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MUSICAL HIGHLIGHTS
The music heard in The Enchanted Island was written by George Frideric Handel,
Antonio Vivaldi, Jean-Philippe Rameau, and several other 18th-century composers.
Even if these names are unfamiliar to your students, they might recognize some of
their music. Have they ever heard the “Hallelujah” chorus from Messiah? Handel
wrote it. The Four Seasons? Vivaldi. But even if some of these composers’ works
have remained extraordinary popular, their operas are rarely performed today (with
the exception of Handel, whose stage works have seen a major renaissance in the
second half of the 20th century).
But during their own lifetimes, all of these composers were celebrities, internationally renowned, friends with kings and rulers, and especially famous for their
operas. They were also prolific: Vivaldi claimed to have written close to 100 operas
(although the actual number is probably lower and only some two dozen survive).
Handel wrote more than 40, Rameau about 30. In other words, these composers
created a massive amount of music that once dominated the stage but has since
largely disappeared from the repertoire.
What happened? Time passed. Taste changed and opera became a different kind
of musical theater as the centuries wore on. This doesn’t mean that these works
should feel foreign to us today. After all, the music of The Enchanted Island is full of
virtuosic singing, well-crafted melodies, and subtle instrumental writing. Through
many of their other works, we’re familiar with the beauty of Handel and Vivaldi’s
music. But in order to understand how music and text work together to tell a story—
to understand what makes a Baroque opera—we need to embark on a historical
journey.
This guide will introduce you to the ideas and conventions of 18th-century musical
theater. It will enable you and your students to understand why this music was
written in the way it was and how people listened to it in the past. At the same time,
it will open your mind and ears to the infinite possibilities of experiencing this music
in new and exciting ways today. This dialogue between the past and the present is
one of the main aspects that make The Enchanted Island such a fascinating project.
Opera Seria and Oratorio: Baroque Musical Theater
There is much about the music of Baroque opera that your students might find
strange at first. They’re not alone. In fact, even people living in the 18th century
found this art form to be challenging. Samuel Johnson, the man who compiled the
first great English dictionary, described opera as “an exotic and irrational entertainment” (by which he meant “foreign and bizarre”). In many ways he was right. Opera
in England was mostly sung in Italian, even though the majority of the audience
did not speak the language. Johnson could not fathom why the public would sit for
hours watching a performance while they could not understand what the characters
were saying. Also, opera was still a relatively new medium to English audiences, and
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Johnson, like many others, was not yet accustomed to the conventions of hearing a
drama sung all the way through—that is, with not only the big solo numbers set to
music, but also the sections of dialogue in between, which are written in a kind of
musical speech known as recitative. Yet the operatic productions in Handel’s time
were also extravagant, expensive, and strikingly beautiful, and a great many people
found them intensely moving and expressive.
The music you will hear in The Enchanted Island comes from two musical genres
of the Baroque era: opera seria and oratorio. The major difference between the
two is that an opera seria (Italian for “serious opera”) would usually tell a story from
mythology or ancient history and be seen on stage. Oratorios, on the other hand,
mostly set biblical stories to music and were performed in a concert setting, without
costumes or scenery.
But these two genres also had a lot in common. The guiding principle behind
both was that they were to be morally instructive to their audiences. The characters
they featured were heroes and royalty—all types of characters that, at the time,
were seen as the exemplars of achievement and nobility, which the rest of society
strove to emulate. These elevated personages overcame obstacles in their paths by
subduing irrational and base emotional states, such as passion, rage, or madness,
through their heroic deeds. They were not just models of heroism, but also examples
of self-control and righteousness.
In other words, the writer of an opera seria or oratorio would try to portray life as
he felt it should have been, not as it was. Appropriately, most of these works featured
a happy ending (or “lieto fine” in Italian), in which the characters and audience could
revel in the glory of the protagonist’s deeds. If anything unsavory were to happen
in the opera’s plot (a death, for example), it would usually take place offstage and
be portrayed with as much solemnity and dignity as possible. Not surprisingly, there
was no comedy in either genre. This was relegated to shorter scenes called intermezzi that were performed between the acts of an opera seria and had nothing to
do with the main plot. (These would later evolve into the full-length genre of opera
buffa, or comic opera.)
