fbpx
Wikipedia

Italian opera

Italian opera is both the art of opera in Italy and opera in the Italian language. Opera was in Italy around the year 1600 and Italian opera has continued to play a dominant role in the history of the form until the present day. Many famous operas in Italian were written by foreign composers, including Handel, Gluck and Mozart. Works by native Italian composers of the 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi and Puccini, are amongst the most famous operas ever written and today are performed in opera houses across the world.

Interior of La Fenice opera house in Venice in 1837. Venice was, along with Florence and Rome, one of the cradles of Italian opera.

Origins edit

 
Jacopo Peri as Arion in La pellegrina

Dafne by Jacopo Peri was the earliest composition considered opera, as understood today.[1] Peri's works, however, did not arise out of a creative vacuum in the area of sung drama. An underlying prerequisite for the creation of opera proper was the practice of monody. Monody is the solo singing/setting of a dramatically conceived melody, designed to express the emotional content of the text it carries, which is accompanied by a relatively simple sequence of chords rather than other polyphonic parts. Italian composers began composing in this style late in the 16th century, and it grew in part from the long-standing practice of performing polyphonic madrigals with one singer accompanied by an instrumental rendition of the other parts, as well as the rising popularity of more popular, more homophonic vocal genres such as the frottola and the villanella. In these latter two genres, the increasing tendency was toward a more homophonic texture, with the top part featuring an elaborate, active melody, and the lower ones (usually these were three-part compositions, as opposed to the four-or-more-part madrigal) a less active supporting structure. From this, it was only a small step to fully-fledged monody. All such works tended to set humanist poetry of a type that attempted to imitate Petrarch and his Trecento followers, another element of the period's tendency toward a desire for restoration of principles it associated with a mixed-up notion of antiquity.

The solo madrigal, frottola, villanella and their kin featured prominently in the intermedio or intermezzo, theatrical spectacles with music that were funded in the last seventy years of the 16th century by the opulent and increasingly secular courts of Italy's city-states. Such spectacles were usually staged to commemorate significant state events: weddings, military victories, and the like, and alternated in performance with the acts of plays. Like the later opera, an intermedio featured the aforementioned solo singing, but also madrigals performed in their typical multi-voice texture, and dancing accompanied by the present instrumentalists. They were lavishly staged, and led the scenography of the second half of the 16th century. The intermedi tended not to tell a story as such, although they occasionally did, but nearly always focused on some particular element of human emotion or experience, expressed through mythological allegory.

The staging in 1600 of Peri's opera Euridice as part of the celebrations for a Medici wedding, the occasions for the most spectacular and internationally famous intermedi of the previous century, was probably a crucial development for the new form, putting it in the mainstream of lavish courtly entertainment.

Another popular court entertainment at this time was the "madrigal comedy", later also called "madrigal opera" by musicologists familiar with the later genre. This consisted of a series of madrigals strung together to suggest a dramatic narrative, but not staged.[2] There were also two staged musical "pastoral"s, Il Satiro and La Disperazione di Fileno, both produced in 1590 and written by Emilio de' Cavalieri. Although these lost works seem only to have included arias, with no recitative, they were apparently what Peri was referring to, in his preface to the published edition of his Euridice, when he wrote: "Signor Emilio del Cavalieri, before any other of whom I know, enabled us to hear our kind of music upon the stage".[3] Other pastoral plays had long included some musical numbers; one of the earliest, Fabula di Orfeo [de; fr; it] (1480) by Poliziano had at least three solo songs and one chorus.[4]

17th century edit

Florence and Mantua edit

 
Claudio Monteverdi by Bernardo Strozzi, c. 1630

The music of Dafne is now lost, except for the 455 line verse libretto. The first opera for which music has survived was performed in 1600 at the wedding of Henry IV of France and Marie de Medici at the Pitti Palace in Florence. The opera, Euridice, with a libretto by Rinuccini, set to music by Peri and Giulio Caccini, recounted the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. The style of singing favored by Peri and Caccini was a heightened form of natural speech, dramatic recitative supported by instrumental string music. Recitative thus preceded the development of arias, though it soon became the custom to include separate songs and instrumental interludes during periods when voices were silent. Both Dafne and Euridice also included choruses commenting on the action at the end of each act in the manner of Greek tragedy. The theme of Orpheus, the demi-god of music, was understandably popular and attracted Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) who wrote his first opera, L'Orfeo (The Fable of Orpheus), in 1607 for the court of Mantua.

Monteverdi insisted on a strong relationship between the words and music. When Orfeo was performed in Mantua, an orchestra of 38 instruments, numerous choruses and recitatives were used to make a lively drama. It was a far more ambitious version than those previously performed — more opulent, more varied in recitatives, more exotic in scenery — with stronger musical climaxes which allowed the full scope for the virtuosity of the singers. Opera had revealed its first stage of maturity in the hands of Monteverdi. L'Orfeo also has the distinction of being the earliest surviving opera that is still regularly performed today.

Opera in Rome edit

Within a few decades opera had spread throughout Italy. In Rome, it found an advocate in the prelate and librettist Giulio Rospigliosi (later Pope Clement IX). Rospigliosi's patrons were the Barberini.

Among the composers who worked in this period were Luigi Rossi, Michelangelo Rossi, Marco Marazzoli, Domenico and Virgilio Mazzocchi, Stefano Landi.

