In the world of classical music, composers command the lion’s share of respect. Since compositions must be played, performers also receive high praise.
In the case of vocal music, though, there are also those who write the words. But just as few people can name the person who wrote their favorite movie’s screenplay, most casual concertgoers don’t usually recall who wrote the librettos to operas and Broadway musicals. The person toiling behind the curtain, is often poorly paid to boot.
It was not always so. In opera’s heyday, the wordsmith held a higher status than the composer. What was it like to be such an author?
What Goes Into an Opera Libretto?
As in early Hollywood, opera librettists in the 17th and 18th centuries often adapted material from literature or historical accounts rather than writing original stories. This included plundering from sources in epic poetry, imitating Greek tragedy, and dramatizing the lives of saints. Librettists were also expected to follow certain stylistic conventions. Action, for example, was developed in recitative passages (singing with a speech-like rhythm), while the arias, or songs, were lyric interludes that reflected a character’s mood.Many librettists were poets first. Since they had to exercise mastery not only of words, but also the rhythms of language, and to craft verses in a meter that could be sung, this overlap makes sense.
Pietro Metastasio
When considering who the greatest opera librettist of all time is, a potential candidate is Pietro Metastasio (1698–1782). While the title of “greatest” is somewhat subjective, there’s no doubt that Metastasio was the most in-demand librettist of his time. In the 18th century alone, his dramas were set to music more than 800 times, and he achieved great financial success.
Metastasio held the position of court poet and dramatist in Vienna for more than half a century. His contributions to opera seria set the gold standard for the genre thanks to their lyrical beauty and dramatic power. He primarily dramatized biblical and classical subjects, weaving ornate speeches with complex plots and grand climaxes.
One dramatic innovation Metastasio introduced was to place arias at the end of scenes, developing emotions to a peak and signaling a singer’s departure. Among his poetic flourishes, he would add verbs of motion into the text when moving to a new key. He also refused to allow the singer to make vowel sounds of “i” or “e” (“ee” and “ay” in Italian) when embellishing a cadence, since those narrower vowels were more difficult to project clearly and tended to disrupt the smoothness of a lyrical line. At the end of each aria segment, he would always accent the last syllable to round it off.
Librettists were often commissioned to write operas for specific venues, or contracted to work with particular composers and singers. When working with a famous diva, the librettist had to rewrite roles to suit their tastes and vocal talent. The collaborative process brought benefits but also headaches.
For Metastasio, this worked the other way around. He wrote most of his librettos independently, and every composer in Europe scrambled to set them to music. One of his most popular librettos, “Artaserse,” was adapted into 40 operas over the course of a century. Handel set Metastasio’s dramas to music three times; Haydn and Gluck also adapted him, among many others whose names are less remembered.
According to music professor and contributor to “The Oxford History of Opera,” Thomas Bauman, “In the mellifluousness of his verses, the stylized decorum of his poetic lexicon, and the finesse of his emotional palette Metastasio has never had his equal in the history of opera.”
Lorenzo Da Ponte
Mozart is one of the biggest names in opera. He dominates the early genre as Michelangelo presides over the visual arts and Shakespeare towers over drama. But he wouldn’t have this status were it not for Lorenzo da Ponte, the librettist he collaborated with on three of the best opera buffas ever written: “The Marriage of Figaro,” “Don Giovanni,” and “Cosi fan tutte.”
In the same way that comedies rarely win the Academy Award for Best Picture, opera buffa commanded less prestige than serious opera in the 18th century. Da Ponte helped change this. He had a gift for doing two things especially well: writing poetry that could be sung and setting plays to music.
After Metastasio’s death in 1782, Emperor Joseph II appointed Da Ponte to succeed him as the official poet of the Vienna court theater. Four years later, Mozart suggested doing a musical treatment of “The Marriage of Figaro” by the French playwright Pierre Beaumarchais. Though Mozart came up with the idea, it was Da Ponte who produced a libretto to work with. In the poet’s linguistic dexterity, the composer’s musical genius truly found a match.
Da Ponte did for comic opera what Shakespeare did for the Elizabethan stage. By only giving comic elements to the minor characters and keeping the main characters serious, Da Ponte infused “Figaro” with more human realism and character depth than had been previously seen in the genre.
Beaumarchais’s source play was scandalous since it was set in a brothel, and imperial censors initially banned the opera in Vienna. Unlike in the film “Amadeus,” where Mozart is shown persuading Joseph II to allow the work to be produced, it was Da Ponte who really accomplished this through his influence as a court poet.
While Da Ponte held this position for seven years, he did not enjoy the same financial security as Metastasio. By the late-18th century, librettists, like composers themselves, were beginning to pursue what we would today call freelance careers. The arts were moving away from the patronage system of the court and church, servicing theaters’ paying customers instead.
Da Ponte and Mozart had to negotiate fees, contracts, and royalty agreements, meet deadlines, scrape together money for productions, and appeal to public tastes that were becoming more commercialized. In this, Da Ponte proved savvier than Mozart, who famously died poor. Da Ponte eventually moved to the United States, where he established an Italian opera company and found enduring success.
After Da Ponte, librettists began to suffer diminishing returns. In the mid-19th century, composers climbed to the top of the musical food chain, commanding higher fees and more respect.
