Meta-Opera

Speranza

As per the link provided previously, Johnston furthers the MUSICOLOGICAL analysis (proper, as per score rather than mere libretto) of meta-opera, focusing on the intermezzo.

He quotes from Antonio Salvi, "L’artigiano gentiluomo":

"Ma per dirla, com‟è, ritrovo in lei/Un certo brio brillante,/Che piace agli occi miei./Quel ciglio lampeggiante/Dolcemente mi strazia:/Signora mia, per grazia/Si levi in piedi, e mi passeggi avanti,/Poi mi faccia un‟inchino.
Di color porporino/Tingo il mio volto a questa sua dimanda;/Pur son costretta a far quel, che comanda./Che bel taglio di vita!/Che andamento, ch‟alletta!/Par giusto una Barchetta./Che gentil portamento! basta, basta:
Non piu; morir mi sento./Non bramo la sua morte;/Bramo.../Che brama?/D‟essergli Consorte."
English translation: "But to you I say that I find in you/a certain brilliant glow,/which pleases my eyes./Those twinkling eyes/sweetly torment me:/my Lady, please/stand and walk in front of me,/then curtsy for me./I feel my face turning purple/at your request./I feel compelled to grant you that request./What a beautiful figure!/What grace, how enticing!/How like a little boat./What a noble bearing! enough, enough:/No more, I‟m dying./I do not wish you to die;/I desire.../What do you desire?/To be your wife."

Johnston comments: "Hasse's music leaves large gaps for Vanesio‟s fawning."
"The continuo player could have embellished these moments in order to accompany Vanesio‟s onstage actions."
"Musically the most striking moment occurs at “morir.”"
"Here Hasse has taken Salvi's cue to create a highly affective moment."
"The
--- “mi sento morir”
-- was the ubiquitous cry of the operatic heroine from the late seventeenth century through to at least "Aida"."
"Its chromatic treatment here -- a rising semitone figure supported by a pointed tonal shift from D major6 to F-sharp major —
recalls a madrigalesque sensibility."
"That it is Vanesio‟s bass voice which sings
the line makes it of course seem
ridiculous (to say nothing of the incongruity
of the fact he feels faint at merely seeing the Baronessa walk)."
"It is a short walk from pathos to bathos."

The scene highlights, Johnston notes, a couple of important points
about meta-theatre in the intermezzo.

"The first is that the intermezzo engaged in a
parody even in texts which
originally did not call for such moments."
-- "Molière's text for Le bourgeois gentilhomme did not contain the scene above and yet Salvi felt compelled to add it. This gives strength to this argument that the intermezzos based on works by Molière were not simply adaptations of plotlines from Molière‟s original plays. They were instead collections of elastic gags newly strung together with a newly manufactured plot. It also supports the claim that the intermezzo was metatheatrical in is nature. Librettists felt compelled to include material which burlesqued the opera seria tradition as a matter of course. L’artigiano gentiluomo was written by Salvi for a performance in Florence in 1722, though Orlandini‟s music for that production does not survive."
"Though the libretto was revised for performance in Naples in 1726, no changes were made to this scene and to the aria that follows.38 Whether in Florence or Naples (or any of the seven other cities in which the intermezzo is known to have been performed) it seems that audiences appreciated a good parody of opera seria."
"One of the most remarkable features of Martello's dialogue is how he has recast the moral imperative of opera producers."
"Recalling the quotation above, Martello suggested that arias with charming comparisons were necessary as “these things all lead the imagination to I know not what pleasant realms of thought and so refresh it.” Whereas Muratori and Gravina thought it incumbent upon artists to create works which would strengthen the moral fabric of the audience, Martello sees it as necessary to create diversions from the reality of the real world. His belief that music is the chief means of accomplishing this kind of transcendent experience is one of the great love letters to opera and is strikingly modern in its tone."
"Music alone, in action, contains the all-important
secret of separating the soul from all mortal cares
for at least as long as the notes can keep it absorbed, through the skillful management of consonance, whether vocal or instrumental."
"And if sleep is so universally praised for its power to enthral the senses of unhappy humanity, lifting them up and, for a few hours, making them impervious to misfortune, how much more praiseworthy must an art be which, not robbing us of life as does sleep (whence it is called the Brother of Death), allows us to live ecstatically in delicious, contented peace, our senses fully about us, yet glad and truly blissful."
"Coming at the end of a lengthy and humorous discussion of the many facets (and sometimes excesses)
of opera, Martello's encomium could be easily discounted as hollow praise."
"But the dimensions of what he is suggesting extend beyond the benign enjoyment of an evening‟s entertainment."
"The Italian critics, like their French counterparts, condemned opera in moral terms specifically because the moderation of the passions was seen to be a necessary virtue in matters greater than the opera."
"Philosophers such as Paolo Mattia Doria specifically saw the inability to control one‟s pleasure-seeking as the road to Sophism, skepticism and Epicureanism."
"Doria, like Muratori and Gravina, found refuge in the guidance of the austere Plato."
"Only through the subjugation of one‟s passion to reason could one truly achieve good art, good character and good governance."
"Martello outlines the complete opposite."
"Martello states that it is opera‟s job to give its audience relief from the pressures of life."
"A performance is a time to disengage from the world, turn off one‟s faculties of reason and indulge in the beauty of music."
"What is fascinating is the fact that Martello concedes that operatic enterprise is only useful to the soul “as long as the notes can keep it absorbed.”"
"Meta-theatrical devices, however, are forever undermining music‟s ability to completely absorb the listener since they shock the spectator out of the awe of the moment and bring full attention to the experience as theatre."
The next section in Johnston's thesis is thus entitled, "METATHEATRE IN THE LIBRETTO."
Johnston provides another fragment.
"In the course of his argument with his disbelieving wife,
Bacocco considers what his life would have been had he truly reformed his gambling ways:

