On The Inheritance And Innovation Of Verdi's Baritone Creation In His Late Operas

The dissertation focuses on the study of Jago and Falstaff,the two male protagonists in Othello and Falstaff,Verdi's two late operatic works.By analyzing the aria and configuration of Verdi's baritone roles,the dissertation probes into the concrete skills of Verdi's highly united musical structure and drama structure,and continues to deal with his grasp of inheriting and innovation in his later creation.In the beginning,the dissertation reviews Verdi's early baritone roles,and then sums up the baritone roles in his early and middle creation stages.This tentatively summarizes the reasons for Verdi's emphasis of using baritone role:the necessity of opera's theme and his personal preference.After his early imitation and exploration, Verdi elevates the quality of baritone roles in his middle creation stage,and establishes his own melodic language style and structure features.When his operatic creation enters the late stage,his skills undergo great changes because of the German,French and Italian influences.First,the role of baritone becomes more important through the dramatic development.The baritone roles become the center of the dramatic development. The personality and psychology become more complicated and delicate.The focus of the drama is not limited to the display of concrete events any longer.Rather,it turns into the characterization,human nature probe and psychological study of Jago and Falstaff.Secondly,the melody of the vocal music develops from the original paralleled and orderly singing rhythm to the various-length free chanting sentence style.This makes the baritone melody closer to the dramatic verse in semantics,pronunciation and force.In the baritone rhythm,aria-recitative occupies the major position, complemented with recitative and aria,which helps to effectively present the roles' psychological activities.Thirdly,the expressive force and function of the orchestra are strengthened. The orchestra is no longer a foil for human sound,but assumes an independent expressing and dramatic function.Meanwhile,the flowing and coherent orchestra, as the basic framework,bears the weight of melody which is subtle and miniaturized and the baritone tune which is structure-freed.This coincidences with the opera's musical structure and development.Fourthly,because the major music-structure-carrier shifts from human sound to orchestra,the continuous music flow and extension of the orchestra break the musical structure pattern,taking the vocal songs as the unit structure.Parlante's improvement not only expands the structure of the human sound songs,but also gives more room and structure freedom to the baritone and other vocal parts,which constitutes more complicated patterns.The relationship between human sound and orchestra develops from the early linear structure(orchestra complementing the human sound) to the two-dimensional structure based on the orchestra's parlante, and to the later interlacing and furling of orchestra and human sound,and to the eventual multi-dimensional musical structure.This multi-dimensional musical structure originates from Othello and is widely used in Falstaff.In his baritone roles' creation,Verdi keeps the traditional style of Italian opera and sticks to the tradition of the human sound as the major part.And at the same time,according to the characteristics of the times and the operatic necessities,he improves the vocal music vocabulary to strengthen the expressive force of the orchestra.He extends the horizontal structural scale,establishes the vertical and multi-dimensional composite style of human sound and orchestra.Consequentially, he achieves an organic integration between the inheritance and innovation.To sum up,Verdi's baritone roles in his late stage are the perfect combination of Shakespeare's dramatic creation,Boito's gifted adaption and Verdi's great operatic sense and musical talent.At the late stage of his creation,Verdi reaches the tiptop of his baritone characterization and his overall operatic art competence.He does not only elevate the operatic creation through his achievement in the creation of the baritone roles,but also ennobles the position of the baritone roles.The baritone roles in his later work are classical ones challenging in sound technology, musical expression and stage presenting.Jago is regarded as the greatest operatic baritone role while Falstaff,the greatest comic baritone role ever in the history of the opera history.