Later Italian composers, such as Berio and Nono, have experimented with modernism. This was a style introduced by Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Ruggiero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci that came virtually to dominate the world’s opera stages with such popular works as Giacomo Puccini’s La Boheme, Tosca, and Madama Butterfly. After Verdi, the sentimental “realistic” melodrama of verismo appeared in Italy
Once the Metastasian ideal had been firmly established, comedy in Baroque-era opera was reserved for what came to be called opera buffa. Opera did not remain confined to court audiences for long; in 1637 the idea of a “season” of publicly-attended operas supported by ticket sales emerged in Venice. His most important follower Francesco Cavalli helped spread opera throughout Italy. Monteverdi had moved to the city from Mantua and composed his last operas, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and L’incoronazione di Poppea, for the Venetian theatre in the 1640s. In these early Baroque operas, broad comedy was blended with tragic elements in a mix that jarred some educated sensibilities, sparking the first of opera’s many reform movements, sponsored by Venice’s Arcadian Academy which came to be associated with the poet Metastasio, whose libretti helped crystallize the genre of opera seria, which became the leading form of Italian opera until the end of the 18th century
The performance is typically given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery and costumes and sometimes includes dance. Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work which combines a text and a musical score. Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition
Italian libretti were the norm, even when a German composer like Handel found himself writing for London audiences. Italian libretti remained dominant in the classical period as well, for example in the operas of Mozart, who wrote in Vienna near the century’s close. Italian opera set the Baroque standard. Leading Italian-born composers of opera seria include Alessandro Scarlatti, Vivaldi and Porpora. Opera seria was elevated in tone and highly stylised in form, usually consisting of secco recitative interspersed with long da capo arias. Indeed, Farinelli was the most famous singer of the 18th century. These afforded great opportunity for virtuosic singing and during the golden age of opera seria the singer really became the star. The role of the hero was usually written for the castrato voice; castrati such as Farinelli and Senesino, as well as female sopranos such as Faustina Bordoni, became in great demand throughout Europe as opera seria ruled the stage in every country except France
With the rise of recording technology, singers such as Enrico Caruso became known to audiences beyond the circle of opera fans. The first third of the 19th century saw the highpoint of the bel canto style, with Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini all creating works that are still performed today. The mid to late 19th century is considered by some a golden age of opera, led by Wagner in Germany and Verdi in Italy. This ‘golden age’ developed through the verismo era in Italy and contemporary French opera through to Puccini and Strauss in the early 20th century. Operas were also performed on, radio and television. The 20th century saw many experiments with modern styles, such as atonality and serialism , Neo-Classicism , and Minimalism . During the 19th century, parallel operatic traditions emerged in Central and Eastern Europe, particularly in Russia and Bohemia. It also saw the advent of Grand Opera typified by the works of Meyerbeer
Literally “beautiful singing”, bel canto opera derives from the Italian stylistic singing school of the same name. Bel canto lines are typically florid and intricate, requiring supreme agility and pitch control. The bel canto opera movement flourished in the early 19th century and is exemplified by the operas of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Pacini, Mercadante and many others
Francesco Algarotti’s Essay on the Opera proved to be an inspiration for Christoph Willibald Gluck’s reforms. Gluck tried to achieve a “beautiful simplicity”. This is illustrated in the first of his “reform” operas, Orfeo ed Euridice, where vocal lines lacking in the virtuosity of Handel’s works are supported by simple harmonies and a notably richer-than-usual orchestral presence throughout. Opera seria had its weaknesses and critics, and the taste for embellishment on behalf of the superbly trained singers, and the use of spectacle as a replacement for dramatic purity and unity drew attacks. The first to really succeed and to leave a permanent imprint upon the history of opera, however, was Gluck. Several composers of the period, including Niccolò Jommelli and Tommaso Traetta, attempted to put these ideals into practice. He advocated that opera seria had to return to basics and that all the various elements — music , ballet, and staging — must be subservient to the overriding drama
