The Musical Language of Italian Opera, 1813-1859

Though studying opera often requires attention to aesthetics, libretti, staging, singers, compositional history, and performance history, the music itself is central. This book examines operatic music by five Italian composers—Rossini, Bellini, Mercadante, Donizetti, and Verdi—and one non-Italian, Meyerbeer, during the period from Rossini's first international successes to Italian unification. Detailed analyses of form, rhythm, melody, and harmony reveal concepts of musical structure different from those usually discussed by music theorists, calling into question the notion of a common practice. Taking an eclectic analytical approach, author William Rothstein uses ideas originating in several centuries, from the sixteenth to the twenty-first, to argue that operatic music can be heard not only as passionate vocality but also in terms of musical forms, pitch structures, and rhythmic patterns—that is, as carefully crafted music worth theoretical attention. Although no single theory accounts for everything, Rothstein's analysis shows how certain recurring principles define a distinctively Italian practice, one that left its mark on the German repertoire more familiar to music theorists.

William Rothstein is Professor of Music Theory at Queens College and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He previously taught at Amherst College, Oberlin College, and the University of Michigan. He is author of Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music and co-author (with Charles Burkhart) of Anthology for Musical Analysis. He has written and lectured extensively on music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with special emphasis on musical rhythm, Schenkerian theory and analysis, and nineteenth-century Italian opera.