Dramma per musica-the most usual term for Italian serious opera
from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century-was a modern,
enlightened form of theater that presented a unified, artistically
designed, dramatic enactment of human stories, expressed by the
voice and underscored by the orchestra. This book by one of the
world's most eminent musicologists illustrates the diversity of
this baroque art form and explains how it has given us opera as we
know it. Reinhard Strohm introduces the concept and history of
dramma per musica and then examines the contemporary reception and
environment of this operatic tradition, analyzing its social and
repertorial patterns and comparing it to theories on the roles of
French spoken drama and Italian libretto reform. In describing the
principles observed by poets, composers, and performers, Strohm
discusses such central concepts of theory and practice as
verisimilitude, decorum, gesture, and rhetoric. He also decodes
various works, including Handel's Ariodante, operas by Hasse, and
stage works featuring the Earl of Essex. Throughout the book,
Strohm surveys the traditions of the spoken theater and pays
special attention to the subject matter of the librettos, as well
as to drama theory, stage action, patronage, political history, and
ideology. His account covers opera houses in Rome, Naples, Venice,
Hamburg, Dresden, Vienna, Madrid, London, and Warsaw, as he follows
one character of the dramatic tradition across the European stages
for more than two centuries. Authoritative and enlightening, this
book reveals how dramma per musica forms a vital part of our
theatrical and musical heritage.
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