Origins The Italian word means "work", both in the sense of the labour done and the result produced. The Italian word derives from the Latin word , a singular noun meaning "work" and also the plural of the noun . According to the
Oxford English Dictionary, the Italian word was first used in the sense "composition in which poetry, dance, and music are combined" in 1639; the first recorded English usage in this sense dates to 1648.
Dafne by
Jacopo Peri was the earliest composition considered opera, as understood today. It was written around 1597, largely under the inspiration of an elite circle of literate
Florentine humanists who gathered as the "
Camerata de' Bardi". Significantly,
Dafne was an attempt to revive the classical
Greek drama, part of the wider revival of antiquity characteristic of the
Renaissance. The members of the Camerata considered that the "chorus" parts of Greek dramas were originally sung, and possibly even the entire text of all roles; opera was thus conceived as a way of "restoring" this situation.
Dafne, however, is lost. A later work by Peri,
Euridice, dating from 1600, is the first opera score to have survived until the present day. However, the honour of being the first opera still to be regularly performed goes to
Claudio Monteverdi's ''
L'Orfeo'', composed for the court of
Mantua in 1607. The Mantua court of the
Gonzagas, employers of Monteverdi, played a significant role in the origin of opera employing not only court singers of the
concerto delle donne (till 1598), but also one of the first actual "opera singers",
Madama Europa.
Italian opera Baroque era , in 1723 (
Panini, 1747,
Louvre) Opera did not remain confined to court audiences for long. In 1637, the idea of a "season" (often during the
carnival) of publicly attended operas supported by ticket sales emerged in
Venice. Monteverdi had moved to the city from Mantua and composed his last operas, ''
Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria and L'incoronazione di Poppea'', for the Venetian theatre in the 1640s. His most important follower
Francesco Cavalli helped spread opera throughout Italy. In these early Baroque operas, broad comedy was blended with tragic elements in a mix that jarred some educated sensibilities, sparking the first of opera's many reform movements, sponsored by the
Arcadian Academy, which came to be associated with the poet
Metastasio, whose
libretti helped crystallise the genre of
opera seria, which became the leading form of Italian opera until the end of the 18th century. Once the Metastasian ideal had been firmly established, comedy in Baroque-era opera was reserved for what came to be called
opera buffa. Before such elements were forced out of opera seria, many libretti had featured a separately unfolding comic plot as sort of an "opera-within-an-opera". One reason for this was an attempt to attract members of the growing merchant class, newly wealthy, but still not as cultured as the nobility, to the public
opera houses. These separate plots were almost immediately resurrected in a separately developing tradition that partly derived from the
commedia dell'arte, a long-flourishing improvisatory stage tradition of Italy. Just as intermedi had once been performed in between the acts of stage plays, operas in the new comic genre of
intermezzi, which developed largely in
Naples in the 1710s and 1720s, were initially staged during the intermissions of opera seria. They became so popular, however, that they were soon being offered as separate productions. Opera seria was elevated in tone and highly stylised in form, usually consisting of
secco recitative interspersed with long
da capo arias. These afforded great opportunity for virtuosic singing and during the golden age of
opera seria the singer really became the star. The role of the hero was usually written for the high-pitched male
castrato voice, which was produced by
castration of the singer before
puberty, which prevented a boy's
larynx from being transformed at puberty. Castrati such as
Farinelli and
Senesino, as well as female
sopranos such as
Faustina Bordoni, became in great demand throughout Europe as
opera seria ruled the stage in every country except France. Farinelli was one of the most famous singers of the 18th century. Italian opera set the Baroque standard. Italian libretti were the norm, even when a German composer like
Handel found himself composing the likes of
Rinaldo and
Giulio Cesare for London audiences. Italian
libretti remained dominant in the
classical period as well, for example in the operas of
Mozart, who wrote in
Vienna near the century's close. Leading Italian-born composers of opera seria include
Alessandro Scarlatti,
Antonio Vivaldi and
Nicola Porpora.
