"Meta-operatic" used twice by Johnstone

Speranza

Excerpts from K. Johnstone on the intermezzo.

Section:

METATHEATRE AND THE INTERMEZZO

Johnstone notes:

"The term “metatheatre” is one of diffuse meaning."

So is metaopera.

"["Metatheatre"] was coined by the literary scholar Lionel Abel in his 1966 book Methatheatre: A New View of Dramatic Form.5"

"Abel explicitly labelled meatheatre as a genre distinct from both tragedy and comedy."

"His central thesis was that “metaplays” supplanted tragedies in the Renaissance and represented a dramatic incarnation of a changed Western cultural worldview."

"This worldview was characterized by the acceptance of the illusory nature of existence and the primarily theatrical existence which we live."

"As Abel suggested, “the world is a stage, life is a dream.”6"

"Abel borrowed the sensibility of the melancholic Jaques in As You Like It in addition to his famous phrase. He saw his categorization of “metaplay” as a fundamentally serious genre which was not comic."

"Though Abel‟s claims were contentious, a strong strand of metatheatrical criticism—especially that concentrating on Shakespeare—has maintained Abel‟s notion of metatheatre as the new tragedy.7"

"Hamlet is the iconic example of a metatheatrical play as defined by Abel—a work in which the metatheatrical device of a play-within-a-play is used but also one in which the protagonist is acutely aware of his own theatricality."

"Subsequent to Abel‟s book many authors began to expand the definition of metatheatre to encompass a greater number of works than Abel prescribed. Richard Hornby‟s expansive 1986

5 Lionel Abel, Metatheatre: A New View of Dramatic Form (New York: Hill and Wang, 1963). Abel republished his book with a new introduction and title in 2003. See Abel, Tragedy and Metatheatre: Essays on Dramatic Form (New York: Holmes & Meier, 2003).
6 Abel, Tragedy and Metatheatre, 257.
7 See, for example, James L. Calderwood, Shakespearean Metadrama: The Argument of the Play in Titus Andronicus, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Richard II (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1971); When the Theatre Turns to Itself: The Aesthetic Metaphor in Shakespeare (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1981); John Bernard, “Theatricality and Textuality: The Example of Othello,” New Literary History 26, no. 4 (1995): 931-49; R.A. Martin, “Metatheater, Gender and Subjectivity in Richard II and Henry IV, Part I,” Comparative Drama 23, no. 3 (1989): 255-64.

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book Drama, "Metadrama and Perception" was the first to categorize systematically varieties of metatheatre in addition to enlarging its repertory to include works from Sophocles to Pinter.8

"He described not only the use of the play-with-the-play, but four other features of the metadramatic: the presence of ceremony, a character role playing within a play, referencing real life or another text and referencing oneself."

"By 1998, Mark Ringer could claim that metatheatre “encompasses all forms of theatrical self-referentiality.”9"

"This expansion of the definition of metatheatre from Abel‟s narrow genre designation is mirrored in the expansion of the metatheatrical repertory to include works of comedy both ancient and modern.10"

"Niall Slater‟s books on the comedies of Plautus and Aristophanes remain important testaments to the applicability of metatheatre as a concept to both comedy and works which predate the Renaissance.11 That metatheatre has any currency at all as either a genre or device within a genre is controversial. The classicist Thomas Rosenmeyer produced an acid attack on the concept. Blaming Abel for implicitly leaving “metatheater” open to application to any and all works, he wrote that
It is evident that “metatheater” has, in the wake of Abel‟s overload, been employed to cover too many different moves, and to elicit responses that undervalue the tradition of inventiveness and the wonderful immediacy of the emotional power of theater.12
Pace Rosenmeyer, I believe the concept can illuminate a distinct practice of librettists and composers working in the intermezzo repertory. The concept of metatheatre helps us to
8 Richard Hornby, Drama, Metadrama and Perception (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1986).
9 Mark Ringer, Electra and the Empty Urn: Metatheater and Role Playing in Sophocles (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 7.
10 For an early criticism of Abel‟s exclusion of comedy see Susan Sontag, “The Death of Tragedy,” in Against Interpretation (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1966): 132-39. For a discussion of the inclusion of comedy see Thomas Austin O‟Connor, “Is the Spanish Comedia a Metatheater?” Hispanic Review 43, no. 3 (1975): 275-289.
11 Niall W. Slater, Plautus in Performance: The Theatre of the Mind (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985); Spectator Politics: Metatheatre and Performance in Aristophanes (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002).
12 Thomas G. Rosenmeyer, “ „Metatheater‟: An Essay on Overload,” Arion 10, no. 2 (2002), 106-107.

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"understand and interpret levels of fiction within a given performance."

"This practice of metatheatre reveals interesting insights into the creation of comedy in the musical theatre."

