如何成为歌剧指挥？ 第1页

论述指挥艺术的著作和文字可谓汗牛充栋，而专门论述歌剧指挥艺术的书籍是比较罕见的。正如今天要介绍的这本书的前言中所说：“ ... This book is none of the above. It is about one musician's approach to conducting a sampling of masterworks of the operatic literature. ”（“ ...这本书不属于上述的任何一种。它是有关一个音乐家指挥歌剧文献中的杰作的节选的方法。”）；又如《剑桥指挥指南》（The Cambridge Companion to Conducting）中所指出的那样：“A good orchestra, fully trained, will be able to play most symphonic works of the classical period without any conductor at all. It might be not have the stamp or the personality of an enlightened musician on it, but the performance would not actually come to a halt. However, an opera cannot even begin to be performed without a proper conductor directing the whole proceedings.”（这段话的主要意思是一个训练有素的乐队没有指挥也能流畅地演奏古典交响乐，但是歌剧如果没有一个对的指挥根本无从“开始”。）这本今年七月刚出版的新作《指挥歌剧：当戏剧邂逅音乐》（Conducting Opera: Where Theater Meets Music）非常值得一读，我读了之后有许多十分让人惊喜的内容。

这本书的作者为Joseph Rescigno，在世界各地的超过50家歌剧院担任过指挥。

这本书的目录如下：

前言

关于乐谱

第一章 我学习的步骤

第二章 莫扎特

第三章 美声唱法歌剧

第四章 威尔第

第五章 瓦格纳

第六章 法国浪漫主义

第七章 普契尼

第八章 理查·施特劳斯

附言和致谢

附录：引用乐谱

尾注

引用文献

索引

全书有不少精彩的内容，在这里随便列举一二：（莫扎特的Don Giovanni《唐璜》）"This work has its full share of Mozartean tone painting. In the Act II sextet, for example, the entrance of trumpets before Ottavio's first line immediately signals the nobility of this character..."；（威尔第的Otello《奥赛罗》）“The final fugue, discussed above, an invigorating piece and one of the most thrilling conclusions to any opera. It also looks back to Bach after the highly romantic Otello. In some measure, we are reminded of the way in which Richard Strauss took inspiration from Mozart for his Der Rosenkavalier.”；（圣·桑的Samson et Dalila《参孙与达莉拉》）“The first measures of the opera: The bassoons play a single note; then the horns play the interval of a third, and the flutes play a minor triad followed by a minor triad in second inversion in the clarinets and bassoons. This sets the stage for the B-minor mood of the next section. The build-up in intensity reminds me of the opening of Das Rheingold where the great river begins in the horns and expands through harmonic and motivic repetition. In this instance, it is the story of the Hebrews that is described.”

除了这本书外，其他论述歌剧指挥的英文文献有Gustav Kobbé于1919年首次出版并于1954年修订的The Complete Opera Book、José Antonio Bowen编辑的《剑桥指挥指南》的第一部分第六章（The Cambridge Companion to Conducting - "Part 1-Practice" - "Chapter 6: Opera Conducting"，作者Vance George）、博士论文The Performance of Accompanied Recitative in Italian Opera: According to the Conducting Method of Ilya Musin（作者Sergei Vesselinov Pavlov）等。中文文献也不少。

另外，感兴趣的朋友们可以搜索Joseph Rescigno的视频。在系列视频中，他对于这本书有很多补充的讲解。这些视频分别谈论了有关歌剧的“结构”、“乐队的表现力”、“风暴天气”、“声音特点”、“鼓掌”、“通篇写作”、“传统”、“速度”、“有表现力的跳跃”和“装饰音”等主题。