Opera seria

 Usually called dramma per musica or melodramma serio

 an Italian musical term which refers to the noble and "serious" style
of Italian opera that predominated in Europe from the 1710s to about
1770.
 The term itself was rarely used at the time and only attained common
usage once opera seria was becoming unfashionable and beginning to
be viewed as a historical genre.
 The popular rival to opera seria was opera buffa, the 'comic' opera
that took its cue from the improvisatory commedia dell'arte.
Musical Formality

Arias
 was originally any expressive melody, usually, but not always,
performed by a singer.
 a long, accompanied song for a solo voice, typically one in an opera or
oratorio.
Duets
 a performance by two people, especially singers, instrumentalists, or dancers.

Recitatives
 musical declamation of the kind usual in the narrative and dialogue parts of opera and
oratorio, sung in the rhythm of ordinary speech with many words on the same note.

Idomeneo
 is an Italian language opera seria by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The libretto was adapted
by Giambattista Varesco from a French text by Antoine Danchet, which had been set to music
by André Campra as Idoménée in 1712. Mozart and Varesco were commissioned in 1780
by Karl Theodor, Elector of Bavaria for a court carnival. He probably chose the subject,
though it might have been Mozart.[2] The work premiered on 29 January 1781 at the Cuvilliés
Theatre in Munich, Germany.

La Clemenza di Tito
 is an opera seria in two acts composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartto an
Italian libretto by Caterino Mazzolà, after Metastasio. It was started after the bulk of Die
  Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), the last opera that Mozart worked on, was already written.
The work premiered on 6 September 1791 at the Estates Theatre in Prague.

14 composers
Niccolo Jommelli
o was a Neapolitan composer. He was born in Aversaand died in Naples. Along with
other composers mainly in the Holy Roman Empire and France, he was responsible
for certain operatic reforms including reducing ornateness of style and the primacy of
star singers somewhat.
o Operas
o Odoardo (Naples, 1738)
o Ricimero re de' Goti (Rome, 1740)
o Don Chichibio (Rome, 1742
Tommaso Traetta
o Born in bitonto
o (30 March 1727 – 6 April 1779) was an Italian composer.

Il Farnace

La Costanza

I pastori felici

o
Christoph Willibald Gluck
o born on 2 July, baptized 4 July 1714
[1]
– 15 November 1787) was a composer of
[2][3]

Italian and French opera in the early classical period. Born in the Upper
Palatinate and raised in Bohemia,[4] both part of the Holy Roman Empire, he gained
prominence at the Habsburg court at Vienna. There he brought about the practical
reform of opera's dramaturgical practices for which many intellectuals had been
campaigning. With a series of radical new works in the 1760s, among them Orfeo ed
Euridice and Alceste, he broke the stranglehold that Metastasian opera seria had
enjoyed for much of the century. Gluck introduced more drama by using
simpler recitative and cutting the usually long da capo aria. His later operas have half
the length of a typical baroque opera.
Artaserse

Demetrio (Cleonice)

Demofoonte

o
Johann Adolph Hasse
o (born in Bergedorf, near Hamburg, baptised 25 March 1699 – died in Venice 16
December 1783) was an 18th-century German composer, singer and teacher of
music. Immensely popular in his time, Hasse was best known for his
prolific operaticoutput, though he also composed a considerable quantity of sacred
music. Married to soprano Faustina Bordoni and a great friend of librettist Pietro
Metastasio, whose libretti he frequently set, Hasse was a pivotal figure in the
development of opera seria and 18th-century music.

Antioco
(incompletely
preserved)

Antonio e
Cleopatra

Il Sesostrate

o
Niccolo Piccinni
o 16 January 1728 – 7 May 1800) was an Italian composer of symphonies, sacred
music, chamber music, and opera. Although he is somewhat obscure today, Piccinni
was one of the most popular composers of opera—particularly the Neapolitan opera
buffa—of his day.

Le donne
dispettose
(or: Le trame opera Naples, Teatro
Antonio Palomba autumn 1754
per amore; La buffa dei Fiorentini
massara
spiritosa)
 Antonio Palomba, after El
Il curioso del
opera 3 ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote Carnival Naples, Teatro
suo proprio
buffa acts de la Mancha by Miguel de 1755/1756? Nuovo
danno
Cervantes Saavedra

Le gelosie
(or: Le gelosie,
o Le nozze in
confusione)

o
Giuseppe Sarti
o also Sardi; baptised 1 December 1729 – 28 July 1802) was an Italian opera
[1]

composer.
o Born at Faenza

Pompeo in Armenia dramma per musica 3 acts Bartolomeo Vitturi Carnival 1752 Faenza

