libretto

Libretto is the Italian diminutive of libro ('book'), which comes from Latin liber, originally meaning 'the inner bark of a tree' (the surface used for writing before papyrus became widely available in Rome), and by extension 'a written document, a book.' The English 'library,' 'libel' (originally a small book or written statement), and 'liberate' (originally to free from a legal bond recorded in a liber) all share this root. A libretto is thus a little book — and for most of opera's history, it was literally that: a small printed booklet sold at the theater containing the full text of the opera, in the original language and often with a translation, so that audiences could follow the words that the singers were declaiming.

The libretto's history as a printed object is itself significant. Opera emerged in Florence around 1600 as an experiment in combining humanist drama with music, and from the beginning, the literary text was considered fundamental — the music served the words, not the other way around. The early Florentine Camerata's theoretical justification for opera was that music could make words more expressive, not replace them. The libretto was the artistic foundation, and composers set it as they set a poem. Opera houses regularly printed and sold libretti before and during performances, and audiences who wished to follow the text — which in a large, candle-lit theater was physically possible, if dim — could do so. The libretto was the opera's text; the music was its realization.

The relationship between libretto and music has been perpetually contested. Eighteenth-century opera seria gave primacy to the poet: Pietro Metastasio, the most influential librettist of his era, wrote texts that were set by dozens of different composers, each applying their own music to the same words. His name was as famous as any composer's. By the time of Verdi and Wagner in the nineteenth century, the balance had shifted: Verdi worked closely with his librettists (most famously Boito) but was clearly the primary artistic voice, and Wagner wrote his own texts in the belief that only the composer-poet could achieve the total artwork (Gesamtkunstwerk) he envisioned. The libretto became the composer's tool rather than the literary foundation.

In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the libretto has diversified in form and status. Composers commission librettists who are poets, playwrights, novelists, or screenwriters; collaborative models vary enormously. The rise of surtitles — projected translations above the stage — has reduced the practical necessity of reading along, but the libretto as literary object has found new readers: librettos are now sometimes published independently as literary works, studied as poetry or drama, analyzed for their literary qualities apart from the music. The little book has grown into something that can stand on its own.