¹ See the various essays, especially the one entitled ‘Discourse in the Novel’, collected in The Dialogic Imagination [Voprosy literatury i estetiki (Moscow, 1975)], trans. Emerson, Caryl and Holquist, Michael, ed. Holquist, Michael (Austin, 1981), 259–422.Google Scholar The resemblance between opera and the novel as plurivocal and plurilinguistic genres has been discussed by Lindenberger, Herbert, Opera: The Extravagant Art (Ithaca, 1984), 91–5.Google Scholar

² My theoretical framework and terminology are based on the first part of Segre, Cesare, Avviamento all'analisi del testo letterario (Turin, 1985).Google Scholar

³ See Dalmonte, Rossana, ‘La canzone nel melodramma italiano del primo ottocento. Ricerche di metodo strutturale’, Rivista italiana di musicologia, 10 (1975), 230–313.Google Scholar The concept of ‘Gattungszitat’ derives from Tibor Kneif, ‘Zur Semantik des musikalischen Zitats’, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 134 (1973), 3–9.Google Scholar

⁴ Dahlhaus, , ‘Drammaturgia dell'opera italiana’, in Storia dell'opera italiana, ed. Bianconi, Lorenzo and Pestelli, Giorgio, VI (Turin, 1988), 79–162, esp. 84–7.Google Scholar

⁵ See Döhring, Sieghart, ‘Meyerbeer – Grand opéra als Ideendrama’, Lendemains (1983), 11–21Google Scholar, cited here and later according to the Italian translation in La drammaturgia musicale, ed. Bianconi, Lorenzo (Bologna, 1986), 365–81; here 367.Google Scholar

⁶ Döhring, , ‘Meyerbeer’, 374.Google Scholar

⁷ Bakhtin, ‘Discourse in the Novel’ (see n. 1).

⁸ According to Carl Dahihaus, there is a ‘factor in common between opera and the novel, which distinguishes it from drama: the aesthetic presence of the author. As in epic-narrative literature, so in opera the presence of a “narrator” who guides events belongs absolutely to its aesthetic make-up.’ ‘Zeitstrukturen in der Oper’, Die Musikforschung, 24 (1981), 2–11, here 4.Google Scholar

⁹ See Segre, , Avviamento (n. 2), 27.Google Scholar The term ‘focus of narration’ was used as early as 1938 by Brooks, Cleanth and Warren, R. P. in Understanding FictionGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ Dalmonte (see n. 3).

¹¹ An interesting area in this context might involve related ‘spatial’ implications, whether in the realistic sense of new uses of scenic space or in the attempt on the part of composers to suggest through musical means an interior sense of space, the evocation of a character's wandering thoughts.

¹² From a terminological point of view one could argue that this type of music often occurs offstage – ‘stage’ meaning the space visible to the spectators. But this obviously refers to the intrinsic musical event, and has nothing to do with operatic convention in the broadest sense.

¹³ Verdi's effect was much praised by the reviewer in the Gazzetta musicale di Milano (20 03 1842)Google Scholar, who reported on the opera's first performance. The ‘rhetorical’ function of the banda playing a funeral march is mentioned by Girardi, Michele, ‘Un aspetto del realismo nella drammaturgia di Stiffelio: La musica fuori scena’, in Tornando a Stiffelio: Popolarità, rifacimento, messinscena, effettismo e altre ‘cure’ nella drammaturgia del Verdi romantico, ed. Morelli, Giovanni (Florence, 1987), 223–41, esp. 226.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Ritorni, Carlo, Ammaestramenti alla composizione d'ogni poema e d'ogni opera appartenente alla musica (Milan: Pirola, 1841).Google ScholarCaractacus (1759, performed in Dublin in 1764) by Mason, William sought to return to an Aeschylean model of tragedy, not without echoing the Pindaric style of the odes of Gray.Google Scholar

¹⁵ It is significant, for example, that Smeton's strophic Romanza in the first act of Anna Bolena may have originally constituted the tempo di mezzo of the following aria of Anna. See Gossett, Philip, ‘Anna Bolena’ and the Artistic Maturity of Gaetano Donizetti (Oxford, 1985), 180.Google Scholar In any case, as banal as it may seem, I would like to stress that the choice between ‘aria’ and ‘Canzone’ has precise implications for the relationship between characters onstage. An aria is not perceived by other characters as ‘music’, and often is not perceived as anything, since it involves the lyrical explication of an interior sentiment; stage music, however, is heard by others as such (indeed, they often comment, ‘Mesta è la tua canzon …’ [‘Your song is sad …’]) and this ‘hearing’ is a condition of the plot. If Medora's Romanza in the first act of Il corsaro, although stylistically generic and lacking in characteristic features, were not a Canzone sung as such (with all that harp accompaniment), but an aria of interior meditation, Corrado would not be able to hear it, understand its melancholy character (‘É pur mesto, Medora, it canto tuo’ [‘And yet, Medora, your song is sad’]), and thus begin the ensuing duet. If ‘La donna è mobile’ were not a Canzone, Rigoletto could not hear it and recognise it as he is about to throw the sack in the Mincio.

¹⁶ The definition, which derives from Günther Müller, has been given musicological currency by Carl Dahlhaus (see n. 4), par. 13.

¹⁷ See Barblan, Guglielmo, ‘Alla ribalta un'ottocentesca tragedia lirica: Parisina d'Este di Donizetti’, Chigiana, 22 (1964), 207–38;Google Scholar and Angelis, Marcello De, Le carte del-l'impresario: Melodramma e costume teatrale nell'ottocento (Florence, 1982), 35–8.Google Scholar