not because the English text didn't work. It did. So to quote Shakespeare, "Let your imaginations work..." A good translator can use all those allegedly "French" recitative rhythms and cadences to huge advantage. The style is very far from "irreproducible", for the pleasure of open minded theatre-goers who want to know what's being said.

Seeing (and hearing) is believing, so I suggest you seek out a recording of it. It might surprise you. And most people these days aren't sufficiently versed in Ancien Regime French to make much of Bernard's (doubtless excellent) original poetry.

[Master Jacques]

Again we agree! Wagner's theories regarding the need he saw to re-unite the long lasting fissure between musical and verbal language must have overlooked the fact that mutual inter-penetration of these two sources of human communication would have evolved concurrently. It is probably no coincidence that of all earlier French composers Rameau was his favourite - in Ravel's case it was Couperin. As I understand it Wagner's musical language would become more akin to prose than aligned in rhythm and phrase structure to the poetry his criticism was primarily directed towards, and secondarily earlier German composers such as Schumann whose phrase structurings he saw as stilted by over-reliance on pre-existing poetic conventions.

Schumann's Genoveva is certainly an underprized opera, as much for its alternative approach to dramaturgy (less "linear" than Wagner's) as for its beautiful score. It's actually quite radical, in taking Weber's psychological dramatic actions onto a new (classical) plane, later explored further by Debussy, Faure and later French composers such as Cras.