Opera seria and oratorio also have certain musical conventions in common:
dialogue is performed in recitative, which means the words are sung without elaborate melodies and in the approximate tempo and pattern of speech, to a very simple
accompaniment of just a few instruments. These passages of recitative are used to
tell the story. They alternate with arias, solo numbers in which the action comes to
a standstill while a character describes his or her feelings. Arias have highly developed and often intricate melodic lines, a steady tempo, a complex accompaniment
by most of the instruments in the orchestra, and are usually written in an ABA form,
with the main section repeated after a contrasting middle part.
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This rigid structure of alternating aria and recitative was a dramatic convention in
Baroque musical theater that composers rarely, if ever, broke. It doesn’t mean that
they were unoriginal, but rather that they found other ways of artistic expression
while staying within the accepted norms of the time. We will explore some of these
methods soon. (In operas of later eras, especially during the Romantic period in the
19th century, the distinction between recitative and aria disappeared completely, to
be replaced by a continuous flow of music that incorporated both highly melodic
arias and more speech-patterned sections.)
Risky Business
Today we are used to walking up to the box office, handing over our credit card, and
receiving a ticket that will allow us to enter the theater and watch a performance.
But in the early 18th century, the idea of buying a ticket to see an opera was new.
For decades, opera had been a courtly entertainment, paid for and attended by
the aristocracy and their guests. It wasn’t until the end of the 17th century that it
became a public business all over Europe—and a risky one at that. Just like today,
opera was expensive to produce. Singers, musicians, sets, costumes, and special
effects cost so much money that it could happen for those in charge of the productions to go bankrupt. In 1720 the satirist Benedetto Marcello joked that, “Real life
is imparted to the opera by use of prisons, daggers, poison, the writing of letters
on stage, bear and wild bull hunts, earthquakes, storms, sacrifices, the settling of
accounts and mad scenes.” While many of the special effects mentioned here could
indeed be seen as part of an 18th-century performance, an opera would hardly
have depicted people actually paying bills. What Marcello ironically refers to is that
librettists, composers, and especially producers were perpetually in debt, dodging
their creditors, and trying to avoid their bills. Avoiding penury (or at least keeping
it at a stiff arm’s length) was as much a part of operatic life as the music and words.
To stay ahead of their bills, composers and librettists had to churn out an impossibly large amount of material. The numbers are staggering by modern standards.
It took Richard Wagner, a major force of 19th-century musical theater, 25 years to
complete the four operas we know as the Ring cycle. People like Handel, Rameau,
or Vivaldi had to produce at least one opera per year, often more. This is even more
impressive when you consider that, in addition to their works for the stage, these
composers simultaneously had to create music for performances in churches or at
court. Keeping up with the demand for new works could be very challenging.
To avoid having to write entire operas from scratch at such a frenetic pace, Handel
and his contemporaries would often take music they had written before, fit it with
new words, and use it for a new story. A stage work assembled in this manner from
different numbers by one or several composers was called a pasticcio, the Italian
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word for “meat pie”—describing an opera compiled from many different ingredients. In French it’s called a pastiche.
But practical economics were only part of the reason these works were created.
They also gave audiences an opportunity to hear their favorite melodies more than
once. Before the introduction of commercial sound recording in the early 20th
century, the only way to hear a piece of music was to hear it live. If a singer had
scored a success with a particular aria and it had become what we would call a
hit, a pastiche gave him or her a chance to repeat that performance, much to the
delight of the paying audience. This was especially important since composers in
the Baroque era would tailor their arias to the taste and abilities of their stars.
Both ideas—reviving a great theatrical tradition and presenting great singers—
played a part in the creation of The Enchanted Island. Its musical numbers, by
Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau, and others, are all taken from works created in the 18th
century. Author Jeremy Sams has selected them, fitted them with new text, and
strung it all together to tell a new story based on motives and characters from two
Shakespeare plays, The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. (As we have
seen, many dramatic works in the Baroque era drew on Greek and Roman mythology
or the Bible, telling stories audiences would have been familiar with. Sams felt that
for a modern audience, the works of Shakespeare might serve a similar function.) At
the same time, The Enchanted Island presents some of today’s most accomplished
interpreters of Baroque opera performing a collection of extraordinary arias from a
vast and little-known repertoire. In the following, we will take a closer look at two of
these arias.