----- ENTER METAOPERA.

"Musicology has only recently taken up the topic."

"The most prominent recent scholar to examine the practice of metatheatre in opera in the eighteenth century is Alice Bellini."

Vide Speranza, "The metaoperas of Bellini."

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"In her 2009 Cantab. D. Phil thesis, Alice Bellini discussed the many eighteenth-century comic ITALIAN operas which feature scenes of performance or are simply about the act of putting on an opera."

"Like Ringer, Bellini defines metatheatre broadly."

"Metatheatre becomes apparent each time theatre brings the audience's attention to the mechanisms governing theatre itself and to the fact that all performance is fictional and taking place hic et nunc."

13

Johnstone:

"Opera presents a special case
in the phenomenon of metatheatre."

VIDE: METAOPERA.

"The very fact the text is sung, rather than declaimed, draws attention to the fact that the actor is performing."

"However, there is a spectrum when it comes to the “theatricality” of performing a text."

"Straight plays with texts that are unmeasured and unrhymed will fall towards the side of realism, or to borrow J. L. Styan's term, the theatre of the illusory.14"

"The spectator for this type of play will expect the text to conform more closely to everyday conversation and therefore be more “believable” as real dialogue."

"The threshold for identifying metatheatrical devices, or moments which draw attention to the fact that the play is a performance, is very low for this type of drama."

"Anything that breaks the illusion of the play as reality is easily identifiable as metatheatrical."

"Plays written in verse (which date from before the modern period and therefore also often feature soliloquies and asides) fall in the middle of the spectrum."

"They are non-illusory, in Styan's terms, because the audience is made aware through the style of language and mode of delivery (speaking directly to---
---------------

Note 13 Alice Bellini,

“Aspects of Metatheatre in Eighteenth-Century Italian Opera,” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 2009), 3.


14 This terminology is used by J. L. Styan in Drama, Stage and Audience (London: Cambridge University Press, 1975).


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the audience, etc.) that they are viewing a performance.

"The status of certain events as metatheatre in these plays is more subject to debate."

"An aside draws attention to the theatricality of the dramatic event, but is a familiar convention of the genre."

"Rosenmeyer would contend that to call such events metatheatrical is to rob the term of any valuable meaning."

----- METAOPERA.

"Opera lies further along the

spectrum towards the point at which, when

watching a performance of a work, the

spectator is continually aware of the

fact that s/he is watching an opera."


"People do not sing their thoughts in everyday life and so we are made aware that opera by its very nature is not realistic."

"Here an overly liberal notion of metatheatre threatens to subsume the entire genre of opera."

METAOPERA.

"If we are always aware that we are watching a performance when enjoying music theatre, is there any difference between opera and metatheatre?"

"The answer is obviously yes."

"The difference has to do with the relationship between the audience and the performer."

"While the spectator may be made aware of the opera as performance, characters in the opera do not share a similar awareness."

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Carolyn Abbate stated the problem eloquently:

"In opera, the characters pacing

the stage often suffer from deafness; they

do not hear the music that is the ambient fluid of
their music-drowned world."

Abbate continues:

"This is one of the genre's most fundamental illusions."

"We see before us something whose fantastic aspect is obvious, since the scenes we witness pass to music."

"At the same time, however, opera stages recognizably human situations, and these possess an inherent “realism” that demands a special and complex understanding of the music we hear."

"We must generally assume, in short, that this music is not produced by or within the stage-world, but emanates from other loci as secret commentaries for our ears alone, and that characters are generally unaware that they are singing."


15

"In true moments of metatheatre, characters become aware that they are performing and they exist in a play as characters."

"Though the mode of operatic performance makes the fact of performance clear at all times to the spectator, the characters on stage do not share any similar moment of epiphany."

"There exists an irony in the fact that opera presents human situations which are realistic, but in a mode which is anything but."

"Only in certain moments do characters become

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15 Carolyn Abbate, Unsung Voices (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 119.


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"conscious that they are singing; these are the so-called “phenomenal” songs."

"These moments of rupture can have a metatheatrical effect if they draw the listener's attention to the means of musical performance.

Thus, Susanna's guitar playing during Cherubino‟s

“Voi che sapete,”

for example, alerts the listener to two artificialities of the operatic genre."

SUSANNA'S GUITAR PLAYING:

"The spectator is first made aware that

music comes from the orchestra, since the

sound source of Susanna's guitar comes from the pit

and not from her lap."


"The listener is also made aware of the materiality of the instruments themselves."

"Since the “guitar” is played by pizzicato strings, the listener is alerted to the fact that the orchestra —- with its more or less standardized complement -- is the means of musical production."

