Opera started in Florence, Italy at the end of the 16th century. However, its roots can be traced to the use of choruses in ancient Greek tragedy and plays.
A group of Florentine humanists, musicians, poets and the intellectuals, called the Florentine Camerata, gathered to discuss and guide the arts movement, especially music and drama. A member of the group, Jacopo Peri, composed the very first play that featured singing throughout the drama, called Dafne, essentially introducing a new genre to the world.
Though operas have been composed for over 400 years, their themes remain universal. Human emotions are explored in all operatic stories including love, greed, jealousy, anger and revenge.
Stories have centered on mythological characters (Wagner’s Ring Cycle), human relationships, actual historical events (Prokofiev’s War and Peace), and adaptations of fairytales (Massenet’s Cendrillon or Rossini’s La Cenerentola—French and Italian adaptations of Cinderella).
There are too many to list but some of the most performed operas are:
Clearly some of the musical heavyweights in opera are Mozart, Puccini, Verdi, and Rossini but Wagner, Britten, Donizetti, and other composers have also contributed a significant amount to the art form.
Don’t be fooled that operas were only written long ago. The genre is still living and developing today. Toni Morrison’s acclaimed book Beloved was recently turned into an opera, as was David Cronenberg’s cult classic movie The Fly.
Female Voice Types:
Male Voice Types:
There’s a grey area when it comes to distinguishing opera and musical theatre.
Musical theatre generally has spoken dialogue with musical numbers inserted in between.
Opera, instead, uses a style of writing dialogue on specific pitches, called recitative, making the entire piece more sung through.
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