Search results
What is opera? Opera (the Italian word for ‘work’) is an art form that tells a story through music and singing. Unlike a musical, opera singers do not use microphones to amplify their voices, and the music, played by the orchestra, is completely live.
- Mozart's Most Famous Music
Mozart’s Requiem was the maestro’s final, unfinished work....
- Beginner's Guide to Philip Glass
Four years later, Satyagraha, an opera on a much larger...
- Opera Glossary
Opera. A dramatic work in one or more acts, set to music for...
- Operas Based on Books
When approached by Paris’s Opera-Comique theatre to compose...
- Tosca
The famed opera singer Floria Tosca’s lover Mario...
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
Britten’s opera is based on Shakespeare’s popular comedy,...
- The Marriage of Figaro
As the opera explores a smart and witty approach to human...
- Carmen
Carmen - The Beginner's Guide to Opera - ENO
- Mozart's Most Famous Music
pros. can customize the look of the browser. - best native dark mode. but you can just install dark reader. -best native new tab page. but you can just install nightTab. - opera desktop and opera mobile are a powerful combination. flow is awsome. but you can just get pocket.
- Overview
- The early history
- The role of Florence
opera, a staged drama set to music in its entirety, made up of vocal pieces with instrumental accompaniment and usually with orchestral overtures and interludes. In some operas the music is continuous throughout an act; in others it is broken up into discrete pieces, or “numbers,” separated either by recitative (a dramatic type of singing that approaches speech) or by spoken dialogue. This article focuses on opera in the Western tradition. For an overview of opera and operalike traditions in Asia (particularly in China), see the appropriate sections of Chinese music, Japanese music, South Asian arts, and Southeast Asian arts; see also short entries on specific forms of Chinese opera, such as chuanqi, jingxi, kunqu, and nanxi.
The English word opera is an abbreviation of the Italian phrase opera in musica (“work in music”). It denotes a theatrical work consisting of a dramatic text, or libretto (“booklet”), that has been set to music and staged with scenery, costumes, and movement. Aside from solo, ensemble, and choral singers onstage and a group of instrumentalists playing offstage, the performers of opera since its inception have often included dancers. A complex, often costly variety of musico-dramatic entertainment, opera has attracted both supporters and detractors throughout its history and has sometimes been the target of intense criticism. Its detractors have viewed it as an artificial and irrational art form that defies dramatic verisimilitude. Supporters have seen it as more than the sum of its parts, with the music supporting and intensifying the lyrics and action to create a genre of greater emotional impact than either music or drama could achieve on its own. In his 1986 autobiography, stage and film director Franco Zeffirelli warned against taking opera too literally:
Short men in armour and large ladies in chiffon singing about ancient Egypt don’t make much sense at one level [but] they can…reveal to us the confusions of emotion and loyalty, the nature of power and pity, that could not be so movingly expressed in any other way.
The preparation of an opera performance involves the work of many individuals whose total contributions sometimes spread across a century or more. The first, often unintentional, recruit is likely the writer of the original story. Then comes the librettist, who puts the story or play into a form—usually involving poetic verse—that is suitable for musical setting and singing. The composer then sets that libretto to music. Architects and acousticians will have designed an opera house suited or adaptable to performances that demand a sizable stage; a large backstage area to house the scenery; a “pit,” or space (often below the level of the stage) to accommodate an orchestra; and seating for a reasonably large audience. A producer (or director) has to specify the work of designers, scene painters, costumers, and lighting experts. The producer, conductor, and musical staff must work for long periods with the chorus, dancers, orchestra, and extras as well as the principal singers to prepare the performance—work that may last anywhere from a few days to many months. All of this activity, moreover, takes place in conjunction with the work not only of researchers and editors who painstakingly prepare the musical score, especially in the case of revivals of works long forgotten or published long ago, but also of the theatre’s administrative staff, which includes the impresario and others responsible for bookings, ticket sales, and other business matters.
Britannica Quiz
An Evening at the Opera
Music historians have continued to debate opera’s ancestry. The plays of the ancient Greek dramatists Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides combined poetic drama and music. During the Middle Ages, biblical dramas that were chanted or interspersed with music were known under various labels, including liturgical dramas (ordines) and similar plays perfo...
The courts of northern Italy, especially that of the Medici family in Florence, were particularly important for the development of opera. Indeed, Florence became the birthplace of opera at the end of the century, as the result of the confluence of three cultural forces: an established theatrical tradition, a strong sense of civic humanism, and a di...
Opera is a key part of Western classical music, and Italian tradition in particular. [3] Originally understood as an entirely sung piece, in contrast to a play with songs, opera has come to include numerous genres, including some that include spoken dialogue such as Singspiel and Opéra comique.
Opera is a multi-platform web browser developed by its namesake company Opera. [11] [12] [13] The current edition of the browser is based on Chromium. Opera is available on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS (Safari WebKit engine). [14] [15] Two mobile versions are still active, called Opera Mobile [16] and Opera Mini.
In this resource, you will: Explore what opera is and learn how to not be intimidated by it. Break down opera’s history of more than 400 years into six separate eras and uncover key players, standout musical features, and notable artistic innovations within each time frame.
People also ask
What does opera mean in English?
What is the difference between opera and a musical?
How does an opera house work?
What is Opera browser based on?
What does an opera writer do?
Is opera good?
Feb 24, 2024 · Our opera introduction features some of the most famous operas by the greatest composers including Mozart, Verdi, Puccini and Wagner.
