Romanticism was a movement in art, music, and literature that started around 1775 and that featured the solitary artistic hero, the grand gesture, strong emotions, and the single individual as central, not society. It is hard to define well and it is not the same as “romantic”

Romanticism in OperaDave Shafer

Characters in Romanticism are very distinctive individuals, larger than life, like Napoleon here. They can be rhapsodizing poets, military heroes, Casanova types, and other expansive egos.It is not the same as “romantic” but shares some features.

Ah, romance! We often think only of the upside of romance, of happy lovers. But there can be the downside too, of rejection – either temporary or permanent. Opera covers all types.

Romantic love, like Romeo and Juliet, is the subject of many operas and much of literature. In literature love can develop at a reasonable pace. In operas there is no time for that and it is usually love at first sight, so the plot can quickly develop. Lovers see each other in expansive, wonderful ways that send reality on a holiday trip. In opera this usually ends badly for the lovers. Romanticism goes way beyond romance and involves extra risk and daring, or extreme anguish, or a lover standing apart from normal society.

Dark thoughts, as in this 1781 Fuseli painting “The Nightmare” are also associated with Romanticism. Here it is intense private feelings.

Goethe Written in 1774, when Goethe was 24 years old

The book that started it all

1749 - 1832

The story and character of Werther were largely based on Goethe’s own life. Werther was a highly sensitive young man, with a poetic disposition. He liked to brood over moving experiences of nature in the company of kindred spirits and dwell on his feelings. The Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) captured this in some very moody evening-time paintings. Goethe’s book was an

immense (make that Immense) success in Europe and was the first tragic novel in European literature.

When Napoleon met Goethe, he told him that he had read “Werther” 7 times. All across Europe young men were giving the women they were wooing tiny bottles containing, they said, their tears – to show how sensitive they were. This was all started by “The Sorrows of Young Werther” in 1775. 120 years later Massenet wrote the opera Werther and we will see some of it.

In 1765 a Scottish poet, James Macpherson, claimed to have discovered some ancient poems in Gaelic and published his translations. Supposedly these poems were by Ossian, an ancient bard, and were very moody and romantic. They had a very great international success and were much admired by Napoleon, Thomas Jefferson, and many others – around the world. Actually Macpherson simply made them up and they have been called the most successful literary falsehood in modern history. One gloomy poem is featured in the opera Werther.

The ancient Gaelic Bard Ossian conjuring up spirits

A pillar of early Romanticism. The poems were actually forgeries and not ancient. In the opera Werther the moody Ossian poems play a role.

We will now watch key excerpts from Massenet’s Werther, with today’s superstar tenor Jonas Kaufmann. This is a great opera video and has wonderful singing and acting, that convey passionate romantic love.It is that extra passion, by a sensitive poet, that elevates this above ordinary an romance.

1842 - 1912

Jules Massenet

Wrote many operas (I have 17 of them and there are a few more) - one of my favorite opera composers. Best known for Manon (1884). Extremely lush romantic music in all his operas. Especially in Werther (1892), which Massenet considered his finest achievement. It is, musically, sort of the French version of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde

Leo Delibes, 1836-1891

Delibes’s 1883 opera Lakme tapped into the fascination at that time in France and England with all things that were exotic. A group of French painters specialized in Orientalism paintings, showing many scenes of harems, slave auctions, etc. where much nudity could be shown. These were all lurid imaginings not based at all on facts and were very popular with the public. Jean-Leon Gerome (1824-1904) was famous for the art we will see next.

Lakme opera, set in India

. Gerome did many harem scenes, most with very much more nudity than this one.

This one is also pretty tame for Gerome. These paintings and the next one are the kind of art in the Dahesh Museum in Manhattan, which specializes in French Orientalism paintings from the late 1800’s

Gerome showed many scenes with a black slave washing a nude white woman.

A few of the operas with an oriental theme

1848 - Il Corsaro – Verdi – Turkish harem

1863 - Pearl Fishers – Bizet - Ceylon

1871 - Aida – 1871 – Verdi – Egypt

1883 - Lakme – Delibes – India

1885 - The Mikado – Gilbert and Sullivan - Japan

1898 – Iris – Macagni - Japan

1903 - Madama Butterfly - Puccini – Japan

1926 -Turandot – Puccini - China

These exotic settings appealed to the Romanticism type of imagination – of exploring “The Other” and picturing a life in a society very foreign to our own.

Charles Gounod 1818-1893

We will end this morning with some scenes from Charles Gounod’s opera Romeo and Juliet. Thanks to its success he became known as the “musician of love”, a title he embraced and at the age of 70 he said that love was at the heart of his life and his art.

Romeo and Juliethave always been a famous pair of lovers. But what makes them very relevant to Romanticism is Romeo’s daring. In his famous balcony scene, which we will see in Gounod’s 1867 opera Romeo and Juliet, he risks his life by sneaking into the estate of his family’s mortal enemies. That daring, by an individual with an adventurous nature, goes with one type of Romantic hero. The grand gesture, such as by Cyrano de Bergerac, is another good example.Both of the lovers are supposed to be 14 years old