Gluck's reforms and Mozart '' Opera seria had its weaknesses and critics. The taste for embellishment on behalf of the superbly trained singers, and the use of spectacle as a replacement for dramatic purity and unity drew attacks.
Francesco Algarotti's
Essay on the Opera (1755) proved to be an inspiration for
Christoph Willibald Gluck's reforms. He advocated that
opera seria had to return to basics and that all the various elements—music (both instrumental and vocal), ballet, and staging—must be subservient to the overriding drama. In 1765
Melchior Grimm published "", an influential article for the
Encyclopédie on
lyric and opera
librettos. Several composers of the period, including
Niccolò Jommelli and
Tommaso Traetta, attempted to put these ideals into practice. The first to succeed however, was Gluck. Gluck strove to achieve a "beautiful simplicity". This is evident in his first reform opera,
Orfeo ed Euridice, where his non-virtuosic vocal melodies are supported by simple harmonies and a richer orchestra presence throughout. Gluck's reforms have had resonance throughout operatic history. Weber, Mozart, and Wagner, in particular, were influenced by his ideals. Mozart, in many ways Gluck's successor, combined a superb sense of drama, harmony, melody, and counterpoint to write a series of comic operas with libretti by
Lorenzo Da Ponte, notably
Le nozze di Figaro,
Don Giovanni, and
Così fan tutte, which remain among the most-loved, popular and well-known operas. But Mozart's contribution to
opera seria was more mixed; by his time it was dying away, and in spite of such fine works as
Idomeneo and
La clemenza di Tito, he would not succeed in bringing the art form back to life again.
Bel canto, Verdi and verismo , 1886 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 Bellini's
Norma,
La sonnambula and
I puritani and Donizetti's
Lucia di Lammermoor, ''
L'elisir d'amore and Don Pasquale''. Following the bel canto era, a more direct, forceful style was rapidly popularised by
Giuseppe Verdi, beginning with his biblical opera
Nabucco. This opera, and the ones that would follow in Verdi's career, revolutionised Italian opera, changing it from merely a display of vocal fireworks, with Rossini's and Donizetti's works, to dramatic story-telling. 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 for a unified Italy. In the early 1850s, Verdi produced his three most popular operas:
Rigoletto,
Il trovatore and
La traviata. The first of these,
Rigoletto, proved the most daring and revolutionary. In it, Verdi blurs the distinction between the aria and recitative as it never before was, leading the opera to be "an unending string of duets".
La traviata was also novel. It tells the story of courtesan, and it includes elements of
verismo or "realistic" opera, because rather than featuring great kings and figures from literature, it focuses on the tragedies of ordinary life and society. After these, 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. These final two works showed Verdi at his most masterfully orchestrated, and are both incredibly influential, and modern. In
Falstaff, Verdi sets the pre-eminent standard for the form and style that would dominate opera throughout the twentieth century. Rather than long, suspended melodies,
Falstaff contains many little motifs and mottos, that, rather than being expanded upon, are introduced and subsequently dropped, only to be brought up again later. These motifs never are expanded upon, and just as the audience expects a character to launch into a long melody, a new character speaks, introducing a new phrase. This fashion of opera directed opera from Verdi, onward, exercising tremendous influence on his successors
Giacomo Puccini,
Richard Strauss, and
Benjamin Britten. 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 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.
German-language opera '' The first German opera was
Dafne, composed by
Heinrich Schütz in 1627, but the music score has not survived. Italian opera held a great sway over German-speaking countries until the late 18th century. Nevertheless, native forms would develop in spite of this influence. In 1644,
Sigmund Staden produced the first
Singspiel,
Seelewig, a popular form of German-language opera in which singing alternates with spoken dialogue. In the late 17th century and early 18th century, the Theater am Gänsemarkt in
Hamburg presented German operas by
Keiser,
Telemann and
Handel. Yet most of the major German composers of the time, including Handel himself, as well as
Graun,
Hasse and later
Gluck, chose to write most of their operas in foreign languages, especially Italian. In contrast to Italian opera, which was generally composed for the aristocratic class, German opera was generally composed for the masses and tended to feature simple folk-like melodies, and it was not until the arrival of Mozart that German opera was able to match its Italian counterpart in musical sophistication. The theatre company of
Abel Seyler pioneered serious German-language opera in the 1770s, marking a break with the previous simpler musical entertainment.
