Opera (English plural:
operas; Italian plural:
opere) 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.
[1]
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, accompanied by an
orchestra or smaller
musical ensemble.
Opera is part of the Western
classical music tradition.[2]
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 foreign composers such as
Handel.
Opera seria was the most prestigious form of Italian opera,
until
Gluck reacted against its artificiality with his "reform"
operas in the 1760s. 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 (Le Nozze Di Figaro),
Don Giovanni, and
Così fan tutte, as well as
The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte), a landmark in the
German tradition.
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.
It also saw the advent of
Grand Opera typified by the works of Auber and
Meyerbeer. The mid-to-late 19th century was a "golden age"
of opera, led and dominated by
Wagner in Germany and
Verdi in Italy. The popularity of opera continued through
the
verismo era in Italy and contemporary
French opera through to
Puccini and
Strauss in the early 20th century. During the 19th century,
parallel operatic traditions emerged in central and eastern
Europe, particularly in
Russia and
Bohemia. 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. Operas were also performed on (and written for)
radio and television.
Operatic
terminology
The words of an opera are known as the
libretto (literally "little book"). Some composers, notably
Richard Wagner, have written their own libretti; others have
worked in close collaboration with their librettists, e.g.
Mozart with
Lorenzo Da Ponte. Traditional opera, often referred to as "number
opera", consists of two modes of singing:
recitative, the plot-driving passages sung in a style
designed to imitate and emphasize the inflections of speech,[3]
and
aria (an "air" or formal song) in which the characters
express their emotions in a more structured melodic style.
Duets, trios and other ensembles often occur, and choruses are
used to comment on the action. In some forms of opera, such as
Singspiel,
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. During the Baroque and Classical periods, recitative
could appear in two basic forms: secco (dry) recitative,
sung with a free rhythm dictated by the accent of the words,
accompanied only by
continuo, which was usually a
harpsichord and a cello; or accompagnato (also known
as strumentato) 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". Subsequent composers have tended to
follow Wagner's example, though some, such as
Stravinsky in his
The Rake's Progress have bucked the trend. The
terminology of the various kinds of operatic voices is described
in detail
below.[4]
History
Origins
The word opera means "work" in Italian (it is the
plural of
Latin
opus meaning "work" or "labour") suggesting that it
combines the arts of solo and choral singing, declamation,
acting and dancing in a staged spectacle.
Dafne
by
Jacopo Peri was the earliest composition considered opera,
as understood today. It was written around 1597, largely under
the inspiration of an elite circle of literate
Florentine
humanists who gathered as the "Camerata
de' Bardi". 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. 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. 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.[5]
The Mantua court of the
Gonzagas, employers of Monteverdi, played a significant role
in the origin of opera employing not only court singers of the
concerto delle donne (till 1598), but also one of the first
actual "opera singers";
Madama Europa.[6]
Italian opera
Main article:
Italian opera
The Baroque
era
Opera did not remain confined to court audiences for long. In
1637, the idea of a "season" (Carnival)
of publicly attended operas supported by ticket sales emerged in
Venice. 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. His most important follower
Francesco Cavalli helped spread opera throughout Italy. 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. Once the Metastasian ideal
had been firmly established, comedy in Baroque-era opera was
reserved for what came to be called
opera buffa.
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." 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. These separate plots were almost immediately
resurrected in a separately developing tradition that partly
derived from the
commedia dell'arte, a long-flourishing improvisatory 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. They became so popular, however, that they were
soon being offered as separate productions.
Opera seria was elevated in tone and highly stylised
in form, usually consisting of secco recitative
interspersed with long da capo arias. 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. 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 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.
Leading Italian-born composers of
opera seria include
Alessandro Scarlatti,
Vivaldi and
Porpora.[7]
Reform: Gluck, the attack on the Metastasian ideal, and Mozart
Illustration for the score of the original Vienna
version of
Orfeo ed Euridice (published in Paris, 1764)
Opera seria had its weaknesses and critics. 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.
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. The first to succeed however, was Gluck. Gluck strove
to achieve a "beautiful simplicity". This is evident in his
first reform opera,
Orfeo ed Euridice, where his non-virtuosic vocal
melodies are supported by simple harmonies and a richer
orchestra 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
Così fan tutte,
The Marriage of Figaro, and
Don Giovanni (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.[8]
Bel canto, Verdi and verismo
Giuseppe Verdi, by
Giovanni Boldini, 1886 (National Gallery of
Modern Art, Rome)
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. 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.