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MUSICAL HIGHLIGHT
Grabbing Your Attention:
Prospero’s First Aria
Opera in the 18th century was a tough business, much like Broadway theater in our
VOICE TYPE
Since the early 19th century,
singing voices have usually
been classified in six basic
types, three male and three
female, according to their
range:
SOPRANO
the highest-pitched type
of human voice, normally
possessed only by women and
boys
MEZZO-SOPRANO
the female voice whose range
lies between the soprano
and the contralto (Italian
“mezzo” = middle, medium)
time, and composers had to try to outshine their rivals. The goal, as today, was to
draw business away from the competition. Therefore, part of the skill of a Baroque
opera composer was to write music that would grab the audience’s attention—
music full of unusual effects, expressive melodies, and striking orchestral colors.
In the first scene of The Enchanted Island, as the magician Prospero offers Ariel
his freedom in return for casting a spell on a shipwrecked stranger, we hear an aria
by Vivaldi, “Ah, ch’infelice sempre” (“Ah, always unhappy” in its original Italian form).
Right from the orchestral introduction, we are drawn in by the unusual sound of the
string instruments: instead of using their bows, the violin players pluck the strings,
producing an effect called pizzicato (the Italian word for plucking). It resembles the
sound of a guitar. We may be more familiar with this effect today, but in Vivaldi’s
time it was rather unusual for a composer to employ this technique.
Listen to Track 1.
CONTRALTO
The violins switch to their bows in a sudden emotional outburst at the words “Ah,
the lowest female voice, also
called an alto
sempre più spietata” (“Ah, ever more ruthlessly”), as the singer describes how a
COUNTERTENOR
students. Again, this is a striking instrumental contrast that would have seemed
a male singing voice whose
vocal range is equivalent to
that of a contralto, mezzosoprano, or (less frequently) a
soprano, usually through use
of falsetto
novel and expressive to audiences at the time (and in fact still does so today).
TENOR
woman named Dorilla wrings tears out of him. Point out the change in sound to your
Listen to Track 2.
In addition to the orchestra’s sound, the voice we hear in this aria also has an unusual
quality. What do your students think: is the singer a soprano, an alto, a tenor, or a
bass? The sound is different from a woman’s voice, but it has a high range, like a
the highest naturally
occurring voice type in adult
males
soprano or alto.
BARITONE
countertenors use their head voice, or falsetto, which allows them to produce a
the male voice lying below
the tenor and above the bass
sound similar to that of a woman. (Every person, man or woman, has a head voice,
BASS
of 17th- and 18th-century music feature countertenors. The reason for this is that
the lowest male voice
one of the leading voice categories from the Baroque era no longer exists: the
In fact, this is a male voice type called a countertenor. Unlike other male singers,
but few male singers train it to meet operatic standards.) Many modern recordings
castrato.
Castrati were men who sang with the high voices of boys. Before puberty, young
boys with promising voices would undergo a surgical procedure that kept their
larynx from changing as they grew up, preserving their high vocal range. From
the 16th century, castrati would sing the soprano and alto parts in church because
women were not permitted to sing during mass. Later castrati migrated to the
operatic stage, where they became the most celebrated and highest paid musicians
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In this 18th-century caricature
of an opera performance, the
castrati are the giant, barrelchested figures dressed as
knights. The women appear tiny
in comparison.
of their time—much like today’s pop stars. They exerted a great deal of control over
operatic performances and repertoire, and composers would write arias specifically
for individual voices and singers.
Castrati disappeared from the operatic stage by about 1830, and in modern
productions of these works their roles are usually performed by countertenors. We
don’t know exactly what the voices of castrati sounded like, but 18th-century writers
describe them as possessing unusual power, brilliance, range, and agility. Physically,
castrati tended to be very tall with a large thorax, which enabled them to produce
a powerful sound in a very high register. The most talented among them could
perform dazzling vocal feats that the public loved, and composers would cater to
their singers’ abilities.
