Opera Music
Opera is a form of theatrical performance in which all of the action is communicated by music. Developed in Florence during the Italian Renaissance, operas are played in 140 festivals each year.
Fast Facts
- The first opera was called Dafne written by Jacopo Peri and performed for the Florentine Camerata in 1597.
- The earliest operas were tied to the pre-Lenten festival of Carnival, and were most often based on Greek tragedies
- The earliest operas were not sung, but rather chanted, in a form of free declamation or recitative, which was thought close to Greek tragic forms
- Castrati were used in operas beginning with Orfeo, an opera by Claudio Monteverdi performed for the first time in 1607
- The first public opera house, Teatro San Cassiano, opened in Venice in 1641.
- Christoph Willibald Gluck is given credit for the reformation of opera, making all of the music part of the story
- Opera comique (or opera buffa) invented in Naples in early 18th century
Important Opera Composers
- Jules Massenet
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
- Vincenzo Bellini
- Gaetano Donizetti
- Giacomo Puccini
- Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
- Richard Wagner
- Giuseppe Verdi
- Igor Stravinski
- George Frideric Handel
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