The Musical Language of Italian Opera, 1813–1859

as readers of this journal know all too well, the discipline of music analysis has increasingly been called on to defend itself over the past decades. So much so that in 2020 Julian Horton felt the need to publish a spirited defense, entitled “On the Musicological Necessity of Musical Analysis.” At stake, he claimed, was not only the ability to consider a “close reading” of an artwork, in which resides the Adornian “surplus” that lies beyond utilitarian and market value and thus resists, through technical codes, neoliberal social and economic forces, but also the very existence of the literate culture that has underpinned music of European origin for centuries—wherever it has been practiced. Music theorists and analysts have responded to the challenge in many ways.1 Some have countered the charge that music analysis is a self-justifying end-in-itself by applying its methods with “historicist” intent to discover more about past theory, pedagogy, performance, and the expectations of long-departed listeners. Much of the new Formenlehre, for instance, as well as Robert O. Gjerdingen's theory of Galant schemas and Giorgio Sanguinetti's study of partimento, use the tools of music theory and analysis to try to recapture, or at least reimagine, musical experiences from the past.2 Others have responded to accusations that the discipline upholds the colonial-era hegemony of the Western classical canon by adapting its methods to deal with a wider range of repertory.These broad concerns explain why Rothstein feels the need to justify his analytical study of Italian opera. In part 1 (“La via italiana,” a survey of theoretical contexts), he takes pains to situate the book within the latter, “wider repertory” approach, while maintaining a foothold in the former, “historicist” one. Within both, he is on shaky ground. He starts by lamenting the declining interest in opera shown by “the North American music-theory community” and expresses a desire “to nudge American theory away from the extreme Germanocentrism that has undergirded it since the 1930s” (xii–xiii). Yet his own erudite and thought-provoking discussions of American theorists who have devoted their careers to the analysis of opera belie the claim to reoccupy previously held new territory. Already by the 1980s Phillip Gossett had begun the task of raising the status of opera composers from Rossini to Verdi to validate their music as worthy of serious study, and his efforts bore fruit in the work of a generation of later scholars (see Gossett 1985). Rothstein confirms as much while seeking to reassure his readers: “To opera lovers who have read such authors as Julian Budden, David Kimbell, and Pierluigi Petrobelli, take heart: you will find much that is familiar in these pages. If you have also read Harold Powers, you should feel right at home” (xx). While most would concede that within the American academy Franco-Italian opera remains subordinate to the instrumental music of “Schenker's dozen, . . . ten of them German” (xiii), Rothstein's aim to revive interest in opera analysis cannot be said to push the boundaries of the discipline into new areas, notwithstanding the many innovative and persuasive findings presented in his book. Nor, as I argue below, does it approach the repertory from a historicist perspective, despite its use of concepts drawn from an insightful and well-informed “snapshot” survey of relevant primary sources—from Asioli, Basevi, Weber, and Reicha to Fétis, Hauptmann, and Sechter—which concludes, tellingly, with the disclaimer that, “except for Asioli and Basevi, we will refer back only occasionally to the theorists discussed in this chapter” (62).The real reason Rothstein wrote this book, as he himself admits, “is that I wanted to write it” (xi). It represents the summation of half a lifetime of research by one of America's most distinguished theorists. The analyses presented in the main body of the book—part 2, “Rossini”; part 3, “Between Rossini and Verdi” (focusing on Bellini, Meyerbeer, Mercadante, and Donizetti); and part 4, “Verdi's Sedici Anni sixteen years, 1843–58”—offer a demonstration and, at the same time, celebration of how the skills and knowledge he has acquired enable him to explain, elucidate, and rejoice in his favorite operas. Rothstein is no gamekeeper-turned-poacher, as hinted in the framing sections of part 1, shaking up the academy from within by exploring unfamiliar repertory or advancing a new historicist approach. Rather, in the main parts of the book, 2–4, he offers a shining example of the potential of mainstream American music theory—neo-Riemannian harmony, Formenlehre, Schenker, and the rest—to advance knowledge and understanding. He is at one with his ideal reader, who “has some familiarity with the operas I discuss, realizes figured basses fluently, and is comfortable with the apparatus of Schenkerian analysis,” adding wryly that these three attributes “do not greatly intersect, especially the first with the last” (xx).Rothstein starts from the premise that Franco-Italian opera of the early nineteenth century differs significantly from the German instrumental tradition, which is too often assumed to represent a “universal” language of music. This distinctive Franco-Italian tradition left its mark on German repertory (as demonstrated, for instance, by some fascinating observations 200 such as Schubert's use of a key scheme from Rossini's Zelmira in his “Wanderer Fantasy,” D. 760), calling into question the idea of a common practice. Rothstein argues for “multicultural” analysis and listening, through which Italian