"It is conventional to have strings and not a guitar, and so the listener has a moment of awareness about the practicalities of producing an opera (if not some understanding about the acoustic properties of plucked instruments).16"

"Though the performers may not alter their method of voice production for their onstage “performance” of a phenomenal song, the audience still is given to understand that the character is aware that they are singing at that moment (and not talking, which is how characters onstage perceive recitative)."

"This creates an interpretive problem for the spectator."

"At what point does the character become aware that they are performing?"

"Music, in this instance, serves to clarify."

"Unlike text which must include stage directions to indicate a metatheatrical manoeuvre, music has the ability to frame moments all on its own."

"It can delineate something as separate from the illusion of reality of a particular work."

"Bellini makes this point clear."

16

Some recent scholarship has explored this phenomenon with respect to the use of the “phenomenal image” in opera. See Linda and Michael Hutcheon, “The „Phenomenal Image‟ in Opera,” South Atlantic Quarterly 104, no. 1 (2005): 63-77; Sherry Lee, “ „Deinen Wuchs wie Musik‟: Portraits and the Dynamics of Seeing in Berg‟s Operatic Sphere,” Berg and His World, edited by Christopher Hailey (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 163-94.

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Bellini writes:

"[p]urely musical means can
be used to underline the presence
of more than one layer of
reality -- music can go above and
beyond the dramatic narrative itself in delineating or dissolving the imaginary fourth wall between embedded and embedding representations."

Bellini goes on:

"Thus the complex nature of meta-operatic scores and their musico-dramatic structures can be seen to be a full match for the complexity of their librettos, along with all their multi-layered plots and the games they play with dramatic conventions and levels of fiction."


17

"Intermezzos in their earliest incarnations do not display this level of sophistication."

"Composers instead seem to have rather quietly followed the cues in the libretto in order to set metatheatrical moments in the intermezzos."

"By the mid-1720s, however, music begins to take a more assertive role in framing these moments and becomes a more independent means of creating humour independent of the text."

"In this decade we have examples in which the music is “metamusical,” drawing attention to itself through the use of parody or disruption."

"Intermezzos are, even more so than opera in general, metatheatrical by nature."

"They are plays-within-plays in the literal sense; they are performed within the frame of existing three-act works."

**********************************
"In the case of Naples before 1725,

minor characters from the

"opera seria" perform the intermezzo, thereby

strengthening the relationship between the two."

"Recall that Albino e Plautilla the intermezzo, like its host opera, Silla Dittatore, takes place in republican Rome."

"Francesco Feo's intermezzo Rosicca e Morano (1723) features a Numidian setting like the opera seria in which it was embedded, Metastasio‟s Siface."

"Elsewhere on the continent intermezzos enjoyed greater autonomy from the operas and did not share characters or settings."

"But it would be hard not to see their very presence as a comment on theatrical performance in general."

"Intermezzos and operatic tragedies shared similar conventions -- like the use of recitative and arias."

"By juxtaposing the styles used for comedy and tragedy, composers drew audience‟s attention to the differences between them."

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17 Bellini,

Music and „Music” in Eighteenth-Century Operatic Scores,” Eighteenth Century Music 6, no. 2 (2009), 207.

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"More importantly, many of the techniques by which librettists, composers and performers create musical humour are metatheatrical in nature."

"Contemporary accounts testify to the fact that performers imitated a number of sounds, including “the cracking of a Whip, the rumbling of Chariot Wheels.”18

"Troy refers to musical figures which imitate extra-musical sounds as examples of “comic realism.”"

"Ironically, however, these attempts at verisimilitude have the opposite effect intended by “realism” by calling attention to the music as performance."

"Just as a speech delivered to the audience breaks the dramatic frame of a play, talking, groaning, or making non-musical sounds has the effect of breaking the musical frame."

"Michal Grover-Friedlander has characterized the operatic medium as one which is dominated by the

“Italian notion of song.”19"

"She means by this that the audience is always listening for beautiful singing, which conditions a kind of listening in which the audience understands “song,” that is melody, as the primary mode of expression."

"This is a kind of ecstatic listening, and it specifically acknowledges operatic singing as an activity bordering on the superhuman."

"Such singing is transcendent on the one hand yet always under the threat of appearing ridiculous on the other, being both miraculous and continually available for parody.20"

"In the intermezzo repertory, which is often explicitly ridiculous, these moments expose the artificiality of musical expression (this artificiality was of course derided by early eighteenth-century dramatic theorists)."

"“Comic realism” therefore always threatens to undermine whatever claims the intermezzo has to verisimilitude."

"If opera is characterized by beautiful singing, then much of the intermezzo is characterized by ridiculous singing."

"In this sense, the intermezzo cannot help but involve metatheatre."

18

Edward Wright, Some Observations Made in Travelling through France , Italy, &c. in the Years 1720, 1721, and 1722 (London, 1730), I, 85.

