So That's How It All Started

In practice, even such drama as was possible to Metastasian* opera [Italian, c. 18th century] tended to be crushed by the weight of commercial conditions attendant on a genuinely popular art. If French opera suffered under the dictatorship of aristocratic critical doctrine, Italian opera suffered from the lack of any effective control beyond that of vulgar taste for vocal virtuosity. Metastasio's excellently ordered librettos, furthermore, were as stultifying as they were convenient; the composer, instead of blundering around with dramatic problems and perhaps solving some of them, merely provided his two dozen arias according to the specified sentiments of love, vigor, apprehension, and sdegno. To quote Sir Donald Tovey on this subject, "The scheme was fatally easy for small musicians and did not stimulate the higher faculties of great ones, while great and small were equally at the mercy of singers." This, of course, was the final limitation: the strong control exerted by the singers' interests. Great virtuosi knew only too well that the public paid only to hear their voices, and they were permitted to translate this confidence into an elaborate system of abuses.

—Joseph Kerman, from: Opera As Drama

*Metastasio, the great 18th-century (1698–1782) Italian poet and dramatist.