Most solo vocal numbers in Baroque music were modeled on a specific form
known as a da capo aria. Its structure can be summarized by the letters ABA. We
hear a set of words and music (the A section), played twice, that expresses the
character’s emotions or thoughts.
Listen to Track 3.
Then there is change of mood, and the singer launches into a contrasting B section.
Listen to Track 4.
After that, the A section is repeated, but this time the singer is asked to slightly
change the melody, adding improvised runs or trills, to show off his or her voice.
Listen to Track 5.
The table on the next page gives an overview of the da capo form.
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Introduction (also called Ritornello) Plucked strings in a mysterious minor mode.
A SECTION
(first half)
The vocal line begins in a
descending arc, expressing
the character’s grief.
Suddenly, on the words “Ah,
sempre più spietata,” it starts
to rise—as if he was moved
to a sudden flash of anger.
Ah, ch’infelice sempre
me vuol Dorilla ingrata.
Ah, sempre più spietata
M’astringe a lagrimar.
Ah, always unhappy ungrateful
Dorilla wants me to remain.
Ah, ever more ruthlessly
She wrings tears out of me.
Short orchestral interlude (Ritornello 2): Plucked strings close this section of music.
A SECTION
(second half)
This section recalls the
first section, with similar
accompaniment and harmony,
but the melody wends its way
around, often referring to the
first A section, but adding
new twists and turns. It ends
with a so-called cadenza, a
moment of vocal flourish
where the orchestra stops
playing and allows the singer
to display his or her vocal skill.
Ah, ch’infelice sempre
me vuol Dorilla ingrata.
Ah, sempre più spietata
M’astringe a lagrimar.
Ah, always unhappy ungrateful
Dorilla wants me to remain.
Ah, ever more ruthlessly
She wrings tears out of me.
Ritornello 3: This is a repeat of Ritornello 1
B SECTION
This section stands in marked
contrast to the A section.
Instead of four beats in every
measure, it has only three—
giving it almost a dance-like
feel.
Per me non v’è ristoro
Per me non v’è più speme
e il fier martiro e le mie
pene
solo la morte può consolar.
For me there is no remedy,
For me there is no hope,
And my bitterness and sorrows
Only death can console
Ah, ch’infelice sempre
me vuol Dorilla ingrata.
Ah, sempre più spietata
M’astringe a lagrimar.
Ah, always unhappy ungrateful
Dorilla wants me to remain.
Ah, ever more ruthlessly
She wrings tears out of me.
Introduction (Ritornello 1)
A SECTION
(first half)
The singer now embellishes
the melody with his or her
own additions.
Short orchestral interlude (Ritornello 2)
A SECTION
(second half)
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The singer continues to
embellish the vocal line.
Ah, ch’infelice sempre
me vuol Dorilla ingrata.
Ah, sempre più spietata
M’astringe a lagrimar.
Ah, always unhappy ungrateful
Dorilla wants me to remain.
Ah, ever more ruthlessly
She wrings tears out of me.
From a dramatic point of view, the da capo aria form may seem strange to us today—
after all, why would a character repeat words he or she had already sung? But the
reason for this wasn’t dramatic, it was musical: it gave the singer a chance to dazzle
and shine, and it gave the audience what they had come for.
As it is used in The Enchanted Island today, all of the dazzling effects of this aria—
the unusual string techniques, the falsetto voice, and dazzling vocal display—prepare
us for the magical evening that will follow. Each of the techniques we have discussed
can be interpreted as sonic special effects or musical magic tricks. Combined with
the mysterious, dark, minor mode of the piece and with the slow, serious, stately
tempo, these sounds lend an ethereal, otherworldly, and yet commanding quality
to the character who sings it. In this case, the character is Prospero, the enigmatic,
aging sorcerer that rules this island. When the curtain opens, the music tells us who
he is even before he utters a single word.
The below chart includes the original Italian text of “Ah, ch’infelice sempre,” its
English translation, and Sams’s new text for The Enchanted Island.
ITALIAN TEXT
ENGLISH TRANSLATION
THE ENCHANTED ISLAND VERSION
Ah, ch’infelice sempre
me vuol Dorilla ingrata.
