Team 2: Orchestras of the European Opera Houses in the 18th and 19th centuries
The Opera Orchestra in 18th- and 19th-Century Europe :
Social, Institutional, and Artistic Problems
Copenhagen, The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, 27-30 May 1999.
The mid-term conference of the Research project "The Opera Orchestra in 18th- and 19th-Century Europe" assembled for first time both the core group of scholars, involved in the project from its inception, and colleagues who joined the project at a later stage and will work with us in the future. The meeting was intended to present the scientific results already achieved within the project and to plan future work.
The Conference consisted of four principal themes :
1. National, Regional, and Local Aspects in the Material and Social History of the Opera Orchestra.
2. The Opera Orchestra as a Component of the Show: Composer, Impressario, and Public facing the Orchestra.
3. The Circulation of Music and Musicians.
4. The Opera Orchestra as an Institution and a Structure in 19th-Century Musical Life.
Theme 1 was devoted to aspects of regional research on opera orchestras : the current state of research in each region, and the location and the types of surviving sources. To some extent, the members of the project find that differences in the quantity and quality of sources may reflect the diverse roles played by opera orchestras in different theatres regions.
In some places, documents concerning the history of opera orchestras are preserved almost completely, as was underlined, both in formal presentations and in discussion, by Owe Ander for Sweden and by Niels Martin Jensen and Heinrich W. Schwab for Denmark. In other regions, the sources are fragmentary and dispersed, as is the case with the Spanish material, as outlined by Juan José Carreras. Reiner Nägele’s presentation on the Stuttgart Court Orchestra in the 18th and 19th Centuries, dealing mostly with the period during which Lindpaintner was the conductor of the court opera orchestra, demonstrated how promising this area of research is. Other presentations dealt with regional areas that have already been more thoroughly investigated from the archival standpoint. Yet all of these presentations offered insight into local practices and made obvious the extent to which European orchestras varied in size, in proportion between the different sections of instruments, and in the types of instruments used.
The research and the discussion dealt (and will continue to deal) thoroughly with this particular aspect, both in terms of the performance practice and the reception history of individual composers and operas. But the study of local aspects of an opera orchestra’s practice and history also provides the opportunity to reconsider received historiographic opinion. Damien Colas pointed out that to a 19th-century French audience, one of the most interesting opera composers regarding his use of the orchestra was Halévy, not, as one might expect, Meyerbeer (an assessment which, due to the present superficial knowledge of scores and instrumentation by the author of La juive, awaits confirmation through further studies). The documentary evidence which Colas brought to our attention is to be found in Constant Pierre’s unpublished treatise on L’histoire de la composition de l’orchestre de l’Opéra de Cambert à nos jours (1888), one of the very few theoretical treatises of the 19th century entirely devoted to the opera orchestra (i.e. the orchestra of the Opéra in Paris); Pierre not only writes a history of the opera orchestra, but - from a positivistic perspective typical of French science and culture of the Third Republic - he also discusses the nature, the sound, and above all the effects obtainable by using new and experimental instruments (an orchestra ’in progress’).
The study of regional traditions and the make-up of local opera orchestras has made it possible to uncover new data on the circulation of musicians and the social history of the orchestras. From this point of view it was extremely interesting to note the extended networks established by travelling instrumentalists and to see how the use of ’foreign’ musicians differed in the various countries. As expected - if until now undocumented - many Italian players were employed in Vienna and London, many German instrumentalists played in opera orchestras in Northern (Scandinavia) as well as in Eastern Europe (Budapest), and a significant number of Bohemians were active in Vienna.
But it is surprising to find in an orchestra like the Neapolitan S. Carlo orchestra of the late 18th century, which consisted almost entirely of Italian musicians, two instrumentalists (Wilhelm Hattenbauer and Leopold Vinitzki) probably of German or Austrian origin playing the clarinet in the orchestra for many years (Anthony R. DelDonna). By contrast, the Lisbon and Oporto theatre orchestras were made up almost entirely of musicians from Italy, England, France, Germany, and Spain (Manuel Carlos De Brito, Luisa Cymbron). This reliance on ’foreign’ musicians did not necessarily make Portuguese orchestras less stable than the Italian ones. As in other peripheral countries in Europe, the tradition of hiring instrumentalists from abroad gave rise to veritable dynasties of players at court as well as in city theatres. Yet dynasties of players employed by the same orchestra were also a common feature of opera houses with a longer institutional tradition, such as the court theatres in Vienna (as Dexter Edge pointed out). The importance of the family dynasties raises yet more questions concerning the circulation of performance practices and of reciprocal influences between players and repertoire. These questions still require extended analysis : for example, how did the highly popular French repertoire sound in Stockholm, played to a Swedish audience by an orchestra almost entirely made up of German musicians and conducted by an Italian (Ander) ?