19

Michal Grover-Friedlander, Vocal Apparitions: The Attraction of Cinema to Opera (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 3.
20 ibid., 3.
188

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The next section in Johnstone's dissertation is:

"THE METATHEATRICAL PERSPECTIVE: MARTELLO AND MARCELLO"

"The intermezzo‟s existence was brought about by the grumbling of literary theorists."

"In the last two decades of the seventeenth century, concerned Italian writers began to voice their concerns about the effects that opera had on its listeners.21"

"In 1700, Giammario Crescimbeni famously assigned blame for the destruction of acting, comedy and tragedy to Giacinto Andrea Cicognini‟s libretto for Cavalli‟s opera Giasone (1649).22"

"Cicognini‟s mixing of serious and comic characters and situations, Crescimbeni decried, was done for the vilest purposes."

"And once done,
[t]his concoction of characters was the reason for the complete ruin of the rules of poetry, which went so far into disuse that not even locution was considered, which, forced to serve music, lost its purity and became filled with idiocies.23"

"A fellow Arcadian, the librettist Apostolo Zeno, had already undertaken the task of filtering out the comic from the opera libretto, leaving nothing but specimens of pure tragedy which Robert Freeman -- in the modern era -- famously labelled “opera without drama.”24"

"Crescimbeni revisited opera in his Comentarii intorno alla sua istoria della vulgar poesia of 1711."

"This time he remarked on many improvements to the genre, which he noted now adhered more closely to an Aristotelian notion of tragedy."

"Arias were fewer in number, choruses returned to replace"

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21 See Robert S. Freeman, Opera Without Drama: Currents of Change in Italian Opera, 1675-1725 (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1981), 13; Renato di Benedetto, “Poetics and Polemics,” in Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli (eds.), The History of Italian Opera (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 1-66; Edward Lippman, A History of Western Musical Aesthetics (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 136-142.
22 Giammario Crescimbeni, La Bellezza della Volgar Poesia: Spiegata in Otto Dialoghi (Rome: Gio. Francesco Buagni, 1700).
23 Crescembeni, La Bellezza, translated by Ellen Rosand, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 275.
24 Robert S. Freeman, Opera without Drama: Currents of Change in Italian opera, 1675-1725 (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1981).

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"comic episodes and librettists adhered to the unity of time.25"

"Crescimbeni‟s complaints about opera were therefore primarily structural. With the elimination of comic scenes and a recommitment to the unities, opera could redeem itself as an aesthetic endeavour."

"Ludovico Antonio Muratori was not so easily swayed by such small changes to opera. In his Della perfetta poesia italiana of 1706 he roundly criticized opera in not only aesthetic but moral terms. Drawing on ancient Greek criticism of the effeminacy of certain types of music, Muratori put the blame not only on comedy, but castrati, melodies, women and eighth notes.26 The problem of opera was not its abandonment of Aristotelian principles of tragedy, but rather opera itself. The entire enterprise was debauched and “exceedingly harmful for public mores.”27"

"Muratori‟s criticisms were echoed in 1715 by Gian Vincenzo Gravina in his essay Della tragedia.28 Gravina, though no longer an Arcadian, maintained a thoroughly attic attitude towards modern opera. Like Muratori he felt that the purpose of tragedy was to improve the moral character of the audience. Modern opera, he suggested, did the complete opposite. This was because the poet and the composer were not the same person.29 The composer merely

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25 Crescimbeni, Commentarj di Gio. Mario de’ Crescimbeni intorno alla sua Istoria della volgar poesia (Rome: Antonio de Rossi, 1711).
26 One cannot think of a single sentence which more thoroughly condemns all aspects of opera than the following: “Whether this effeminacy is caused by an excessive use of eighth notes, sixteenth notes, and the smallest rhythmic values, which break the solemnity of the melody, or is produced by the voices of the singers, who are all either naturally or artificially womanlike, and consequently inspire undue tenderness and languor in the souls of the audience; or whether it stems from the use of ariettas in operas, which induce excessive enjoyment in anyone who listens to them, or from the words, which often lack integrity and abound in lasciviousness, or from the practice of using women singers in theatres; or from all these reasons put together: it is a fact that modern theatre music is exceedingly harmful for public mores, in that people become ever baser and more prone to lasciviousness when listening to it.” Translated by Wolfgang Freis, Lisa Gasbarrone and Michael Louis Leone in Enrico Fubini, Music and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Europe: A Source Book, edited by Bonnie J. Blackburn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 41.
27 ibid., 41.
28 Gian Vincenzo Gravina, Della tragedia (Naples: Nicolo Naso, 1715).
29 Gravina‟s notion of the ancient poet-philosopher-musician would later be an idea important to the work of Giambattista Vico. For more see History of Aesthetics, edited by Cyril Barrett (The Hague: Mouton, 1974), 444; Bruno Barillari, G.V. Gravina come precursore del Vico (Naples: Città di Castello, 1942). For a recent view on

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"pursued his own selfish goals, resulting in a text whose poor literary merit was made worse by the indulgent and fanciful musical setting it received."