Following the bel canto era, a more direct, forceful style
was rapidly popularized by
Giuseppe Verdi, beginning with his biblical opera
Nabucco. 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
(although his own politics were perhaps not quite so radical).
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.
After Verdi, the sentimental "realistic" melodrama of
verismo appeared in Italy. 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 bohème,
Tosca,
and
Madama Butterfly. Later Italian composers, such as
Berio and
Nono, have experimented with
modernism.[9]
German-language opera
Main article:
German opera
Illustration inspired by
Wagner's music drama
Das Rheingold
The first German opera was Dafne, composed by
Heinrich Schütz in 1627, but the music score has not
survived. Italian opera held a great sway over German-speaking
countries until the late 18th century. Nevertheless, native
forms developed too. In 1644
Sigmund Staden produced the first
Singspiel, Seelewig, a popular form of
German-language opera in which singing alternates with spoken
dialogue. In the late 17th century and early 18th century, the
Theater am Gänsemarkt in
Hamburg presented German operas by
Keiser,
Telemann and
Handel. Yet many of the major German composers of the time,
including Handel himself, as well as
Graun,
Hasse and later
Gluck, chose to write most of their operas in foreign
languages, especially Italian.
Mozart's Singspiele,
Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782) and
Die Zauberflöte (1791) were an important breakthrough in
achieving international recognition for German opera. The
tradition was developed in the 19th century by
Beethoven with his
Fidelio, inspired by the climate of the
French Revolution.
Carl Maria von Weber established
German Romantic opera in opposition to the dominance of
Italian
bel canto. His
Der Freischütz (1821) shows his genius for creating a
supernatural atmosphere. Other opera composers of the time
include
Marschner,
Schubert,
Schumann and
Lortzing, but the most significant figure was undoubtedly
Wagner.
Wagner was one of the most revolutionary and controversial
composers in musical history. Starting under the influence of
Weber and
Meyerbeer, he gradually evolved a new concept of opera as a
Gesamtkunstwerk (a "complete work of art"), a fusion of
music, poetry and painting. In his mature music dramas,
Tristan und Isolde,
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg,
Der Ring des Nibelungen and
Parsifal, he abolished the distinction between aria and
recitative in favour of a seamless flow of "endless melody". He
greatly increased the role and power of the orchestra, creating
scores with a complex web of
leitmotivs, recurring themes often associated with the
characters and concepts of the drama; and he was prepared to
violate accepted musical conventions, such as
tonality, in his quest for greater expressivity. Wagner also
brought a new philosophical dimension to opera in his works,
which were usually based on stories from
Germanic or
Arthurian legend. Finally, Wagner built
his own opera house at
Bayreuth with part of the patronage from Ludwig II of
Bavaria, exclusively dedicated to performing his own works in
the style he wanted.
Opera would never be the same after Wagner and for many
composers his legacy proved a heavy burden. On the other hand,
Richard Strauss accepted Wagnerian ideas but took them in
wholly new directions. He first won fame with the scandalous
Salome and the dark tragedy
Elektra, in which tonality was pushed to the limits.
Then Strauss changed tack in his greatest success,
Der Rosenkavalier, where
Mozart and
Viennese
waltzes became as important an influence as Wagner. Strauss
continued to produce a highly varied body of operatic works,
often with libretti by the poet
Hugo von Hofmannsthal, right up until
Capriccio in 1942. Other composers who made individual
contributions to German opera in the early 20th century include
Zemlinsky,
Korngold,
Schreker,
Hindemith,
Kurt Weill and the Italian-born
Ferruccio Busoni. The operatic innovations of
Arnold Schoenberg and his successors are discussed in the
section on modernism.[10]
French opera
Main article:
French opera
In rivalry with imported Italian opera productions, a
separate French tradition was founded by the Italian
Jean-Baptiste Lully at the court of
King Louis XIV. Despite his foreign origin, Lully
established an
Academy of Music and monopolised French opera from 1672.
