The story behind the dedication of Beethoven’s third symphony is the stuff of musical legend.
‘Napoleonic’ certainly describes the scale on which Beethoven conceived the work – he even sketched out a programme of Bonaparte’s life within the symphony’s movements – until the moment in 1804 when he was informed that Napoleon had styled himself Emperor. The original dedication to Bonaparte was defaced: Beethoven announced that Napoleon was “a tyrant”, who “will think himself superior to all men”, and re-named the symphony the “Eroica”.
The symphony was also controversial musically, causing Beethoven’s great admirer Hector Berlioz to exclaim at one point “if that was really what Beethoven wanted… it must be admitted that this whim is an absurdity!”
Absurd or otherwise, the Eroica stands as one of the most important cultural monuments of all time.
The Battle of the Sopranos
The opera house has always been rowdier than the concert hall, but even so the riot at the King’s Theatre Haymarket on June 6 1727 has gone down in history. On stage were two great rival sopranos, Faustina Bordoni and Francesca Cuzzoni, who fought a “horrid and bloody battle”, according to one eyewitness. As did their supporters.
In Handel's opera Alessandro (1726) the importance of the two ladies' roles had to be very carefully balanced, which at one point in the opera's plot made Senesino, playing the name part, look a complete fool. Her rivalry with Faustina, fanned by the press, eventually became scandalous when, in a performance of Bononcini's Astianatte (6 June 1727), attended by princess Caroline, "Hissing on one Side, and Clapping on the other" gave rise to "Catcalls, and other great indecencies". Such was the rumpus that the performance, and the rest of that opera season, were abandoned. The satirical pamphleteers had a field day, depicting the two prime donne exchanging insults and pulling at one another's head-dresses, though recent research has revealed that it was the ladies' rival supporters, rather than the singers themselves, who were the cause of the disturbance.
Belgium in uproar
Auber’s opera La Muette de Portici (The Mute Girl of Portici) caused barely a murmur when it opened in Paris in 1829. But when it was performed at La Monnaie Opera House in Brussels in 1830, revolutionary feelings were in the air, and the aria “Sacred Love of One’s Country” sparked the July revolution that led to Belgian independence.
Read more
No comments:
Post a Comment