Since the 1630s, the subject of the works changed greatly: those of the pastoral tradition and Arcadia, it is preferable that the poems of chivalry, usually Ludovico Ariosto and Torquato Tasso, or those taken from hagiography and Christian commedia dell'arte.

With the increased number of characters, the Roman operas became very dramatic, and had several twists. With these came along a new method of fixing the lines of the recitative, better suited to the various situations that arose from the rich storyline and that was closer to speech, full of parenthetical at the expense of the paratactic style that had so characterized the first Florentine works.

Venice: commercial opera edit

The principal characteristics of Venetian opera were (1) more emphasis on formal arias; (2) the beginning of bel canto ("beautiful singing") style, and more attention to vocal elegance than to dramatic expression; (3) less use of choral and orchestral music; (4) complex and improbable plots; (5) elaborate stage machinery; and (6) short fanfarelike instrumental introductions, the prototypes of the later overture.[5]

Opera took an important new direction when it reached the republic of Venice. It was here that the first public opera house, the Teatro di San Cassiano, was opened in 1637 by Benedetto Ferrari and Francesco Manelli. Its success moved opera away from aristocratic patronage and into the commercial world. In Venice, musical drama was no longer aimed at an elite of aristocrats and intellectuals and acquired the character of entertainment. Soon many other opera houses had sprung up in the city, performing works for a paying public during the Carnival season. The opera houses employed a very small orchestra to save money. A large part of their budget was spent on attracting the star singers of the day; this was the beginning of the reign of the castrato and the prima donna (leading lady).

The chief composer of early Venetian opera was Monteverdi, who had moved to the republic from Mantua in 1613, with later important composers including Francesco Cavalli, Antonio Cesti, Antonio Sartorio, and Giovanni Legrenzi.[5] Monteverdi wrote three works for the public theatres: Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (1640), Le nozze d'Enea con Lavinia (1641, now lost) and, most famously, L'incoronazione di Poppea (1642). The subjects of the new operas by Monteverdi and others were generally drawn from Roman history or legends about Troy, in order to celebrate the heroic ideals and noble genealogy of the Venetian state. However they did not lack for love interest or comedy. Most of the operas consisted of three acts, unlike the earlier operas which normally had five. The bulk of the versification was still recitative, however at moments of great dramatic tension there were often arioso passages known as arie cavate. Under Monteverdi's followers, the distinction between the recitative and the aria became more marked and conventionalised. This is evident in the style of the four most successful composers of the next generation: Francesco Cavalli, Giovanni Legrenzi, Antonio Cesti and Alessandro Stradella.

Spread of opera abroad edit

 
Władysław's Opera Hall Building (right) at the Royal Castle in Warsaw

In the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth a tradition of operatic production began in Warsaw in 1628, with a performance of Galatea (composer uncertain), the first Italian opera produced outside Italy. Shortly after this performance, the court produced Francesca Caccini's opera La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d’Alcina, which she had written for Prince Władysław Vasa three years earlier when he was in Italy. Another first, this is the earliest surviving opera written by a woman. Gli amori di Aci e Galatea by Santi Orlandi was also performed in 1628. When Władysław was king (as Władysław IV) he oversaw the production of at least ten operas during the late 1630s and 1640s, making Warsaw a center of the art. The composers of these operas are not known: they may have been Poles working under Marco Scacchi in the royal chapel, or they may have been among the Italians imported by Władysław. A dramma per musica (as serious Italian opera was known at the time) entitled Giuditta, based on the Biblical story of Judith, was performed in 1635. The composer was probably Virgilio Puccitelli.

Cavalli's operas were performed throughout Italy by touring companies with tremendous success. In fact, his Giasone was the most popular opera of the 17th century, though some critics were appalled at its mixture of tragedy and farce. Cavalli's fame spread throughout Europe. One of his specialties was giving his heroines "ground bass laments". These were mournful arias sung over a descending bass line and they had a great influence on Henry Purcell, whose "When I am laid in earth" from Dido and Aeneas is probably the most celebrated example of the form. Cavalli's reputation caused Cardinal Mazarin to invite him to France in 1660 to compose an opera for King Louis XIV's wedding to Maria Teresa of Spain. Italian opera had already been performed in France in the 1640s to a mixed reception and Cavalli's foreign expedition ended in disaster. French audiences did not respond well to the revival of Xerse (1660) and the specially composed Ercole amante (1662), preferring the ballets that had been inserted between the acts by a Florentine composer, Jean-Baptiste Lully, and Cavalli swore never to compose another opera.

Cesti was more fortunate when he was asked to write an opera for the Habsburg court in Vienna in 1668. Il pomo d'oro was so grandiose that the performance had to be spread over two days. It was a tremendous success and marked the beginning of Italian operatic dominance north of the Alps. In the late 17th century, German and English composers tried to establish their own native traditions but by the early 18th century they had given ground to imported Italian opera, which became the international style in the hands of composers such as Handel. Only France resisted (and her operatic tradition had been founded by the Italian Lully). This set the pattern until well into the 19th century: the Italian tradition was the international one and its leading exponents (e.g. Handel, Hasse, Gluck and Mozart) were often not natives of Italy. Composers who wanted to develop their own national forms of opera generally had to fight against Italian opera. Thus, in the early 19th century, both Carl Maria von Weber in Germany and Hector Berlioz in France felt they had to challenge the enormous influence of the Italian Rossini.

