Opera

Opera (or Melodrama) is an art form that consists of a stage performance of a drama (whose text is called the "libretto"). The drama is presented utilizing scenary, costumes, acting. Much of the dialogue is presented through singing. Recitative is singing in much the form of speaking. Aria is an extended solo passage. Arioso is a smaller, more limited in subject matter aria.

Opera draws from many other art forms. Its backbone is certainly music, it is performed with dialoges, so it is a drama with music, on a stage, so decorative arts are important, as is dance, which sometimes appears in it. Giuseppe Verdi used to call it: the art of recitar cantando.

Opera began in Italy in the Renaissance, as an attempt to revive Classical Greek drama. Opera means simply "work" in Italian. The first opera was written around 1597 in Northern Italy, sources differ on the exact date and place.

For centuries, Italian opera was the standard form, and many operas written by English- or German-speaking composers, Mozart, for example, are in Italian. A separate French tradition, sung in French, was founded by Jean Baptiste Lully, and well into the middle of the nineteenth century, operas performed in France were usually written or translated into French. Spain produced its own distinctive form: zarzuela.

The form of the opera consists of several sung pieces, (arias), separated by recitation over accompaniment. Recitation in opera is a form of singing intermediate between ordinary melodic singing and formal spoken recitation.

Early operas consisted of recitative accompanied only by basso continuo and arias accompianed by full orchestra. Later operas involved the full orchestra throughout the opera to provide a smoother transition between parts.

This changed reached a climax when Richard Wagner introduced the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerke or the Total Work of Art, where the action is continued, with no stops or repetitions, and the music is a continuous flux, not a few pieces separated by recitatives. Wagner also introduced leitmotif, where each character or idea in the story is represented by a musical line that appears whenever they appear or are mentioned.

The themes of the opera at the beginning were mythological or historical, usually tragic and moral. Later, composers introduced more everyday themes.

What are our priorities for writing in this area? To help develop a list of the most basic topics about opera, please see opera basic topics.

Opera is also the name of a popular alternative web browser; see Opera browser

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