Italian opera

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Italian opera can be divided into three periods, the Baroque, the Romantic and the modern. The Baroque appeared first, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and approximately 200 years later, the Romantic. The word opera is a shortened form of the Italian opera in musica (work in music); an English dictionary in 1656 stated, "In Italy it signifies a tragedy, tragi-comedy, or pastoral which is not acted after the vulgar manner, but performed by voices in that way, which the Italians term, 'recitative', being likewise adorned with scenes by perspective, and extraordinary advantage by music."

1 Baroque period
2 Romantic period
3 Modern period
4 See also

[edit] Baroque period

Not only the term, but the art of opera, came from Italy. The first opera for which music has survived was performed in 1600 at the wedding of Henry IV of France and Marie de Medici at the Pitti Palace in Florence. The opera, Euridice, from an Italian poem by Ottavio Rinuccini, set to music by Jacopo Peri and Giulio Caccini, recounted the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. The style of singing favored by Peri and Caccini was a heightened form of natural speech, dramatic recitation supported by instrumental string music; a technique developed in Florence in the 1580s known as monody. Recitation thus preceded the development of arias, though it soon became the custom to include separate songs and instrumental interludes during periods when voices were silent. The theme attracted Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) who wrote his first opera, La Favola d'Orfeo (The Fable of Orpheus), in 1607, which is still performed.

Monteverdi gave a new dramatic life to the instrumental music, insisting on a strong relationship between the words and the instrumental music. When it was performed in Mantua, an orchestra of 38 instruments, numerous choruses and recitatives were used to make a lively drama. It was a far more ambitious version than those previously performed — more opulent, more varied in recitatives, more exotic in scenery — with stronger musical climaxes which allowed the full scope for the virtuosity of the singers. Opera had revealed its first stage of maturity in the hands of Monteverdi.

In 1613, Monteverdi became the maestro da cappela at St. Mark's in Venice. Though he did not write any operas during his tenure, he wrote elaborate madrigals which were the bases for arias.

In 1637, the first public opera house, Teatro San Cassiano, was opened in Venice with an enthusiastic response. The opera flourished along with familiar less sophisticated entertainment, the commedia dell'arte. Monteverdi began to write opera again. Unknown to him, it was close to the end of his life. His two operas, I Ritorno d'Ullise in Patria (The Return of Ullyses, 1637), and L'Incoronazione di Poppaea (The Coronation of Poppaea, 1642) were met with great enthusiasm and survive in today's world. Both operas showed a marked increase in musical flexibility with a mixture of recitatives, solos, duets and ensembles.

Monteverdi is said to be responsible for the introduction of bel canto and buffa styles. Bel canto is defined as operatic singing stressing ease, purity and eveness of tone production and an agile and precise vocal technique; buffa when used to describe opera signifies comic complications, farcical and burlesque elements, the unusual and the unexpected. His works, which reflected the moods and dramatic vividness of the libretto in his music, became a model for the operatic composers to follow.

From this time onward, opera became increasingly prominent in musical life. Within forty years, Venice had ten opera houses. By the end of the century more than 350 operas had been produced in the new theaters in Venice and an equal number by Venetian composers elsewhere in Italy. Wealthy families had season tickets; inexpensive tickets brought in others; foreign visitors came to Venice for the music. Opera performances and composition became the medium through which individual artists gained prominence and fortune so that they no longer depended upon court patronage.

Among the favoured opera composers of the seventeenth century were Domenico Gabrielli (1651-1690) and Giovanni Bononcini (1670-1747). Bononcini enjoyed immense success in Naples. His Il Trionfo di Camilla (1697) made him famous, well beyond the Italian peninsula. His operas were conducted and performed under her leadership in Vienna and London.

[edit] Romantic period

Romantic opera, which placed emphasis on the imagination and the emotions began to appear in the early 19th century, and because of its arias and music, gave more dimension to the extreme emotions which typified the theater of that era. In addition, it is said that fine music often excused glaring faults in character drawing and plot lines. Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868) initiated the Romantic period. His first success was an "opera buffa" (comic opera), La Cambiale di Matrimonio (1810). His reputation still survives today through his Barber of Seville. But he also wrote serious opera, Otello (1816) and Guilliame Tell (1829).

Rossini's successors in the Italian bel canto were Vincenzo Bellini (1801–35), Gaetano Donizetti (1797–1843) and Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901). It was Verdi who transformed the whole nature of operatic writing during the course of his long career. His first great successful opera, Nabucco (1842), caught the public fancy because of the driving vigour of its music and its great choruses. Va, pensiero, one of the chorus renditions, was interpreted and gave advantageous meaning to the struggle for Italian independence and to unify Italy.

After Nabucco, Verdi based his operas on patriotic themes and many of the standard romantic sources: Victor Hugo (Ernani, 1844); Byron (Il Duo Foscari, 1844); and Shakespeare (Macbeth, 1847). Verdi was experimenting with musical and dramatic forms, attempting to discover things which only opera could do. In 1877, he created Otello which completely replaced Rossini's opera, and which is described by critics as the finest of Italian romantic operas with the traditional components: the solo arias, the duets and the choruses fully integrated into the melodic and dramatic flow.

Verdi's last opera, Falstaff (1893), broke free of conventional form altogether and finds music which follows quick flowing simple words and because of its respect for the pattern of ordinary speech, it created a threshold for a new operatic era in which speech patterns are paramount.

Opera had become a marriage of the arts, a musical drama, full of glorious song, costume, orchestral music and pageantry; sometimes, without the aid of a plausible story. From its conception during the baroque period to the maturity of the romantic period, it was the medium through which tales and myths were revisited, history was retold and imagination was stimulated. The strength of it fell into a more violent era for opera: Verismo.

Source: Dr. Anthony A. Abruzzese of the PIRANDELLO LYCEUM Institute of Italian American Studies, Research and Cultural Disemmination.

[edit] Modern period

The greatest Italian operas of the twentieth century were written by Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924). These include Manon Lescaut, La bohème, Tosca, and Madam Butterfly. His final opera Turandot was left incomplete. Luciano Berio attempted a completion of the work. Berio also wrote operas but none have endured on the stage. Luigi Dallapiccola (1904–1975) wrote two operas that have stood the test of time, Ulisse (1960–68), and Il Prigioniero (1944–48, "The Prisoner").