The terminology of the various kinds of operatic voices is described in Section 3 below. Duets, trios and other ensembles often occur, and choruses are used to comment on the action. Traditional opera consists of two modes of singing: recitative, the plot-driving passages often sung in a non-melodic style characteristic of opera, and aria in which the characters express their emotions in a more structured melodic style. During the Baroque and Classical periods, recitative could appear in two basic forms: secco recitative, accompanied only by “continuo”, which was often no more than a harpsichord; or accompagnato in which the orchestra provided accompaniment. By the 19th century, accompagnato had gained the upper hand, the orchestra played a much bigger role, and Richard Wagner revolutionised opera by abolishing almost all distinction between aria and recitative in his quest for what he termed “endless melody”. Some composers, notably Richard Wagner, have written their own libretti; others have worked in close collaboration with their librettists, e. Mozart with Lorenzo da Ponte. The words of an opera are known as the libretto . Melodic or semi-melodic passages occurring in the midst of, or instead of, recitative, are also referred to as arioso. In some forms of opera, such as Singspiel, opéra comique, operetta, and semi-opera, the recitative is mostly replaced by spoken dialogue. g. Subsequent composers have tended to follow Wagner’s example, though some, such as Stravinsky in his The Rake’s Progress have bucked the trend
Dafne by Jacopo Peri was the earliest composition considered opera, as understood today. Significantly, Dafne was an attempt to revive the classical Greek drama, part of the wider revival of antiquity characteristic of the Renaissance. The members of the Camerata considered that the “chorus” parts of Greek dramas were originally sung, and possibly even the entire text of all roles; opera was thus conceived as a way of “restoring” this situation. The honour of being the first opera still to be regularly performed, however, goes to Claudio Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, composed for the court of Mantua in 1607. It was written around 1597, largely under the inspiration of an elite circle of literate Florentine humanists who gathered as the “Camerata de’ Bardi”. The word opera means “work” in Italian suggesting that it combines the arts of solo and choral singing, declamation, acting and dancing in a staged spectacle. Dafne is unfortunately lost. A later work by Peri, Euridice, dating from 1600, is the first opera score to have survived to the present day
Opera seria was the most prestigious form of Italian opera, until Gluck reacted against its artificiality with his “reform” operas in the 1760s. Opera started in Italy at the end of the 16th century and soon spread through the rest of Europe: Schütz in Germany, Lully in France, and Purcell in England all helped to establish their national traditions in the 17th century. However, in the 18th century, Italian opera continued to dominate most of Europe, except France, attracting foreign composers such as Handel. Today the most renowned figure of late 18th century opera is Mozart, who began with opera seria but is most famous for his Italian comic operas, especially The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte, as well as The Magic Flute, a landmark in the German tradition
Verdi’s operas resonated with the growing spirit of Italian nationalism in the post-Napoleonic era, and he quickly became an icon of the patriotic movement . In the early 1850s, Verdi produced his three most popular operas: Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La traviata. But he continued to develop his style, composing perhaps the greatest French Grand opera, Don Carlos, and ending his career with two Shakespeare-inspired works, Otello and Falstaff, which reveal how far Italian opera had grown in sophistication since the early 19th century. Following the bel canto era, a more direct, forceful style was rapidly popularized by Giuseppe Verdi, beginning with his biblical opera Nabucco
But Mozart’s contribution to opera seria was more mixed; by his time it was dying away, and in spite of such fine works as Idomeneo and La Clemenza di Tito, he would not succeed in bringing the art form back to life again. Gluck’s reforms have had resonance throughout operatic history. Mozart, in many ways Gluck’s successor, combined a superb sense of drama, harmony, melody, and counterpoint to write a series of comedies, notably Così fan tutte, Le Nozze di Figaro, and Don Giovanni which remain among the most-loved, popular and well-known operas today. Weber, Mozart and Wagner, in particular, were influenced by his ideals
They became so popular, however, that they were soon being offered as separate productions. Before such elements were forced out of opera seria, many libretti had featured a separately unfolding comic plot as sort of an “opera-within-an-opera. These separate plots were almost immediately resurrected in a separately developing tradition that partly derived from the commedia dell’arte, a long-flourishing improvisitory stage tradition of Italy. Just as intermedi had once been performed in-between the acts of stage plays, operas in the new comic genre of “intermezzi”, which developed largely in Naples in the 1710s and ’20s, were initially staged during the intermissions of opera seria. ” One reason for this was an attempt to attract members of the growing merchant class, newly wealthy, but still less cultured than the nobility, to the public opera houses