Book Review: That’s Opera: 200 Years of Italian Music, edited by Gabriele Dotto (2009, Prestel Publishing, ISBN 978-3791341330)
Picture yourself seated in a lovely opera house, opera glasses in hand, intently reading the program before the lights dim, the chatter of the audience in the background as it awaits the overture. Have you ever wondered how an opera is conceived and journeys to the completion of its magic that you are about to experience?
Presented through essays in the pages of That’s Opera: 200 Years of Italian Music is that journey of the making of an opera. The essays are exquisitely written, timeless pieces on the background and art of opera. This catalog companion to a worldwide exhibition of over two centuries of publishing by Ricordi is a must-have for all opera lovers and artists. It is almost as if you are walking through the world tour exhibit while reading, with beautiful illustrations accompanying each essay. The book is not only visually stunning but its thick, textured, acid-free pages are also pleasing to the touch.
“My life has been dedicated to music and especially to opera. It is therefore only natural that I should be pleased to contribute these few words for such an important occasion as the commemorative exhibit for the bicentennial of the Ricordi Historical Archive,” writes Plácido Domingo in one of the forwards to the book. His forward is joined by those from six other notable figures in the opera world: Letizia Moratti (mayor of Milan), Maurizio Fallace (director general of the Department of Library Collections, Italian Ministry of Culture), Tino Cennamo (vice president and managing director of Ricordi), Hartmut Ostrowski (CEO of Bertelsmann AG), Thomas Rabe (CFO of Bertelsmann AG), and Uwe R. Brückner (creative director of Atelier Brückner).
The first essay, “Publisher as Protagonist,” written by the book’s editor Gabriele Dotto, director of classical music and historical archives at Ricordi, informs the reader on the history of Ricordi as a publisher of music. Illustrations include the building which housed Ricordi’s shop and offices, a view inside the printing plant, and an original production ledger.
Jean-Jacques Nattiez’s essay “Constructing an Opera” describes each cubicle in the exhibit stating, “The bulk of the exhibit is devoted to the successive phases in the conception and realization of an opera distributed into five ‘cubes’ which aim to present and describe them: the libretto, the score, the production, voices and costumes, and the performance. The essay is enhanced with photographs of Puccini, Verdi, and Boito, as well as a reproduction of a Neapolitan song by Tosti and published by Ricordi.
The next essay, “Spoken Drama, Sung Drama” by Luca Zoppelli, is a well illustrated historical account of the preparation of opera librettos for works from Rossini to Puccini. Zoppelli states, “Although one tends to forget the libretto in the end product (it is absorbed, so to speak, in the wash of sound that is opera), it nonetheless represents an essential phase in the creation of such a work.” The essay includes letters from librettists to composers which give insight into the collaboration and are oftentimes humorous. This essay is also wonderfully illustrated with reproductions of original writings of librettos with composer editing.
Pierluigi Petrobelli’s essay “From Words to Music” explores how the written word becomes music and stagecraft. Petrobelli begins his essay by commenting that “[f]or Verdi, actually writing the score—in the sense of creating the musical component of an opera with both the sung lines and the orchestral parts—did not mark the start of the creative trajectory, but its end point.” Illustrated with such novelties as letters indicating staging ideas and autographed musical sketches, this essay is sure to fascinate anyone interested in the nitty-gritty of what’s behind the music and its staging magic.
“Scenography,” Mercedes Viale Ferrero’s essay on the evolution of operatic staging, takes readers behind the scenes to explain how early Italian opera set designers transported “the audience to remote and unexplored worlds.” Reproductions of set illustrations for Aida, Madama Butterfly, La bohème, and Falstaff are wonderfully presented. And Ferrero educates on the concept of stage designs and the collaboration between set designer and composer.
The book is rounded out with two final essays, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Character and Costume in the Theater of Verdi and Puccini” by Vittoria Crespi Morbio and “The Composer Paints: Verdi, Puccini, and Their Scenic Worlds” by Roger Parker. Morbio’s essay illuminates early costuming ideas for such operas as Rigoletto, Otello, and Tosca and explains how each costume was designed to help enhance the character. Readers discover who the early costume designers were and how they worked with composers of Italian opera from conception to completion of each character. Roger Parker’s final essay on staging of operas is a well constructed and entertaining work on the demands of Puccini and Verdi in their staging requests—“production books.”
That’s Opera: 200 Years of Italian Music would perfectly grace any opera aficionado’s coffee table, readily becoming a wonderful companion to a warm blanket and hot beverage on a rainy afternoon.
