how did opera change over the course of the 17th century

How did opera develop in the 18th century?

This period also saw the rise of castrati—male singers who were castrated as boys to preserve their soprano voices. The few who survived and made it to the top were the singing stars of the 17th and 18th century. Today those roles are sung by countertenors, or by women. Opera content began to change in the Classical period (1750–1830). This was brought about by the social …

What is the antecedent of opera?

Jul 05, 2016 · Therefore, especially as opera grew, ornamentation became more and more necessary in an Italian opera and all the parts were given either to natural sopranos or castratos. There was not nearly as much concern about text clarity with the Italians as there was with the French, because they valued talented singers who were able to show off their voices and …

What is opera?

Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice builds on this previous scholarship. Although it aims to survey the entire field, from a variety of perspectives, its particular agenda is signaled by its subtitle: The Creation of a Genre. Its thesis, as already suggested, is that opera received its most lasting theoretical, as well as practical, definition in the public theaters of seicento Venice.

How did Venice change the world of opera?

It started in Italy at the end of the 16th century (with Jacopo Peri’s lost Dafne, produced in Florence in 1598) 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. In the 18th century, Italian opera continued to dominate most of Europe, except France, attracting …

How did opera change over time?

Opera content began to change in the Classical period (1750–1830). This was brought about by the social movement known as the Enlightenment, with less elaborate musical forms and more realistic plots (read: fewer gods, more humans) and a reaction against excessive vocal display.

What is 17th century opera?

Opera developed in western Europe in the early 17th century as a means of bringing together all the arts, including painting, poetry, drama, dance and music. Our collections document its evolution from early Baroque extravaganzas through to contemporary productions.

Was opera popular in the 17th century?

Despite the intentions of French composers like Jean-Baptiste Lully or the Italian Arcadian reformers, opera remained a popular form of entertainment, and the taste for lavish productions never completely disappeared from the genre.

What style of opera takes over in popularity by the end of the 17th century?

Opera seriaOpera seria By the end of the 17th century some critics believed that a new, more elevated form of opera was necessary. Their ideas would give birth to a genre, opera seria (literally "serious opera"), which would become dominant in Italy and much of the rest of Europe until the late 18th century.

How did opera develop?

How Did Opera Get Started? The concept of opera was developing many years before the first opera was written. Its beginning can be traced to the ancient Greeks. They fused poetry and music, creating plays that incorporated song, spoken language and dance, accompanied by string or wind instruments.

What do you know about opera from the 1800s?

Operas were composed for individual singers who were the great stars. The composer's job was to produce music to show off the star's voice and many composers could write an opera in just two or three weeks. These star singers had considerable freedom to improvise within the music.

What is the significance of operas in Italy?

Opera has always played an important role in Italian culture. Works by Italian composers of the 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi and Puccini, count among the most famous operas ever written and are performed in the most prestigious opera houses around the world.

What were the important features of early opera during the baroque period?

Early operas used dramatic text and music to express their stories, which were often based on Classical Greek and Roman mythology.

What is the significance of operas in Italy to the history of Western music?

Opera emerged in Italy around the year 1600 and is generally associated with the Western classical music tradition. Opera uses many of the elements of spoken theatre such as scenery, costumes, and acting. Generally, however, opera is distinguished from other dramatic forms by the importance of song.

How is baroque opera different from the Baroque cantata?

An opera is intended to be acted out, as a play in which all of the dialogue is sung rather than spoken. A cantata, on the other hand, is also a drama, but is more like a story set to music and sung.Apr 13, 2020

How is the Classical opera different from the baroque opera?

Baroque operas were very focused on Greek mythology such as the ancient gods and heroes, which tended to create a more tragic, dramatic and non-realistic feel. Classical operas, “Opera Buffa” or “Comic opera” in particular, had a more comical approach.

What was the new vocal style of opera modeled?

A group of nobles, poets and composers who began to meet regularly in Florence around 1575 and whose musical discussions prepared the way for the beginning of opera. -Atempted to create a new vocal style modeled on the music of ancient Greek tragedy. They created Recitative.

How did the French Revolution affect opera?