"The intermezzo therefore came of age during a time in which the operatic enterprise was under attack not only for its production practices but for every aspect of the medium itself. When, of course, has this not been the case? But in the early decades of the eighteenth century the voices of criticism were louder and more vociferous than they had been at any time previous. This despite the fact that Zeno, Salvi and others had successfully implemented many changes which critics had suggested in the previous century. But Muratori, Gravina and their ilk could not be satisfied. More than calling for the “reform” of opera‟s ways, they demanded the purgation of its very soul."

"This fevered and somewhat paranoid criticism helped pave the way for satirical representations of opera. The two most prominent of these in literature were Pier Jacopo Martello‟s Della tragedia antica e moderna (1715) and Benedetto Marcello‟s Il teatro alla moda (1720). Martello‟s treatise had appeared a year earlier, but was republished in 1715 with the addition of a commentary on opera. The relationship of these works to contemporary operatic practice is well documented,30 as is their relationship to contemporary dramatic criticism, including some of the work cited above.31 This material will not be rehashed in any great detail
Vico‟s and Gravina‟s differences see Giuseppe Mazzotta, The New Map of the World: The Poetic Philosophy of Giambattista Vico (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 155.

30 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.
31 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-

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here."

"What I will attempt to do in this section is explore how these literary works give us a glimpse into the mindset of learned opera audiences of the 1710s. I do not want to posit a simple causal relationship between these works of Martello and Marcello and subsequent metatheatrical librettos. In fact, it is almost certain that none exists. The intermezzo satire La Dirindina (discussed below) was written in 1715, the same year as Martello‟s dialogue and some five years before Marcello‟s pamphlet. Yet it seems to pinpoint many of the same operatic topoi which will be satirized throughout the century. Librettists may therefore have lampooned the same behaviours and conventions outlined in Martello‟s and Marcello‟s works, but they did not look to them for source material. The relationship between metatheatre and these literary works is not so direct. Instead, they testify to a particular perspective, a way of looking at opera that began to occupy practitioners and theatregoers in the 1710s. It is this perspective which allows for the kinds of metatheatrical humour we see in the intermezzo repertory."

"This type of humour was diverse and involved a number of different metatheatrical devices."

"But much of the intermezzo‟s evolving style of humour—which begins to influence its musical language—is dependent upon a kind of meta-sensibility, that is, an awareness on the part of creators and performers of the intermezzo medium as theatre. Humour is always dependent upon insider knowledge. The previous chapters explored the importance of French theatre, philosophy, gambling and divorce to an appreciation of the humour in the intermezzos discussed there. The self-consciousness of the intermezzo—its understanding of itself as an intermezzo, or as a comment on opera in general—is a fundamental condition of the style of musical humour that evolved throughout the 1720s."

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19; 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.

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"Given that Aristotle figured so prominently in the serious debates among dramatic theorists it is little surprise he was featured as the main character of Martello‟s dialogue."

"The interlocutor (Martello) meets a supposedly very aged Aristotle on a ship bound for Marseilles and passes the time listening to his lengthy disquisitions on what constitutes a proper theatrical work. This Aristotle‟s views on opera were far more sympathetic to actual practice than what Muratori and others had imagined the real Aristotle‟s to be. Regarding the fundamental problem critics had—that the words were subservient to the music—the impostor has no problem at all. Martello here cleverly gets around the problem as posed by critics. He suggests that the text of the opera is not the work of poets at all. What opera needs is a different type of writer:
We have need, then, not of Poets, but rather of verse-mongers; but no, not of verse-mongers, either, for there must be a plot, and that calls for something more than a verse-monger: not mere verse-monger, then, nor true Poets (I am at a loss what to call them) let those be who are called upon to serve the needs of opera, just as the choregi once served the material needs of tragedy.32"

"Martello‟s indecision about what to call these writers is telling. He is not willing to place them in a totally subservient role, but as he later suggests, merely within a hierarchy of the art form (above the scenographer and costumer, but below the composer). The choregi of Greece may not be remembered as playwrights like Sophocles are, but they were still awarded prestigious prizes for their contributions.33 Martello implies there is no shame in this."

"This practical consideration of opera—the idea that certain roles in a production are required and so there must be artisans to fulfill them—is the defining characteristic of Martello‟s dialogue. An artist‟s obligation is to the medium of theatre, not to a moral imperative. This reframing of the role of the librettist signals the turn towards metatheatre in the sense of the term


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32 Translated in Piero Weiss, “Pier Jacopo Martello on Opera (1715): An Annotated Translation,” The Musical Quarterly 66, no. 3 (1980): 378-403, 385.
33 Eric Csapo, Actors and Icons of the Ancient Theater (Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 21.

