Raff: Cavatina, Op. 85 no. 2
Jakob Lehmann and Imke Lichtwark
Music as a cultivated art in Europe - as diverse as it became, as diverse as its folk-sources were - flowed across the continent from one definite point of origin, which was the peninsula we now call Italy. So it’s natural that basic musical terminology everywhere was based on Italian words. Some became universal. Others stayed particular, and one of those was “cavatina.” It derives from the verb “cavare,” to draw forth or bring out, and in opera it generally meant the solo of a leading singer the first time he or she is “brought forth” onto the stage.
Raff, photographic portrait, Wiesbaden 1875
Why the diminutive (“cavatina” instead of “cavata”)? Probably because it was long traditional for this first solo to be of slight dimensions. We see that often in Handel, who in the age of the aria da capo would often introduce the hero with what we would now call an “A-section only” - no second part and no da capo. Since terms migrate through use, “cavatina” was still the word when the styles changed and a Lucia or a Norma would enter with a full-scale recitative, slow aria, transition, and brilliant cabaletta.
Raff, wood engraving c. 1880 based on photograph
In Germany the term migrated a little differently. Those short entrance arias in Handel were almost always lyrical cantabile pieces, and when Beethoven or Weber used the designation “cavatina,” it meant a slow movement with broad “vocal” melody. That is what Joseph Joachim Raff (1822-1882) produced in the most popular piece of his vast output: an opportunity for the violin to sing. It’s a perfect distillation of the Romantic style of string playing that Teatro Nuovo is helping to revive, full of the portamento connections that came naturally before violinists learned the modern fingerings that were developed in the 20th century to serve a less voice-oriented idea of instrumental music in the age of Stravinsky.