18th century edit

Opera seria edit

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"),[6] which would become dominant in Italy and much of the rest of Europe until the late 18th century. The influence of this new attitude can be seen in the works of the composers Carlo Francesco Pollarolo[7] and the enormously prolific Alessandro Scarlatti.[8]

During the 18th century artistic and cultural life in Italy was heavily influenced by the aesthetic and poetic ideals of the members of the Accademia dell'Arcadia. The Arcadian poets introduced many changes to serious music drama in Italian, including:[9]

  • the simplification of the plot;
  • the removal of comic elements;
  • the reduction of the number of arias;
  • a predilection for plots drawn from ancient Classical or modern French tragedy, in which the values of loyalty, friendship and virtue were extolled and the absolute power of the sovereign was celebrated.
 
Pietro Metastasio, attributed to Pompeo Batoni

By far the most successful librettist of the era was Pietro Metastasio and he maintained his prestige well into the 19th century. He belonged to the Arcadian Academy and was firmly in line with its theories. A libretto by Metastasio was often set by twenty or thirty different composers and audiences came to know the words of his dramas by heart.[10]

Opera buffa edit

In the 17th century comic operas were produced only occasionally and no stable tradition was established. Only in the early years of the 18th century was the comic genre of opera buffa born in Naples and it began to spread throughout Italy after 1730.

Opera buffa was distinguished from opera seria by numerous characteristics:

  • the importance given to stage action and the consequent need for the music to follow the changes of the drama, emphasising the expressiveness of the words;
  • the choice of singers who were also excellent actors able to perform the drama convincingly;
  • a reduction in the use of scenery and stage machinery and in the number of orchestral players;
  • the use of a small cast of characters (at least in the short form of comic opera known as the intermezzo) and simple plots (a good example being Pergolesi's La serva padrona, 1733);
  • libretti inspired by commedia dell'arte, with realistic subjects, colloquial language and slang expressions;
  • as far as singing was concerned: the complete rejection of vocal virtuosity; a tendency to an incorrect pronunciation of the words; the frequent presence of rhythmic and melodic tics; the use of onomatopoeia and interjections;
  • the exclusion of castrati.[11]
 
Carlo Goldoni by Alessandro Longhi, c. 1757

In the second half of the 18th century comic opera owed its success to the collaboration between the playwright Carlo Goldoni and the composer Baldassare Galuppi. Thanks to Galuppi, comic opera acquired much more dignity than it had during the days of the intermezzo. Operas were now divided into two or three acts, creating libretti for works of a substantially greater length, which differed significantly from those of the early 18th century in the complexity of their plots and the psychology of their characters. These now included some serious figures instead of exaggerated caricatures and the operas had plots which focused on the conflict between the social classes as well as including self-referential ideas. Goldoni and Galuppi's most famous work together is Il filosofo di campagna (1754).

The collaboration between Goldoni and another famous composer Niccolò Piccinni produced with La Cecchina (1760) another new genre: opera semiseria. This had two buffo characters, two nobles and two "in between" characters.

The one-act farsa had a significant influence on the development of comic opera. This was a type of musical drama initially considered as a condensed version of a longer comic opera, but over time it became a genre in its own right. It was characterised by: vocal virtuosity; a more refined use of the orchestra; the great importance given to the production; the presence of misunderstandings and surprises in the course of the drama.

Gluck's reforms and Mozart edit

 
Christoph Willibald Gluck playing his clavichord (1775), by Joseph Duplessis

Opera seria had its weaknesses and critics; a 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. Francesco Algarotti's Essay on the Opera (1755) proved to be an inspiration for Christoph Willibald Gluck's reforms. He advocated that opera seria had to return to basics and that all the various elements—music (both instrumental and vocal), ballet, and staging—must be subservient to the overriding drama. Several composers of the period, including Niccolò Jommelli and Tommaso Traetta, attempted to put these ideals into practice. In 1765 Melchior Grimm published "Poème lyrique", an influential article for the Encyclopédie on lyric and opera librettos.[12][13][14][15][16]

The first to really succeed and to leave a permanent imprint upon the history of opera, however, was Gluck. 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 (say) Handel's works are supported by simple harmonies and a notably richer-than-usual orchestral presence throughout.

Gluck's reforms have had resonance throughout operatic history. Weber, Mozart and Wagner, in particular, were influenced by his ideals. Mozart, in many ways Gluck's successor, combined a superb sense of drama, harmony, melody, and counterpoint to write a series of comedies, notably The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte (in collaboration with Lorenzo Da Ponte) which remain among the most-loved, popular and well-known operas today. 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.

Romantic period edit

Romantic opera, which placed emphasis on the imagination and the emotions began to appear in the early 19th century, and because of its arias and music, gave more dimension to the extreme emotions which typified the theater of that era. In addition, it is said that fine music often excused glaring faults in character drawing and plot lines. Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868) initiated the Romantic period. His first success was an "opera buffa" (comic opera), La cambiale di matrimonio (1810). His reputation still survives today through his Barber of Seville (1816), and La Cenerentola (1817). But he also wrote serious opera, Tancredi (1813) and Semiramide (1823).