Starting with
Cadmus et Hermione, Lully and his librettist
Quinault created
tragédie en musique, a form in which dance music and
choral writing were particularly prominent. Lully's operas also
show a concern for expressive
recitative which matched the contours of the French
language. In the 18th century, Lully's most important successor
was
Jean-Philippe Rameau, who composed five
tragédies en musique as well as numerous works in other
genres such as
opéra-ballet, all notable for their rich orchestration and
harmonic daring. After Rameau's death, the German
Gluck was persuaded to produce six operas for the
Parisian stage in the 1770s. They show the influence of
Rameau, but simplified and with greater focus on the drama. At
the same time, by the middle of the 18th century another genre
was gaining popularity in France:
opéra comique. This was the equivalent of the German
singspiel, where arias alternated with spoken dialogue.
Notable examples in this style were produced by
Monsigny,
Philidor and, above all,
Grétry. During the
Revolutionary period, composers such as
Méhul and
Cherubini, who were followers of Gluck, brought a new
seriousness to the genre, which had never been wholly "comic" in
any case. Another phenomenon of this period was the 'propaganda
opera' celebrating revolutionary successes, e.g.Gossec's
Le triomphe de la République (1793).
By the 1820s, Gluckian influence in France had given way to a
taste for Italian
bel canto, especially after the arrival of
Rossini in Paris. Rossini's
Guillaume Tell helped found the new genre of
Grand Opera, a form whose most famous exponent was another
foreigner,
Giacomo Meyerbeer. Meyerbeer's works, such as
Les Huguenots emphasised virtuoso singing and
extraordinary stage effects. Lighter opéra comique also
enjoyed tremendous success in the hands of
Boïeldieu,
Auber,
Hérold and
Adolphe Adam. In this climate, the operas of the French-born
composer
Hector Berlioz struggled to gain a hearing. Berlioz's epic
masterpiece
Les Troyens, the culmination of the Gluckian tradition,
was not given a full performance for almost a hundred years.
In the second half of the 19th century,
Jacques Offenbach created
operetta with witty and cynical works such as
Orphée aux enfers, as well as the opera
Les Contes d'Hoffmann;
Charles Gounod scored a massive success with
Faust; and
Bizet composed
Carmen, which, once audiences learned to accept its
blend of
Romanticism and realism, became the most popular of all
opéra comiques.
Massenet,
Saint-Saëns and
Delibes all composed works which are still part of the
standard repertory.[11]
At the same time, the influence of
Richard Wagner was felt as a challenge to the French
tradition. Many French critics angrily rejected Wagner's music
dramas while many French composers closely imitated them with
variable success. Perhaps the most interesting response came
from
Claude Debussy. As in Wagner's works, the orchestra plays a
leading role in Debussy's unique opera
Pelléas et Mélisande (1902) and there are no real arias,
only recitative. But the drama is understated, enigmatic and
completely unWagnerian.
Other notable 20th century names include
Ravel,
Dukas,
Roussel and
Milhaud.
Francis Poulenc is one of the very few post-war composers of
any nationality whose operas (which include
Dialogues des Carmélites) have gained a foothold in the
international repertory.
Olivier Messiaen's lengthy sacred drama
Saint François d'Assise (1983) has also attracted
widespread attention.[12]
English-language opera
In England, opera's antecedent was the 17th century jig.
This was an afterpiece which came at the end of a play. It was
frequently
libellous and scandalous and consisted in the main of
dialogue set to music arranged from popular tunes. In this
respect, jigs anticipate the ballad operas of the 18th century.
At the same time, the French
masque was gaining a firm hold at the English Court, with
even more lavish splendour and highly realistic scenery than had
been seen before.
Inigo Jones became the quintessential designer of these
productions, and this style was to dominate the English stage
for three centuries. These masques contained songs and dances.
In
Ben Jonson's Lovers Made Men (1617), "the whole
masque was sung after the Italian manner, stilo recitativo".[13]
The approach of the
English Commonwealth closed theatres and halted any
developments that may have led to the establishment of English
opera. However, in 1656, the
dramatist Sir
William Davenant produced
The Siege of Rhodes. Since his theatre was not licensed
to produce drama, he asked several of the leading composers
(Lawes, Cooke, Locke, Coleman and Hudson) to set sections of it
to music. This success was followed by
The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru (1658) and
The History of Sir Francis Drake (1659). These pieces
were encouraged by
Oliver Cromwell because they were critical of Spain. With
the
English Restoration, foreign (especially French) musicians
were welcomed back. In 1673,
Thomas Shadwell's
Psyche, patterned on the 1671 'comédie-ballet' of the
same name produced by
Molière and
Jean-Baptiste Lully.