Mozart's
Singspiele,
Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782) and
Die Zauberflöte (1791) were an important breakthrough in achieving international recognition for German opera. The tradition was developed in the 19th century by
Beethoven with his
Fidelio (1805), inspired by the climate of the
French Revolution.
Carl Maria von Weber established
German Romantic opera in opposition to the dominance of Italian
bel canto. His
Der Freischütz (1821) shows his genius for creating a supernatural atmosphere. Other opera composers of the time include
Marschner,
Schubert and
Lortzing, but the most significant figure was undoubtedly
Wagner. ''. Wagner was one of the most revolutionary and controversial composers in musical history. Starting under the influence of
Weber and
Meyerbeer, he gradually evolved a new concept of opera as a
Gesamtkunstwerk (a "complete work of art"), a fusion of music, poetry and painting. He greatly increased the role and power of the orchestra, creating scores with a complex web of
leitmotifs, recurring
themes often associated with the characters and concepts of the drama, of which prototypes can be heard in his earlier operas such as
Der fliegende Holländer,
Tannhäuser and
Lohengrin; and he was prepared to violate accepted musical conventions, such as
tonality, in his quest for greater expressivity. In his mature music dramas,
Tristan und Isolde,
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg,
Der Ring des Nibelungen and
Parsifal, he abolished the distinction between aria and recitative in favour of a seamless flow of "endless melody". Wagner also brought a new philosophical dimension to opera in his works, which were usually based on stories from
Germanic or
Arthurian legend. Finally, Wagner built
his own opera house at
Bayreuth with part of the patronage from
Ludwig II of Bavaria, exclusively dedicated to performing his own works in the style he wanted. Opera would never be the same after Wagner and for many composers his legacy proved a heavy burden. On the other hand,
Richard Strauss accepted Wagnerian ideas but took them in wholly new directions, along with incorporating the new form introduced by Verdi. He first won fame with the scandalous
Salome and the dark tragedy
Elektra, in which tonality was pushed to the limits. Then Strauss changed tack in his greatest success,
Der Rosenkavalier, where Mozart and Viennese
waltzes became as important an influence as Wagner. Strauss continued to produce a highly varied body of operatic works, often with libretti by the poet
Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Other composers who made individual contributions to German opera in the early 20th century include
Alexander von Zemlinsky,
Erich Korngold,
Franz Schreker,
Paul Hindemith,
Kurt Weill and the Italian-born
Ferruccio Busoni. The operatic innovations of
Arnold Schoenberg and his successors are discussed in the section on
modernism. During the late 19th century, the Austrian composer
Johann Strauss II, an admirer of the French-language
operettas composed by
Jacques Offenbach, composed several German-language operettas, the most famous of which was
Die Fledermaus. Nevertheless, rather than copying the style of Offenbach, the operettas of Strauss II had distinctly
Viennese flavor to them.
French opera '' in the
Salle du Palais-Royal in 1761 In rivalry with imported Italian opera productions, a separate French tradition was founded by the Italian-born French composer
Jean-Baptiste Lully at the court of
King Louis XIV. Despite his foreign birthplace, Lully established an
Academy of Music and monopolised French opera from 1672. Starting with
Cadmus et Hermione, Lully and his librettist
Quinault created
tragédie en musique, a form in which dance music and choral writing were particularly prominent. Lully's operas also show a concern for expressive
recitative which matched the contours of the French language. In the 18th century, Lully's most important successor was
Jean-Philippe Rameau, who composed five
tragédies en musique as well as numerous works in other genres such as
opéra-ballet, all notable for their rich orchestration and harmonic daring. Despite the popularity of Italian
opera seria throughout much of Europe during the Baroque period, Italian opera never gained much of a foothold in France, where its own national operatic tradition was more popular instead. After Rameau's death, the Bohemian-Austrian composer
Gluck was persuaded to produce six operas for the Parisian stage in the 1770s. They show the influence of Rameau, but simplified and with greater focus on the drama. At the same time, by the middle of the 18th century another genre was gaining popularity in France:
opéra comique. This was the equivalent of the German
singspiel, where arias alternated with spoken dialogue. Notable examples in this style were produced by
Monsigny,
Philidor and, above all,
Grétry. During the
Revolutionary and
Napoleonic period, composers such as
Étienne Méhul,
Luigi Cherubini and
Gaspare Spontini, who were followers of Gluck, brought a new seriousness to the genre, which had never been wholly "comic" in any case. Another phenomenon of this period was the 'propaganda opera' celebrating revolutionary successes, e.g.