The French Revolution impacted on opera as on everything else. New subjects extolling liberty became popular in the works of the Paris-based Italian Luigi Cherubini, the contemporary most admired by Beethoven. As the 19th century progressed, Italian composers Rossini ( pictured right ), Donizetti and Bellini continued to compose lyrical scores – their writing privileged the expressive power of the human voice in what has become known as the bel canto (beautiful singing) style. Verdi dominated the next generation. Over five decades he demonstrated a vigorous commitment to drama in Rigoletto (1851), Il Trovatore and La Traviata (both 1855), gradually honing his technical skills to perfection in Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893). In Germany, Weber instigated opera's Romantic phase with his gothic-horror tale Der Freischütz (The Marksman, 1821); its impact was wide, not least on Wagner, whose reimagining of the potential of opera would prove revolutionary. His sequence of large-scale, mainly mythological operas, climaxing in the four-evening-long Der Ring des Nibelungen (1876) and Parsifal (1882) are among man's most ambitious artistic works. Meanwhile, other national traditions arose, each with a distinct identity. The Russians, led by Glinka, Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky, concentrated on history or the fairy tale; the Czechs, led by Smetana, Dvorˇ ák and Janá cˇ ek, on comedy, fairy tale and later realism. France preferred the grand historical epics of Meyerbeer and the more intimate moral fables of Gounod and Massenet.

What were the two developments that ended the hegemony of serious opera?

Two developments ended the hegemony of serious opera ( opera seria ). The first was the posthumous success of Pergolesi's 1733 subversive Neapolitan comedy , La Serva Padrona, in which a maid outwits and marries her master. Comedies ( opera buffa) such as this made opera seria look marmoreal. The second arose from a desire to rationalise opera along Enlightenment lines. Simplicity and naturalism were the watchwords of Gluck (1714-1787), whose L'Orfeo ed Euridice (1762) and Alceste (1767, pictured left) provided the benchmarks for such "reform" works, focusing on dramatic truth. At the end of the 18th century, Mozart (1756-1791) drew on these traditions in a sequence of comedies (Nozze di Figaro, 1786, Don Giovanni, 1787, and Così fan Tutte, 1790), as well as renewing opera seria (Idomeneo, 1781, and La Clemenza di Tito, 1791), and giving a boost to opera in the German (as opposed to Italian) language (Die Entführung aus dem Serail, 1782 and Die Zauberflöte, 1791).

What is CNN opera?

Though the US had already produced individual works of distinction (such as Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, 1935, pictured right) it was the arrival of John Adams's Nixon in China in 1987 that marked the emergence of the so-called CNN opera, based on recent historical events, and followed up in The Death of Klinghoffer (1991) and Dr Atomic (2005); such works have demonstrated an immediate contemporary relevance in a form some modernists had declared moribund. Philip Glass's more determinedly minimalist approach was seen in works such as Satyagraha (1980) and Akhnaten (1984), whose appeal is widespread though far from universal. Pop composers, too, began to interest themselves in exploring the relationship between music and drama, such as Damon Albarn's Doctor Dee, which premiered this year. More traditional approaches have found new exponents in the prolific Hans Werner Henze, Pascal Dusapin, Wolfgang Rihm, Thomas Adès, Mark-Anthony Turnage and Judith Weir.

Where was opera born?

Quick answers: Born in Italy more than 400 years ago during the Renaissance, opera—a combination of vocal and orchestral music, drama, visual arts and dance—has been inspiring people for ages. In Florence, a small group of artists, statesmen, writers and musicians known as the Florentine Camerata decided to recreate the storytelling ...

What is Verdi's most famous opera?

Verdi understood the human voice and the internal processes behind the characters he created. Perhaps his most popular opera is La Traviata, which tells the story of Violetta, a beautiful courtesan who is fatally ill with tuberculosis.

What is the marriage of Figaro based on?

Take his The Marriage of Figaro ( Le Nozze di Figaro ), a farce where servants ultimately outwit their aristocratic masters, based on a play by French writer Beaumarchais. It’s fast, irreverent and funny, but also full of stunning music. Mozart was also a master of high drama, as seen in his masterpiece Don Giovanni.