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that Abel originally intended."

"Librettists were no longer meant to be original, but should be aware of their own positions as servants of the music and the drama."

"They were aware of the fact they were creating works of theatre, and so their work in some ways is about the nature of theatre and theatrical expression."

"Martello's suggestions about how to achieve success in this realm are familiar to lovers of opera seria. His suggestion for arias texts is very useful."

"In the arias I advise you to use similes involving little butterflies, little ships, a little bird, a little brook."

"These things all lead the imagination to I know not what pleasant realms of thought and so refresh it."

34

"Marcello advised exactly the same thing."

"The aria must in no way be related to the preceding recitative but it should be full of such things as sweet little butterflies, bouquets, nightingales, quails, little boats, little huts, jasmine, violets, copper basins [?], little pots [cavo rame], tigers, lions, whales, crabs, turkeys, cold capon, etc.35"

"Marcello‟s tone is much more sardonic than Martello‟s (he‟s also much funnier). But they both get at the overuse of the simile aria in contemporary operatic practice. Bellini cautions against viewing Marcello‟s pamphlet as a documentary account of actual operas. She writes that “we should attempt to distinguish between historical data and what appear to be the conventional traits and literary formulas of this repertoire.”36 That this trope appears in both sources suggests the latter. It does not, however, imperil our argument because tropes which contribute to the self-conscious sensibility contribute to that sensibility no less than if they were original observations."

34 Weiss, MQ, 397.

35 Translated by Reinhardt G. Pauly in Benedetto Marcello, “Il Teatro Alla Moda—Part I,” The Musical Quarterly 34, no. 3 (1948), 377. “Part II” appeared in MQ 35, no. 1 (1949): 85-105.

36 Bellini, “Aspects of Metatheatre,” 11.
194

"Antonio Salvi introduced this literary satirical trope into his libretto for the intermezzo L’artigiano gentiluomo (1722)."

"But rather than directly parodying a simile aria, Salvi has introduced his satire through the back door by sneaking it into the recitative. The following excerpt is the continuation of the scene we examined in chapter 1 (section 1.4). Vanesio has just welcomed the Baronessa d‟Arbella (his servant Larinda in disguise) and completed his elaborate salutation meant to impress the noblewoman. What preceded, as we saw, was adapted faithfully from Molière‟s original text. The following, however, is the invention of Salvi."

From: Antonio Salvi, L’artigiano gentiluomo, Part II.37

Vanesio
Larinda
Van.
Lar.
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.
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.

----

"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

----

37 Raccolta copiosa, 365. Translation adapted from Lazarevich in Hasse, L’artigiano gentiluomo, xxxii.

---

"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.
Example 4.3.2 Johann Adolph Hasse, L’artigiano gentiluomo, Part II, recit.
This scene does highlight a couple of important points about metatheatre 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 thesis‟s argument in chapters 1 and 2 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

38 For a complete account of the changes in the libretto see Lazarevich, “The Role of the Neapolitan Intermezzo in the Evolution of Eighteenth-Century Musical Style,” 251-3.

---

cities in which the intermezzo is known to have been performed) it seems that audiences appreciated a good parody of opera seria.39"

"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.40"

"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, whom we encountered in Chapter 2, for example, specifically saw the inability to control one‟s pleasure-seeking as the
---

39 For a list of these performances see Troy, 144-5.
40 Martello, 402-3.

---

road to Sophism, skepticism and Epicureanism.41

"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. He 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.” Metatheatrical 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. Let us now examine how librettists and composers used these devices in practice."

The next section in Johnstone's PhD is entitled:

METATHEATRE IN THE LIBRETTO

"Many intermezzo librettos contain moments like the one which forms the epigraph of this chapter."

"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!”

"His interjection interrupts Serpilla‟s questioning, and interrupts the audience‟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

---
41 Paolo Mattia Doria, Difesa della metafisica degli antichi contro Locke, book 4, chapter 10. For more on Doria and his views on self-restraint see Stapelbroek, 95-99; Robertson, 184-200, 338-340.

---

"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 metatheatrical in this sense than Brunetta e Burlotto, set to music by Domenico Sarro for performance in Naples in 1720.42"

"It was a great success that was revived in Venice, Rome and Urbino by the travelling intermezzo team of Santa Marchesini and Giacchino Corrado.43 Its libretto was by the prolific Antonio Salvi."

"The intermezzo, in three parts, features a remarkable second act which we will explore in some detail. It 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."

"We will first examine parts I and III, followed by an extended discussion of part II.