 
Giuseppe Verdi, by Giovanni Boldini (1886)

Rossini's successors in the Italian bel canto were Vincenzo Bellini (1801–35), Gaetano Donizetti (1797–1848) and Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901). It was Verdi who transformed the whole nature of operatic writing during the course of his long career. His first great successful opera, Nabucco (1842), caught the public fancy because of the driving vigour of its music and its great choruses. "Va, pensiero", one of the chorus renditions, was interpreted and gave advantageous meaning to the struggle for Italian independence and to unify Italy.

After Nabucco, Verdi based his operas on patriotic themes and many of the standard romantic sources: Friedrich Schiller (Giovanna d'Arco, 1845; I masnadieri, 1847; Luisa Miller, 1849); Lord Byron (I due Foscari, 1844; Il corsaro, 1848); and Victor Hugo (Ernani, 1844; Rigoletto, 1851). Verdi was experimenting with musical and dramatic forms, attempting to discover things which only opera could do.

In 1887, he created Otello which completely replaced Rossini's opera of the same name, and which is described by critics as the finest of Italian romantic operas with the traditional components: the solo arias, the duets and the choruses fully integrated into the melodic and dramatic flow.

Verdi's last opera, Falstaff (1893), broke free of conventional form altogether and finds music which follows quick flowing simple words and because of its respect for the pattern of ordinary speech, it created a threshold for a new operatic era in which speech patterns are paramount.

Opera had become a marriage of the arts, a musical drama, full of glorious song, costume, orchestral music and pageantry; sometimes, without the aid of a plausible story. From its conception during the baroque period to the maturity of the romantic period, it was the medium through which tales and myths were revisited, history was retold and imagination was stimulated. The strength of it fell into a more violent era for opera: verismo, with Cavalleria rusticana by Pietro Mascagni and Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo.

Contemporary period edit

 
Final scene of the opera Risorgimento!

Some of the greatest Italian operas of the 20th century were written by Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924). These include Manon Lescaut, La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, La fanciulla del West, La rondine and Turandot, the last two being left unfinished. In 1926 and in 2002 Franco Alfano and Luciano Berio respectively attempted a completion of Turandot, and in 1994 Lorenzo Ferrero completed the orchestration of the third version of La rondine. Berio himself wrote two operas, Un re in ascolto and Opera. Ferrero likewise has composed several operas including Salvatore Giuliano, La Conquista, and his 2011 Risorgimento!

Other 20th-century Italian opera composers are:

See also edit

References edit

Notes edit

  1. ^ This is not agreed by all authorities, see Grout & Williams 1988, 41 (footnote) for references to other views
  2. ^ Grout & Williams 1988, p. 33.
  3. ^ Porter, William V. (Summer 1965). "Peri and Corsi's Dafne: Some New Discoveries and Observations". Journal of the American Musicological Society. 18 (2): 170–196. doi:10.2307/830682. JSTOR 830682.
  4. ^ Grout & Williams 1988, p. 30.
  5. ^ a b Miller & Cockrell 1991, p. 93
  6. ^ "Opera seria". OperaFolio.com. Retrieved 25 June 2022.
  7. ^ Balthazar, Scott L. (5 July 2013). Historical Dictionary of Opera. Scarecrow Press. p. 96. ISBN 978-0-8108-7943-0. Retrieved 25 June 2022.
  8. ^ Robinson, M. F. (1961). "The Aria in Opera Seria, 1725–1780". Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association. 88: 31–43. doi:10.1093/jrma/88.1.31. JSTOR 766201.
  9. ^ Delon, Michel (4 December 2013). Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment. Routledge. pp. 936–937. ISBN 978-1-135-95998-2.
  10. ^ Pietro Metastasio at the Encyclopædia Britannica
  11. ^ Warrack & West 1992, p. [page needed].
  12. ^ Larousse, Éditions. "Melchior baron de Grimm - LAROUSSE". www.larousse.fr.
  13. ^ Thomas 1995, p. 148.
  14. ^ Heyer 2009, p. 248.
  15. ^ Lippman 2009, p. 171.
  16. ^ "Position Papers: Seminar 1. Music: universal, national, nationalistic" 2018-11-18 at the Wayback Machine Faculty of Arts and Humanities, King's College London

Sources edit

  • Grout, Donald Jay; Williams, Hermine Weigel (1988). A Short History of Opera. Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231061926.
  • Heyer, John Hajdu, ed. (2009). Lully Studies. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521118651.
  • Lippman, Edward A. (2009). A History of Western Musical Aesthetics. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 9780803279513.
  • Miller, Hugh Milton; Cockrell, Dale (1991). History of Western Music. ISBN 978-0-06-467107-1.
  • Thomas, Downing A. (1995). Music and the Origins of Language: Theories from the French Enlightenment. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521028622.
  • Warrack, John; West, Ewan (1992). The Oxford Dictionary of Opera. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-869164-5.

