Talk:Libretto

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Illustrations

I wonder if the picture is appropriate. What does it add to our understanding of libretto? Maybe it could be placed lower in the article under a subtitle about famous librettists.

--David A.

That's a good point. I didn't notice until now that someone had inserted a portrait of a particular person. It makes it look as if that's the most important or representative librettist. Better to have a sample page from a public-domain printed libretto to show how the text is laid out. I will try to come up with something to substitute for the existing portrait. Mademoiselle Fifi 14:18, 23 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've replaced that picture and added 3 more to make the illustrations more directly relevant to the text.Voceditenore 12:09, 9 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Musical requirements?

I've removed the following paragraphs that were between Language and Status; it's not clear that the first is an exception (or at least to what), and in the second it's not clear how (or even that) the libretto was changed beyond translation into French. If they make sense to anyone else fell free to put them back...Sparafucil 09:24, 1 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

 There have been notable exceptions. George Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess, for example, is based on DuBose Heyward and  Dorothy Heyward's play Porgy, and though about 95% of the opera is sung, the recitatives, which are really large chunks of the play set to  music, are in prose, while the formal arias, duets, trios, etc., are in verse.

==Musical requirements==

As different musical traditions developed over time in different places, libretti were sometimes subjected to changes because of local requirements of performance practice.  For example, an 18th-century Italian comic opera like Pergolesi's La Serva Padrona was to be sung all the way through in Italy, but in France the recitatives had to be converted into spoken dialogue.