--- "Ah sia pur benedetto/chi ha fatto quel libretto!”

"Bacocco's interjection interrupts Serpilla's questioning, and interrupts the spectator's immersion in the domestic drama unfolding onstage."
"Bacocco confronts the audience with the possibility that another libretto would present his situation differently—reminding the spectator that what they are witnessing onstage is the work of an author, that it is a fiction and that the actors are only playing parts."
"Such moments point to a general feature of the intermezzo: its willingness to recognize itself as theatre by referencing aspects of theatrical production."
"No intermezzo is more meta-theatrical in this sense than "Brunetta e Burlotto", set to music by D. Sarro for performance in Naples in 1720"
"It was a great success that was revived in Venice, Rome and Urbino by the travelling intermezzo team of
Santa Marchesini and Giacchino Corrado."
"Its libretto was by the prolific Antonio Salvi."
"The intermezzo features a remarkable second [section] which ... involves the performance of a play within a play, commentary on that play and the self-referencing of the actors as characters."
"It is, textually, the intermezzo‟s Hamlet in its hypermeta construction."
"The intermezzo‟s willingness to reference itself is made more interesting because "Brunetta e Burlotto" is in
some sense about the act of recognition."
"The intermezzo opens with Burlotto waiting outside in the cold on a moonless night for the girl he loves, Brunetta."
"Burlotto sings a short aria in which he steels himself against the inclement weather."
"He who is in love must remain steadfast in the cold, in the heat, in the water and wind”

Chi è innamorato
Ha da star saldo
Al freddo, al caldo
A l'acqua, al vento.

"Burlotto soon sees a light coming down the road and so hides himself in case it is not his lover."
"It is of course, Brunetta, but as the stage directions tell us at the beginning she is carrying a mask in her hand."
"Unsure of whom she is approaching, Brunetta cautiously puts on the mask to disguise her identity."
"The two—still dark figures in the night—then confess to the audience who they suspect each other to be.

"(Adesso se ne viene)/(A me pare assai bene/Cambiar la positura)/cammina diversamente dal suo naturale/(Nel camminar non ha la sua lindura)/(Fino su gl‟occhi ei sta inferraiolato,/In altezza, in grossezza, e in tutto il resto;/Certo, Burlotto è questo)/(Sta masherata in viso, al camminare,/E alla veste Brunetta non mi pare./O, che sciocco pur son! Non sbaglio no:/E‟ Madama Margò!)/(Io non mi vo scoprire,/Stiamo a veder, che mai la fare, e dire)/si vede uscir la Luna."
Translation: "(Now if it is)/(It seems like a good idea/to change my posture)/walks in a different way than normal/(Her gait doesn‟t have her elegance)/(He‟s cloaked up to his eyes, but,/In height, fatness, and in every respect;/Of course, this is Burlotto)/(A mask on her face, her walk,/And I do not think dressed like Brunetta./O, I‟m such a fool! I‟m not mistaken no:/It‟s Madame Margo!)/(I won‟t be found out,/Let‟s see what he‟ll do and say)/the moon comes out."

"Burlotto then introduces himself and a comical exchange ensues."
"Rather than disguising her voice (a favourite tactic in the repertory), Brunetta mutely
nods or shakes her head to Burlotto‟s questions."
"In the course of their exchange “Madama Margò” indicates that she is out wandering in the cold looking for Burlotto."
"Burlotto, fed up with waiting for Brunetta, turns amorous and pledges his allegiance to “Madama Margò” if she will take his hand (though he does admit that in doing so “I may have completely ruined Brunetta” [“Brunetta, sarei proprio rovinato”])."
"At that moment, of course, Brunetta reveals herself and curses the unfaithful Burlotto."
"The scene ends with Burlotto begging for Brunetta to open up his chest and see that he loves her with all his heart."
Brunetta goes on to "agreeing to stay with Burlotto, but only if he takes her as his wife."
"The rest of the intermezzo involves some playful behaviour."
"Little plot is advanced, but at the end they agree to flee together and elope."

