Everything about Opera totally explained
Opera is an
art form in which
singers and
musicians perform a
dramatic work (called an opera) which combines a text (called a
libretto) and a
musical score. Opera is part of the Western
classical music tradition. 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 started in Italy at the end of the 16th century (
Jacopo Peri's lost
Dafne, produced in
Florence about 1597) and soon spread through the rest of Europe:
Schütz in Germany,
Lully in France, and
Purcell in England all helped to establish their national traditions in the 17th century. However, in the 18th century, Italian opera continued to dominate most of Europe, except France, attracting foreign composers such as
Handel.
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, Don Giovanni, and
Così fan tutte, as well as
The Magic Flute, 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
Meyerbeer. The mid to late 19th century is considered by some a golden age of opera, led by
Wagner in Germany and
Verdi in Italy. This 'golden age' developed through the
verismo era in Italy and contemporary
French opera through to
Puccini and
Strauss in the early 20th century. 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),
Neo-Classicism (
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.
History
Origins
The word
opera means "work" in
Italian (from
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.
Italian opera
The Baroque era
Opera didn't 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, (as indeed, such plots had always been) a long-flourishing improvisitory stage tradition of Italy. Just as intermedi had once been performed in-between the acts of stage plays, operas in the new comic genre of "intermezzi", which developed largely in Naples in the 1710s and '20s, were initially staged during the intermissions of opera seria. 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 the most famous singer 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.
Reform: Gluck, the attack on the Metastasian ideal, and Mozart
Opera seria had its weaknesses and critics, and the taste for embellishment on behalf of the superbly trained singers, and the use of spectacle as a replacement for dramatic purity and unity drew attacks.
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 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
Così fan tutte,
Le Nozze di 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 wouldn't succeed in bringing the art form back to life again.
Bel canto, Verdi and verismo
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 Boheme,
Tosca, and
Madama Butterfly. Later Italian composers, such as
Berio and
Nono, have experimented with
modernism.
German-language opera
The first German opera was
Dafne, composed by
Heinrich Schütz in 1627 (the music hasn't 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, a popular form of German-language opera in which singing alternates with spoken dialogue. In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, 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
Richard 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, 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,
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.
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
opera-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.
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, wasn't 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;
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. 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.
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".
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 wasn't 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
Shakespeare play to be set to music (composed by Locke and Johnson).
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 fine 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. 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.
Also in the 20th century, American composers like
Leonard Bernstein,
Gershwin,
Gian Carlo Menotti, and
Carlisle Floyd began to contribute English-language operas infused with touches of popular musical styles. They were followed by modernists like
Philip Glass,
Mark Adamo,
John Coolidge Adams, and
Jake Heggie.
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
Dmytro 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 Rachmaninov in his works
The Miserly Knight and
Franchesca 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.
Other national operas
Spain also produced its own distinctive form of opera, known as
zarzuela, which had two separate flowerings: one in the 17th century, and another beginning in the mid-19th century. During the 18th 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.
The best-known composer of
Polish national opera was
Stanislaw Moniuszko, most celebrated for the opera
Straszny Dwór. In the 20th century, other operas created by Polish composers included
King Roger by
Karol Szymanowski and
Ubu Rex by
Krzysztof Penderecki.
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
Wagner, and in particular the
Tristan chord. Composers such as
Richard Strauss,
Claude Debussy,
Giacomo Puccini,
Paul Hindemith 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 acolyte
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, which he described as: "The voice rising and falling relative to the indicated intervals, and everything being bound together with the time and rhythm of the music except where a pause is indicated".
The two operas of Schoenberg's pupil Alban Berg,
Wozzeck and
Lulu (left incomplete at his death) 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 didn't 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.)
However, operatic modernism's use of dodecaphony sparked a backlash among several leading composers. Prominent among the vanguard of these was the Russian
Igor Stravinsky. After composing obviously Modernist music for the
Diaghilev-produced ballets
Petrushka and
The Rite of Spring, in the 1920s Stravinsky turned to
Neoclassicism, culminating in his opera-oratorio
Oedipus Rex. When he did compose a full-length opera that was without doubt an opera (after his Rimsky-Korsakov-inspired works
The Nightingale (1914), and
Mavra (1922)), in
The Rake's Progress he continued to ignore serialist techniques and wrote an 18th century-style "number" opera, using diatonicism. His resistance to
serialism (which ended at the death of Schoenberg) proved to be an inspiration for many other composers.
Other trends
A common trend throughout the 20th century, in both opera and general orchestral repertoire, is the downsizing of orchestral forces. As patronage of the arts decreases, new works are commissioned and performed with smaller budgets, very often resulting in chamber-sized works, and 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 20th century opera is the emergence of contemporary historical operas.
The Death of Klinghoffer and
Nixon in China by
John Adams, and
Dead Man Walking by
Jake Heggie 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. Earlier models of opera generally stuck to more distant history, re-telling contemporary fictional stories (reworkings of popular plays), or mythical/legendary stories.
The Metropolitan Opera reports that the average age of its patrons is now 60. 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. In an effort to attract younger audiences, the Met offers a student discount on ticket purchases. Smaller companies like Opera Carolina offer discounts and happy hour events to the 21–40 year old demographic. 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.
From musicals back towards opera
Also 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, influenced by jazz styles, and
Candide, 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 and others tell dramatic stories through complex music and are now sometimes seen in opera houses. Some musicals, beginning with
Tommy (1969) and
Jesus Christ Superstar (1971) and continuing through
Les Miserables (musical) (1980),
Rent (1996) and
Spring Awakening (2006), utilize various operatic conventions, such as
through composition, recitative instead of dialogue, leitmotifs, and dramatic stories told predominantly through rock or pop music.
Acoustic enhancement with speakers
A subtle type of sound reinforcement called
acoustic enhancement is used in some concert halls where operas are performed. Acoustic enhancement systems help give a more even sound in the hall and prevent "dead spots" in the audience seating area by "...augment[ing] a hall's intrinsic acoustic characteristics." The systems use "...an array of microphones connected to a computer [whichis] connected to an array of loudspeakers." However, as concertgoers have become aware of the use of these systems, debates have arisen, because "...purists maintain that the natural acoustic sound of [Classical] voices [or] instruments in a given hall shouldn't be altered."
Kai Harada's article
Opera's Dirty Little Secret
states that opera houses have begun using electronic acoustic enhancement systems "...to compensate for flaws in a venue's acoustical architecture." Despite the uproar that has arisen amongst operagoers, Harada points out that none of the opera houses using acoustic enhancement systems "...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." Instead, most opera houses use the sound reinforcement system for acoustic enhancement, and for subtle boosting of offstage voices, onstage dialogue, and sound effects (for example, church bells in
Tosca or thunder in Wagnerian operas).
Operatic voices
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 loosely 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're termed
sopranist or
countertenor. Of these, only 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 classified by
voice type - 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. 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.
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 throughout operatic history as the voice of choice for the female protagonist of the opera in question. 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's quite a lot of "movement" between these two voice-types). For the true contralto, the range of parts is more limited, hence the saying that contraltos only sing "Witches, bitches, and
britches". In recent years many of the trouser roles from the Baroque era, originally written for women, and those originally sung by castrati, have been assigned 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" wasn't used until the mid-nineteenth 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-1600s. 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.
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 has also supported the popularity of famous singers such as
Luciano Pavarotti,
Placido Domingo, and
Jose Carreras ("
The Three Tenors"). Other famous 21st century performers include
Renee Fleming and various other artists who have gained note as "crossover" performers by featuring in pop music and movie scores.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Opera'.
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