opera can be heard and appreciated through Italian, rather than German, ears. The main differences are those already introduced in his publications dating back to 2008. In terms of tonal structure, for example, Italian opera employs a form of “common-tone tonality,” as opposed to the “classical tonality” found in German instrumental works (see Rothstein 2008, 2011). This concept maps neatly onto (and thus justifies Rothstein's use of) Hugo Riemann's theory of chord transformations, through which a C-major triad can be related to its “Parallel,” C minor; its “Relative,” A minor; and its “Leading-Tone Exchange,” E minor. Such third relations, together with their chromatic variants, are shown to underlie the tonal structures of Italian opera, which often resist interpretation in terms of a single tonic. Rothstein characterizes these as “tonal fields,” families of keys based around a pairing of relative major and minor and their common-tone relations (406).Another significant difference pointed out by Rothstein concerns phrase rhythm and hypermeter. The German tradition favors beginning-accent, at every level, from individual bars to short phrases and pieces to entire multimovement works. Recall how the classical sentence (Satz) typically begins with a tight-knit and strongly characterized theme that fragments and dissolves into a conventional cadence, or how the classical first-movement sonata form normally progresses from a weighty primary theme to a light, often folk-like or comical closing zone, or how the movements of a classical symphony or concerto generally progress from a serious opening to a playful finale. Italian opera, by contrast, favors end-accent, not only at the level of two or more measures (owing to the position of the main verse accent in Italian poetry), but also at the level of closed pieces, such as the “lyric prototype,” with its culminating final section, and entire multimovement scenes. Perhaps the main difference between what Dahlhaus (1989) called the twin styles, however, is the centrality of melody to one and bass to the other. Rothstein likens Italian opera to an earlier cantus firmus tradition of composition, in which a foundational melody could occupy any part. One manifestation of this is Pierluigi Petrobelli's notion of sonorità, a focal melodic pitch that often determines common-tone relations within the accompanying harmony (1974 Eng. trans., 1982). The centrality of melody in Italian opera maps neatly onto (and thus warrants Rothstein's extensive reliance on) Heinrich Schenker's analytical method, with its emphasis on the concept of a structural melodic Urlinie in conjunction with figured bass.The promise of a radical manifesto suggested in part 1 gradually fades as the book progresses, to be replaced by a focus on more familiar issues of form and harmonic coherence. This is a strength, not a weakness, given the quality of the analyses. The locus of the claim to break new analytical ground is found in chapter 1, which explores the “Coro di Zingari e Canzone,” or “anvil chorus,” from act 2 of Il Trovatore. Rothstein first asks what constitutes a “number” in Italian opera. Given the frequent disagreements between manuscript and published sources, this is not a simple question. He also cites Abramo Basevi's 1859 study of Verdi to argue that in Italian opera melody is the primary determinant of harmony and form—a view that accords with the importance of solfeggio in the traditional training of musicians. The analysis reveals a modal melodic structure, beginning with a transposed aeolian scale that coalesces into phrygian, neither of which sits easily with the accompanying harmony (20). Rothstein's approach to the form of the movement is no less surprising. It is best described, he claims, as a verse-prechorus-chorus (21), a pattern that, according to Walter Everett (2009: 146), arose in 1964. Yet he marginalizes the most striking aspect of this movement: its exotic coloring. Before Liszt popularized his “Hungarian” Zigeuner style, composers tended to turn to eighteenth-century “Turkish” music for markers of exoticism. The opening phrase of the anvil chorus is a Turkish march, further othered by means of syncopation. The second phrase has characteristic upbeat swooshes into stomps, best explained through gesture theory, and the third phrase includes imitations of the jingling Turkish crescent. These features contrast meaningfully with the subsequent lyrical arpeggiated ascent through the scale and the rousing unison hymn. Such semiotic readings are overlooked throughout this book in favor of pitch structures, form, and rhythm, although Rothstein does include instrumentation within his analyses, pointing out for instance that the introduction of a new orchestral voice often contributes to the salience of a dramatic moment.Rothstein's lack of interest in semiotics extends also to schema theory. By slipping the odd schema name into his analyses he ensures that we do not mistake his lack of deeper engagement for ignorance. He identifies Riepel's Monte in “Tacea la notte” (167), for instance, and a “latter-day Monte” in a chromatic ascent sung by Rodolfo in Luisa Miller (181), as well as the Romanesca (393), Quiescenza (490), and other stock patterns. But these mentions are taken no further. At one point, Rothstein even appears to dismiss the relevance of schema theory by describing a passage that “Riepel would have called . . . a Fonte” as a “descending fifths sequence” (165). The comparison downgrades the schema to a fanciful label for a commonplace fundamental bass progression of root position chords, but it overlooks several crucial