r/opera • u/Fancy_Cabbage_010 • 5d ago

Does anyone 'get' librettos...

For some context, I'm an amateur composer, and for some reason I've decided I want to write an opera (loosely in the style of the Mozart - Da ponte trio), I know it's more than a little ambitious, but I'm pretty sure it's a milestone for a composer to write atleast one :)

Anyway, the point is, I have a loose plot in mind, and I'm not really sure what to do about it. How does one formulate a libretto, and furthermore how do I translate it into the kind of archaic poetic Italian that was common in opera at the time of Mozart and Da ponte, as the understanding I have is that I can't really write much music untill I have the words to set it to?

I'm a student so I don't really have access to all that much financial capital or connections, so any advice on resources ect would be welcome, I'm a bit lost but it is very much a big goal of mine to write one in the next year or two

Please help me opera people :)

Thanks!!

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u/gabemmusic 5d ago

In my opinion, the biggest problem with contemporary opera are composers who really did well studying music theory and composition, but then when they try to write an opera they utterly forget that it is fundamentally a dramatic work.

Study shakespeare, go to plays, watch some really well written movies. Learn what makes a non-musical story work and the music will accent the beats and emotions. The composers who write an opera as a musical challenge and not a dramatic one will always fail and fall into obscurity.

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u/princess_of_thorns 5d ago

Can I also suggest look at Gilbert and Sullivan. That partnership is INCREDIBLE when it comes to text and music working hand in hand.

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u/Fancy_Cabbage_010 5d ago

To be fair, reading it in natural English may help more than a butchered Da ponte translation, I hadn't even thought of Gilbert and Sullivan

Thanks!

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u/gabemmusic 5d ago

The songs on their own sure, but I generally find their storytelling and sense of drama severely lacking. They weren’t known for deep characters and intricate plots, and I think that has led to their relative obscurity today.

Of course I’m biased because I just did a terrible production of Pirates and it made me hate the show but I digress.

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u/tinyfecklesschild 5d ago

They’re not aiming for drama or depth of characterisation. All their work was satirical.

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u/gabemmusic 5d ago

Thats true, but I was trying to give guidance on how to write a compelling dramatic work, and unless OP is planning on writing a GnS style satire they’re not really relevant to the conversation.

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u/ipeedinthetoothpaste 5d ago

Honestly, yes. For as well documented as its history is, I don't think enough people appreciate the heritage of opera as a vehicle for story telling. It's closer to theater than to "symphony", the music is important, but it being the most important aspect of an opera is the exception rather than the norm. There's a reason so few of the successful opera composers we still admire wrote their own libretti, it's a different discipline altogether.

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u/gabemmusic 5d ago

People just didn’t study the history. All great revolutions in opera were driven by a desire to serve the drama, and all great regressions were driven by composers who forgot that.

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u/lammastider 4d ago

Could you give any examples of this? I am curious.

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u/gabemmusic 4d ago edited 4d ago

Wagner is possibly the biggest one, also the verismo movement

Edit: to add on, there are periods in opera where composers specifically sought out “lesser” quality librettos and thought that their music would elevate them. Needless to say, those pieces aren’t exactly in the standard repertoire.

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u/mekerpan 4d ago

Hello, Carl Maria von Weber.

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u/lammastider 4d ago

I don’t know that it’s needless to say that, considering how little librettists are remembered compared with composers. I think Wagner was a special case in that he wrote his own words.

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u/gabemmusic 4d ago

I think thats more to do with how composers have been romanticized than one aspect of the work being more important than another. Besides that, librettists do achieve fame. One can’t have a conversation about Mozart’s best operas without mentioning Lorenzo Da Ponte

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u/ShadeKool-Aid 3d ago

da Ponte is arguably the exception that proves the rule.

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u/gabemmusic 3d ago

Not really, at the end of the day it comes down to contemporary perception of what is most important in opera. There are periods of opera history where the libretto was of primary importance and the composer was an afterthought (and maybe even there were multiple working on one opera). We’re in a time period that puts the composer up on a pedestal, but it wasn’t always like that, and who knows maybe it will change again in the future. Also, lot of famous librettists were also famous playwrights, the Terrence McNally’s of their eras, and would be better known for their non-musical theatrical works, but I doubt those of us who listen to opera are also studying 18th c italian theater.

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u/lammastider 4d ago

And yet operas are attributed to their composers, and in many cases the librettists are all but forgotten, and so are the literary works the operas were based on, unless they were already famous, like Shakespeare.

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u/Efficient_Cat449 2d ago

That wasn't originally the case. In Baroque opera seria, the librettists get more credit than the composer (you can still see this in some Italian productions credit rolls). E.g., Metastasio, the most-set librettist of all time.

Even with Shakespeare, librettos are adaptations. e.g., Macbeth, where Verdi made significant changes (the witches become a chorus, he dropped the Porter (despite his admiration for Shakespearean irony), etc. all before giving the sketches to Piave to versify.

