A broader view

Musical Times, Spring 2000 by Rushton, Julian

A broader view

JULIAN RUSHTON

Antonio Salieri and Viennese opera

John A. Rice

University of Chicago Press (Chicago & London, 1998); xx, 648pp; L75.95, ISBN 0 226 71125 0.

John Rice has produced a remarkable book, not only because it fills a gap in the market, but because of the richness of its material which establishes a broader framework for the comprehension of a repertoire which is increasingly going to be valued for its own sake, rather than merely as a context for Mozart. It is not a biography; it deals briefly with the main facts of Salieri's early life, then plunges into studies of context and of his operas, neglecting his instrumental and choral music and stopping with his last opera, twenty years before his death. Since Volkmar Braunbehrens published his biographical study in 1989 (translated in 1992 as Maligned master: the real story of Antonio Salieri), there has been an enormous increase, at least in Anglophone countries, in estimation not only of Mozart's operas, but of those by his predecessors and contemporaries working in Vienna. Despite Salieri's prominence in the demonology of Mozart worship, however, surprisingly little of this work has been devoted to him. James Webster, in a volume of which he was joint editor, has offered a magisterial and illuminating analysis of one aria from La locandiera (Mary Hunter & James Webster, edd.: Opera buffa in Mozart's Vienna (Cambridge UP, 1997)). Mary Hunter, in her 1999 book The culture of opera buffa in Mozart's Vienna (Princeton UP), takes most of her examples from other popular composers, especially Sarti, Paisiello, and Martin y Soler, although a cardinal point in her closing discussion of Cosi fan tutte is its `conversational' relationship to Salieri's La grotta di Trofonio. Other pertinent work is that of Dorothea Link on Martin y Soler, and her documentary study of the Burgtheater will be an indispensable source of reference for as long as we are interested in Mozart (The National Court Theatre in Mozart's Vienna: sources and documents, 1783-1792 (Oxford, 1998)). In addition, of course, we have interpretative, analytical, and archival study by other Mozartians who continue to spread their studies into the wider arena of Mozartian context.

In this crowded field, John Rice's new book will always stand out, not least because, while featuring a Viennese composer of the same generation as Mozart, it covers in detail a more extended period than Mozart's Viennese decade - although Hunter's more theoretical study extends back to 1770, the year Salieri's first opera buffa was performed. Examination of almost any other composer will make Mozart seem atypical; on this showing, Salieri's career was hardly more normal. Italian by birth, he came to Vienna so early that the Empress, Maria Theresia, with the brusqueness which characterises her famous comments on the Mozart family included Salieri in a list of German composers. In his earliest works, written during the 'impresarial decade' when the Court took a less interventionist role in running the theatres, Salieri experimented with a striking variety of genres. Among these operas are not only Goldonian dramma giocoso but a two-act intermezzo, and an opera-ballet on Camacho's wedding. There is even a Gluckian 'reform' opera, Armida, more like Telemaco (which has the same librettist) than Alceste, since it accommodates virtuoso singing within the reformist structure. Rice does not observe that the quoted air for Rinaldo (p.172) closely anticipates Gluck's later Armide ('Ah, si la liberte'). Salieri's willingness to face new problems of dramatic organization no doubt helped when,

in the 1780s, he assumed the mantle of Gluck in Paris, and then, with da Ponte, adapted his third French opera Tarare for Vienna as Axur, re d'Ormus.

Although Rice's book should act as a corrective to any assumption that Mozart was always at the centre of things, he falls naturally into the habit of mentioning Mozart when one of his future singers or librettists appears on the scene to work with Salieri, and he devotes a chapter to the relationship, and mutual influence, of the two composers; while Mozart's Figaro owes a debt to Paisiello's Barbiere, Don Giovanni, Rice suggests, is partly modelled on Salieri, whose operas were popular in Prague (although in the second finale Mozart chose to quote operas by Martin and Sarti rather than Salieri). The suggested debt of Die Zauberf tote to Axur is less compelling, given the tradition to which Mozart's last opera belongs, and of which our knowledge has recently been enriched by exploration, and recording, of the collaborative Schikaneder opera Der Stein der Weisen.

Anticipations in Salieri of features we might once have considered Mozartian include arias with elaborate wind obbligatos, two-tempo rondos, certain keyassociations, and the dramatic use of social dance, notably in La fiera di Venezia, which reminds us that the first finale of Don Giovanni is part of a Goldonian tradition of ball scenes. Rice is full of information on the Emperors, not only Joseph II, but his brother Leopold II, whose short reign had immense impact on Italian opera in Vienna; and he carefully profiles impresarios, librettists, and singers. His touch with historical context is generally assured, although on p.121, in connection with Salieri's first opera buffo, Le donne literati, a note of uncertainty is struck: 'there may have been a tradition in the 1760s that allowed for the finale of a third act to begin and end in different keys'. Since Salieri was born in 1750, it is perhaps excusable that Rice did not gather the statistical evidence to resolve doubts on this matter. On p.315, the statement that 'most tragedies lyriques were in five acts' does not hold for the 1780s, when Salieri worked in Paris; since Iphigenie en Aulide in 1774, three acts had been the norm. Even the adaptations of older, five-act librettos were usually in three acts; Gluck's Armide, and Salieri's Les Danaides and Tarare, are unusual in reverting to five. Despite the subtitle, and the book's concentration on Viennese opera, Les Danaides is fully discussed. Rice's diligence has led him to the somewhat partial analysis of this opera in my unpublished thesis. Re-reading this thirty-year-old work I can understand why he calls it `almost unremittingly hostile'. My assessment was based on the unpleasant subject-matter, mass murder being difficult to accommodate musically; the lack of marked musical individuality; and the absence of charactergrowth. Rice provides no ammunition to refute these points, but it is apparently no part of today's musicological project to separate genius from an expert talent. I certainly hope to revisit Les Danaides in the hope of Finding it better than I did then; but the genre Salieri cultivated most, and in which his works are most worth reviving, remains opera buffa.