ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the interaction between formal structure and drama in opera, presenting an interdisciplinary model of investigation and closing with a discussion of the first-act trio from Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro. The trio's adaptation of sonata-form principles provides an ideal case study of the interconnectivity of intramusical and extramusical dramatic narrative. The methodological model integrates current music theoretical approaches to form and critical mechanisms from the fields of semiology, pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, and iconology. The field of music theory takes the understanding of musical structure as one of its primary goals. Several recent volumes attempt to classify and catalog formal archetypes in music, focusing on particular instrumental repertoires or examining a single instrumental genre. Robert Hatten's book Musical Meaning in Beethoven: Markedness, Correlation, and Interpretation is a noteworthy exception. The focus of the methodology is the analysis of signs in the "language" of musical structure, but it allows a parallel track for the interpretation of operatic drama.
