Incomplete And Utter History Of Classical Music

OPERA III - THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD

Ђ \K, you may think, judging from that title, that I've got a bit of a./downer on opera, but nothing could be further from the truth. True, the people who attend opera on a regular basis are, on the whole, a strange, often slightly paranoid breed, who tend to be either over-animated or shy to the point of torture. Some say they are, like organists, a breed apart, but I prefer to give them a chance. After all, some of my best friends are regular opera-goers, and, let's face it, weU under 50 per cent of them have ever been a cause for concern. Admittedly, most of them smile a little too much and look over their shoulder a lot, but that should not be borne against them. Besides, I, myself, like nothing better occasionally than to sit back and let Don Giovanni wash over me. So I don't want you to think I'm anti-opera. Far from it.

Anyway, it's 1831 and more or less three people are upholding the interests of opera. Rossini is one, as we saw earlier; Donizetti, as we'll see soon; and Bellini, as we'll see now.

Bellini was the classic opera composer. In fact, you could say he was the classic composer, period. He wrote only a handful of master- pieces, then died young and left a beautiful corpse. In the gospel according to Roger Hargreaves, again, he would be, what, Mr Tragedy? Or Mr Consumption, perhaps. In fact, gosh, what a jolly little book that would have made - just right for the first book for your god-daughter: 'Mr Consumption went to the door. "Oh look," he cried, weakly, "it's Little Miss Tuberculosis, come to cough!'" Best leave that one there, I think. Anyway, Bellini it was who put more feeling than you could shake a stick at back into opera. Whereas Rossini and Donizetti would rattle off a couple of operas over lunch, Bellini would take around a year to produce just one, wrenching the notes from his very soul. Or whatever. He also decided to move away from big, vocal displays for their own sake, and went instead for sheer intensity. So gone were the 'stand and deliver' arias, which showed off just what a singer could do, simply because they could do it. In their place were bywords like passion and feeling, and all that malarkey. It frequently left his audiences in tears.

Take his offering from 1831, for example; 'a work of genius', according to Richard 'Just you wait' Wagner, 'a great score that speaks to the heart'. It was called Norma, set in Roman France (Gaul), and, today, the title role is still considered one of the most important roles for a soprano, not least because it's exceedingly hard to sing. But it's also because it contains one of the, if not the, most beautiful soprano arias EVER- 'Casta Diva' - divine in every way and best, in my view, in the version recorded by Maria Callas. Sorry, not exactly a revolutionary view, but, nevertheless, a heartfelt one. In terms of plot, it lives up to the prerequisite rules of opera that all plots must be (a) hard to work out without reading the programme notes, and (b) complete bollocks. Norma is both. If I remember rightly, there's druids, Roman soldiers, a pet rabbit, and extras in togas. Actually, better check the rabbit.