How
are you?
Following
the last week, I am going to start my 38th lecture.
I
had conducted music lectures at Art Collage JANG in Seoul, South Korea every
Saturday from March 2015 to December 2017.
I
am going to introduce the lecture by the lecture’s order every Saturday.
Please
refer to the following link for my previous lectures.
Today's
lecture is five operas featuring “Marriage”, which were introduced in “The 38th
ACJ Music Academy” on March 12, 2016.
1. Le
nozze di Figaro (Mozart)
It is an opera buffa composed by Mozart in
1786 and Lorenzo Da Ponte wrote the opera's libretto based on Pierre
Beaumarchais’ comedy, The Marriage of Figaro (1784).
Count Almaviva, who bought a barber, Figaro
and all the others with money, was married to a virgin he wanted in the first
episode of "The Barber of Seville.” Then, he appears as a playboy who gets
tired of his wife and habitually makes love affairs with other women in the
sequel, "Le nozze di Figaro." When Figaro, who made a big
contribution to the Count’s marriage and became his servant, tries to marry the
maid Susanna, the Count reactivates the “Jus primae noctis (the right of the
lord to sleep with the bride before the bridegroom)” that had already been
abolished by him, to take Susanna before marriage. Finally, Figaro, Susanna,
and Countess Rosina Almaviva make the Count succumb with their tricks.
2. L'elisir
d'amore (Donizetti)
This is a two-act opera composed by Gaetano
Donizetti based on Felice Romani's libretto.
In the early 19th century, everybody is
busy during a harvest in a rural village in Spain, but Adina, who is a daughter
of a landowner, reads a book in the shade of a tree and bursts into laughter as
she reads the story of Love Potion from the legends of Northern Europe Tristan
and Isolde. The town's bachelor Nemorino loves Adina
but she always rejects his propose. Nemorino thinks such medicine really exists
and wants to get it. Then, a drug dealer named “Dulcamara” comes to this town,
and Nemorino buys the love potion from him by spending all the money, but in
fact it is just cheap wine. The drug dealer says, “The effect of the medicine appears
exactly after 24 hours.” Nemorino, who thought the wine as the love potion and
drank it, finally succeeds in attaining Adina's love.
3. Don
Pasquale (Donizetti)
A three-act opera buffa composed by Gaetano
Donizetti, with an Italian libretto by Giovanni Ruffini and Donizetti based on a
libretto by Angelo Anelli for Stefano Pavesi's opera “Ser Marcantonio.”
An old bachelor miser and rich man, Don
Pasquale can't get married because he's afraid his wife will waste his
property. Pasquale has only one kin who is his nephew, Ernesto. He wants to
marry his nephew to a rich virgin, but Ernesto is secretly loving a young
widow, Norina. Pasquale opposes Norina who is a widow with a marriage history and
has no property and no dowry. But as his nephew resists, Pasquale declares that
he will marry. Then all the property is taken over by Pasquale's wife and
Ernesto cannot inherit anything. Surprised Ernesto confesses the physician of
Pasquale. The physician suggests an idea to disguise Norina into the physician's
younger sister and introduce her to Pasquale as his wife candidate. Pasquale loves
Norina at first sight and marries her right away, but as soon as Pasquale signs
his marriage certificate, she acts to get tired of him. Pasquale, who couldn't
stand it anymore, calls his physician for a divorce. The physician pretends to
make a trick again and says that marrying Ernesto to the widow is the only way
to get Pasquale's wife away. Since there is no other way, Pasquale allows
Ernesto's marriage, and those who succeeded in their plan reveal the truth
before Pasquale.
4. Orphée
aux Enfers (Offenbach)
It is a two-act comic opera composed by Jacques
Offenbach with a libretto by Hector Crémieux and Ludovic Halévy.
Orpheus is a music teacher who lives on
violin lessons, and Eurydice is a cheating wife with a shepherd because she is
tired of her husband. But this shepherd is actually a god Pluton in disguise.
When Eurydice is killed by her husband's trap, Orpheus is so happy, but soon Public
Opinion appears (a personification of 'public opinion') and says “Since the
reputation of the world is more important than love, although you don't like
it, go find your wife.” Then it makes Orpheus go to hell. Meanwhile, in
Olympos, the gods raise a riot against the dictator and the playboy Zeus, and
in order to endure the embarrassing situation, Zeus leads all the gods down to
the underworld, where he transforms himself into a fly and seduces Eurydice.
But when forced to send her back to the ground, Zeus offers a condition to Orpheus
not to looking back until he sees the light on the ground and then waits for Orpheus’
looking back with curiosity. Orpheus is surprised by the thunderstorm of
Zeus, who had lost control, and looks back. Finally, Orpheus and Eurydice rejoice
and break up.
5.
Prodaná nevěsta (Smetana)
It is a comic opera in three acts by the
Czech composer Bedřich Smetana, to a libretto by Karel Sabina.
Everyone is enjoying town’s festival, but
the main heroine Mařenka is in trouble. Because she has a lover but her parents are
trying to marry her to the landowner’s son. Mařenka's
lover, Jeník, who was driven by a bad stepmother, is living a tough life with
hard works. He meets and loves Mařenka but he is worried that
her parents don’t want to give their only daughter to a wanderer who has
neither parents nor property. The matchmaker hands Jeník the money and
asks him to write a note that gives up Mařenka to
earn money by making a successful marriage of Mařenka and
the landowner's son. Jeník accepts the proposal with a condition that Mařenka
must marry the landowner's son. Mařenka, meanwhile, describes herself
as a witch to the landowner's son who has never seen Mařenka,
causing him to give up his marriage. However, she misunderstands that Jeník
abandoned his love and sold her to the matchmaker. But at the gathering of the
villagers, Jeník reveals that he is the landowner's eldest son, who had been
driven by his stepmother long ago. After all, Mařenka and Jeník
get married in the blessing of everyone.
You
can listen to all the arias selected in this course from following YouTube
link.
1. Sull’ aria, Le nozze di Figaro (Mozart)
2. Una furtiva lagrima, L'elisir d'amore
(Donizetti)
3. Quel guardo il cavaliere, Don Pasquale
(Donizetti)
4. Viens! C’est l’honneur qui t’appelle, Orphée
aux Enfers (Offenbach)
5. I know a maiden fair, Prodaná nevěsta
(Smetana)
Next
week, I will lecture 5th "Opera" course as my 39th lecture.
Thank
you.
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