William Davenant produced The Tempest in the same
year, which was the first musical adaption of a
Shakespeare play (composed by Locke and Johnson).[13]
About 1683,
John Blow composed
Venus and Adonis, often thought of as the first true
English-language opera.
Blow's immediate successor was the better known
Henry Purcell. Despite the success of his masterwork
Dido and Aeneas (1689), in which the action is furthered
by the use of Italian-style recitative, much of Purcell's best
work was not involved in the composing of typical opera, but
instead he usually worked within the constraints of the
semi-opera format, where isolated scenes and masques are
contained within the structure of a spoken play, such as
Shakespeare in Purcell's
The Fairy-Queen (1692) and Beaumont and Fletcher in
The Prophetess (1690) and Bonduca (1696). The main
characters of the play tend not to be involved in the musical
scenes, which means that Purcell was rarely able to develop his
characters through song. Despite these hindrances, his aim (and
that of his collaborator
John Dryden) was to establish serious opera in England, but
these hopes ended with Purcell's early death at the age of 36.
Following Purcell, the popularity of opera in England
dwindled for several decades. A revived interest in opera
occurred in the 1730s which is largely attributed to
Thomas Arne, both for his own compositions and for alerting
Handel to the commercial possibilities of large-scale works in
English. Arne was the first English composer to experiment with
Italian-style all-sung comic opera, with his greatest success
being
Thomas and Sally in 1760. His opera
Artaxerxes (1762) was the first attempt to set a
full-blown
opera seria in English and was a huge success, holding the
stage until the 1830s. Although Arne imitated many elements of
Italian opera, he was perhaps the only English composer at that
time who was able to move beyond the Italian influences and
create his own unique and distinctly English voice. His
modernized ballad opera, Love in a Village (1762), began
a vogue for pastiche opera that lasted well into the 19th
century.
Charles Burney wrote that Arne introduced "a light, airy,
original, and pleasing melody, wholly different from that of
Purcell or Handel, whom all English composers had either
pillaged or imitated".
Besides Arne, the other dominating force in English opera at
this time was
George Frideric Handel, whose opera serias filled the
London operatic stages for decades, and influenced most
home-grown composers, like
John Frederick Lampe, who wrote using Italian models. This
situation continued throughout the 18th and 19th centuries,
including in the work of
Michael William Balfe, and the operas of the great Italian
composers, as well as those of Mozart, Beethoven and Meyerbeer,
continued to dominate the musical stage in England.
The only exceptions were
ballad operas, such as
John Gay's
The Beggar's Opera (1728), musical
burlesques, European
operettas, and late
Victorian era
light operas, notably the
Savoy Operas of
W. S. Gilbert and
Arthur Sullivan, all of which types of musical
entertainments frequently spoofed operatic conventions. Sullivan
wrote only one grand opera,
Ivanhoe (following the efforts of a number of young
English composers beginning about 1876),[13]
but he claimed that even his light operas constituted part of a
school of "English" opera, intended to supplant the French
operettas (usually performed in bad translations) that had
dominated the London stage from the mid-19th century into the
1870s. London's
Daily Telegraph agreed, describing
The Yeomen of the Guard as "a genuine English opera,
forerunner of many others, let us hope, and possibly significant
of an advance towards a national lyric stage."[14]
In the 20th century, English opera began to assert more
independence, with works of
Ralph Vaughan Williams and in particular
Benjamin Britten, who in a series of works that remain in
standard repertory today, revealed an excellent flair for the
dramatic and superb musicality. Today composers such as
Thomas Adès continue to export English opera abroad.[15]
More recently
Sir Harrison Birtwistle has emerged as one of Britain's most
significant contemporary composers from his first opera
Punch and Judy to his most recent critical success in
The Minotaur. In the first decade of the 21st century, the
librettist of an early Birtwistle opera,
Michael Nyman, has been focusing on composing operas,
including
Facing Goya,
Man and Boy: Dada, and
Love Counts.