"Chi è questo mai che viene?/(Chi è costui? O che modo di vestire!/A li Baffi, e al Turbante un Turco pare:/In quel linguaggio or io gli vo parlare.)/Sei Munsulmansin?/Non Sennor/Non Sennor? Sarà Spagnuolo.
Digame Cavallero/Es Espagnol! V.M.?/Nain, Nain/Tedesco esso sarà/Vasfor ein Landasman bist du./Bist en Tarter?/Non Monsieur/Ah, Ah, questo è Francese,/La lingua ancora so di quel Paese:
Feites moy le Plaisir, Monsieur,/De me dire, si vous etes Francois?/No Sar./O Inglese è questo:/Tu tell mi ifu aran Inghlis menn?/Minime, Nequaquam./Tal linguaggio/Ora non intend‟io./O te l‟ho fatta.
(Certo Burlotto è questo:/Fingerò, non averlo conosciuto)/Mi favorisca, quale è il suo Paese?/Son Italiano."
--- Translation: "Who‟s coming this way?/(Who is this? What a way to dress!/With a mustache, and looks like a Turkish turban:/What language should I talk to him in.)/You‟re a Muslim?/Non Señor
No, Sir? You‟ve become a Spaniard./Tell me, Sir/You‟re Spanish? Yes?/Nein, Nein./You‟ve become German./What kind of countryman are you./Are you a Tartar?/Non Monsieur/Ah, Ah, that‟s French,
I even know that language:/Do me the pleasure, Sir,/Tell me if you are French?/No Sir./Oh, that‟s English:/Do tell me if you are an English man?/Very little, not in the least./Such language/Now I don‟t understand
Oh, I‟ve had it with you./(I‟m sure this is Burlotto:/I‟ll pretend not to know him)/Please, what is your nationality?/I'm Italian."

"Burlotto then attempts to give the disguised Brunetta a fencing lesson."
"Brunetta, of course, handily upstages him by removing buttons from his shirt with her sword."
"The scene is reminiscent of the fencing scene between Nicole and Monsieur Jourdain in Le bourgeois gentilhomme, but does not quote Molière‟s text in any exact way."
"Since Salvi adapted Molière‟s play two years later it is possible that he had it in mind."
"This might seem especially plausible since a scene not in Salvi‟s adaptation appeared in a Neapolitan intermezzo in 1723 (see chapter 3). But in that case the borrowing was much more literal. This scene perhaps took some small inspiration from Molière, but more likely owes a debt to a “theatregram” which seeded both the scene in Molière and here in Brunetta e Burlotto. The intermezzo ends with Brunetta revealing her true identity and the two revelling with their “hearts leaping, butterflies gone, and hoping for love” (“Il cor mi saltella / Non piu budella / Sperando goder”)."
"While the intermezzo‟s third part might appear to be a trifle, the fact that it fits in with the larger theme of recognition that occupies all three parts suggests that Salvi was aiming for some greater unity. The third part brings a kind of symmetry to the work. Parts I and III deal with disguise as deception. Part II examines disguise as theatre. Intermezzos may be farcical in content, but their formal constructions are often more sophisticated than we give them credit for."
Johnston goes on to focus on this section of the "which takes the level of meta-theatricality to new heights."
"It opens with Brunetta and Burlotto agreeing to elope."
"But their thoughts soon turn to how they should accomplish this task."
"A disguise and new identities seem in order and they decide on an interesting occupation."

**************

They will be actors in an opera.

*************

"Brunetta, concerned about their abilities, suggests a rehearsal."

"E così di fuggir ancor dobbiamo noi pensare/Al modo di campare./Io l‟ho trovato:/Ambedue noi sappiamo un po cantare:/Potremo recitare./Recitare? Eh! Non tutti quelli, ch‟escono,/A fare un tal mestier, poi ci riescono./Se tu parli per me,/Io mi confido fare anche da Re./A la prova./A la prova./Recitiamo una scena ora a l‟impronto,/Io per me sono pronto./La scena finge stanza;/Qui ci vorrebbe un trono./Adesso me lo trovo, e ce lo pongo./entra/Questo è un Uomo curioso./E in certe cose è proprio grazioso./Sarà il mio Trono questo Tavolino./Che ci se finge sopra il baldacchino./porta fuori un Tavolino./Or siedi a dar udienza,/Ed io poi verrò a farti riverenza./O che bel Re! O che bel cospettone!/Ad esser tal ci ho gran disposizione./siede sopra un Tavolino.
--- Translation: "And so to flee we have to think again/about how we want to dress./I‟ve got it:/Both of us know how to sing a bit:/We can act./Acting? Eh! Not everyone, who goes onstage/to make it a profession becomes successful./If you speak for me,/I am confident I can do a King/To the rehearsal./To the rehearsal./We‟ll act a scene now on the spot,/I, for one, am ready./The scene takes place in a room;/In which we would like a throne./I‟ll find it, and place it there./enter/This is an odd man./In some things he‟s just lovely./This table will be my throne./If we pretend there‟s a canopy above./brings out a table./Now sit to hold an audience,
And then I will come to give you reverence./Oh that good King! O what wonderful presence!/To be so greatly at your disposal./sits on a table."

