Opera, of course, is full of passion. There is plenty of seething always, and doomed love, and not infrequently a corpse or two (or more).
Thinking about first kisses today, I found myself wondering, what was the first operatic kiss? Meaning, when was it first deemed permissible to have the characters kiss on stage?
I’m not talking about modern productions, which often have characters in Handel operas rolling around on the floor together. I’m speaking historically.
As this article points out, there is abundant longing in so much of opera, but until a certain, fairly recent point in time, kissing itself was rarely depicted, or perhaps accepted.
https://www.deutscheoperberlin.de/en_EN/opernsaenger-kuesst-man-nicht
I’m not sure how authoritative the writer’s conclusions are, since my thoughts immediately turn to Bedřich Smetana’s “The Kiss,” which, as may be surmised from the title, hinges on a lip-lock as the entire motivation of its plot. Smetana’s opera, first performed in 1876, easily predates “Falstaff.”
From that same year comes the wake-up smacker in Wagner’s “Siegfried.”
Bizet’s “Carmen” was introduced in 1875. The amorality of its heroine (one critic described her as “the very incarnation of vice”), as well as the work’s antiheroic tone – the story is set among the common milieu of soldiers, cigarette girls, and toreadors – generated much hostility and indignation.
On a lighter note, there’s “Were You Not to Ko-Ko Plighted,” from “The Mikado,” from 1885, with its refrain of “Oh this, oh this, this is what I’ll never, never do” (punctuated by kisses, naturally).
Of course, by 1905, the genie is well out of the bottle, and we have Salome making out with the severed head of Jochanaan (John the Baptist).
Can there not have been abundant kissing already in the 18th century, the age of Fragonard? How do you do “Così fan tutte” without at least a few pecks? Or was it all kissing of hands?
Again, I am not talking about modern stagings of classic operas. Extensive Google-searching is turning up very little in the way of history and quite a lot in terms of anecdotes about singers’ first on-stage kisses. Here are a couple from a cute series put together by San Francisco Opera:
Some shop talk on opera kissing:
http://sestissimo.blogspot.com/2008/10/opera-kissing.html
As always, Pavarotti takes the prize:
Franco Corelli and Maria Callas at the Old Met in 1965