The intermezzo‟s willingness to reference itself is made more interesting because Brunetta e Burlotto is in some sense about the act of recognition. It opens with Burlotto waiting outside in the cold on a moonless night for the girl he loves, Brunetta. He 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”).44 He 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, she 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.
---

42 Domenico Sarro, Brunetta e Burlotto (Naples, 1720). Ms., I-Nc, 32.2.22.
43 See Piperno, 265-66.
44 Raccolta copiosa, 294-95.


From: A. Salvi, Brunetta e Burlotto, Part I, recitative45

Burlotto
Brunetta
Bur.
Bru.
Bur.
Bru.

(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. He, 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."

"Part II of the intermezzo begins with Brunetta agreeing to stay with Burlotto, but only if he takes her as his wife. The rest of the intermezzo involves some playful behaviour which I will discuss in more detail below. Little plot is advanced, but at the end they agree to flee together and elope. Part III is especially silly and has garnered some reputation in the literature. Troy
45 ibid., 394. “Lindura” is a Spanish word not found in Italian, suggesting the intermezzo‟s Neapolitan origins.
200
mentions it as the “ne plus ultra” of clowning scenes.46 David Kimbell, in his history of Italian opera, uses the scene as an example of the intermezzo‟s indebtedness to the commedia dell’arte.47 Brunetta and Burlotto have disguised themselves in order to make their escape. He wears a French hat, German breeches, a Turban, a fencing master‟s vest and carries two foils in each hand; she is dressed as a man. Neither recognizes each other. Brunetta‟s questions about Burlotto‟s identity unfold as a multi-lingual elastic gag every bit as ridiculous as Burlotto‟s getup.48

From:

Brunetta e Burlotto, Part III
Burlotto
Brunetta
Bur.
Bru.
Bur.
Bru.
Bur.
Bru.
Bur.
Bru.
Bur.
Bru.
Bur.

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.

46 Troy, 86.
47 David Kimbell, Italian Opera (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 307.
48 For the use of multiple languages in the routines of the commedia dell’arte see Erith Jaffe-Berg, The Multilingual Art of Commedia dell‟arte (Ottawa, ON: Legas, 2009).

---

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.

Let‟s now examine the second part of the intermezzo, which takes the level of metatheatricality 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.

From:

Brunetta e Burlotto, Part II
Brunetta
Burlotto
Bru.
Bur.
Bru.
Bur.
Bru.
Bur.
Bru.
Bur.
Bru.
Bur.
Bru.
Bur.

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."

From: Brunetta e Burlotto, Part II
Burlotto
Brunetta
Bur.
Bru.
Bur.
Bru.
Bur.
Bru.
Bur.
Bru.
Bur.
Bru.
Bur.
Bru.
Bur.
Bru.
Bur.
Bru.

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.

From:

Brunetta e Burlotto, Part II, “Corrado infido / Marchesina Ahi”

Brunetta
Burlotto
Bru.
Burl.
Bru.
a2
Bur.
Bru.
Bur.
Bru.
Bur.
Bru.
a2

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 dearest
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."

From:
D. Sarro, Brunetta e Burlotto, Part II, duet finale, mm. 18-30 (folio 105v-160r)


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.


From:
D. Sarro, Brunetta e Burlotto, Part II, duet finale, mm. 35-43 (folio 106r-106v)
208

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.

"In order to clarify what is going on here, I will refer to the literary theorist Lucien Dällenbach."

"His work
describes the use of the mise en abyme, which he refers to as “the mirror in the text.”49"

"Dällenbach defines the mise en abyme as “any internal mirror that reflects the whole of the narrative by simple, repeated or „specious‟ (or paradoxical) duplication.”50

"These three types require some explanation."

"The first type we have encountered already."

"“Simple duplication” is the use of a play within a play which bears some connection to the play itself (as in Hamlet)."

---

"This is the type which occurs throughout most of Part II, in which Brunetta and Burlotto enact a fiction within their existing fictional frame."

"“Indefinite duplication” (or “repeated” duplication) is the recursive appearance of a play within a play which itself has a play in it."

"“Aporetic duplication” (the specious or paradoxical duplication) is the third type, in which the play within the play turns out to be, in fact, the play itself."

----

AliceBellini describes Carlo Goldoni‟s metatheatrical comedy La bella verità (1762) as one of the few examples of such metatheatre in the repertory.51

Alice Bellini's reference to the art of Maurits Escher helps illuminate Dällenbach‟s concept.

Escher‟s Drawing Hands (1948) shows two hands on paper holding pencils drawing the other hand.

We have a theatrical version of that occurring in the Part II finale duet of Brunetta and Burlotto.

Two actors pretending to be characters pretend to be the actors they actually are.

But whereas Escher‟s drawing shows two perfectly formed hands, our intermezzo reveals the seams between the various layers.

By having Burlotto become confused and switch between characters Salvi reveals the various levels at which the scene is operating.