Further reading edit

italian, opera, opera, company, that, performed, until, 1847, majesty, theatre, haymarket, london, italian, opera, house, successor, royal, opera, house, royal, italian, opera, both, opera, italy, opera, italian, language, opera, italy, around, year, 1600, con. For the opera company that performed until 1847 at Her Majesty s Theatre in Haymarket London see Italian Opera House For its successor at the Royal Opera House see Royal Italian Opera Italian opera is both the art of opera in Italy and opera in the Italian language Opera was in Italy around the year 1600 and Italian opera has continued to play a dominant role in the history of the form until the present day Many famous operas in Italian were written by foreign composers including Handel Gluck and Mozart Works by native Italian composers of the 19th and early 20th centuries such as Rossini Bellini Donizetti Verdi and Puccini are amongst the most famous operas ever written and today are performed in opera houses across the world Interior of La Fenice opera house in Venice in 1837 Venice was along with Florence and Rome one of the cradles of Italian opera Contents 1 Origins 2 17th century 2 1 Florence and Mantua 2 2 Opera in Rome 2 3 Venice commercial opera 2 4 Spread of opera abroad 3 18th century 3 1 Opera seria 3 2 Opera buffa 3 3 Gluck s reforms and Mozart 4 Romantic period 5 Contemporary period 6 See also 7 References 7 1 Notes 7 2 Sources 8 Further readingOrigins editMain article Origins of opera nbsp Jacopo Peri as Arion in La pellegrinaDafne by Jacopo Peri was the earliest composition considered opera as understood today 1 Peri s works however did not arise out of a creative vacuum in the area of sung drama An underlying prerequisite for the creation of opera proper was the practice of monody Monody is the solo singing setting of a dramatically conceived melody designed to express the emotional content of the text it carries which is accompanied by a relatively simple sequence of chords rather than other polyphonic parts Italian composers began composing in this style late in the 16th century and it grew in part from the long standing practice of performing polyphonic madrigals with one singer accompanied by an instrumental rendition of the other parts as well as the rising popularity of more popular more homophonic vocal genres such as the frottola and the villanella In these latter two genres the increasing tendency was toward a more homophonic texture with the top part featuring an elaborate active melody and the lower ones usually these were three part compositions as opposed to the four or more part madrigal a less active supporting structure From this it was only a small step to fully fledged monody All such works tended to set humanist poetry of a type that attempted to imitate Petrarch and his Trecento followers another element of the period s tendency toward a desire for restoration of principles it associated with a mixed up notion of antiquity The solo madrigal frottola villanella and their kin featured prominently in the intermedio or intermezzo theatrical spectacles with music that were funded in the last seventy years of the 16th century by the opulent and increasingly secular courts of Italy s city states Such spectacles were usually staged to commemorate significant state events weddings military victories and the like and alternated in performance with the acts of plays Like the later opera an intermedio featured the aforementioned solo singing but also madrigals performed in their typical multi voice texture and dancing accompanied by the present instrumentalists They were lavishly staged and led the scenography of the second half of the 16th century The intermedi tended not to tell a story as such although they occasionally did but nearly always focused on some particular element of human emotion or experience expressed through mythological allegory The staging in 1600 of Peri s opera Euridice as part of the celebrations for a Medici wedding the occasions for the most spectacular and internationally famous intermedi of the previous century was probably a crucial development for the new form putting it in the mainstream of lavish courtly entertainment Another popular court entertainment at this time was the madrigal comedy later also called madrigal opera by musicologists familiar with the later genre This consisted of a series of madrigals strung together to suggest a dramatic narrative but not staged 2 There were also two staged musical pastoral s Il Satiro and La Disperazione di Fileno both produced in 1590 and written by Emilio de Cavalieri Although these lost works seem only to have included arias with no recitative they were apparently what Peri was referring to in his preface to the published edition of his Euridice when he wrote Signor Emilio del Cavalieri before any other of whom I know enabled us to hear our kind of music upon the stage 3 Other pastoral plays had long included some musical numbers one of the earliest Fabula di Orfeo de fr it 1480 by Poliziano had at least three solo songs and one chorus 4 17th century editFlorence and Mantua edit This section does not cite any sources Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed May 2020 Learn how and when to remove this template message nbsp Claudio Monteverdi by Bernardo Strozzi c 1630The music of Dafne is now lost except for the 455 line verse libretto The first opera for which music has survived was performed in 1600 at the wedding of Henry IV of France and Marie de Medici at the Pitti Palace in Florence The opera Euridice with a libretto by Rinuccini set to music by Peri and Giulio Caccini recounted the story of Orpheus and Eurydice The style of singing favored by Peri and Caccini was a heightened form of natural speech dramatic recitative supported by instrumental string music Recitative thus preceded the development of arias though it soon became the custom to include separate songs and instrumental interludes during periods when voices were silent Both Dafne and Euridice also included choruses commenting on the action at the end of each act in the manner of Greek tragedy The theme of Orpheus the demi god of music was understandably popular and attracted Claudio Monteverdi 1567 1643 who wrote his first opera L Orfeo The Fable of Orpheus in 1607 for the court of Mantua Monteverdi insisted on a strong relationship between the words and music When Orfeo was performed in Mantua an orchestra of 38 instruments numerous choruses and recitatives were used to make a lively drama It was a far more ambitious version than those