Monday, January 23, 2012

About Theatre Arts Italian Opera

By Aaron B. Baker


Italian opera could be the earliest known opera form. Even though the Greek and Roman Theater had inspired it, it inspired many countries all over the world, including most of Europe. Some claim that the word opera has been derived from the Italian words "Opera in Musica" meaning work in music. The evidence of the very first opera performed in Italy was in the wedding of Marie de Medici and Henry IV of France. An italian man , opera had three stages namely the baroque, the romantic along with the modern.

Baroque period is the name of these period of Italian opera that started in Italy in the beginning of the 17th century. The voice used was quite high pitched along with instrumental music. This style was called monody and was developed by Giulio Caccini and Jacopo Peri. It was reflected in the opera Euridice which was based on the story of Eurydice and Orpheus. When there were no dialogues during the performance, there were songs with music. Such a opera inspired many other writes, on of these was Claudio Monteverdi who wrote La Favola D'Orfeo which had the monody style. It was his first play plus it still is famous with the audience today. Monteverdi worked very challenging to synchronizing instrumental music with the words and showed this effort in Mantua, with large choruses with nearly forty instruments that developed a really good effect. He was named as the Maestro Da Cappela in Venice around 1613.

The first opera house for public was opened around 1637. Monteverdi wrote many compositions just for this theater and his works L'Incoronazione di Poppae and that i Ritomo d'Ullise in Patria were prominent out of the many. He even brought the Bel Canto and Buffa styles into Italian opera. Bel canto stood a more even tone and eased the singing stress. Buffa had more comic touch with amusing and mocking elements. These acted as the stepping-stone for many other later composers. At the conclusion of the century there were three hundred and fifty opera made for the theaters of Venice alone. Many young artists were inspired to work in these theaters and bring out their talents. People originated in outside Italy too.

Inside the 19th century romantic opera began to rise and Gioacchino Rossini was in charge of it. The romantic opera involved plenty of emotions and imagination in addition to lots of music and arias. This music was so fine that it over shadowed the blunders inside stories. His composures such as La Cenerentola and Barber of Seville are famous till today. Numerous others such as Vincenzo Bellini, Giuseppe Verdi and Gaetano Donizetti followed him.

Giuseppe Verdi changed just how opera was written at that time. Nabucco was his first work and yes it was a very big success due to the great choruses along with enormous liveliness within the music. He even wrote Va pensiero, a chorus presentation to inspire the warriors during the time of Italian independence struggle. The works, which followed this had a more patriotic theme and were also according to older romantic works. He soon started to venture into different musical forms and finally his creation Otello replaced Rossini's opera. His last work Falstaff finally changed the typical form of theater and made music and words more free flowing.




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