features (not least melodic) that distinguish the Fonte from most sequences of fifths.3 Given the extensive use of compositional formulas in Italian opera, I, for one, would have been interested to find out how they might integrate with Rothstein's long-range voice-leading analyses.The strongest arguments in the book are those relating to issues of form. As well as providing comprehensive surveys of the small-scale “lyric prototype” and the larger “usual form (solita forma)” of solo, duet, and ensemble scenes, Rothstein tackles the organization and coherence of multimovement numbers and even entire acts. Among his many tools are teleological end-weighting, third cycles as tonal pathways, and static versus kinetic harmony. He starts from the notion of symmetry at different hierarchical levels. Balanced square phrasing ensured the memorability of Italian melody, while its disruption could enliven the sense of drama. Rossini, for instance, employed two types of repetition: complementary/grammatical, as in the antecedent-consequent phrase, and enchained/mathematical, which results in a kind of mechanical movement without a predictable endpoint (144). As a “crescendo,” this is a defining feature of Rossini's style. Understanding the importance of symmetry and its distortion also involves the contraction and expansion of phrases (162). Balance can take the form of “musical economy,” in which two phrases possess the same degree of closure despite ending on different chords (165). Formulaic layouts for closed pieces, such as the lyric prototype, can be subject to many variants, including hybrid combinations featuring sentences, bar forms, and heavily weighted double codas with two rhetorically reinforced perfect authentic cadences (167). The rest of Rothstein's survey of standard forms in Italian opera is too extensive to do justice to here. It expertly expands on the research of just about every significant scholar of the past fifty years. It does, however, continue to rely on the spatial metaphors of German-inspired Formenlehre—visualizable templates made up of named blocks, which require nonconforming structures to be understood as deviations from the norm—rather than the temporal metaphors of Italian such as the of a musical or the of a musical and this despite Rothstein's frequent efforts to view structures as temporal rather than into its own in Rothstein's analyses of from the operas. beginning and ending in the same key does not that a or act can be said to be one he the of a a that or not to its of tonal within a has he that its is a This new on the in E major that his voice-leading of the from Rossini's example and the many other throughout the book, which readers a of new into the structural of melody in this are many discussions from the book that be over in this short on innovative for instance, or use of keys and key relations as dramatic take on rhythm He starts with a of of them the of and as out in Asioli and relevant since the He takes notion of a kind of of and in the accompanying normally two and it into what he a it from this is a It the of Italian rhythm and even it emphasis on verse The bass employs a which begins on the strongest while the part it with a which with a phrase of its pattern of As and have pointed this to a between two structures, one harmonic and one melodic [Eng. trans., and the bass through a with the accent pattern 1 2 4, onto which the melody its own to the accent pattern 2 1 or 1 This to a of which is best via Rothstein's of an by example this is only the from and and Rothstein on to many in the repertory dramatic is by the between and from He a of analysis of the movement from the 1 of in in which Rossini two of through a between that the and that a sense of and in a that and Rothstein concludes, and Verdi by their desire for these very his study as a to a of the of opera analysis within the American He does, however, one within the A of from the of interest in the tradition of and he of and solfeggio to Italian opera have been more are to this I one more of to opera by exploring the ending of through the of his early training in I will the results with Rothstein's analysis of the same which and methods on the of German and of American music theory, especially and Rothstein's own and ground “historicist” approach, some on be As he was into a musical in his as a was out from He himself to have “the first of from his who had at the in the was also a but he appears to have to the of the to his thus the as they in over fifty an that is out in his At the of he to to his at the He by in with and with but two he to The was as the of the in in the same as he to traditional solfeggio in of the by the of his for voice out the on its only to the and within the that It to that in and to melody by means of the to his operas a into those unfamiliar with Italian it is based on a of in which the do la on the first and of a major In the key of for instance, do to as well as and to the relative minor scale on as well as This of the one of favorite for the range of a He would often a from one with the from through a called or In the at the of for instance, as shown in 1, the to closure by pairing of the with its on In Italian as by the analysis on the in 1, as one from the on and the other from the on This pitch to the on the on while to the lamenting on The is related to one that I the final just the to E major at the of 1, the two cadences to to an of a By the from on to on the entire passage of from earlier in the act at and further to Rothstein's of common-tone and in this finale. 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