Who wrote Dafne?

Enter Jacopo Peri (1561–1633), who composed Dafne (1597), which many consider to be the first opera. From that beginning, two types of opera began to emerge: opera seria, or stately, formal and dignified pieces to befit the royalty that attended and sponsored them, and opera buffa, or comedies.

Opera Across Western Europe in the 17th and 18th Centuries

Opera developed in different ways across Europe through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Particularly noticeable were both the similar advancements and dissimilar progress made by Italy, France, and England all within their own operatic spheres.

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Where did the word "opera" come from?

Origins. Claudio Monteverdi. The Italian word opera means “work”, both in the sense of the labour done and the result produced. The Italian word derives from the Latin opera, a singular noun meaning “work” and also the plural of the noun opus.

What is the most obvious stylistic manifestation of modernism in opera?

Perhaps the most obvious stylistic manifestation of modernism in opera is the development of atonality . The move away from traditional tonality in opera had begun with Richard Wagner, and in particular the Tristan chord. Composers such as Richard Strauss, Claude Debussy, Giacomo Puccini, Paul Hindemith, Benjamin Britten and Hans Pfitzner pushed Wagnerian harmony further with a more extreme use of chromaticism and greater use of dissonance.

What is the art form of opera?

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text (called a libretto) and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance. The performance is typically given in an opera house, ...

Who was the most famous singer of the 18th century?

Indeed, Farinelli was one of the most famous singers of the 18th century. Italian opera set the Baroque standard. Italian libretti were the norm, even when a German composer like Handel found himself composing the likes of Rinaldo and Giulio Cesare for London audiences.

What were the styles of the 20th century?

The 20th century saw many experiments with modern styles, such as atonality and serialism (Schoenberg and Berg), Neoclassicism (Stravinsky), and Minimalism (Philip Glass and John Adams). With the rise of recording technology, singers such as Enrico Caruso became known to audiences beyond the circle of opera fans.

When was the first opera written in Russia?

Opera was brought to Russia in the 1730s by the Italian operatic troupes and soon it became an important part of entertainment for the Russian Imperial Court and aristocracy. Many foreign composers such as Baldassare Galuppi, Giovanni Paisiello, Giuseppe Sarti, and Domenico Cimarosa (as well as various others) were invited to Russia to compose new operas, mostly in the Italian language. Simultaneously some domestic musicians like Maksym Berezovsky and Dmitry Bortniansky were sent abroad to learn to write operas. The first opera written in Russian was Tsefal i Prokris by the Italian composer Francesco Araja (1755). The development of Russian-language opera was supported by the Russian composers Vasily Pashkevich, Yevstigney Fomin and Alexey Verstovsky.

What is the recitative in opera?

In some forms of opera, such asSingspiel, opéra comique, operetta, and semi-opera, the recitative is mostly replaced by spoken dialogue. Melodic or semi-melodic passages occurring in the midst of, or instead of, recitative, are also referred to as arioso.

What were the conditions of the opera houses in the 18th century?

Great variety characterized the conditions of European opera houses in the eighteenth century, and a range of houses, from the modest to the luxuriant and palatial, was a fact of the age. The major houses of Venice and Naples sat at the apex of this world, as well as the great court theaters of Vienna, Paris, Berlin, and Dresden. These court operas were generally unable to survive without generous financial support from their royal patrons. Beneath these great theaters were a number of smaller court theaters and commercial houses. This last category was a thoroughly commercial affair charged by its investors with making a profit. These commercial theaters consequently economized on many productions, staging operas with scenery and costumes that were considerably more modest than those produced in the great houses of Venice, Naples, and Vienna. Theaters like this often shared productions with other houses, and scenery, costumes, and singers were carted around to perform a work in many different locations. Generally, the eighteenth-century season was made up of far more "new" operas than it was of revivals of older works, since the idea of an operatic repertory had not yet developed at this time and audiences craved novelty. Only in France were the operas of Jean-Baptiste Lully systematically revived from generation to generation. It was far more normal throughout the rest of Europe for an opera to be written for a season, to be performed several times, and after being repeated a season or two later, to be largely forgotten. This fact of eighteenth-century production continues even now to lure modern performers and opera directors into musical archives in search of the discarded gems of the eighteenth century.