previously performed more opulent more varied in recitatives more exotic in scenery with stronger musical climaxes which allowed the full scope for the virtuosity of the singers Opera had revealed its first stage of maturity in the hands of Monteverdi L Orfeo also has the distinction of being the earliest surviving opera that is still regularly performed today Opera in Rome edit This section does not cite any sources Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed May 2020 Learn how and when to remove this template message Within a few decades opera had spread throughout Italy In Rome it found an advocate in the prelate and librettist Giulio Rospigliosi later Pope Clement IX Rospigliosi s patrons were the Barberini Among the composers who worked in this period were Luigi Rossi Michelangelo Rossi Marco Marazzoli Domenico and Virgilio Mazzocchi Stefano Landi Since the 1630s the subject of the works changed greatly those of the pastoral tradition and Arcadia it is preferable that the poems of chivalry usually Ludovico Ariosto and Torquato Tasso or those taken from hagiography and Christian commedia dell arte With the increased number of characters the Roman operas became very dramatic and had several twists With these came along a new method of fixing the lines of the recitative better suited to the various situations that arose from the rich storyline and that was closer to speech full of parenthetical at the expense of the paratactic style that had so characterized the first Florentine works Venice commercial opera edit The principal characteristics of Venetian opera were 1 more emphasis on formal arias 2 the beginning of bel canto beautiful singing style and more attention to vocal elegance than to dramatic expression 3 less use of choral and orchestral music 4 complex and improbable plots 5 elaborate stage machinery and 6 short fanfarelike instrumental introductions the prototypes of the later overture 5 Opera took an important new direction when it reached the republic of Venice It was here that the first public opera house the Teatro di San Cassiano was opened in 1637 by Benedetto Ferrari and Francesco Manelli Its success moved opera away from aristocratic patronage and into the commercial world In Venice musical drama was no longer aimed at an elite of aristocrats and intellectuals and acquired the character of entertainment Soon many other opera houses had sprung up in the city performing works for a paying public during the Carnival season The opera houses employed a very small orchestra to save money A large part of their budget was spent on attracting the star singers of the day this was the beginning of the reign of the castrato and the prima donna leading lady The chief composer of early Venetian opera was Monteverdi who had moved to the republic from Mantua in 1613 with later important composers including Francesco Cavalli Antonio Cesti Antonio Sartorio and Giovanni Legrenzi 5 Monteverdi wrote three works for the public theatres Il ritorno d Ulisse in patria 1640 Le nozze d Enea con Lavinia 1641 now lost and most famously L incoronazione di Poppea 1642 The subjects of the new operas by Monteverdi and others were generally drawn from Roman history or legends about Troy in order to celebrate the heroic ideals and noble genealogy of the Venetian state However they did not lack for love interest or comedy Most of the operas consisted of three acts unlike the earlier operas which normally had five The bulk of the versification was still recitative however at moments of great dramatic tension there were often arioso passages known as arie cavate Under Monteverdi s followers the distinction between the recitative and the aria became more marked and conventionalised This is evident in the style of the four most successful composers of the next generation Francesco Cavalli Giovanni Legrenzi Antonio Cesti and Alessandro Stradella Spread of opera abroad edit This section does not cite any sources Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed May 2020 Learn how and when to remove this template message nbsp Wladyslaw s Opera Hall Building right at the Royal Castle in WarsawIn the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth a tradition of operatic production began in Warsaw in 1628 with a performance of Galatea composer uncertain the first Italian opera produced outside Italy Shortly after this performance the court produced Francesca Caccini s opera La liberazione di Ruggiero dall isola d Alcina which she had written for Prince Wladyslaw Vasa three years earlier when he was in Italy Another first this is the earliest surviving opera written by a woman Gli amori di Aci e Galatea by Santi Orlandi was also performed in 1628 When Wladyslaw was king as Wladyslaw IV he oversaw the production of at least ten operas during the late 1630s and 1640s making Warsaw a center of the art The composers of these operas are not known they may have been Poles working under Marco Scacchi in the royal chapel or they may have been among the Italians imported by Wladyslaw A dramma per musica as serious Italian opera was known at the time entitled Giuditta based on the Biblical story of Judith was performed in 1635 The composer was probably Virgilio Puccitelli Cavalli s operas were performed throughout Italy by touring companies with tremendous success In fact his Giasone was the most popular opera of the 17th century though some critics were appalled at its mixture of tragedy and farce Cavalli s fame spread throughout Europe One of his specialties was giving his heroines ground bass laments These were mournful arias sung over a descending bass line and they had a great influence on Henry Purcell whose When I am laid in earth from Dido and Aeneas is probably the most celebrated example of the form Cavalli s reputation caused Cardinal Mazarin to invite him to France in 1660 to compose an opera for King Louis XIV s wedding to Maria Teresa of Spain Italian opera had already been performed in France in the 1640s to a mixed reception and Cavalli s foreign expedition ended in disaster French audiences did not respond well to the revival of Xerse 1660 and the specially composed Ercole amante 1662 preferring the ballets that had been inserted between the acts by a Florentine composer Jean Baptiste Lully and Cavalli swore never to compose another opera Cesti was more fortunate when he was asked to write an opera for the Habsburg court in Vienna in 1668 Il pomo d oro was so grandiose that the performance had to be spread over two days It was a tremendous success and marked the beginning of Italian operatic