Read on to discover why the opera libretto - the words and story - are just as important as the music...
Why don't we credit the opera libretto?
'Prima la musica, poi le parole.’ First the music, then the words? Oh dear. In opera, the reality is quite the opposite. We tend to credit opera composers ahead of their librettists. But can you imagine Mozart without Da Ponte? Verdi without Piave? Strauss without Hofmannsthal? Our favourite operas, such as Le nozze di Figaro, La traviata or Der Rosenkavalier would be nowhere without their words and their drama – provided by the writer. Composers might grumble, cajole or bully their wordsmiths, but they know on which side their bread is buttered.
A great libretto (the term means ‘little book’) can make the difference between a rare wonder and an opera for the ages. The reason Fauré’s Pénélope is so rarely performed is probably that the libretto places most of the drama offstage. L’elisir d’amore is among Donizetti’s most popular operas possibly because Felice Romani gave him a rom-com of such well-calibrated human truths that it sparked some of his best music.
Words or music first... When and how is the opera libretto put together?
Interestingly, in pop music or musicals the words are often added second to fit the tune, so people assume that’s how operas are done too. It isn’t. Moreover, in musical theatre, a writer creates the book or lyrics, but rarely both. A librettist, conversely, writes ‘a little book’, controlling an opera’s dramatic outline, but usually also the words that are sung.
For today’s new commissions, some opera houses might employ a ‘dramaturg’ to help embed an opera in a convincingly created dramatic world; and if the creative team works with a director from the start, that person has much input in shaping the outcome. But ultimately, it is up to the librettist first to put a strong dramatic structure on the page, and next to produce concentrated, singable text, with plenty of open vowels and not too many instances of ‘ss’ or ‘th’ (and hopefully not too many of my bugbear, ‘ayshern’ rhymes, as in ‘celebrayshern across the nayshern’). It’s no place for literary flights of fancy, though there are some librettists who never got that email.
In the early days.... the opera librettist as star
Long, long ago and far, far away, it was almost possible to be an opera librettist full time. Pietro Metastasio (1698-1782) wrote 26-28 librettos which produced around 800 operas. His Adriano in Siria was set, incredibly, by more than 60 composers. Porpora, Caldara, Pergolesi, Galuppi and Cherubini were just a few of those who took up his work, and even Mozart used a Metastasio libretto – La Clemenza di Tito – though by that time operatic fashions had evolved, and it required substantial tweaking.
Most librettists, however, have had ‘portfolio’ careers. Metastasio’s colourful existence was outshone by that of Lorenzo Da Ponte, librettist for Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte. His life rip-roared through priesthood and academia in Italy, a stint in Vienna, and ultimately New York, where he opened a grocery store. His three librettos for Mozart fed upon Beaumarchais’s plays, the advice of Casanova (who lent a ring of authenticity to Don Giovanni) and possibly, for Così, the composer’s own relationships with two sisters, Aloysia and Constanze Weber. In 1787 he created three libretti simultaneously for three different composers. He related in his memoirs that he had the help of a box of snuff to one side, a bottle of Tokay to the other, and, in between, his landlady’s 16-year-old daughter…
Verdi and his librettist Piave... an unequal and sometimes bullying partnership
Ideally these working relationships are a marriage of true minds. You would think that was essential. The nuances, however, are deeper and more complex. Try Giuseppe Verdi and his long-time collaborator Francesco Maria Piave. They began with Ernani in 1844; numerous subsequent works included the first version of Macbeth, Rigoletto and La traviata. From Murano, near Venice, Piave was a successful journalist and poet, but also stage manager of La Fenice, the Venetian opera house for which La traviata was written. It was largely thanks to Verdi’s influence that he later won the same job at La Scala, Milan.
Although Piave clearly had some power in the musical world, Verdi was the dominant partner. He proved a hard-hitting personality and a composer who knew what he wanted. Piave dealt with him using tact, diplomacy and remarkable patience. Some consider that Verdi was bullying him, yet Piave once described their collaboration as ‘a faith, a religion, a cult’. It only ended when the librettist suffered a stroke in 1867 that left him disabled. When he died, Verdi paid for his funeral and helped to support his family.
Puccini... stormy relationships with his librettists
Giacomo Puccini was notorious for his stormy relationships with his librettists. Interestingly, for La bohème he and his publisher, Ricordi, chose a ‘book’ and ‘lyrics’ approach: Luigi Illica wrote the scenario and Giuseppe Giacosa the verse. During the creative process, sparks flew.