What was the most important thing about opera in the 18th century?

Perhaps the most notable feature of opera in the eighteenth century was its rapid spread throughout the European world. In the course of the seventeenth century, opera had been a performance phenomenon in Italy, in France, and in about twenty courts and cities throughout Central Europe. During the eighteenth century, opera houses were founded in some fifty additional cities and courts. Opera spread to the far corners of Europe, with new houses appearing in Spain, Portugal, Scandinavia, England, and Moscow. The expansion, though, was most pronounced in Central Europe, particularly in the Holy Roman Empire, a region of the continent that had long been divided into many small states. Here rulers of both large and small territories found in opera an appealing art form to compete for cultural glory. As the eighteenth century progressed, the operatic world in Central Europe adapted itself to the demands of the Enlightenment, the great international philosophical movement that championed human reason and the abandonment of the fanaticism and superstition of the European past. Works that glorified the principles of this philosophical movement came to be performed in many of the new houses. At the same time the operatic world of the eighteenth century was extremely varied, and many of the new houses were court theaters that were heavily subsidized by princes. In these venues works with traditional themes drawn from Antiquity, legend, and history were performed alongside lighter fare that offered a more purely entertaining value.

What were the opera houses in Central Europe?

Although some of the theaters imitated the French styles of production pioneered by Lully, the opera houses in Central Europe, by and large, followed Italian examples. Italian impresarios brought their productions to the cities and courts of the region, and composers and librettists from the peninsula were lured to Vienna, Berlin, and Dresden with long-term contracts. In the century and a half following 1650, the German-speaking lands of the region provided a steady source of employment for Italian composers and musicians. During the seventeenth century Antonio Cesti (1623–1669), Antonio Draghi (c. 1635–1700), Marc'Antonio Ziani (1653–1715), and Antonio Bertali (1605–1669) were just a few of the Italians who found permanent employment at Vienna's court opera house. In the eighteenth century Antonio Caldara (1670–1736) and the now famous Antonio Salieri (1750–1825) were just a few of the many figures that carried on the Italian tradition in the German-speaking world at this time. Vienna was by no means unusual, and for most of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries operas written by native German speakers were a rarity. As the eighteenth century progressed, more German-born composers began writing operas, although many of these figures were trained to do so in Italy. While there were occasional attempts to compose operas in German, most artists chose librettos that were written in Italian. One exception to this rule, however, was Hamburg's Theater am Gänsemarkt, a theater founded by members of Hamburg's merchant and commercial classes in 1678 with the express purpose of nurturing operas in German. Many of the works performed there, nevertheless, made use of librettos that had been translated from Italian. Hamburg's Theater did have a major impact on the training of German composers to write opera, and it counted George Frideric Handel among the distinguished ranks of German artists who had written works for its stage.

What was Samuel Sharp's Grand Tour?

His tour occurred in 1765 and 1766, and when he returned to England he published the letters he had sent home along the way. This excerpt from one of them describes the various opera houses at Naples and their performances.

Monteverdi 's Operas.

• In 1607, Claudio Monteverdi's Orfeo had set a new standard for operatic production. For his subject Monteverdi and his librettist Alessandro Striggio had chosen the ancient myth of Orpheus, the god who was able to shape the outcome of history through his musical powers. Monteverdi'…

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from Court to Theater.

Transformations on The Venetian Stage.

Opera spreads.

Arcadian Reforms.

Sources

16Th-Century 0rigins

• Though various ways of bringing music and drama together had been explored over centuries – such as liturgical dramas, the English court masque and its Italian equivalent, the intermedio– the first real opera can be accurately dated. A group of Florentine intellectuals called the Camerata decided to recreate the original form of Greek drama – which they wrongly believed to have bee…

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The Baroque Period

The Classical Period

The Romantic Period

Verismo

Developments in The 20th Century

Contemporary Opera