A World of Music

Baroque opera

(1600-1750)

The stories in this period focused on Greek mythology and represented love, death, tragedy and duty confronted to feelings. Some famous composers and some of their works were Claudio Monteverdi who wrote L'Orfeo (premiere in 1607), Francesco Cavalli who created Ormindo and Giasome and after 1700 Friederich Händel who produced Agripina, Alcina, Orlando, etc. 

Operas broadened from court sphere to wider audiences all through the period and, at the same time, some other works, which included low-class character and humorous situations as well as speech parts, developed. These pieces could be played independently or between opera acts. They were called zarzuela in Spain, opera buffa and intermezzo in Italy and singspiel in Germany. 

Classical opera

(1750-1799)

Classical opera developed in a period of history where the power of aristocracy was questioned and the Enlightening thinking arose. Operas became more theatrical, the scenery and structure became more important than the music, which also turned to simpler melodies and lyrics. These changes attracted a general audience. Christoph Gluck (1714-1787) encouraged these variations in opera. He wrote Orfeo and Eurydice in 1762, his first work and the one where he tried to change the characteristics of opera. Other authors are: Amadeus Mozart, whose most famous operas were comic operas, wrote The Abduction from the Seraglio (1782), The Marriage of Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), The Magic Flute (premiere 1791), etc. Luigi Cherubini created Médée (1789). Domenico Cimarosa wrote Il matrimonio segreto (1792).

Secretaría de Cultura Ciudad de México. Teatro de la Ciudad Esperanza Iris , función especial para medios de la ópera La flauta mágica, según Papageno, de W.A. Mozart, en adaptación y dirección de Oscar Eduardo Tapia, con la compañía Producciones Arándano A.C..  Wikimedia Commons.(CC- BY)

Romantic opera

(19th century)

At the beginning of the 19th century, the Bel Canto school in Italy greatly influenced operas. They included florid complex melodies which required singers' high pitch control. The most famous operas were: Rossini's (1792-1868) The Barber of Seville and Cinderella, Bellini's Norma  and Donizetti's The elixir of Love and Don Pasquale. At the end of the century Guiuseppe Verdi (1830-1901) changed the vision of opera, from the ornate display of vocals of the previous period to the drama of stories including an Italian patriotic movement born after the Napoleonic era. Verdi represented this national spirit. His most famous works are: Nabucco (1842), Rigoletto (premiere 1851), Il trovatore (premiere January 1853), La traviata (premiere March 1853), Aida (1871). In Germany, one of the most outstanding authors is Richard Wagner (1813-1883) whose work The ring of the Nibelung (a four-opera work) and Tristan and Isolde are worldwide known.

WikimediaImages. El barbero de Sevilla. Pixabay. (Pixabay Licence)

Opera now

(20th century)

The first opera writers in this century were those under the verismo movement, which started near the end of the 19th century and extended through the beginning of the 20th. Artistic movements developed quickly in this period:

-Postromanticism or wagnerism, which meant great harmony and orchestra performance. Richard Strauss was its best representative. He wrote, for example, Salome (1905), The Knight of the Rose (1911) and his last opera was Capriccio (1942).

-Impressionism. Almost at the same time as the previous trend, impressionism started to develop. Operas gave emphasis to instrumental timbres, static harmony and the authors wanted to show a reaction against romanticism. Claude Debussy (1862-1918) wrote Pélleas and Mélisande and he also started a type of opera called the literary opera, which focused on literary texts that are recited.

-Neoclassicism. It took place between the First and Second World War. Authors used formal, harmonic or melodic elements from the music of the eighteenth century, classical elements and even more modern elements such as dissonance. Igor Stravinsky wrote Oedipus Rex (1927), The Rake's Progress (1951) and Sergei Prokofiev's most famous opera is The Love of the Three Oranges. Carl Orff created Antigone (1949) and Oedipus der Tyrann (1959).

-After the Second World War, movements such as serialism, minimalism, aleatoric music or atonality developed though the works were not really successful as audience preferred a more traditional type of opera.