"They then act out a scene in which Brunetta, a young shepherdess, has come to ask for the right to take water from the stream by her hovel. Burlotto, the King, grants her request. Throughout their exchange Brunetta must step out of her character in order to remind Burlotto how he is supposed to act as the King and how it is he should act as an actor. When he reads out an ordinance he forgets that he has to make up what‟s on the blank piece of paper he has in his hand. Brunetta‟s gentle prodding, thankfully, always prompts him to act properly."
"This intermezzo within an intermezzo is particularly interesting because it enacts a scene not dissimilar from the kind that was in the opera seria proper. Brunetta e Burlotto was imbedded in Salvi‟s Ginevra, principessa di Scozia, an opera in which a King‟s wishes play a prominent role. The scene has no comparable one in the opera, but the audience that had been watching an opera with a King giving dispensations would then watch an intermezzo duo enact a scene in which one pretends to be a King giving a dispensation.
"Then things become especially convoluted. Burlotto innocently asks Brunetta what she thinks of his performance. She replies that she does not think him particularly suited to play royal persons, but perhaps comic ones. Burlotto retorts that she could play his servant girl. They then joke that they would have to give each other stage names. He would be “Corrado,” she “Marchesina.” These of course, are the names of the real actors portraying Burlotto and Brunetta on the stage."

"Ora lasciamo un po la Maestà,/E dimmi in verità/Che ti par?/Che mi pare?/Tu avvilisci il costume, e in parte grave/Non ci potrai riuscire./E che ho da fare?/La parte del Buffon puoi recitare./Buffone, mo?
Sbagliai, del grazioso./E tu, cara Brunetta,/Potresti far la parte di Servetta./Servetta, mo?/Sbagliai, di Damigella./Come vuoi caro mio./Sì sì: mia bella./Ma se fane vogliamo,/Com‟ogni Virtuoso, e Canterina,
Chiamiamoci con qualche sopranome,/O pure col cognome./Io mi dirò Corrado./Io Marchesina./Ma ci riusciremo/In questo modo poi di recitare?/Sai che vogliamo fare/Proviamo ancora un poco./Sì mio core.
Faccio io scena di sdegno, e tu d‟amore."
---- Translation: "Now let‟s leave a bit of the pomp,/And tell me the truth/What do you think?/What do I think?/You debase the costume, and that you/won‟t succeed in serious parts/And what would I have to do?/You can play the part of the buffoon./A buffoon, me?/I‟m mistaken, of the lover./And you, my dear Brunetta,/You could play the part of the maid./The maid, me?/I‟m mistaken, of the Damsel./However you like, my dear./Yes, yes, my pretty./But if we want to be/like every virtuoso and singer,/we have to be known by some nicknames,/or just by a surname./I‟ll call myself Corrado./I‟ll be Marchesina./But will we succeed/in this kind of acting?/You know what we want to do./Let‟s rehearse a bit longer./Yes, my love./I‟ll do a scene of outrage, and you of love."

"They then proceed to sing a duet very similar to the type which ended part one. Brunetta hurls insults at Burlotto, and he begs her to understand how much he loves her. All the while they refer to each other as themselves, that is, Corrado and Marchesina."

"Corrado infido,/Corrado ingrato,/Tu m‟hai lasciato,/E perche mai?/Ahi Marchesina,/Cara, e carina,/A te ritorno,/E notte, e giorno/M‟avrai d‟intorno/Non vo parlarti/No vo ascoltarti/Vatiene via./Brunetta mia
Dici da vero?/No no, ch‟io provo,/O! Che piu meglio non puot-andar/Fingerò piangere./Fingerò ridere./Queste mie lagrime/Sapranno frangere/Il tuo rigor./Ti puoi uccidere,/Ch‟a le tuo lagrime/Ride il mio cor.
Or burli ancor?/Sì sì, ch‟io burlo./Torniam da capo cara/o a provar.
---- Translation: "Disloyal Corrado,/Ungrateful Corrado/You left me,/And why?/Ah Marchesina,/Dear, and pretty,/I come back to you/Night and day/You shall have me near/I don‟t want to talk to you
I don‟t want to listen to you/Go away./Brunetta deares/Do you speak the truth?/No no, I‟m practicing,/O! What could possibly go better/I‟ll pretend to cry./I‟ll pretend to laugh./These are my tears
They will break/Your severity./You can kill yourself,/Your tears bring/laughter to my heart./Now jest again?/Yes, yes, I‟ll jest./Let‟s take it from the top and try it again.

