Let's discuss music of the world starting with Opera by AXJ

[AXJ USA]

Let's discuss music of the world starting with Opera

Opera is one of those pleasures in life only a minority of humans have the chance to experience and enjoy, but like everything in life it is as question of preference but you have to give it a chance. I was fortunate enough to have been born in a family that has always appreciated and enjoyed opera and due to destiny ended up married a woman who sings opera. Let's go though a little history of its evolution so that we are all on the same page here. What is Opera? Let's read this definition by Wiki:

Opera (English plural: operas; Italian plural: opere) is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text (called a libretto) and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting.^[1] Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance. The performance is typically given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble.

Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition.^[2] It started in Italy at the end of the 16th century (with Jacopo Peri's lost Dafne, produced in Florence in 1598) and soon spread through the rest of Europe: Schütz in Germany, Lully in France, and Purcell in England all helped to establish their national traditions in the 17th century. In the 18th century, Italian opera continued to dominate most of Europe, except France, attracting foreign composers such as Handel. Opera seria was the most prestigious form of Italian opera, until Gluck reacted against its artificiality with his "reform" operas in the 1760s. Today the most renowned figure of late 18th century opera is Mozart, who began with opera seria but is most famous for his Italian comic operas, especially The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze Di Figaro), Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte, as well as The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte), a landmark in the German tradition.

The first third of the 19th century saw the highpoint of the bel canto style, with Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini all creating works that are still performed today. It also saw the advent of Grand Opera typified by the works of Auber and Meyerbeer. The mid-to-late 19th century was a "golden age" of opera, led and dominated by Wagner in Germany and Verdi in Italy. The popularity of opera continued through the verismo era in Italy and contemporary French opera through to Puccini and Strauss in the early 20th century. During the 19th century, parallel operatic traditions emerged in central and eastern Europe, particularly in Russia and Bohemia. The 20th century saw many experiments with modern styles, such as atonality and serialism (Schoenberg and Berg), Neoclassicism (Stravinsky), and Minimalism (Philip Glass and John Adams). With the rise of recording technology, singers such as Enrico Caruso became known to audiences beyond the circle of opera fans. Operas were also performed on (and written for) radio and television. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera

As we read this history of Opera we find that many different countries and cultures created their own versions of the human voice singing to music written by real genius, and accompanied by unique instruments that never quite reached the recreation of the sounds generated by the human voice. One of my favorites is the "Oboe d'Amore".

I just asked my wife to define what singing Opera is for her, and she told me it is the interpretation of the feelings and emotions of life through music. In a word it is feeling life and singing about it.

One of our favorite Opera singers/Divas has always been Monserrat Caballe of Spain, but this takes us directly to the concept of the "Bel Canto" and its authors, Verdi, Puccini, etc. Let's read about it on Wiki:

Giuseppe Verdi, by Giovanni Boldini, 1886 (National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome)

The bel canto opera movement flourished in the early 19th century and is exemplified by the operas of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Pacini, Mercadante and many others. Literally "beautiful singing", bel canto opera derives from the Italian stylistic singing school of the same name. Bel canto lines are typically florid and intricate, requiring supreme agility and pitch control. Examples of famous operas in the bel canto style include Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia and La Cenerentola, as well as Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor.

Following the bel canto era, a more direct, forceful style was rapidly popularized by Giuseppe Verdi, beginning with his biblical opera Nabucco. Verdi's operas resonated with the growing spirit of Italian nationalism in the post-Napoleonic era, and he quickly became an icon of the patriotic movement (although his own politics were perhaps not quite so radical). In the early 1850s, Verdi produced his three most popular operas: Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La traviata. But he continued to develop his style, composing perhaps the greatest French Grand Opera, Don Carlos, and ending his career with two Shakespeare-inspired works, Otello and Falstaff, which reveal how far Italian opera had grown in sophistication since the early 19th century.

After Verdi, the sentimental "realistic" melodrama of verismo appeared in Italy. This was a style introduced by Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana and Ruggero Leoncavallo's Pagliacci that came virtually to dominate the world's opera stages with such popular works as Giacomo Puccini's La bohème, Tosca, and Madama Butterfly. Later Italian composers, such as Berio and Nono, have experimented with modernism.^[9]

Opera is much more than a just a group of 100 or so human beings getting together on a stage to recreate stories of life through music, but is actually one of the greatest achievements of humanity that can be enjoyed by peoples of all walks of life. Here is one of my favorite renditions by the Diva herself: 

It really matters not that you have read Tosca nor understand Italian to feel the emotions this woman is transmitting with her voice accompanied by instruments. And here is a rendition by the Divo Placido Domingo expressing the frustration of a man about to die.