Opera is a theatrical artistic genre that consists of a staged drama accompanied by music, that

is, a dramatic composition in which instrumental music and singing are combined, with or
without the presence of spoken dialogue. The singers are accompanied by a musical group,
which in some operas may be a full symphony orchestra. The singers and their characters are
classified according to their vocal timbres, the male singers in bass, bass-baritone (or bass
singer), baritone, tenor, and countertenor, and the female singers in alto, mezzo-soprano, and
soprano. Each of these classifications has subdivisions, for example, a baritone can be a
lyrical baritone, a character baritone, or a snort baritone, which associates with the singer's
voice.
An opera follows a standard script. The first part is the Overture, where a song is played by
the orchestra. Followed by, Recitative, where the actors are talking. The secondary characters
take part in the chorus, while the main ones interpret the arias.
Jacopo Peri was an Italian composer from the 16th century who made the first opera, with a
composition of monidc style, named “Opera Dafne”. He wrote this Opera with the interest in
reviving elements from German drama.
The most important school was Venice, where the first genius of opera appeared, Claudio
Monteverdi, also an Italian composer, was the most important figure in the transition from
Renaissance to Baroque music and he did the most important development in the history of
opera. He established the opera as a serious form of musical and dramatic expression, writing
his first musical drama and the most important opera ever made named “Opera L’Orfeu,”
written in 1607. He replied to the highly charged speech of a great actor with the use of
voices in a better way to express all the emotions. Also, the orchestra was used not only to go
with the singers but to establish the moods of the various scenes.
L’Orfeo (SV 318), sometimes called La favola d’Orfeo, is an early Baroque favola in music,
or opera (sometimes considered late Renaissance), by Claudio Monteverdi, with a libretto by
Alessandro Striggio. It is based on the Greek legend of Orpheus and tells the story of his
descent to Hades and his fruitless attempt to bring his dead bride Eurydice back to the living
world. It was written in 1607 for a court performance during the annual Carnival at Mantua.
L’Orfeo has the honor of being the earliest surviving opera that is still regularly performed
today. The action takes place in two contrasting locations: the fields of Thrace (Acts 1, 2, and
5) and the Underworld (Acts 3 and 4). An instrumental toccata (English: tucket, meaning a
flourish on trumpets) precedes the entrance of La musica, representing the “spirit of music,”
who sings a prologue of five stanzas of verse. After a gracious welcome to the audience, she
announces that she can, through sweet sounds, “calm every troubled heart.” She sings a
further paean to the power of music, before introducing the drama’s main protagonist, Orfeo,
who “held the wild beasts spellbound with his song.”
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's operas include 22 musical dramas in a variety of genres. They
range from the small-scale, derivative works of his youth to the full-fledged operas of his
maturity. Three of the works were abandoned before completion and were not performed
until many years after the composer's death. His mature works are all considered classics and
have never been out of the repertory of the world's opera houses.

From a very young age, Mozart had, according to opera analyst David Cairns, "an
extraordinary capacity ... for seizing on and assimilating whatever in a newly encountered
style (was) most useful to him". In a letter to his father, dated 7 February 1778, Mozart wrote,
"As you know, I can more or less adopt or imitate any kind and style of composition". He
used this gift to break new ground, becoming simultaneously "assimilator, perfector and
innovator". Thus, his early works follow the traditional forms of the Italian opera seria and
opera buffa as well as the German Singspiel. In his maturity, according to music writer
Nicholas Kenyon, he "enhanced all of these forms with the richness of his innovation", and,
in Don Giovanni, he achieved a synthesis of the two Italian styles, including a seria character
in Donna Anna, buffa characters in Leporello and Zerlina, and a mixed seria-buffa character
in Donna Elvira. Unique among composers, Mozart ended all his mature operas, starting with
Idomeneo, in the key of the overture. Ideas and characterizations introduced in the early
works were later developed and refined. For example, Mozart's later operas feature a series of
memorable, strongly drawn female characters, in particular, the so-called "Viennese
soubrettes" who, in opera writer Charles Osborne's phrase, "contrive to combine charm with
managerial instinct". Music writer and analyst Gottfried Kraus has remarked that all these
women were present, as prototypes, in the earlier operas; Bastienne (1768), and Sandrina (La
finta giardiniera, 1774) are precedents for the later Constanze and Pamina, while Sandrina's
foil Serpetta is the forerunner of Blonde, Susanna, Zerlina, and Despina.
Don Giovanni, in full The Libertine Punished; or, Don Giovanni, Italian Il dissolute punito;
ossia, il Don Giovanni, opera in two acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart that premiered at the
original National Theatre in Prague on October 29, 1787. The opera’s subject is Don Juan,
the notorious libertine of fiction, and his eventual descent into hell. For Mozart, it was
unusually intense work, and it was not entirely understood in his own time. Within a
generation, however, it was recognized as one of the greatest of all operas.
Beethoven was born into a musical family. His father tried to make him into a child prodigy,
like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but failed. Beethoven did, however, meet Mozart in 1787.
By that time, the teenaged Beethoven had published a composition (Nine Variations on a
March by Dressler [1783]) and had been appointed continuo player to the Bonn opera. After
their meeting, Mozart reportedly said of Beethoven, “This young man will make a great name
for himself in the world.” Three years later, composer Joseph Haydn “discovered”
Beethoven, who was then a viola player in the Bonn orchestra, and took him under his wing.
In 1792 Beethoven left Bonn for good. He took with him several musical souvenirs, including
the sudden pianos, unexpected outbursts, and “Mannheim rockets” typical of the Bonn
orchestra. These elements feature prominently in Beethoven’s later work.
Fidelio originally titled Leonore, oder Der Triumph der ehelichen Liebe (Leonore, or The
Triumph of Marital Love), Op. 72, is Ludwig van Beethoven's only opera. The German
libretto was originally prepared by Joseph Sonnleithner from the French of Jean-Nicolas
Bouilly, with the work premiering at Vienna's Theater an der Wien on 20 November 1805.
The following year, Stephan von Breuning helped shorten the work from three acts to two.
After further work on the libretto by Georg Friedrich Treitschke, a final version was
performed at the Kärntnertortheater on 23 May 1814. By convention, the first two versions
are referred to as Leonore.

Assignment José Silva