The Most Powerful Form Of Opera

Opera Assignment

Opera is a drama that is acted and it is usually sung with an orchestral accompaniment. It uses music, acting, poetry, dance, scenery and costumes to make it more appealing to the audience. The characters usually are very emotional and it is a very powerful form of musical theatre. By combining all of these factors together it becomes very impressive and something to remember.

Some important plot ingredients are death, seduction, love, fights, God, and many other things. Other plot ingredients are misunderstandings, the mood, the way the characters are characterised and dramatic action.

i) The Overture is a song played at the very start of an opera and it usually involves music that will be played later on during the opera.

v) A chorus is used to make comments on the action and generate atmosphere. This is usually sung by many characters like sailors, peasants, prisoners and other side characters.

4. Opera was first introduced in Italy in about 1600s but it first started and was very successful around 1597. Monteverdi was an Italian composer during the late Renaissance - early Baroque and he contributed to opera by attending some of the earlier operas, and then going on to make his own operas which was much more dramatic, expressive and he unified the whole acts with the music making the climax for the singer match up with the climax of the orchestral piece. Some would say that Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo was the true first opera. Between 1600 and 1750, the first operas led to even more being made due to the first one’s success and soon after only letting few select people watch, they opened up to the public. Opera only rises and became popular during this period and it was highly

During the Classical period, opera split up into 3 different genres, Opera seria, Opera Buffa and Singspiel. Opera seria was like the Baroque Period’s opera but arias became longer and used in da capo form, there are 3 acts and it is all in Italian. In Opera Buffa, arias slowly changed into more through-composed forms due to larger ensembles, there were 2 acts but it was still in Italian. Singspiel is the last type of opera and it had typically 2 acts and unlike normal opera, it also included dialogue. Mozart composed many famous opera like Don Giovanni and these may well have influenced many composers after him. Mozart’s operas were very well composed, and dramatic and people flocked to see them but in the end, Mozart shifted back to classical