dominance north of the Alps In the late 17th century German and English composers tried to establish their own native traditions but by the early 18th century they had given ground to imported Italian opera which became the international style in the hands of composers such as Handel Only France resisted and her operatic tradition had been founded by the Italian Lully This set the pattern until well into the 19th century the Italian tradition was the international one and its leading exponents e g Handel Hasse Gluck and Mozart were often not natives of Italy Composers who wanted to develop their own national forms of opera generally had to fight against Italian opera Thus in the early 19th century both Carl Maria von Weber in Germany and Hector Berlioz in France felt they had to challenge the enormous influence of the Italian Rossini 18th century editOpera seria edit 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 6 which would become dominant in Italy and much of the rest of Europe until the late 18th century The influence of this new attitude can be seen in the works of the composers Carlo Francesco Pollarolo 7 and the enormously prolific Alessandro Scarlatti 8 During the 18th century artistic and cultural life in Italy was heavily influenced by the aesthetic and poetic ideals of the members of the Accademia dell Arcadia The Arcadian poets introduced many changes to serious music drama in Italian including 9 the simplification of the plot the removal of comic elements the reduction of the number of arias a predilection for plots drawn from ancient Classical or modern French tragedy in which the values of loyalty friendship and virtue were extolled and the absolute power of the sovereign was celebrated nbsp Pietro Metastasio attributed to Pompeo BatoniBy far the most successful librettist of the era was Pietro Metastasio and he maintained his prestige well into the 19th century He belonged to the Arcadian Academy and was firmly in line with its theories A libretto by Metastasio was often set by twenty or thirty different composers and audiences came to know the words of his dramas by heart 10 Opera buffa edit This section does not cite any sources Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed May 2020 Learn how and when to remove this template message In the 17th century comic operas were produced only occasionally and no stable tradition was established Only in the early years of the 18th century was the comic genre of opera buffa born in Naples and it began to spread throughout Italy after 1730 Opera buffa was distinguished from opera seria by numerous characteristics the importance given to stage action and the consequent need for the music to follow the changes of the drama emphasising the expressiveness of the words the choice of singers who were also excellent actors able to perform the drama convincingly a reduction in the use of scenery and stage machinery and in the number of orchestral players the use of a small cast of characters at least in the short form of comic opera known as the intermezzo and simple plots a good example being Pergolesi s La serva padrona 1733 libretti inspired by commedia dell arte with realistic subjects colloquial language and slang expressions as far as singing was concerned the complete rejection of vocal virtuosity a tendency to an incorrect pronunciation of the words the frequent presence of rhythmic and melodic tics the use of onomatopoeia and interjections the exclusion of castrati 11 nbsp Carlo Goldoni by Alessandro Longhi c 1757In the second half of the 18th century comic opera owed its success to the collaboration between the playwright Carlo Goldoni and the composer Baldassare Galuppi Thanks to Galuppi comic opera acquired much more dignity than it had during the days of the intermezzo Operas were now divided into two or three acts creating libretti for works of a substantially greater length which differed significantly from those of the early 18th century in the complexity of their plots and the psychology of their characters These now included some serious figures instead of exaggerated caricatures and the operas had plots which focused on the conflict between the social classes as well as including self referential ideas Goldoni and Galuppi s most famous work together is Il filosofo di campagna 1754 The collaboration between Goldoni and another famous composer Niccolo Piccinni produced with La Cecchina 1760 another new genre opera semiseria This had two buffo characters two nobles and two in between characters The one act farsa had a significant influence on the development of comic opera This was a type of musical drama initially considered as a condensed version of a longer comic opera but over time it became a genre in its own right It was characterised by vocal virtuosity a more refined use of the orchestra the great importance given to the production the presence of misunderstandings and surprises in the course of the drama Gluck s reforms and Mozart edit nbsp Christoph Willibald Gluck playing his clavichord 1775 by Joseph DuplessisOpera seria had its weaknesses and critics a 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 Francesco Algarotti s Essay on the Opera 1755 proved to be an inspiration for Christoph Willibald Gluck s reforms He advocated that opera seria had to return to basics and that all the various elements music both instrumental and vocal ballet and staging must be subservient to the overriding drama Several composers of the period including Niccolo Jommelli and Tommaso Traetta attempted to put these ideals into practice In 1765 Melchior Grimm published Poeme lyrique an influential article for the Encyclopedie on lyric and opera librettos 12 13 14 15 16 The first to really succeed and to leave a permanent imprint upon the history of opera however was Gluck 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 say Handel s works are supported by simple harmonies and a notably richer than usual orchestral presence throughout Gluck s reforms have had resonance throughout operatic history Weber Mozart and Wagner in particular were influenced by his ideals Mozart in many ways Gluck s successor combined a superb sense of drama harmony melody and counterpoint to write a series of comedies notably The Marriage of Figaro Don Giovanni and Cosi fan tutte in collaboration with Lorenzo Da Ponte which remain among the most loved popular and well known operas today 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 Romantic period editThis section does not cite any sources Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed May 2020 Learn how and when to remove this template message Romantic opera which placed emphasis on the imagination and the emotions began to appear in the early 19th century and because of its arias and music gave more dimension to the extreme emotions which typified the theater of that era In addition it is said that fine music often excused glaring faults in character drawing and plot lines Gioachino Rossini 1792 1868 initiated the Romantic period His first success was an opera buffa comic opera La cambiale di matrimonio 1810 His reputation still survives today through his Barber of Seville 1816 and La Cenerentola 1817 But he also wrote serious opera Tancredi 1813 and Semiramide 1823 nbsp Giuseppe Verdi by Giovanni Boldini 1886 Rossini s successors in the Italian bel canto were Vincenzo Bellini 1801 35 Gaetano Donizetti 1797 1848 and Giuseppe Verdi 1813 1901 It was Verdi who transformed the whole nature of operatic writing during the course of his long career His first great successful opera Nabucco 1842 caught the public fancy because of the driving vigour of its music and its great choruses Va pensiero one of the chorus renditions was interpreted and gave advantageous meaning to the struggle for Italian independence and to unify Italy After Nabucco Verdi based his operas on patriotic themes and many of the standard romantic sources Friedrich Schiller Giovanna d Arco 1845 I masnadieri 1847 Luisa Miller 1849 Lord Byron I due Foscari 1844 Il corsaro 1848 and Victor Hugo Ernani 1844 Rigoletto 1851 Verdi was experimenting with musical and dramatic forms attempting to discover things which only opera could do In 1887 he created Otello which completely replaced Rossini s opera of the same name and which is described by critics as the finest of Italian romantic operas with the traditional components the solo arias the duets and the choruses fully integrated into the melodic and dramatic flow Verdi s last opera Falstaff 1893 broke free of conventional form altogether and finds music which follows quick flowing simple words and because of its respect for the pattern of ordinary speech it created a threshold for a new operatic era in which speech patterns are paramount Opera had become a marriage of the arts a musical drama full of glorious song costume orchestral music and pageantry sometimes without the aid of a plausible story From its conception during the baroque period to the maturity of the romantic period it was the medium through which tales and myths were revisited history was retold and imagination was stimulated The strength of it fell into a more violent era for opera verismo with Cavalleria rusticana by Pietro Mascagni and Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo Contemporary period edit nbsp Final scene of the opera Risorgimento Some of the greatest Italian operas of the 20th century were written by Giacomo Puccini 1858 1924 These include Manon Lescaut La boheme Tosca Madama Butterfly La fanciulla del West La rondine and Turandot the last two being left unfinished In 1926 and in 2002 Franco Alfano and Luciano Berio respectively attempted a completion of Turandot and in 1994 Lorenzo Ferrero completed the orchestration of the third version of La rondine Berio himself wrote two operas Un re in ascolto and Opera Ferrero likewise has composed several operas including Salvatore Giuliano La Conquista and his 2011 Risorgimento Other 20th century Italian opera composers are Gian Francesco Malipiero 1882 1973 whose 19 operas include L Orfeide and Torneo notturno Luigi Dallapiccola 1904 1975 whose operas include Ulisse Volo di notte and Il prigioniero Luigi Nono 1924 1990 who wrote Al gran sole carico d amore Intolleranza 1960 and Prometeo Sylvano Bussotti 1931 2021 whose prolific compositional output includes La Passion selon Sade La Racine pianobar pour Phedre Nympheo Bozzetto siciliano Salvatore Sciarrino born 1947 who wrote several operas including Luci mie traditriciSee also edit nbsp Opera portalList of Italian opera houses Italian language operas category References editNotes edit This is not agreed by all authorities see Grout amp Williams 1988 41 footnote for references to other views Grout amp Williams 1988 p 33 Porter William V Summer 1965 Peri and Corsi s Dafne Some New Discoveries and Observations Journal of the American Musicological Society 18 2 170 196 doi 10 2307 830682 JSTOR 830682 Grout amp Williams 1988 p 30 a b Miller amp Cockrell 1991 p 93 Opera seria OperaFolio com Retrieved 25 June 2022 Balthazar Scott L 5 July 2013 Historical Dictionary of Opera Scarecrow Press p 96 ISBN 978 0 8108 7943 0 Retrieved 25 June 2022 Robinson M F 1961 The Aria in Opera Seria 1725 1780 Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 88 31 43 doi 10 1093 jrma 88 1 31 JSTOR 766201 Delon Michel 4 December 2013 Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment Routledge pp 936 937 ISBN 978 1 135 95998 2 Pietro Metastasio at the Encyclopaedia Britannica Warrack amp West 1992 p page needed Larousse Editions Melchior baron de Grimm LAROUSSE www larousse fr Thomas 1995 p 148 Heyer 2009 p 248 Lippman 2009 p 171 Position Papers Seminar 1 Music universal national nationalistic Archived 2018 11 18 at the Wayback Machine Faculty of Arts and Humanities King s College London Sources edit Grout Donald Jay Williams Hermine Weigel 1988 A Short History of Opera Columbia University Press ISBN 9780231061926 Heyer John Hajdu ed 2009 Lully Studies Cambridge University Press ISBN 9780521118651 Lippman Edward A 2009 A History of Western Musical Aesthetics University of Nebraska Press ISBN 9780803279513 Miller Hugh Milton Cockrell Dale 1991 History of Western Music ISBN 978 0 06 467107 1 Thomas Downing A 1995 Music and the Origins of Language Theories from the French Enlightenment Cambridge University Press ISBN 9780521028622 Warrack John West Ewan 1992 The Oxford Dictionary of Opera Oxford University Press ISBN 0 19 869164 5 Further reading editBoyden Matthew 1997 Opera the Rough Guide ISBN 1 85828 138 5 Holden Amanda 2001 The New Penguin Opera Guide ISBN 0 14 051475 9 Orrey Leslie Rodney Milnes Opera A Concise History World of Art Thames amp Hudson Parker Roger Ed 1994 The Oxford Illustrated History of Opera Sadie Stanley Ed 1992 The New Grove Dictionary of Opera ISBN 0 333 73432 7 ISBN 1 56159 228 5 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Italian opera amp oldid 1199056355, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

article

, read, download, free, free download, mp3, video, mp4, 3gp, jpg, jpeg, gif, png, picture, music, song, movie, book, game, games.