In these instances the scene reverts to the first type in which there is simply one embedded performance.

Dällenbach accounts for this

---

Note:

49 Lucien Dällenbach,

"The Mirror in the Text",
translated by Jeremy Whiteley with Emma Hughes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 35.

50 ibid., 36

51 Bellini, “Aspects of Metatheatre in Eighteenth-Century Italian Opera,” 114.

---

"occurrence and suggests that the three types of mise en abyme are “trinitary” in nature."

"The concept is not compromised by the switching back and forth between types."

"There is yet one more level on which this scene enacts the third “aporetic” type of mise en abyme."

"Brunetta and Burlotto are pretending to perform a finale duet, which, of course, they are in fact performing."

"As we noticed above, their ability to stay in character was only partial and so we do not have a complete example of the “aporetic” variety."

"But formally, as a finale duet, the scene which is supposed to be embedded does enclose itself."

"It also pokes fun at its own convention by having the participants agree verbally to perform the da capo."

"What is fascinating is that in the moments in which Brunetta and Burlotto step back into their original characters the music essentially breaks down."

"In the embedded performance -- the one in which they are pretending to perform as themselves -- the strings hurriedly accompany the vocal line."

"But at the points mentioned above (at the ends of sections A and B when they return to “Brunetta” and “Burlotto”) the music is stripped bare and the continuo only lumbers along."

"This is remarkable because on the dramatic level the audience is able to keep track of the stacked levels of fiction (at least for the most part)."

"They are aware that the characters are performing the roles of other people."

"On the MUSICAL level, however, the audience is not able to discern a similar stacking of levels."

"Brunetta and Burlotto do not sing with a different musical language than “Corrado” and “Marchesina.”"

"When the actors revert back to the level of the characters of Brunetta and Burlotto there appears to be no musical activity at all."

"This is meant as humorous because it draws attention to the fact that Burlotto is silly enough to believe what his “Marchesina” is saying."

"The musical action stops as the dramatic action pauses and the characters step out of character."

"But it is ironic that when they sing as themselves (as Corrado and Marchesina) they sing an aria, but when they sing as their characters they sing in something more closely resembling recitative."

"The further away they get from actual speech, the closer they get to being themselves."

"Corrado and Marchesina -- the performers -- therefore appear to be as much a performance as the characters they perform on the stage."

"Returning to Abel‟s dictum, the world is a stage and their lives as performers are a dream."

"The music, in this capacity, does frame our perception of the scene."

"It helps clarify the various metatheatrical levels that we pass through in the course of their duet."

"Though the music is not overly sophisticated, it nevertheless assists the libretto in its complex treatment of several levels of fiction."

The next section in Johnstone's PhD thesis is entitled,

METATHEATRICAL MUSIC IN THE INTERMEZZO

"As we saw above, 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 metatheatricality 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).52"

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"Erving Goffman‟s concept of “frames” helps to clarify what occurs onstage."

"He 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

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52 Bellini, “Music and „Music‟ in Eighteenth-Century Operatic Scores,” 190.
53 Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), 202.

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"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, Part II, “M’ave Amore già sbalordito”
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 Amor 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.

From:
J.A. Hasse, Dorilla e Balanzone, Part II, “M’ave Amore già sbalordito”
215
216
217

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, see chapter 1) 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.

From:
Girolamo Gigli, La Dirindina, Part II, “Queste vostre pupillette”

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.”

From:
Girolamo Gigli, La Dirindina, Part II, aria, “Queste vostre pupillette,” mm. 1-4.


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).

54 Francesco Degrada, La Dirindina (Milan: Ricordi, 1985). 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 he was a castrato, as his part was written in the tenor clef in Part I and the soprano clef in Part II.55 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.

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. As I argued in the introduction to this thesis, 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

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55 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.

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"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."

"Metatheatre 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

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56 On the Relationship between Lessing and Diderot see Robert Heitner, “Concerning Lessing‟s Indebtedness to Diderot,” Modern Language Notes 65, no. 2 (1950): 82-88. Diderot was particularly concerned with the “illusory” nature of theatrical works. He wrote that “If one is so curious about the artist, then the illusion must be very weak, one must sense little that is natural and yet be all the more aware of the artifice.” He, more that Diderot, expressed this necessity in explicitly theatrical terms. See Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Hamburgische Dramaturgie, Sechsunddreissigstes Stück (September 1, 1767), erke: ol. Kritische Schriften. hilosophische Schriften. M nchen, edited by Jost Perfahl and Otto Mann (Munich: Winkler, 1969): 425-26

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"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.”
57 Bonds, “Haydn, Laurence Sterne, and the Origins of Musical Irony,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 44, no. 1 (1991): 57-91.
58 Ibid., 71.
223

"I do not intend here to draw 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."