Also in the 20th century, American composers like
Leonard Bernstein,
George Gershwin,
Gian Carlo Menotti,
Douglas Moore, and
Carlisle Floyd began to contribute English-language operas
infused with touches of popular musical styles. They were
followed by composers such as
Philip Glass,
Mark Adamo,
John Corigliano,
Robert Moran,
John Coolidge Adams, André Previn and
Jake Heggie.
Russian opera
Main article:
Russian opera
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.
However, the real birth of
Russian opera came with
Mikhail Glinka and his two great operas
A Life for the Tsar (1836) and
Ruslan and Lyudmila (1842). After him in the 19th
century in Russia there were written such operatic masterpieces
as
Rusalka and
The Stone Guest by
Alexander Dargomyzhsky,
Boris Godunov and
Khovanshchina by
Modest Mussorgsky,
Prince Igor by
Alexander Borodin,
Eugene Onegin and
The Queen of Spades by
Pyotr Tchaikovsky, and
The Snow Maiden and
Sadko by
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. These developments mirrored the
growth of Russian
nationalism across the artistic spectrum, as part of the
more general
Slavophilism movement.
In the 20th century the
traditions of Russian opera were developed by many composers
including
Sergei Rachmaninoff in his works
The Miserly Knight and
Francesca da Rimini,
Igor Stravinsky in
Le Rossignol,
Mavra,
Oedipus rex, and
The Rake's Progress,
Sergei Prokofiev in
The Gambler,
The Love for Three Oranges,
The Fiery Angel,
Betrothal in a Monastery, and
War and Peace; as well as
Dmitri Shostakovich in
The Nose and
Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District,
Edison Denisov in
L'écume des jours, and
Alfred Schnittke in
Life with an Idiot and
Historia von D. Johann Fausten.[16]
Other
national operas
Spain also produced its own distinctive form of opera, known
as
zarzuela, which had two separate flowerings: one from the
mid-17th century through the mid-18th century, and another
beginning around 1850. During the late 18th century up until the
mid-19th century, Italian opera was immensely popular in Spain,
supplanting the native form.
Czech composers also developed a thriving national opera
movement of their own in the 19th century, starting with
Bedřich Smetana, who wrote eight operas including the
internationally popular
The Bartered Bride.
Antonín Dvořák, most famous for
Rusalka, wrote 13 operas; and
Leoš Janáček gained international recognition in the 20th
century for his innovative works including
Jenůfa,
The Cunning Little Vixen, and
Káťa Kabanová.
The key figure of Hungarian national opera in the 19th
century was
Ferenc Erkel, whose works mostly dealt with historical
themes. Among his most often performed operas are
Hunyadi László and
Bánk bán. The most famous modern Hungarian opera is
Béla Bartók's
Duke Bluebeard's Castle.
Stanisław Moniuszko's opera
Straszny Dwór (in English The Haunted Manor)
(1861-4) represents a nineteenth century peak of
Polish national opera.[17]
In the 20th century, other operas created by Polish composers
included
King Roger by
Karol Szymanowski and Ubu Rex by
Krzysztof Penderecki.
Early operas from the
Caucasus region include
Leyli and Majnun (1907) by the
Azerbaijani composer
Uzeyir Hajibeyov and Absalom and Eteri (1913–1919) by
the
Georgian
Zakaria Paliashvili.
Contemporary, recent, and modernist trends
Modernism
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[citation
needed],
Paul Hindemith, Benjamin Britten and
Hans Pfitzner pushed Wagnerian harmony further with a more
extreme use of chromaticism and greater use of dissonance.
Operatic modernism truly began in the operas of two Viennese
composers,
Arnold Schoenberg and his student
Alban Berg, both composers and advocates of atonality and
its later development (as worked out by Schoenberg),
dodecaphony. Schoenberg's early musico-dramatic works,
Erwartung (1909, premiered in 1924) and
Die glückliche Hand display heavy use of chromatic
harmony and dissonance in general. Schoenberg also occasionally
used
Sprechstimme.
