Alienation as Expressed in Three Twentieth-Century Operas

Opera is concerned with poetry, drama and music, which must be fused into one. It is characteristic of opera that neither words nor music alone can express all that its drama requires. Words and music must go together. The images of music are just as communicative, if not more so, than poetry; for example, a change in mentality can be conveyed merely by switching abruptly into another key.

It is opera when a verbal text articulates a drama intended to be staged, with full theatrical decor, to music, which does as much as the words to develop the character and situation all the way through to final resolution. Thus we have prose (libretto), songs (arias, duets, etc.), the orchestra (musical instruments) and a stage production. It is easily seen that opera can do more with symbols than the spoken word, for it is opera's particular and peculiar quality that the orchestra can contradict a singer's expressed thoughts, indicate his unconscious fears and hopes, and illuminate his personality. Also, the form of the music itself can be used to convey many things. Tonal leaps in the vocal line, altered tempi and rhythm, and interpolated chromaticisms are used to indicate changing moods or emotion; sudden changes in harmony, even discord, are employed to suggest tension or conflict; and the orchestral instruments project atmosphere, suggest emotional nuance, and build climaxes. Finally, the stage production should serve the same end by the use of visual images drawn in the spirit, if not necessarily the letter, of the same artistic idiom.

Opera prior to the twentieth century — with one major exception