"The music is highly conventional for this type of duet, except for the two lines in which the characters refer back to themselves as characters and not to themselves as actors. This occurs towards the end of the A section when “Marchesina,” doing her “scene of outrage” tells “Corrado” to go away (“Vatiene va”). Burlotto then asks if she really means it (“Brunetta mia / Dici da vero?”). Brunetta must then break character and tell him that she‟s only playing her part."
"This happens again at the very end of the B section when Burlotto asks Brunetta if she would like to take it from the top. Here they both again break character and become Brunetta and Burlotto again. In both of these instances Sarro leaves the strings behind and slows the bass
down to quarter notes marked off with quarter rests. He breaks the musical frame just as Brunetta and Burlotto break the theatrical one."

"Salvi and Sarro have concocted a very complex situation. When “Corrado” and “Marchesina” break character to return to “Burlotto” and “Brunetta,” they are in fact actually returning to character since the performers are, in real life, Corrado and Marchesina"
--- At this point comes Johnston's use of Daellenbach, as per previous commentary.

The next section in Johnstone's PhD thesis is entitled, "METATHEATRICAL MUSIC IN THE INTERMEZZO"

"The breakdown of musical language serves to enhance a metatheatrical effect suggested in the libretto."
"But the intermezzo repertory also contains music which frames moments of meta-theatricality in a more artful way."
"One of the most famous examples is explored by Alice Bellini."
"Metastasio‟s L’impresario delle canarie -- like "La Dirindina" -- is metatheatrical by nature."
"It is an intermezzo about an impresario, Nibbio, from the Canary Islands who arrives backstage to convince the soprano Dorina to take a contract at his opera house."
-- cfr. Villane
"He has prepared for her an aria to sing (her complaints that she cannot are quoted in chapter 3)."
"The aria, “Amor prepara,” is performed by Dorina with interjections of encouragement from Nibbio. Bellini suggests that Sarro has composed an “ideal” aria in 6/4 which is interspersed with Nibbio‟s “real” interjections in 3/4."
"The metrical structure of the work therefore serves to clarify the two dramatic frames which are occurring."
"Alice Bellini remarks that this does not suggest that separate dramatic frames are inserted in sequence, but rather that there are two concurrent dramatic frames occurring simultaneously."
"Our attention is drawn to one at a time as suggested by the libretto, the character speaking and, in the case of this aria, by the metrical shifts."

BELLINI WRITES:
"Meta-operatic scores mirror this narrative process."
"When realistic music is performed, the music that supports the entire opera is still there -- it may be confined to the background for a while, but does not go away."
"The conflict arises when the two levels of fiction (and of music) are brought to the foreground at the same time, and fixed (or recorded) within the same closed number, with occasionally paradoxical results (such as the metrical shifts mentioned above)."
"Erving Goffman‟s concept of “frames” helps to clarify what occurs onstage."
"Goffman writes that in the normal course of experience we focus on a particular event which holds our attention. We interpret this experience through a “frame.” Goffman suggests that if multiple events are occurring simultaneously one has the ability to “disattend”—to ignore—what is going on in the other events.53 For example, when attending the opera one usually chooses to focus on the stage action and ignore any chatter, coughing or rustling in the house. These things may catch our attention, but we attempt to filter them out and don‟t attach them to the experience of the opera as a work of art—we keep it out of that frame of interpretation. If our neighbour unwraps a lozenge we do not confuse that with part of the operatic work. In musical terms something similar can occur. The composer can choose to ignore what is going on in a particular event onstage musically in order to concentrate an event elsewhere onstage. Sarro, therefore, helps frame the audience‟s attention by “disattending” to certain musical events and composing only those which occur within the frame. When Dorina sings, Nibbio and his competing metre fall silent."
"Sarro helps the audience temporarily “disattend” to his onstage musical world in order to concentrate on Dorina‟s performance of the aria. In this example, Sarro has shown his ability to treat two competing levels of fiction in musical terms. Both Dorina and Nibbio occupy different levels of onstage fiction and so have concomitantly different musical languages. In the Brunetta e Burlotto example, he only chose to sustain one event at a time.
"This kind of interweaving of musical languages Sarro composed is unusual. More common in the repertory is the breakdown of musical material of the kind we saw above. Such moments often involve not only the breaking of character, but as we‟ll see, the reference and parody of certain operatic conventions.
Hasse‟s Dorilla e Balanzone features an aria which parodies the simile aria of the type we explored in 4.3. The rich but crass Balanzone, unsuccessful in his attempts to meet with Dorilla‟s mistress, sings of his infatuation in a buffa da capo aria. The A section is entirely typical of the comic genre in both words and music. The text makes use of questo/quello wordplay and many action verbs. The music sports gruff octave leaps and patter passages. The text of the B section is a silly take on the simile aria.

