CHAPTER XX
GLUCK AND THE DRAMATIC REFORM
150. The Operatic Situation.—The latter half of the 18th century
was a time of enormous activity in operatic music. At
least seventy-five composers might be named whose ability or
practical success gave them prominence. So intense was the
popular demand that perhaps as many as 2500 operas of all
sorts were written, of which many hundreds were produced.
The field may be roughly divided between three principal groups—the
Neapolitans, whether working in Italy or abroad, the
Viennese (including some belated Venetians), and the French.
Other national groups, however, were beginning to appear as
offshoots from these, though none of them, not even the German,
was yet of much importance.
At first Italian models were almost everywhere supreme, though in Paris they were in competition with styles of French origin. The opera seria was at its extreme of structural formality and showy heartlessness—a procession of conventional arias designed to exhibit the dexterity of vocalists and to feed the popular craving for sensation. Except in the hands of a few writers, the musical structure was meagre and common-*place, lacking both harmonic and contrapuntal life, and unsupported by any broad sense of orchestral treatment. Opera-writing was largely a knack or a trade, which many an aspirant felt he could acquire at short notice and then honorably exercise as long as public favor could be shrewdly cajoled. The principal exception in the prevailing flatness was the opera buffa, with its tendency to transgress traditions by developing real personification, pithy and animated action, and extended ensemble or concerted effects. The reaction of this upon the opera seria was beginning to be felt, so that the line between the two was growing fainter—one of the signs of a new era.