Theme 2 focused on the role of the orchestra in opera productions and in theatrical organisation. An orchestra, as stable and complete as it might be, often needed extra musicians to enlarge the number of players for special purposes. On the other hand, musicians in a stable and institutional orchestra would look for outside performing activities to increase their income, an activity which frequently caused problems with the institution to which they belonged. A case study of such troubles was presented by Rachel Cowgill in her analysis of the documents related to the ’secession’ of a great number of players of the London King’s Theatre after the attempt of its manager to curtail the players’ ’extra-curricular’ activities (1829). The episode was most important for what it revealed about the public’s perceptions of London’s Italian opera orchestra, the tension between operatic and concert institutions in the capital at that time, and changes that occurred in the constitution of the opera orchestra. This raises the question : ’How important was the orchestra to an opera audience?’. The great amount of printed as well as of manuscript documentation that covered events of this kind, provide some answers. Antonio Rostagno has examined similar issues in his study of reviews of opera performances in Italian periodicals of the mid-19th century. His research has revealed that reviews and articles of the early 1840s still consider the orchestra as a ’noisy’ component of the show, while by the time of Verdi’s central operas writers such as Alberto Mazzuccato frequently report on (that is, they now are aware of) the orchestra’s dramatic function and its role in musical dramaturgy. This clearly indicates that the public (the readers of articles by Mazzucato and others in the "Gazzetta Musicale di Milano") no longer considered the opera orchestra a mere accompaniment, but instead valued it as a complementary element of equal importance to the voice itself.
Theme 3. Yet another aspect of orchestra reception is to be found in the ways in which an important opera could alter the size of an existing orchestra. A case in point is the circulation of French grand-opéra in countries not so well acquainted with this repertoire. The staging of Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète at the Teatro Regio of Parma in 1853 (studied by Anna Tedesco and Elisabetta Pasquini) was very difficult for organizers, singers, stage personnel and orchestra players since it was a type of spectacle completely new to Parma and a production of great complexity. Organizers went to Turin to see a producion of Le Prophète in order to obtain direct information about the requirements necessary for the opera’s presentation in Parma. The orchestra had to be enlarged (10 extra strings were added to the total of 33, the wind section was doubled by hiring players from the local military band). These alterations were not due to specific characteristics of the score, but rather to the great number of chorus singers required by Le Prophète. Following this production the orchestra was reduced to its normal size - the opera left no immediate lasting mark on orchestral practices in Parma. In Parma the orchestra assembled for Le Prophète contained at least 60 musicians, but when Meyerbeer’s opera reached the Budapest theatre it was performed by only 39 players. This did not prevent reviewers from highlighting the immense impression which Meyerbeer’s orchestral score made on the Budapest public, even though ca. 80% of the articles and reports dealt with vocal aspects of the opera (Talliàn).
Theme 4. In the history of opera orchestras, institutional aspects are of the utmost importance. The Copenhagen conference offered an opportunity to present results of detailed research already undertaken for opera orchestras in Italy, Paris and London. Hervé Audéon presented a study of the rules of the Opéra orchestra in Paris, which provide new information on the ’internal’ life of the orchestra. Gabriella Dideriksen focused on the London Pantheon Opera (1790-1792) whose orchestra was drawn from London’s established opera house and concert venues (the Professional Concert, which was advertised as a quality guarantee for the orchestra). This case study was particularly interesting due to the richness of the recently discovered business archive of the Pantheon which now makes possible a detailed examination of the financial and artistic organisation of the opera house orchestra, including recruitment, membership, size, contracts and salaries. As regards the relation between theatre orchestras and other institutions like conservatories, philharmonic academies and military bands, the role of the last-mentioned in operatic productions as well as in the dissemination of many opera scores and in ’popularisation’ of the orchestra’s sound in 19th-century Italy has been outlined by Antonio Carlini as part of a study on the history of opera orchestras.
Two sessions were devoted to discussions of the methodological aspects of the project, the creation of a detailed proposal for a publication, and the continuation of the research project as such.
Participants : Dr. Owe Ander (Stockholm); Dr. Hervé Audéon (Paris/Versailles, CNRS) ; Prof. Juan José Carreras (Zaragoza) ; Dr. Damien Colas (Paris, CNRS) ; Dr. Rachel Cowgill (Huddersfield) ; Dr. Luisa Cymbron (Lisboa) ; Prof. Dr. Manuel Carlos De Brito (Lisboa) ; Dr. Gabriella Dideriksen (London) ; Prof. Sieghart Döhring (Bayreuth) ; Prof. Dexter Edge (Louisiana State University); Prof. Niels Martin Jensen (Copenhagen) ; Dr. José Maximo Leza (Salamanca) ; Prof. Christoph-Hellmut Mahling (Mainz) ; Dr. Christian Meyer (Paris, CNRS) ; Dr. Jean-Paul C. Montagnier (Nancy, Metz) ; Dr. Reiner Nägele (Stuttgart) ; Dr. Elisabetta Pasquini (Bologna) ; Prof. Pierluigi Petrobelli (Parma) ; Prof. Franco Piperno (Firenze) ; Dr. Antonio Rostagno (Torraza di Imperia) ; Prof. Heinrich W. Schwab (Copenhagen) ; Dr. Tibor Talliàn (Budapest) ; Dr. Anna Tedesco (Bologna).
Summarized from the scientific report submitted by Prof. Franco Piperno (June 1999).