Ah, sempre più spietata
Ah, always unhappy ungrateful
Dorilla wants me to remain.
Ah, ever more ruthlessly
Ah, if you would earn your freedom, then do
as I command you.
I may be growing older;
Ah, sempre più spietata
Ah, ever more ruthlessly
still, I am still your master.
M’astringe a lagrimar.
She wrings tears out of me.
Your fate is in my hands,
Ah, m’astringe a lagrimar.
Ah, she wrings tears out of me.
Yes, remember your fate is in my hands.
Ah, ch’infelice sempre
me vuol Dorilla ingrata.
Ah, always unhappy ungrateful
Dorilla wants me to remain.
If you would earn your freedom, then do as I
command you.
Ah, sempre più spietata
M’astringe a lagrimar.
Ah, ever more ruthlessly
She wrings tears out of me.
Though I am growing older, remember what
you are, what you are.
Ah, sempre più spietata
Ah, sempre più spietata
Ah, ever more ruthlessly
Ah, ever more ruthlessly
And in your fierce frustration,
Do not forget your station.
M’astringe a lagrimar, ah
lagrimar.
She wrings tears out of me.
You must do as your master commands, as I
command.
Per me v’è, no,
non v’è ristoro,
For me, no,
For me there is no remedy,
Have you forgotten
How I once freed you?
Per me non v’è no
Non v’è più speme
For me, there is none
For me there is no hope,
See how you treat me,
Now that I need you!
e il fier martoro
e le mie pene
And my bitterness
And my sorrows
Haughty and moody,
Thus you repay me.
e il fier martoro
e le me pene
And my bitterness
And my sorrows
P’raps I should teach you
how to obey me?
Solo la morte può consolar,
Only death can console
If I should need you this is my will.
Solo la morte può consolar,
può consolar
Only death can console
All my wishes are yours, yours to fulfill.
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MUSICAL HIGHLIGHT
Expressing Emotions:
Caliban’s Aria
Aside from the conventions of form, a major difference between Baroque operas
and the more familiar ones from the Classical and Romantic eras that make up the
bulk of the repertoire today is the way in which characters express their emotions.
Typically, in a 19th-century opera, a composer would try to depict the feelings of a
single character in a specific situation or dilemma. In other words, the music represents a unique person often feeling a jumble of emotions: joy, sadness, anger, and
jealousy all mixed together. This is the way we tend to think of emotions today—as
complex psychological states that can be difficult to describe precisely because our
feelings are often conflicting.
In the Baroque era, things were different. Writers and scientists theorized that
emotions represented physical conditions caused by changes in body chemistry.
They saw individual emotions like grief or joy as distinct and separate from one
another and believed they sprang from physical causes, rather than from irrational
psychological states. (In fact, the modern idea of psychology hardly existed in the
18th century.)
While Romantic music tries to depict the eruption of complex emotions in the
unique character portrayed on stage, Baroque composers would use specific musical
techniques to evoke a single emotional state in their audiences. In a Romantic opera,
a character’s feelings were uniquely his or hers; in a Baroque opera, characters were
depicted as conforming to one general physiological state: sadness was sadness,
joy was joy, anger was anger, and so forth, with little regard for the dramatic context.
This theory of portraying a single emotion within any given piece of music is called
the Doctrine of the Affections.
This difference between the two ways of expressing emotions in music is a subtle
one, so an example will help your students to understand it. Play Vivaldi’s “Gelido
in ogni vena” from the opera Il Farnace. It appears in The Enchanted Island when
Caliban sings about his love for Helena. Without paying attention to the words, what
emotion or emotions do your students think this piece portrays?
Listen to Track 6.
The slow tempo, the dissonant opening chords, the sudden shifts in volume from
very soft to loud are meant to describe a state of utter terror: the character, King
Farnace, has just been defeated by his enemy, and to save his son from living in
captivity, he orders his wife to kill the child and then to commit suicide herself.
Here’s what he says in the original Italian text:
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MUSICAL NOTES
ITALIAN TEXT
ENGLISH TRANSLATION
A section
The dissonant harmony
and constant pulse of
music in the orchestra
give this music a sense
of tense expectation and
dread, while the drooping
melody line lends the text
a foreboding quality.
