Bellini: Il pirata (The Pirate)
Today marks the first ‘serious’ turning point of Opera of the Day, in which we are going to introduce operas in a more academic manner.
Today’s focus isn’t exactly the opera itself, but the librettist behind: Felice Romani. Librettists don’t usually receive a lot of recognition for their works, despite being immensely important for an opera’s success. They determine how the plot is developed and what words the vocalists sing. Coupled with the composer’s music, the libretto creates the drama that attracts full houses of audiences to sit or stand in the theatre for more than 2 hours. In Romani’s time, librettists only earned a little commission given by the composer for the libretto’s completion. Romani himself notably also didn’t like writing opera libretti (as seen from his rants) because of the small amount of money he reaped from the operatic business, whilst having to spend a lot of time and effort on constructing a libretto.
Romani was undeniably the greatest librettist of his time, but the prestige and recognition he got, besides far less than the composer, was far less than his overshadowing counterpart, Pietro Metastasio (the librettist who wrote Artaserse among many others). Metastasio was considered the founding father of the opera seria form, and his works were extensively incorporated in major works in the Baroque period, extending to the Classical period (Mozart’s Artaserse is also based on Metastasio’s libretto). Metastasio’s influence was all over Europe and his works were translated to languages outside of Italian. Meanwhile, Romani’s popularity with both his libretti and poems were only confined to some parts in Italy. It was apparent that Romani was very discontent about this, given his well-known hostility towards opera composers trying to make changes to his commissioned works.
But Bellini was an exception. During the construction of Il pirata Bellini had suggested a few edits to Romani’s original, and Romani had not shown any signs of lashing out at Bellini. Throughout Bellini’s lifetime, it was not an understatement to say Bellini was Romani’s favourite composer to work with, to the extent that a librettist would work so exclusively for a composer like the duo. Bellini, on the other hand, also found Romani his favourite librettist, saying to a friend,
“per me Romani è necessario.” (for me, Romani is necessary.)
Il pirata marks the first great success of the many Romani-Bellini collaborations — seven is many, considering Bellini’s early mortality at almost 35 — in which Romani met with Bellini and proposed the idea of incorporating romanticist drama to the operatic stage. Before Romani, Bellini was already quite a famous composer known for his works other than opera. But it was with Romani’s libretti that Bellini became a monumental figure in the history of opera: melodies were no longer focused only on virtuosity, but also the dramatic flow; plots were no longer soapy, but with tension. These two elements combined were the engagement of words with music; Romani was a great poet, which makes his verses melodic in itself. Bellini then performed his magic in turning words on paper into hearable music.
It is also interesting that some academics would frame Romani’s libretti as poetry too, and it is probably because of Romani’s writing style and the type of material he drew on for his works, such as myths. Romani himself once described his own style:
“Non sono né classico né romantico: voglio anch’io il progresso, purché si sappia dove si va e che cosa si va a fare.” (I am neither classical nor romantic: I want progress also, so long as we know where it is going and what we are going to do.)
Although we would probably beg to differ with his use of blank verses, Romani did propelled Bellini’s romanticist composition with greater emphasis on character arcs, the creation of a hero and his inevitable downfall. These kinds of plot development were not usually found in Baroque or Classical operas, but the bold experimental incorporation of these kinds of literary mechanisms on the operatic stage created some unexpectedly explosive popularity among the audiences. It was also because of this that in particular, 19th century libretti were also taken in itself, as an individual piece of literature, for analyses. Romantic operas are more often put on stage in the present day than Baroque operas, and Romani was definitely one of the greatest reasons for this. The dramatic tension driven by both the music and the libretto together created a third medium, a more immersive experience for the audience — this shift towards a more human touch through Romani’s joint creation with Bellini drove the evolution of the genre.
References:
- Ashbrooke, W. (1987). Donizetti and Romani, Italica, 64(4):606–631.
- Roccatagliati, A. & Henson, K. (1996). Felice Romani, Librettist by Trade, Cambridge Opera Journal, 8(2):113–145.
- Della Seta, F. & Weir, M.W. (2011). From Romance to Drama and Opera: “L’Étrangère” and “La straniera”, Acta Musicologica, 83(2):261–280.
Cite as: Bachmanov, G. (July 16, 2023). Bellini: Il pirata (The Pirate). Opera of the Day. https://medium.com/@operaoftheday/bellini-il-pirata-the-pirate-96fe8467b313