Gossec's Le triomphe de la République (1793). and
Jonas Kaufmann in a scene from
Carmen,
Salzburg Festival 2012 By the 1820s, Gluckian influence in France had given way to a taste for Italian
bel canto, especially after the arrival of
Rossini in Paris. Rossini's
Guillaume Tell helped found the new genre of
grand opera, a form whose most famous exponent was another foreigner,
Giacomo Meyerbeer. Meyerbeer's works, such as
Les Huguenots, emphasised virtuoso singing and extraordinary stage effects. Lighter
opéra comique also enjoyed tremendous success in the hands of
Boïeldieu,
Auber,
Hérold and
Adam. In this climate, the operas of the French-born composer
Hector Berlioz struggled to gain a hearing. Berlioz's epic masterpiece
Les Troyens, the culmination of the Gluckian tradition, was not given a full performance for almost a hundred years. In the second half of the 19th century,
Jacques Offenbach created
operetta with witty and cynical works such as
Orphée aux enfers, as well as the opera ''
Les Contes d'Hoffmann; Charles Gounod scored a massive success with Faust; and Georges Bizet composed Carmen'', which, once audiences learned to accept its blend of
Romanticism and realism, became the most popular of all opéra comiques.
Jules Massenet,
Camille Saint-Saëns and
Léo Delibes all composed works which are still part of the standard repertory, examples being Massenet's
Manon, Saint-Saëns'
Samson et Dalila and Delibes'
Lakmé. Their operas formed another genre, the , combined and grand opera. It is less grandiose than grand opera, but without the spoken dialogue of . At the same time, the influence of
Richard Wagner was felt as a challenge to the French tradition. Many French critics angrily rejected Wagner's music dramas while many French composers closely imitated them with variable success. Perhaps the most interesting response came from
Claude Debussy. As in Wagner's works, the orchestra plays a leading role in Debussy's unique opera
Pelléas et Mélisande (1902) and there are no real arias, only recitative. But the drama is understated, enigmatic and completely un-Wagnerian. Other notable 20th-century names include
Ravel,
Dukas,
Roussel,
Honegger and
Milhaud.
Francis Poulenc is one of the very few post-war composers of any nationality whose operas (which include
Dialogues des Carmélites) have gained a foothold in the international repertory.
Olivier Messiaen's lengthy sacred drama ''
Saint François d'Assise'' (1983) has also attracted widespread attention.
English-language opera In England, opera's antecedent was the 17th-century
jig. This was an afterpiece that came at the end of a play. It was frequently
libellous and scandalous and consisted in the main of dialogue set to music arranged from popular tunes. In this respect, jigs anticipate the ballad operas of the 18th century. At the same time, the French
masque was gaining a firm hold at the English Court, with even more lavish splendour and highly realistic scenery than had been seen before.
