The opera is a musical drama combining
singing and music.
It includes all stage arts including stage design, costumes and full makeup.
The opera is a musical melange of a highly evolved singing culture and
fine orchestral writing. It was invented in the late 16th century, as a
part of a renaissance
of ancient Roman
and Greek cultures, and its origins are rooted in the ancient
Greek
theatre. The first opera was "Daphne",
first performed in 1598 in Florence.
It's music was composed by Jacopo Peri
(1561-1633).
Throughout
operatic history, there is a constant, fascinating competition between
drama and music as different artists underline
one element as more important, yet both consitute a significant component
in the opera as a whole. Monteverdi,
Gluck
and Rameau
were the important baroque
opera composers, while Mozart,
with "The Marriage of Figaro",
"Don Giovanni",
the "Magic Flute"
and many other operas, was the leading classical
composer in this field. Among 19th century
romantic
Italian
composers were Rossini
("The Barber
of Seville")
and Puccini
("Tosca"
and "La Boheme")
and of course the greatest opera writer Verdi,
who, with unforgettable operas such as "Nabucco",
"La Traviata",
"Rigoletto"
and "Aida"
made opera the perfect romantic combination of great drama and worderful
music.
In
his great "music dramas",
German
composer Wagner
("Twilight
of the Gods", "Tristan
and Isolde") developed Weber's
system of light-motifs,
in which every character is represented by a musical motif, played every
time it is either mentioned or appears, and he turned to write operas about
historical and German myths. The end of 19th century brought opera writers
to deal with more realistic subjects thanbefore (opera
verismo),
and they strated writing about the lives of the common people of their
time ("Carmen"
by Bizet,
and Puccini's
"Madame Butterfly",
for instance).
The
excellent opera singer always gained audiences' admiration. There were
times (the 17th century) when the admiration they enjoyed made them masters
of the opera, and composers wrote operas that
would allow them to demonstrate their staggering aptitude. Although opera
since Gluck became
more dramatic and less of a virtuoso display, there were singers in the
20th Century, such as Maria Callas
"the divine" and Italian tenor
Enrico Caruso,
who became icons of opera singing history. Of the most famous opera singers
in the world today, are the tenors Luciano
Pavarotti and Placido
Domingo. They perform in the main opera theaters
in the world today, from the Metropolitan in New-York
to Milan
and Vienna.
The opera, in many people's opinion,
is artistic wholeness, derived in the number of arts taking part, and in
the quality that this combination produces.
"Hoffmann's tales"
by Offenbach
Prokofiev's "Love
of the 3 oranges"
From Verdi's "Nabucco"
"Habanera" from the opera "Carmen" by Bizet (Solo: Lori-Kaye Miller)
"The Queen of the Night" from the opera "The Magic Flute" by Mozart (Singer: Diana Damrau)