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Sep 10, 2024 · The English word opera is an abbreviation of the Italian phrase opera in musica (“work in music”). It denotes a theatrical work consisting of a dramatic text, or libretto (“booklet”), that has been set to music and staged with scenery, costumes, and movement.
opera, Entirely musical drama consisting of vocal pieces with instrumental accompaniment, typically punctuated with orchestral overtures and interludes. Opera emerged at the end of the 16th century in Florence, fueled by the convergence of several cultural currents, including an established tradition of musical theatre, a desire to experiment ...
Opera is a type of classical music. It is also a mix of several art forms. Like actors in the theater, opera singers act out a story on a stage. An orchestra plays the music. Opera often features ballet or other types of dance, too.
Aug 28, 2024 · Richard Wagner, German dramatic composer and theorist whose operas and music had a revolutionary influence on the course of Western music, either by extension of his discoveries or reaction against them. Among his major works are Tristan und Isolde (1865), Parsifal (1882), and The Ring of the Nibelung (1869–76).
Sep 10, 2024 · Opera - Reform, Grand, Music: Dissatisfaction arose in some quarters with the excesses of Italian opera seria—especially its predictable use of recitative and aria and its catering to solo coloratura (an elaborately embellished vocal melody) and other ornamental features that impeded the action.
Opera seria, (Italian: “serious opera”), style of Italian opera dominant in 18th-century Europe. It emerged in the late 17th century, notably in the work of Alessandro Scarlatti and other composers working in Naples, and is thus frequently called Neapolitan opera.
Since the 18th century jingxi (or jingju), popularly known as Peking opera, has arisen as the principal form of Chinese music-drama. Credit for the beginning of jingxi is given to actors from Anhui (now a province in eastern China) appearing in Beijing (then called Peking) in the 1790s.
Claudio Monteverdi (baptized May 15, 1567, Cremona, Duchy of Milan [Italy]—died November 29, 1643, Venice) was an Italian composer in the late Renaissance, the most important developer of the then new genre, the opera. He also did much to bring a “modern” secular spirit into church music.
Sep 10, 2024 · Many of the qualities that became associated with the so-called Viennese Classic style of the 18th century—especially the instrumental music of Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven —had their origins in the tuneful vocal style of Neapolitan opera.
Sep 10, 2024 · Resembling the style of French grand opera, the work is notable for its use of an idiom based on Russian folk song and its suggestion of “oriental” melody. Rimsky-Korsakov’s numerous operas alternate between dramas and fairy tales, with more or less weight given to recitative and lyrical elements.