Inigo Jones became the quintessential designer of these productions, and this style was to dominate the English stage for three centuries. These masques contained songs and dances. In
Ben Jonson's
Lovers Made Men (1617), "the whole masque was sung after the Italian manner, stilo recitativo". The approach of the
English Commonwealth closed theatres and halted any developments that may have led to the establishment of English opera. However, in 1656, the dramatist Sir
William Davenant produced
The Siege of Rhodes. Since his theatre was not licensed to produce drama, he asked several of the leading composers (
Lawes,
Cooke,
Locke,
Coleman and
Hudson) to set sections of it to music. This success was followed by
The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru (1658) and
The History of Sir Francis Drake (1659). These pieces were encouraged by
Oliver Cromwell because they were critical of Spain. With the
English Restoration, foreign (especially French) musicians were welcomed back. In 1673,
Thomas Shadwell's
Psyche, patterned on the 1671 'comédie-ballet' of the same name produced by
Molière and
Jean-Baptiste Lully. William Davenant produced
The Tempest in the same year, which was the first musical adaption of a
Shakespeare play (composed by Locke and Johnson). Sullivan produced a few light operas in the 1890s that were of a more serious nature than those in the G&S series, including
Haddon Hall and
The Beauty Stone, but
Ivanhoe (which ran for 155 consecutive performances, using alternating casts—a record until
Baz Luhrmann's 2002/2003 production of
La bohème with 228 performances on
Broadway) survives as his only
grand opera. In the 20th century, English opera began to assert more independence, with works of
Ralph Vaughan Williams and in particular
Benjamin Britten, who in a series of works that remain in standard repertory today, revealed an excellent flair for the dramatic and superb musicality. More recently
Sir Harrison Birtwistle has emerged as one of Britain's most significant contemporary composers from his first opera
Punch and Judy to his most recent critical success in
The Minotaur. In the first decade of the 21st century, the librettist of an early Birtwistle opera,
Michael Nyman, has been focusing on composing operas, including
Facing Goya,
Man and Boy: Dada, and
Love Counts. Today composers such as
Thomas Adès continue to export English opera abroad. Also in the 20th century, American composers like
George Gershwin (
Porgy and Bess),
Scott Joplin (
Treemonisha),
Leonard Bernstein (
Candide),
Gian Carlo Menotti,
Douglas Moore, and
Carlisle Floyd began to contribute English-language operas infused with touches of popular musical styles. They were followed by composers such as
Philip Glass (
Einstein on the Beach),
Mark Adamo,
John Corigliano (
The Ghosts of Versailles),
Robert Moran,
John Adams (
Nixon in China),
André Previn and
Jake Heggie. Many contemporary 21st century opera composers have emerged such as
Missy Mazzoli,
Kevin Puts,
Tom Cipullo,
Huang Ruo,
David T. Little,
Terence Blanchard,
Jennifer Higdon,
Tobias Picker,
Michael Ching,
Anthony Davis, and
Ricky Ian Gordon.
Russian opera as
Ivan Susanin in
Glinka's
A Life for the Tsar Opera was brought to Russia in the 1730s by the
Italian operatic
troupes and soon it became an important part of entertainment for the Russian Imperial Court and
aristocracy. Many foreign composers such as
Baldassare Galuppi,
Giovanni Paisiello,
Giuseppe Sarti, and
Domenico Cimarosa (as well as various others) were invited to Russia to compose new operas, mostly in the Italian language. Simultaneously some domestic musicians of Ukrainian origin like
Maxim Berezovsky and
Dmitry Bortniansky were sent abroad to learn to write operas. The first opera written in Russian was
Tsefal i Prokris by the Italian composer
Francesco Araja (1755). The development of Russian-language opera was supported by the Russian composers
Vasily Pashkevich,
Yevstigney Fomin and
Alexey Verstovsky. However, the real birth of
Russian opera came with
Mikhail Glinka and his two great operas
A Life for the Tsar (1836) and
Ruslan and Lyudmila (1842). After him, during the 19th century in Russia, there were written such operatic masterpieces as
Rusalka and
The Stone Guest by
Alexander Dargomyzhsky,
Boris Godunov and
Khovanshchina by
Modest Mussorgsky,
Prince Igor by
Alexander Borodin,
Eugene Onegin and
The Queen of Spades by
Pyotr Tchaikovsky, and
The Snow Maiden and
Sadko by
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. These developments mirrored the growth of Russian
nationalism across the artistic spectrum, as part of the more general
Slavophilism movement. In the 20th century, the traditions of Russian opera were developed by many composers including
Sergei Rachmaninoff in his works
The Miserly Knight and
Francesca da Rimini,
Igor Stravinsky in
Le Rossignol,
Mavra,
Oedipus rex, and ''
The Rake's Progress, Sergei Prokofiev in The Gambler, The Love for Three Oranges, The Fiery Angel, Betrothal in a Monastery, and War and Peace; as well as Dmitri Shostakovich in The Nose and Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, Edison Denisov in L'écume des jours, and Alfred Schnittke in Life with an Idiot and Historia von D. Johann Fausten''.