The two operas of Schoenberg's pupil Alban Berg,
Wozzeck (1925) and
Lulu (incomplete at his death in 1935) share many of the
same characteristics as described above, though Berg combined
his highly personal interpretation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone
technique with melodic passages of a more traditionally tonal
nature (quite Mahlerian in character) which perhaps partially
explains why his operas have remained in standard repertory,
despite their controversial music and plots. Schoenberg's
theories have influenced (either directly or indirectly)
significant numbers of opera composers ever since, even if they
themselves did not compose using his techniques.
Composers thus influenced include the Englishman
Benjamin Britten, the German
Hans Werner Henze, and the Russian
Dmitri Shostakovich. (Philip
Glass also makes use of atonality, though his style is
generally described as
minimalist, usually thought of as another 20th century
development.)[citation
needed]
However, operatic modernism's use of atonality also sparked a
backlash in the form of
neoclassicism. An early leader of this movement was
Ferruccio Busoni, who in 1913 wrote the libretto for his
neoclassical
number opera
Arlecchino (first performed in 1917).[18]
Also among the vanguard was the Russian
Igor Stravinsky. After composing music for the
Diaghilev-produced ballets
Petrushka (1911) and
The Rite of Spring (1913), Stravinsky turned to
neoclassicism, a development culminating in his opera-oratorio
Oedipus Rex (1927).[19]
Well after his Rimsky-Korsakov-inspired works
The Nightingale (1914), and
Mavra
(1922), Stravinsky continued to ignore
serialist technique and eventually wrote a full-fledged 18th
century-style
diatonic number opera
The Rake's Progress (1951). His resistance to serialism
(an attitude he reversed following Schoenberg's death) proved to
be an inspiration for many[who?]
other composers.[20]
Other trends
A common trend throughout the 20th century, in both opera and
general orchestral repertoire, is the use of smaller orchestras
as a cost-cutting measure; the grand Romantic-era orchestras
with huge string sections, multiple harps, extra horns, and
exotic percussion instruments were no longer feasible. As
government and private patronage of the arts decreased
throughout the 20th century, new works were often commissioned
and performed with smaller budgets, very often resulting in
chamber-sized works, and short, one-act operas. Many of
Benjamin Britten's operas are scored for as few as 13
instrumentalists;
Mark Adamo's two-act realization of
Little Women is scored for 18 instrumentalists.
Another feature of late 20th century opera is the emergence
of contemporary historical operas, in contrast to the tradition
of basing operas on more distant history, the re-telling of
contemporary fictional stories or plays, or on myth or legend.
The Death of Klinghoffer,
Nixon in China and
Doctor Atomic by
John Adams,
Dead Man Walking by
Jake Heggie, and
Anna Nicole by
Mark-Anthony Turnage exemplify the dramatisation on stage of
events in recent living memory, where characters portrayed in
the opera were alive at the time of the premiere performance.
The Metropolitan Opera in the US reports that the average age
of its audience is now 60.[21]
Many opera companies have experienced a similar trend, and opera
company websites are replete with attempts to attract a younger
audience. This trend is part of the larger trend of greying
audiences for
classical music since the last decades of the 20th century.[22]
In an effort to attract younger audiences, the Metropolitan
Opera offers a student discount on ticket purchases.[23]
Major opera companies have been better able to weather the
funding cutbacks, because they can afford to hire star singers
which draw substantial audiences.
Smaller companies in the US have a more fragile existence,
and they usually depend on a "patchwork quilt" of support from
state and local governments, local businesses, and fundraisers.
Nevertheless, some smaller companies have found ways of drawing
new audiences. Opera Carolina offer discounts and happy hour
events to the 21- to 40-year-old demographic.[24]
In addition to radio and television broadcasts of opera
performances, which have had some success in gaining new
audiences, broadcasts of live performances in HD to movie
theatres have shown the potential to reach new audiences. Since
2006, the Met has broadcast live performances to several hundred
movie screens all over the world.[25]
From musicals back towards opera
By the late 1930s, some
musicals began to be written with a more operatic structure.
These works include complex polyphonic ensembles and reflect
musical developments of their times.
Porgy and Bess (1935), influenced by jazz styles, and
Candide (1956), with its sweeping, lyrical passages and
farcical parodies of opera, both opened on
Broadway but became accepted as part of the opera repertory.
