ABSTRACT
The problematic disconnection between musical and dramatic narrative in opera was one of the most hotly debated issues in German operatic ideology, and was resolved only with the exclusion of set pieces from through-composed settings, sometime after the careers of Franz Schubert and Weber. This fragmentation of the musical narrative was the source of great aggravation for German critics looking to create a transcendent national art form as a counterpart to fully sung Italian operas. From the opposite perspective, the middle-class entertainments of Singspiel and opera comique, with their simpler musical forms and spoken dialogues, nevertheless display a tendency similar to opera seria with regard to musico-dramatic narrative. Although many of Schubert's faults as an opera composer arguably lie at a deeper level of misunderstanding of the genre's demands, his later attempts, most notably Fierrabras, reveal extended open-ended scenas that result in "real time" musico-dramatic narrative and character development.