From: "Dorilla e Balanzone"

"M'ave Amor già sbalordito/E sconvolto m‟ha il cervello;/Bramo questo e fuggo quello,/Prendo quello e lascio questo;/Ed in somma delle somme confuso,/Son stordito, e non so quel che mi far./Son qual pianta fra due venti,/Son qual vento fra due piante,/Son qual nave in mezzo all‟onda,/Son qual onda in mezzo al mar./Son qual nave fra due piante...No,/Son qual pianta in mezzo al mar,
--- Translation: "My Love has stunned me/and upset my mind;/I crave this and escape that,/I take that and leave this;/So to sum it all up I‟m confused,/I‟m stunned, and I don‟t know what I‟m doing./I‟m like a tree between two winds,/I‟m like the wind between two trees,/I‟m like a ship in the middle of a wave,/I‟m like a wave in the middle of the sea./I‟m like a ship between two trees ... No,/I‟m like a tree in the middle of the sea."

"Hasse creates a wind machine in music for the B section."
"The vocal line continues with patter and vocal leaps, but the strings accompany the line with scalar passages of thirty-second notes.
"At measure 40 the music suddenly stops at the point at which the phrase would normally elide with the next. One imagines that Balanzone would perform some mock-thoughtful gestures as he tried to remember how the rest of the piece is supposed to go. He decides on an ending which is incorrect, but the music is not similarly incorrect. It continues with a literal repeat of the material. The repetition of the last two lines is superfluous as the text had already been set and the music had, at measure 39, arrived at its tonal goal of G minor. But Burlotto was too caught up in his simile and had to continue on incorrectly. In this case the metatheatrical moment—the moment which draws attention to the artifice of the aria—is again a moment in which the music gives out. Silence defines the fictional level at which Balanzone conjures up his thoughts. The level at which he performs his aria—the level the audience is exposed to through Hasse‟s music—is in the familiar style of an intermezzo‟s bass aria."
"Some metatheatrical music in the intermezzo repertory is more subtle in its construction."
"Girolamo Gigli‟s libretto for La Dirindina (1715) is of course firmly in the metatheatrical vein."
"It is a satire of the operatic business with its bad lead sopranos, profligate castratos, stage mothers and horny music masters. One of its arias, “Queste vostre pupillete,” uses a musical analogy to describe the visual charms of the eponymous Dirindina who, despite her mediocre singing abilities, is on her way to great success because of her obvious physical beauty. The aria is sung by Liscione, her castrato confidante. He attempts to convince Dirindina that she will be an enormous success in the theatrical world after she has just been given a contract.

"Queste vostre pupillette,/tanto vive e tanto nere,/son due note armoniose/fatte al metro d‟ogni cor./Son due nuove minuette/della danza delle sfere;/son due chiavi luminose/pel concerto d‟ogni amor.
--- Translation: "These eyes of yours,/so alive and so dark,/are two harmonious notes/timed to the metre of every heartbeat./They are two new minuets/from the dance of the spheres;
they are two shining clefs/for the concerto of every love."

"The first stanza suggests the musical analogy. The second provides the inspiration for the form of the aria. The text is set as a lilting two-part minuet—a musical joke on the simile of Dirindina‟s eyes being like “due nuove minuette.” Scarlatti further obliges Gigli‟s poetic flight of fancy by setting the piece in D major, a key with “due chiavi luminose.”
"These correlations are the source of humour in an otherwise serious-sounding cavatina. Each couplet follows the familiar versification plan for seria arias of the period with three ottonarii with piano endings and a final settenario capped with a tronco (eschewing the sdrucciolo ending common in humorous arias). This staid textual approach is mirrored in the music which remains within the ambit of minuet propriety. There is of course the potential for humour in the performance of the aria. The scene itself is ironic. Liscione clearly harbours no truly romantic feelings for Dirindina. Theirs is a platonic friendship (and one cannot escape the implication that Liscione is homosexual). A 1985 television production of La Dirindina (the year of its first publication in a critical edition)54 played up the effete character of Liscione by having the falsettist, Gianfranco Mari, squeak out the aria in a kind of high-pitched whine rather than using a more cultivated counter-tenor sound. Nothing is known of the original performer, Tommaso Bizzarri Sanese (which Francesco Degrada suggests may have been a pseudonym)."