Gelido in ogni vena
scorrer mi sento il sangue,
l’ombra del figlio esangue
m’ingombra di terror.
I feel the blood
Running cold in my veins,
My dead son’s ghost
Fills me with terror.
B section
The offbeat pulse in
the strings provides a
subtle change from the
A section, almost as if
the character was out of
breath from crying.
E per maggior pia pena,
credo che fui crudele
a un’anima innocente,
al core del mio cor.
And for my greater sorrow
I believe to have been cruel
To an innocent soul,
To my true love.
Note that each section of “Gelido in ogni vena” expresses a single emotion. The A
section evokes terror.
Listen to Track 7.
The B section evokes sorrow.
Listen to Track 8.
The da capo aria was constructed to conform to the Doctrine of the Affections: the
A section depicts one emotional state that lasts for the entire segment of music.
The B section introduces a contrasting emotional state, and in the repeat of the A
section the first state returns. Instead of showing a character experiencing a jumble
of feelings that change from moment to moment (as we might expect today), each
emotion is confined to one particular stretch of music, and the emotional state
changes only twice during the aria.
Specific musical techniques were used to arouse these emotions in us. In the
A section of “Gelida in ogni vena,” for example, the vocalist draws out the word
“esangue” (dead) over many notes, over a constant orchestral pulse in the minor
mode.
Listen to Track 9.
A string of different pitches stretched over one syllable of a word is called a melisma.
Here, it is as if the horror of his situation makes the king lose his bearings and
stammer and stutter. The B section replaces the constant pulse in the orchestra
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with an offbeat accent in the strings—a lurching rhythm that may make us think of
somebody crying.
Listen to Track 10.
The goal of both sections is to evoke the same responses in the listener: ideally, we
should also be moved to revulsion or tears.
In writing new text for this piece of music, Jeremy Sams takes a different, more
modern approach to the character’s emotions. Compare the original Italian words
to the new version we hear in The Enchanted Island.
ITALIAN TEXT
ENGLISH TRANSLATION
THE ENCHANTED ISLAND VERSION
Gelido in ogni vena
scorrer mi sento il sangue,
l’ombra del figlio esangue
m’ingombra di terror.
I feel running in my veins
a cold blood,
The ghost of my dead son
fills me of terror.
Mother, my blood is freezing,
Mother, my brain is burning.
Turning and then re-turning
From heat to ice to fire.
Terror is tinged with yearning,
Half worship, half desire.
The basic imagery is the same: cold blood courses through these characters’
veins. But while Vivaldi and his librettist focus on the discrete states of terror and
sorrow, Sams depicts a more tumultuous concept of emotion: not only does the
blood freeze, but at the same time the brain burns; ice and fire mingle; terror is
mixed with desire. In other words, this character is in a state of confusion and his
emotions are in a state of turmoil.
This is one of the fascinating things about creating a new pastiche: it allows us
to hear Vivaldi’s music in new, completely modern ways. Notice, for example, how
Sams uses the melisma. While Vivaldi’s singer stammered on the word “esangue”
out of terror, the singer in The Enchanted Island performs the melisma on the
word “yearning.” It is as if the character was so enraptured by the melody that
he doesn’t even want to move on to the next word—he is enjoying the sensuous
sound, relishing the feeling of desire and yearning that the text describes. This,
of course, is completely opposite to Vivaldi’s original intent. But we can’t say that
either approach is more “correct” than the other. The interpretation depends on
the historical context: if you subscribe to the Doctrine of the Affections, as artists
in Vivaldi’s time did, the melisma helps express the terror evoked in this part of the
aria. In Sams’s reinvention, it’s only one hue in a kaleidoscopic musical depiction of
complex emotions.
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With the Met production of The Enchanted Island, Baroque opera and the 21st
century come together in a new way. The characters, the words they sing, and the
values they hold all speak to our times and to us as a contemporary audience—yet
they do so in dialogue with the conventions of the past. Experiencing this extraordinary work can help us deepen our appreciation for opera and its fascinating history.
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