Show Boat,
West Side Story,
Brigadoon,
Sweeney Todd,
Evita,
The Light in the Piazza,
The Phantom of the Opera and others tell dramatic
stories through complex music and are now sometimes seen in
opera houses.[26]
The Most Happy Fella (1952) is quasi-operatic and has
been revived by the
New York City Opera. Some musicals, such as
Tommy (1969) and
Jesus Christ Superstar (1971),
Les Misérables (1980),
Rent (1996) and
Spring Awakening (2006), employ various operatic
conventions, such as
through composition, recitative instead of dialogue, and
leitmotifs.
Acoustic enhancement in opera
A subtle type of sound electronic reinforcement called
acoustic enhancement is used in some modern concert halls
and theatres where operas are performed. Although none of the
major opera houses "...use traditional, Broadway-style sound
reinforcement, in which most if not all singers are equipped
with radio microphones mixed to a series of unsightly
loudspeakers scattered throughout the theatre", many use a
sound reinforcement system for acoustic enhancement, and for
subtle boosting of offstage voices, child singers, onstage
dialogue, and sound effects (e.g., church bells in
Tosca
or thunder effects in Wagnerian operas).[27]
Operatic
voices
Operatic vocal technique evolved, in a time before electronic
amplification, to allow singers to produce enough volume to be
heard over an orchestra, without the instrumentalists having to
substantially compromise their volume.
Vocal
classifications
Singers and the roles they play are classified by
voice type, based on the
tessitura,
agility, power and
timbre of their voices. Male singers can be classified by
vocal range as
bass,
bass-baritone,
baritone,
tenor
and
countertenor, and female singers as
contralto,
mezzo-soprano and
soprano. (Men sometimes sing in the "female" vocal ranges,
in which case they are termed
sopranist or
countertenor. The
countertenor is commonly encountered in opera, sometimes
singing parts written for
castrati – men neutered at a young age specifically to give
them a higher singing range.) Singers are then further
classified by
size – for instance, a soprano can be described as a lyric
soprano,
coloratura,
soubrette,
spinto, or dramatic soprano. These terms, although not fully
describing a singing voice, associate the singer's voice with
the roles most suitable to the singer's vocal characteristics.
Yet another sub-classification can be made according to
acting skills or requirements, for example the
Basso Buffo who often must be a specialist in
patter as well as a comic actor. This is carried out in
detail in the
Fach
system of German speaking countries, where historically opera
and spoken
drama
were often put on by the same
repertory company.
A particular singer's voice may change drastically over his
or her lifetime, rarely reaching vocal maturity until the third
decade, and sometimes not until middle age. Two French voice
types, premiere dugazon and deuxieme dugazon, were
named after successive stages in the career of
Louise-Rosalie Lefebvre (Mme. Dugazon). Other terms
originating in the star casting system of the
Parisian theatres are
baryton-martin and
falcon.
Historical use of voice parts
- The following is only intended as a brief overview.
For the main articles, see
soprano,
mezzo-soprano,
alto,
tenor,
baritone,
bass,
countertenor and
castrato.
The soprano voice has typically been used as the voice of
choice for the female protagonist of the opera since the latter
half of the 18th century. Earlier, it was common for that part
to be sung by any female voice, or even a
castrato. The current emphasis on a wide vocal range was
primarily an invention of the
Classical period. Before that, the vocal virtuosity, not
range, was the priority, with soprano parts rarely extending
above a high
A (Handel,
for example, only wrote one role extending to a high
C), though the castrato
Farinelli was alleged to possess a top
D (his lower range was also extraordinary, extending to
tenor C). The mezzo-soprano, a term of comparatively recent
origin, also has a large repertoire, ranging from the female
lead in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas to such heavyweight
roles as Brangäne in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde (these
are both roles sometimes sung by sopranos; there is quite a lot
of movement between these two voice-types). For the true
contralto, the range of parts is more limited, which has given
rise to the insider joke that contraltos only sing "witches,
bitches, and
britches" roles. In recent years many of the "trouser roles"
from the Baroque era, originally written for women, and those
originally sung by castrati, have been reassigned to
countertenors.
