An aria in an opera, oratorio or cantata in which the text makes a comparison between the singer’s situation or thoughts and some natural phenomenon or activity in the world at large, and the music provides appropriate illustration. Its literary origins are found in the elaborate metaphorical style of Giambattista Marino (1569–1625), whose influence on 17th-century Italian literature extended to the opera libretto; aria texts using conceits broadly similar to those favoured by Metastasio are common in the 17th century. Arias of this kind offered composers an opportunity to introduce a wide variety of imagery. An example from Handel is Caesar’s aria ‘Va tacito e nascosto’ in Giulio Cesare (1724), where a solo horn alludes to the hunter who must go cautiously in pursuit of his prey and the text makes a comparison with the intriguer who conceals his real intentions. In Bach’s cantata Was mir behagt bwv208 (1716), the accompaniment to ‘Schafe können sicher weiden’ suggests a pastoral background, while the text compares the security enjoyed by sheep under a watchful shepherd with the satisfaction of living under a wise ruler. In Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (1728) the beggar claims to have ‘introduc’d the similes that are in all your celebrated Operas’, and the texts include several parodies of the type, e.g. ‘I’m like a skiff on the Ocean tost’. The convention was increasingly criticized during the 18th century and had nearly died out by the end of it. A late example is ‘Come scoglio’ in Mozart's Così fan tutte (1790), which parodies the convention, in that Fiordiligi compares her resolution – which the audience knows will prove weak – to a rock unaffected by the battering it receives from a stormy sea.
See also Aria §4(i).
JACK WESTRUP