History of opera

Opera is the combination of drama and music and it consists of the whole spectrum of

theatrical components just like in a drama. Such elements include dialogue, acting, costumes,

actions, and scenery. The total of all these components with music added is what defines the art

form of opera. Opera was first composed in Italy in the year 1600 and it has progressively

dominated the history of the form until modern day. Most of the major composers came from

Italy, including Handel, Gluck, and Mozart. As noted by (Donald Grout, 2003) “native Italian

composers of the 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi and

Puccini, are amongst the most famous operas ever written and today are performed in opera

houses across the world.”

Among the recognized composers of opera is Jacopo Peri and his work “Dafne”. Jacopo

work did not ascend out of an ingenious vacuum in the field of sung drama. A fundamental

prerequisite for the foundation of opera proper was the exercise of monody. Monody is the solo

singing and setting off a theatrically apprehended melody, premeditated to express the emotions

of its content. It’s supplemented by a comparatively modest sequence of chords rather than other

polyphonic parts.

During the 17th century, the idea of composing a more elevated sort of opera was

developed and it resulted in a genre, “opera seria” that is serious opera. This dominated in Italy

and the whole of Europe until the late of the century. The inspiration of this new attitude can be

traced in the works of the composers such as Carlo Francesco Pollarolo and the enormously

prolific Alessandro Scarlatti.

 Jean-Philippe Rameau, George Frederic Handel, and Christoph Willibald Gluck were the

greatest opera composers of the 18th century. Nonetheless, their works were exceeded by the

excellent operas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In the beginning 19th century, Gioacchino

Rossini and Gaetano Donizetti conquered Italian opera (Donald Grout, 2003). In the 20th century

opera seemed to diminish as the composer who stuck with it found it hard to establish because it

became more expensive and unavoidably appealed small audiences. Nevertheless, it has

continued to endure the hard time and the emergence of new forms of genres.

Reference

Williams, H. W., Grout, D., Grout, D. (2003). A Short History of Opera. United States:

Columbia University Press.