Transcript Opera - General Music

Early Opera
The Birth of Opera:
Florence, Mantua, and Venice
• Opera: The word literally means "work," was first
employed in the Italian phrase opera drammatica in
musica (a dramatic work, or play, set to music). In
the West, opera first appeared in Florence, Italy, at
the turn of the seventeenth century.
• The fundamental idea of opera is that sung music
can heighten the emotional intensity of a dramatic
text.
Early Opera in Florence
• Florentine Camerata: A "club" or "circle" of
prominent Florentines gathered to discuss literature,
arts, and science in the home of Count Giovanni Bardi
as early as the 1570s. The members of the Camerata
sought to create a modern music that approximated
the vocal declamation of ancient Greek tragedy.
Composer-singer Jacopo Peri portraying the
mythological poet-singer Arion in Florence in 1589
Jacopo Peri: He was
composer and singer that
is known for creating the
first true operas:
1) Dafne – The first known
opera to have been
written. Only a few parts
of this opera remain today
2) Euridice – The first opera
that remains today.
• The Orpheus Legend is the mythological tale of
the poet-singer Orpheus, the son Apollo, of the
Greek god of the sun and of music. Orpheus (in
Italian Orfeo) falls in love with the beautiful human
Euridice, who dies shortly after their marriage as a
result of a snake bite. Through the divine musical
powers of his voice, Orpheus descends to the
Underworld determined to restore Euridice to life.
This he nearly accomplishes, overcoming the furies
of Hades with the beauty of his expressive song.
This mythological tale is important to the history of
opera as numerous composers would set it to
dramatic music over the next three centuries.
Early opera in Mantua: Monteverdi's Orfeo.
• Claudio Monteverdi—In the early 1600s
Monteverdi took the idea for his opera
from the legend of Orpheus and Euridice
and titled it Orfeo (1607. Compared to
earlier settings of the Orpheus legend,
Monteverdi's is a richer, more complex
version. As well as a larger number and
variety of instruments, Orfeo features
diverse kinds of music: choral songs,
choral dances, instrumental interludes, and
various kinds of solo singing.
Early opera in Venice
• When the first public theater opened in Venice in 1637,
opera as we know it today was born. While in Florence,
Rome, and Mantua opera was sponsored by aristocratic
courts, in Venice it became the enterprise of wealthy
merchant families who saw it as a way to make money.
The audience was no longer a select group of two-hundred
aristocratic guests, but a fee-paying crowd of as many as
1,500 drawn from many sections of society.
•
• Many Changes took place to the Opera
1. Star singers acquired great importance and wealth as
opera houses competed amongst themselves for audience.
2. composers were forced to tailor the music to suit the
voice of leading singers, while librettists wrote texts that
would appeal to their audience
3.stage machinery and elaborate sets created an air of the
spectacular
Monteverdi Continued..
• In 1613 Monteverdi quit his job in Mantua and moved to
Venice, where he had accepted the prestigious position
of maestro di cappella (director of music) at St. Mark's
Basilica. In 1640, three years after the first public
theater was opened for business in Venice, Monteverdi
returned to the operatic stage. He did so with Il ritorno
d'Ulisse in patria (The Return of Ulysses), followed by Le
nozze d'Enea (The Marriage of Aeneas, 1641) and
L'incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea,
1642). The latter, based on a historical rather than
mythological subject matter, is considered by many
today as the greatest opera of the seventeenth century.
Example from Monteverdi’s Orpheo
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Individual Project
• Each student will be given a manila folder. This
folder is going to be your own personal project
board. This project will count as part of your
test grade!
• Using this folder as your board, you are to cover
the following topics within your presentation. You
may use pictures but they must relate to the area
that you are using them in. All Pictures must be
labeled as to what they are. BE CREATIVE!!!!!
– Baroque charateristics (type of music, instruments,
vocabulary)
– Famous Composers – (pick on of the composers we
have talked about and explain about their life and
accomplishments
– Opera – (Using the information you have been given,
create an explanation of what you have learned)