Francesco Degrada,
La Dirindina (Milan: Ricordi, 1985).

Johnston notes:

"Degrada was also the continuo keyboardist for this production. The production was broadcast on Radiotelevision Svizzera, featuring the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana conducted by Marc Andreae. Peter Bissegger‟s set design created an appropriate setting for a meta-theatrical work; the intermezzo takes place on a giant harpsichord, which acts as a giant set piece. Liscione performs his aria as a dance on the dual-manual keyboard."

"We do not even know if [the original singer] was a castrato, as his part was written in the tenor clef in Part I and the soprano clef in Part II."
"Given that the libretto makes a lot of comedic hay of the fact that Liscione is a eunuch, it seems unlikely that Scarlatti would have envisioned the role performed in a tenor‟s range."
"The aria‟s mercilessly high tessitura—it contains five a‟‟s and never dips below a g‟—suggests either that Sanese had a remarkably lovely voice above the staff or that Scarlatti accepted that his voice may strain in performance."
"One wonders if Scarlatti here sacrificed his singer just to keep his “two shining clefs” in D major."
"This aria suggests that even in an early stage of the intermezzo‟s development composers found opportunities to apply a metatheatrical sensibility to the practice of composition." ("Sanese did not participate in the pastoral work which replaced La Dirindina in performance during Ambleto. The castrato Domenico Fontana took the female part of Elpina (as he was in La Dirindina) and Michele Salvatici played the baritone role of Silvano. See Sartori 13383 in Claudio Sartori, I libretti italiani a stampa dale origini al 1800: catalogo analitico con 16 indici (Cuneo: Bertola & Locatelli, 1990-1992), vol. 5. Since the work was intended to be performed in Rome a castrato had to play the female lead.")

The next section in Johnstone's dissertation is entitled, "METATHEATRE AND THE AESTHETICS OF MUSICAL HUMOUR"
"An obsession with the “natural” pervades all forms of aesthetic criticism in the latter three-quarters of the eighteenth-century."
"The prevailing view that the comic intermezzo is the manifestation of a kind of “natural” comic expression is largely the retroactive application of mid-century aesthetic notions onto an earlier time and repertory."
"Many musical features are shared between the mid-century and the works we‟ve explored here from the 1710s and 1720s."
"But we have also seen how a metatheatrical sensibility pervades the entire genre of the intermezzo. This contrasts sharply with the ideals of the natural as expressed by philosophers and dramatic theorists in the mid-eighteenth century—especially those disposed to French ideals (like Diderot, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Esteban de Arteaga).56 As we noted in the introduction, for Diderot the Italian comic style (as presented during the querelle des bouffons) was the ideal musical expression. But the intermezzo, as it was, was not so natural. Indeed, many of the basic features of the intermezzo‟s comic style shatter any sense of the natural by exposing the artificial means of theatrical production. Whether containing references to the actors playing a part (as in Brunetta e Burlotto) or parodying musical convention, the intermezzo always reminded the audience of the operatic work as a calculated fiction."
"The intermezzo belongs more properly to a different critical debate that occurred sometime earlier than the mid-eighteenth century. The dramatic criticisms of Muratori, Crescimbeni and Gravina formed the backdrop to the humour of the intermezzo. In the humorous treatises by Martello and Marcello we see further examples of how the criticisms of operatic practice were made manifest as a series of tropes about the excesses of opera. “Butterflies” and “little boats” became metonyms for the medium‟s failure to achieve verisimilitude. To critics and humourists alike, therefore, opera was nothing more than a collection of stock conventions divorced from any dramatic purpose."
"Meta-theatre in the intermezzo shows us, once again, that the genre‟s humour is dependent upon earlier theatrical models and upon a high degree of theatrical intelligence. One would not laugh and Marchesina‟s and Corrado‟s jokes about their personalities, their skills as actors and their conventional modes of representation if they were not well educated theatregoers. Humour, as Kozintsev noted, by its nature asks the audience to adopt the author‟s position and view the joke from the “metalevel.” Understanding humour means not merely getting the joke, but getting how the joke came about by understanding the author‟s perspective."
"This point has been made several times regarding comedy in the music of Haydn. Mark Evan Bonds, for example, made clear that the brilliance of Haydn‟s instrumental humour was its ability to capitalize on audiences‟ understanding of convention.57 In the case of the famous surprise symphony, “Haydn does more than merely surprise us: he directs our attention toward his own open manipulation of the various artifices that we as listeners, through our familiarity with this idiom, have come to expect.”58
"What Bonds asserts about the work of Haydn can easily be said about the metatheatrical comedic devices of the intermezzo. Comedy in the theatre obviously contains many more variables. An audience does not simply laugh at the music. But by the manipulation of the intermezzo‟s multiple modes of presentation—its music, its text, its gesture, its costuming, its scenography—producers of opera were able to create a humorous work of art by calling attention to the act of performance itself. The audience‟s expectations of how things are supposed to go are thwarted. But so are the audience‟s illusions about what the operatic experience is. The kinds of metatheatrical devices which generate comedy in the intermezzo make the audience always aware of the art form itself. They annihilate any ability to “suspend disbelief.”"
Johnston does not intend to "a facile line between the humour of the intermezzo and the musical humour of Haydn (thereby crediting it with not only classical style, but with the notion of Romantic irony in music)."
"Many connections exist, but there is a wide temporal and generic gap that is filled with many books and dissertations. What I do want to draw attention to is the fact that in both Haydn‟s music and the music of the intermezzo comedy is dependent upon manipulation of musical material for comic effect. It is not a natural phenomenon, but rather one which is fundamentally artificial. Behind every musical joke is the calculated understanding of an audience‟s expectations. The intermezzo was saturated with an understanding of itself as a work of fiction—with a metatheatrical awareness—from the very start. As we saw at the start of this chapter it owed its existence to a criticism of opera which denigrated the very basis of the form. No doubt influenced by this cultural criticism, intermezzo librettists found humour in making fun of opera, of performing and of the intermezzo itself. Composers‟ ability to support these turns musically is varied. In some cases they aurally composed the cues found in the music (as in the aria in La Dirindina). In other cases they composed music which exposed differing layers of fiction (as in the duet from Dorina e Nibbio). Most of the time they broke the musical frame and resorted to recitative or silence to accomplish their metatheatrical aims. In the very process of doing so these composers have revealed to us a truth about the practice of musical comedy that we will explore in the final chapter: musical humour cannot happen on its own, but is dependent upon the thwarting of listeners‟ expectation."