For instance, writing about Act III, Puccini grumbled: ‘I am annoyed by all these trifling episodes which have nothing at all to do with the action of the drama. We ought to find an entirely different setting…’ Poor Giacosa told Ricordi: ‘All this incessant rewriting, retouching, adding, correcting, taking away and sticking on again, puffing it out on the right side to thin it down on the left, I am sick to death. Curse the libretto!’
When composers write their own libretto... with mixed results
Wagner... lengthy and wordy
But if a composer needs to exert such obsessive control, why not just write it yourself? Richard Wagner, who was unlikely ever to relinquish control over anything, took pride in writing every word of his own librettos. He packed them with intriguing philosophies (try Parsifal: ‘Here space becomes time’), women as powerful as Brünnhilde, Isolde and Kundry and men as complex as Hans Sachs and Wotan. But the results are so very lengthy and wordy that many opera-goers over the years have wished he’d employed a good editor.
As a librettist, one’s aim is to use the minimum number of words to prod the composer into writing music containing the maximum amount of emotion. It’s sometimes said that it takes three times longer to sing words than to speak them, but it can be as much asfivetimes. Therefore, if you’re hung up on fidelity to a non-theatrical literary source, you’re asking for trouble.
Sentences not suitable for singing
When Nicholas Maw’s opera Sophie’s Choice, based on William Styron’s novel, was staged at the Royal Opera House in 2002, it was powerful enough that some scenes have stayed with me ever since, including its dark, devastating conclusion. Unfortunately, Maw – on Styron’s advice – spent years writing his own libretto, aiming to be true to parts of the massive book. The result, with drawn-out, literary sentences, simply wasn’t suitable enough for singing.
On the day of the dress rehearsal for the premiere of Brett Dean’s Hamlet at Glyndebourne, I bumped into the composer on the bus. I asked him, ‘Why Hamlet?’ and got the genial response, ‘Why not?’ The librettist, Matthew Jocelyn, had created a very different script from the play – because if Dean had tried to set the whole of Shakespeare’s original, it would have taken all day to perform. Dean remarked that he had used the equivalent of about one fifth of the Bard’s text.
The composer and the librettist... different working patterns
Working patterns between composer and librettist vary tremendously from team to team. For instance, Martin Crimp, George Benjamin’s collaborator, dislikes the word ‘libretto’: he calls it simply a ‘script’. He perfects his text, then hands it over to Benjamin, who sets it exactly as he finds it. They do not consult one another, but their results have included masterpieces such as Written on Skin and Picture a Day Like This.
Close partnerships... Roxanna Panufnik and Jessica Duchen
My own experience is very different. I’ve been lucky to write four librettos so far, for two large community-plus operas and two youth operas, for Garsington Opera. I’ve thought of it as creating the skeleton upon which the composer builds the muscle, sinew, skin, personality and soul.
The requirements for community or youth opera work are particularly complex, involving in-depth consultation with the wider team. When I worked with Roxanna Panufnik on Silver Birch and Dalia, we wrote for an adult amateur choir, a large complement of children and young people aged 9 to 19, top-level professional soloists, several child soloists, Foley artists, consultants from the worlds of the stories (in Silver Birch the army, in Dalia refugees, foster parents and cricket professionals), plus the Philharmonia Orchestra and a dog. The biggest challenge was catering to everybody’s needs while also producing a work that retained its own artistic integrity.
'We were on the phone constantly'
First, we settled upon the basic outline; next, we interviewed our consultants, then agreed the final scenario and cast of characters with the team. With that in place, I wrote the first draft. The libretto needs to be signed off by the powers that be, who might request changes. Once there was a final(ish) version, Roxanna took it and worked her musical magic.
We were on the phone constantly as she would ask if I could revise W chorus to match the pattern of the X section, or add Y number of lines to aria Z. We’ve been friends for 30 years, which enables us each to accept the other’s additions, subtractions and multiplications. And when we went to a rehearsal for the first time and saw the young performers making the work their own, the rush of energy struck us like a steam train.
Opera... a wonderful coming together of music, drama, poetry, movement and design
There is a reason opera is called opera; the word means ‘work’. Creating one takes a superhuman effort from a large number of people, each making their own unique contribution to this shared objective. And to me it really can be the greatest of all artforms: as Wagner called it, ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ – the complete work of art, uniting music, drama, poetry, movement and design. Being part of it is the best feeling in the world.