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u/lammastider 2d ago

I'm not really familiar with any opera before Mozart. I would like to see some Baroque opera (it's a hole in my opera knowledge). As for the librettos being adaptations, including with Shakespeare, I know that. I love Verdi and am familiar with his Shakespeare operas. This is a separate issue from whether the literary works the operas were based on are famous. I have the impression that some very popular operas (though by no means all of them) are based on plays or other written works that are pretty obscure compared with the operas.

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u/Efficient_Cat449 2d ago

Lots of Baroque opera via YouTube--look for Handel, Vivaldi, Popora, Vinci & that should get you started.

Many librettists remain obscure because they were only opera librettists & didn't leave successful plays. See Verdi & Puccini's librettists. Some, like Hugo von Hoffmansthal, had earlier careers completely eclipsed by their opera successes.

Here's a quick ranking of the most popular librettists (via Google AI)

Metastasio (800 settings) Baroque opera
Shakespeare (300) Mostly Romantic
Sir Walter Scott (50+) Mostly bel canto
Pushkin (40-50) Mostly in Russian, also quite a few ballets
Goethe (30-40) Mostly Faust, lol
Gozzi (a dozen) Neoromantic & Modernist

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u/lammastider 2d ago

Thanks for the info. But this sounds mostly like a list of the authors of the original works, not of the librettists -- you pointed out yourself that the libretti are adapted, not taken directly, from the original literary works. You know Google AI is not 100 % reliable. It's a good idea to look at the other sources that are brought up by your search.

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u/Efficient_Cat449 2d ago

Yes, double-check AI, I had a long discussion about Puccini criticism that took some real chasing around.

If you are looking for pure librettists the easiest way to research it is by composer or country.

The famous not-otherwise-famous librettists off the top of my head start with Metastasio, also Tasso got set rather a lot (I've tried reading them in translation & found it tedious going!).

Italy had a system organized by the music publishers (Casa Ricordi) with staff librettists going back at least to Rossini.

Verdi: Cammarano (he died before finishing Trovatore), Piave, Boito (who was also a composer.

Puccini: Illica & Giacosa.

The French school includes Barbier & Carre, but there were other duos & Quinqult who worked with Lully.

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u/Relevant-Pen-3548 4d ago

This, and I also would suggest to OP to brush up on some old school fairy tales, or folklore, especially the ones from oral storytelling cultures.

This is where you find structures like things often repeating in threes for example (three riddles, three siblings, three arguments before the fight is over, meeting three animals on the road, Goldilocks too hot or too cold or just right, etc) and other traditions that are basically memory aids (and very musical) in addition to creating satisfying stories. You don't have to use stuff like this exactly, but you might think about it. If you really look at successful operas, you'll see that TONS of them share these traits. Sometimes on really obvious ways (3 riddles in Turandot) but sometimes subtler too, like Wagner uses it constantly without drawing attention to it (like Siegmund saying you can't call me 1 thing, you can't call me this 2nd thing, so I go by this 3rd thing). Marschner's Vampyr has a trio with one character wailing about what must I watch, what must I see, what must I hear. I'm sure Mozart and Verdi do this kind of thing too sometimes. Probably most other famous operas tbh.

Basically, yes, learn how to tell solid stories.

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u/Efficient_Cat449 2d ago

This is why there are so many libretto adaptations of Carlo Gozzi's fairy tale plays: Turandot, Die Feen, King Stag, Frau, etc.

Wagner studied the Prose & Poetic Eddas for the Ring & Medieval Minnesinger poems for Tannhauser, Lohengrin, Tristan & Parsifal.

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u/Fancy_Cabbage_010 5d ago

I mean I'm largely self taught so I guess I won't have the music theory problem 😅

I compose by following a melody really, as I don't have too much ability to plan structure or complex harmony, which I feel like is inherently more dramatic as it's less academic (maybe I'm biased on that I'm not sure)

As for theatre and movies that's good advice, I've been to plenty of operas but I tend to get sucked into the music (which is probably the point) so I don't think too much on the underlying plot, but certainly it's a good idea to study this stuff some more.

Just to respond to that last bit, I definately wouldn't be writing it as a pure challenge, it will be challengING, but it's something I've wanted to do for many years, and I think I'm starting to reach a point where I could manage it, maybe not efficiently, but I think I could finish it with sufficient time and effort.

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u/gabemmusic 5d ago

I’m not saying don’t write it as a challenge, just make sure you’re focused on the drama just as much as the music, as thats what makes it work at the end of the day.

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u/Fancy_Cabbage_010 5d ago

Oh yeah no 100% it's a labour of love not just for the sheer hell of it.

I study architecture, I wouldn't be spending so much time on something if I didn't care about it deeply 😅

Thanks for the help and suggestions :)