References:

Robert S. Freeman,
Opera Without Drama: Currents of Change in Italian Opera, 1675-1725 (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1981).

Renato di Benedetto,
“Poetics and Polemics,” in Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli (eds.), The History of Italian Opera (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).

Edward Lippman, A History of Western Musical Aesthetics (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 136-142.

Giammario Crescimbeni,
La Bellezza della Volgar Poesia: Spiegata in Otto Dialoghi (Rome: Gio. Francesco Buagni, 1700).

Crescembeni,
La Bellezza, translated by Ellen Rosand, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 275.

Robert S. Freeman,
Opera without Drama: Currents of Change in Italian opera, 1675-1725 (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1981).

Crescimbeni, Commentarj di Gio. Mario de’ Crescimbeni intorno alla sua Istoria della volgar poesia (Rome: Antonio de Rossi, 1711).

Gian Vincenzo Gravina,
Della tragedia (Naples: Nicolo Naso, 1715).

Claudio Gallico, “La „sostanza de‟melodrammi‟ secondo Pier Jacopo Martello: Una rilettura.” Musica e Storia 7, no. 2 (December 1, 1999): 347-349;

Gallico, “Prassi esecutiva nel Teatro alla moda di Benedetto Marcello,” Studi Musicali 1, no. 1(1972): 317-26;

Nino Pirotta, “Pier Jacopo Martello: „Et in Arcadia ego,‟ ma „cum modo,‟ ” Le parole della musica. II: Studi sul Lessico della Letteratura Critica del Teatro Musicale in Onore di Gianfranco Folena (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1995), 33-46;

Ulrich Weisstein, “Benedetto Marcellos Il teatro alla moda: Scherz, Satire, Parodie oder tiefere Bedeutung?” in Opern und Opernfiguren: Festschrift für Joachim Herz (Salzburg: Ursula Müller-Speiser, 1989), 31-57.

Claudio Gallico, “P.I. Martello and La poetica di Aristotile sul melodramma,” in Scritti in Onore di Luigi Ronga (Naples: Ricciardi, 1973), 225-232; Andrea Luppi, “Presupposti estetici del Teatro alla moda di Benedetto Marcello,” A.M.I.S. Antiquae Musicae Italicae Studiosi: Bollettino dell’Associazione 2, no. 3 (February 1, 1986): 14-

Reinhard G. Pauly
“Benedetto Marcello‟s Satire on Early 18th-Century Opera,” The Musical Quarterly 34, no. 2 (1948): 222-233; Nino Pirrotta, “Metastasio and the demands of his literary environment,” Studies in Music from the University of Western Ontario 7, no. 1 (1982): 10-17.

Piero Weiss, “Pier Jacopo Martello on Opera (1715): An Annotated Translation,” The Musical Quarterly 66, no. 3 (1980): 378-403, 385.

Eric Csapo, Actors and Icons of the Ancient Theater (Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 21.