Il re pastore dramma per musica 3 acts Metastasio Carnival 1753 Pesaro

Vologeso

o
Antonio Sacchini
o (14 June 1730 – 6 October 1786) was an Italian composer, best known for his
operas.
o Sacchini was born in Florence, but raised in Naples, where he received his musical
education. He made a name for himself as a composer of serious and comic opera in
Italy before moving to London, where he produced works for the King's Theatre. He
spent his final years in Paris, becoming embroiled in the musical dispute between the
followers of the composers Gluck and Niccolò Piccinni. His early death in 1786 was
blamed on his disappointment over the apparent failure of his opera Œdipe à Colone.
However, when the work was revived the following year, it quickly became one of the
most popular in the 18th-century French repertoire.

Fra Donato intermezzo 2 acts Naples 1756

Il giocatore intermezzo Naples 1757

Olimpia tradita[28]

o
Johann Christian Bach
o (September 5, 1735 – January 1, 1782) was a composer of the Classical era, the
eleventh surviving child and youngest son of Johann Sebastian Bach. He is
sometimes referred to as "the London Bach" or "the English Bach", due to his time
spent living in the British capital, where he came to be known as John Bach.[1] He is
noted for influencing the concerto style of Mozart.
o W G1 \ Artaserse
W G2 \ Catone in Utica
W G3 \ Alessandro nell'Indie
Etienne-Nicolos Mehul
o (French: [meyl]; 22 June 1763 – 18 October 1817) was a French composer, "the most
important opera composer in France during the Revolution".[1] He was also the first
composer to be called a "Romantic".[2]

4 September
1790;
revision in 4 acts,
Euphrosine, ou
comédie François Benoît 11 September
Le tyran corrigé 5 Comédie-
mise en Hoffmann, 1790;
(Euphrosine et acts Italienne
musique after Conradin revision in 3 acts,
Coradin)
31 October 1790;
with a new Act 3,
13 August 1791

Valadier, after Les

Cora 4 15 February
opéra Incas by Jean-François Opéra
(Alonzo et Cora) acts 1791
Marmontel

o
Luigi Cherubini
o
Gasparo Spontini
Leonardo Vinci
Nicolo porpora
George Frideric Handel

Examples of Opera
1 L'Orfeo
Claudio Monteverdi Mantua, Italy, c1607

With a mythological musician as hero, L'Orfeo ranks as the first great opera.
Monteverdi was the "founding father" of operatic form. Euridice dies from a
snake bite. The sorrowful Orpheus, through his music, tries to save her from the
Underworld. A popular operatic subject (Gluck, Jaques Offenbach, Philip Glass),
L'Orfeo is emotional, melancholy and transcendent.

2 Dido and Aeneas

Henry Purcell London, UK, 1689

A lone English operatic success until the 20th century, Dido recounts the tale of
the tragic Queen of Carthage and her love for Aeneas, inconveniently en route to
found a new Troy. In addition to sailors and witches, Purcell gave us one of the
most sublime laments in opera: Dido's When I Am Laid in Earth.

3 Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar)

George Frideric Handel London, UK, 1724

An epic of love and war often considered Handel's finest work, Giulio Cesare has
a richly intricate plot and the bonus of a brilliantly characterised and
outrageously seductive Cleopatra (see Glyndebourne's Opus Arte DVD with the
dancing Danielle de Niese as Cleo). Caesar, written for castrato, is often sung by a
countertenor. Other good Handel: Rinaldo, Radamisto, Tamerlano, Rodelinda,
Ariodante, Alcina.

4 Serse (Xerxes)
Handel London, UK, 1738

Opens with one of Handel's best known arias, Ombra Mai Fu, sung by Serse, King
of Persia, in honour of a plane tree and its shade. A plot of jealousy, infidelity and
treachery results in a cocktail of bravura music. ENO's 1992 production by
Nicholas Hytner helped put Handel's operas back on the map.

5 Orfeo ed Euridice (Orpheus and Eurydice)

Christoph Willibald Gluck Vienna, Austria, 1762
Written in Italian, this intense drama was later revised as the French Orphée. A
mix of old and new styles, poised at the birth of Romanticism, this is regarded as
one of the key operas of the 18th century. Maria Callas made J'ai Perdu Mon
Eurydice a stand-alone hit.

Comique parlando
a French opera genre that was very popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries . There is
kinship with the Italian opera buffaand the German version, the Singspiel .
Examples of opera buffa
 Amelia Goes to Ball – by Gian Carlo Menotti
 Calandro – by Giovanni Alberto RIstori
 Don Pasquale – by Gaetano Donizetti
 Don Procopio – by Georges Bizet
 Gli equivoci – by Stephen Storace