Chamber opera

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Chamber opera is a designation for operas written to be performed with a chamber ensemble rather than a full orchestra.

The term and form were invented by Benjamin Britten in the 1940s, when the English Opera Group needed works that could easily be taken on tour and performed in a variety of small performance spaces. The Rape of Lucretia was the first example of the genre. Other composers, including Thomas Adès and Philip Glass, have since adopted the term for their own works.

Instrumentation for a chamber opera will vary, but Britten scored his for a band of fourteen musicians, including the full instrumental range of a symphony orchestra but played by soloists rather than sections.

The term chamber opera is also sometimes used to describe smaller Baroque operatic works such as Pergolesi's La serva padrona and Charpentier's Les Arts florissants, which also use small instrumental and vocal ensembles.