The tenor voice, from the Classical era onwards, has
traditionally been assigned the role of male protagonist. Many
of the most challenging tenor roles in the repertory were
written during the bel canto era, such as
Donizetti's sequence of 9 Cs above middle C during
La fille du régiment. With Wagner came an emphasis on
vocal heft for his protagonist roles, with this vocal category
described as Heldentenor; this heroic voice had its more
Italianate counterpart in such roles as Calaf in Puccini's
Turandot. Basses have a long history in opera, having been
used in opera seria in supporting roles, and sometimes
for comic relief (as well as providing a contrast to the
preponderance of high voices in this genre). The bass repertoire
is wide and varied, stretching from the comedy of Leporello in
Don Giovanni to the nobility of Wotan in
Wagner's Ring Cycle. In between the bass and the
tenor is the baritone, which also varies in weight from say,
Guglielmo in Mozart's Così fan tutte to Posa in Verdi's
Don Carlos; the actual designation "baritone" was not
standard until the mid-19th century.
Famous singers
Early performances of opera were too infrequent for singers
to make a living exclusively from the style, but with the birth
of commercial opera in the mid-17th century, professional
performers began to emerge. The role of the male hero was
usually entrusted to a
castrato, and by the 18th century, when Italian opera was
performed throughout Europe, leading castrati who possessed
extraordinary vocal virtuosity, such as
Senesino and
Farinelli, became international stars. The career of the
first major female star (or
prima donna),
Anna Renzi, dates to the mid-17th century. In the 18th
century, a number of Italian sopranos gained international
renown and often engaged in fierce rivalry, as was the case with
Faustina Bordoni and
Francesca Cuzzoni, who started a fist fight with one another
during a performance of a Handel opera. The French disliked
castrati, preferring their male heroes to be sung by a
haute-contre (a high tenor), of which
Joseph Legros was a leading example.[28]
Though opera patronage has decreased in the last century in
favor of other arts and media (such as musicals, cinema, radio,
television and recordings), mass media and the advent of
recording have supported the popularity of many famous singers
including
Maria Callas,
Enrico Caruso,
Kirsten Flagstad,
Mario Del Monaco,
Risë Stevens,
Alfredo Kraus,
Franco Corelli,
Montserrat Caballé,
Joan Sutherland,
Birgit Nilsson,
Nellie Melba,
Rosa Ponselle,
Beniamino Gigli,
Jussi Björling,
Feodor Chaliapin, and "The
Three Tenors" (Luciano
Pavarotti,
Plácido Domingo, and
José Carreras).
Funding of
opera
Outside the US, and especially in Europe, most opera houses
receive public subsidies from taxpayers.[29]
For example, in Milan, Italy, 60% of La Scala's annual budget
of €115 million is from sales and private donations, with the
remaining 40% coming from public funds.[30]
In 2005, La Scala received 25% of Italy's total state subsidy of
€464 million for the performing arts.[31]
Cinema
and internet
Major opera companies have begun presenting their
performances in local cinemas throughout the United States and
many other countries. The
Metropolitan Opera began a
series of live
high-definition video transmissions to cinemas around the
world in 2006.[32]
In 2007, Met performances were shown in over 424 theaters in 350
U.S. cities.
La bohème went out to 671 screens worldwide.
San Francisco Opera began prerecorded video transmissions in
March 2008. As of June 2008, approximately 125 theaters in 117
U.S. cities carry the showings. The HD video opera transmissions
are presented via the same
HD digital cinema projectors used for major
Hollywood films.[33]
European opera houses and
festivals including the
Royal Opera in London,
La Scala in Milan, the
Salzburg Festival,
La Fenice in Venice, and the
Maggio Musicale in Florence have also transmitted their
productions to theaters in cities around the world since 2006,
including 90 cities in the U.S.[34][35]
The emergence of the Internet is also affecting the way in
which audiences consume opera. In a first for the genre, in 2009
the British
Glyndebourne Festival Opera company offered an online
digital video download of its complete 2007 production of
Wagner’s
Tristan und Isolde.[36]
In July 2012 premiered the very first community opera at the
Savonlinna Opera Festival. Free Will was written,
composed and visualized by group of volunteers on the Internet
called Opera by You. Professional soloists, a 80 member opera
choir, a symphony orchestra and a live audience of 2700 were
part of this historic event when Free Will was presented
at the medieval castle of
Olavinlinna.[37]