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Haydn and Orfeo — a classical myth
by H. C. Robbins Landon

Joseph Haydn

Just as it can be maintained that Mozart’s Idomeneo is a magnificent failure as a music drama, it could be said of Haydn’s last opera, L’anima del filosofo, ossia Orfeo ed Euridice, that it was doomed, dramatically, before Haydn set a note of it on paper. By 1791, there was indeed no hope for opera seria — not for Haydn, not even for Mozart, whose La Clemenza di Tito (also written in 1791) was, to put it very bluntly, an utter waste of his time. Yet musically Haydn’s Orfeo contains some of his grandest thoughts, for within the rigid framework of the form, the composer managed to write a most beautiful farewell to an ancient and honourable form of art. Euridice’s death aria in the second act is the most moving slow recitative and aria Haydn ever wrote, while the very end of the opera, a shattering D minor chorus which dwindles away to nothing except a lonely timpani roll, is certainly the most dramatic piece Haydn ever wrote in an opera. In the frantic inspiration with which he committed this piece to paper, the notes themselves seem to surge forward (much as they do in the second act of Wagner’s Tristan); and not satisfied with the large orchestral apparatus, which even includes trombones, Haydn seems to have thought of an organ continuo — there appear suddenly figures under the bass part — to increase the doom-ridden fury of the drowning baccanti.

As in Armida, Haydn and his librettist, Carlo Franceso Badini, did away with that dreadful happy end which disfigures Gluck’s opera on the subject. Returning to the original legend, Orfeo is poisoned by the baccanti and, as they, shrieking with delight, prepare to tear him into pieces the river Lethe rises up in anger and drowns the frenzied women. At the end, the storm gradually sinks away, leaving the stage empty and dark, while the remains of Orfeo are carried away by the waters, to find rest on the Isle of Lesbos.

Haydn uses the chorus in this opera in the manner of a Greek tragedy: to comment on the action and, occasionally, to take part in it as ‘amorini’ or ‘baccanti’. The chorus, as might be expected from a composer who loved the choir and was prevented from using it at Esterhaza by the fact that there was none, plays a decisive rle in Orfeo, and many of the finest pieces are choral. A striking effect is obtained by using, at the beginning of the opera, Euridice together with the chorus in a furious C minor Vivace. Euridice interrupts them, crying ‘Deh, per pieta, Lasciatemi!’, but the chorus cuts her off, warning her again, ‘Ferma il piede, o Principessa!’

One curious, and in Haydn’s earlier operas unrevealed, trait stands out in this opera: the composer’s uncanny ability to create a doom-ridden atmosphere. The music tells us again and again how this drama will end; in the beautiful E major Aria of Creonte in Act I (‘Il pensier sta negli oggetti’), there is a sudden and sinister pianissimo hush, and the double basses enter like a great cloud over the peaceful arabesques of flute and strings. In Orfeo’s first scena in Act I (with solo harp, by the way), there is the same interruption before the end of the aria proper. And even in the happy love duet between Orfeo and Euridice at the end of Act I, Haydn stops to introduce this chilling presentiment of the action’s outcome. Technically, this ‘presence of doom’ is often achieved by the same means: the music stops, and then the double basses enter on the dominant with soft repeated quavers (or whatever the basic quick pulse may be) whilst the upper parts then slide across the texture with diminished seventh chords which do indeed have a peculiarly ominous effect.

In summing up, it is quite obvious that L’anima del filosofo is one of Haydn’s most impressive works and likewise one of the great monuments to opera seria; if it fails as opera, it fails magnificently, as did Idomeneo. Yet despite its disability to succeed as a stage piece it rounds out, in a curious way, Haydn’s activities as an operatic composer. It will no longer be possible to consider Haydn in London without L’anima del filosofo; and I think Haydn, who was the most modest and self-critical of all composers, would be satisfied with that.