Czech opera Czech composers also developed a thriving national opera movement of their own in the 19th century, starting with
Bedřich Smetana, who wrote
eight operas including the internationally popular
The Bartered Bride. Smetana's eight operas created the bedrock of the Czech opera repertory, but of these only
The Bartered Bride is performed regularly outside the composer's homeland. After reaching Vienna in 1892 and London in 1895 it rapidly became part of the repertory of every major opera company worldwide. in 1917
Antonín Dvořák's nine operas, except his first, have librettos in Czech and were intended to convey the Czech national spirit, as were some of his choral works. By far the most successful of the operas is
Rusalka which contains the well-known aria "Měsíčku na nebi hlubokém" ("Song to the Moon"); it is played on contemporary opera stages frequently outside the
Czech Republic. This is attributable to their uneven invention and libretti, and perhaps also their staging requirements –
The Jacobin,
Armida,
Vanda and
Dimitrij need stages large enough to portray invading armies. ''
Leoš Janáček gained international recognition in the 20th century for his innovative works. His later, mature works incorporate his earlier studies of national folk music in a modern, highly original synthesis, first evident in the opera
Jenůfa, which was premiered in 1904 in
Brno. The success of
Jenůfa (often called the "
Moravian national opera") at
Prague in 1916 gave Janáček access to the world's great opera stages. Janáček's later works are his most celebrated. They include operas such as
Káťa Kabanová and
The Cunning Little Vixen, the
Sinfonietta and the
Glagolitic Mass.
Other national operas Spain also produced its own distinctive form of opera, known as
zarzuela, which had two separate flowerings: one from the mid-17th century through the mid-18th century, and another beginning around 1850. During the late 18th century up until the mid-19th century, Italian opera was immensely popular in Spain, supplanting the
native form. In Russian Eastern Europe, several national operas began to emerge. Ukrainian opera was developed by
Semen Hulak-Artemovsky (1813–1873) whose most famous work
Zaporozhets za Dunayem (A Cossack Beyond the Danube) is regularly performed around the world. Other Ukrainian opera composers include
Mykola Lysenko (
Taras Bulba and
Natalka Poltavka),
Heorhiy Maiboroda, and
Yuliy Meitus. At the turn of the century, a distinct national opera movement also began to emerge in
Georgia under the leadership
Zacharia Paliashvili, who fused local
folk songs and stories with 19th-century
Romantic classical themes. , the father of Hungarian opera The key figure of Hungarian national opera in the 19th century was
Ferenc Erkel, whose works mostly dealt with historical themes. Among his most often performed operas are
Hunyadi László and
Bánk bán. The most famous modern Hungarian opera is
Béla Bartók's ''
Duke Bluebeard's Castle''.
Stanisław Moniuszko's opera
Straszny Dwór (in English
The Haunted Manor) (1861–64) represents a nineteenth-century peak of
Polish national opera. In the 20th century, other operas created by Polish composers included
King Roger by
Karol Szymanowski and
Ubu Rex by
Krzysztof Penderecki. The first known opera from
Turkey (the
Ottoman Empire) was
Arshak II, which was an Armenian opera composed by an ethnic Armenian composer
Tigran Chukhajian in 1868 and partially performed in 1873. It was fully staged in 1945 in Armenia. s
"Leyli and Majnun" opera,
Azerbaijan State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater (1934) The first years of the
Soviet Union saw the emergence of new national operas, such as the
Koroğlu (1937) by the Azerbaijani composer
Uzeyir Hajibeyov. The first Kyrgyz opera,
Ai-Churek, premiered in Moscow at the
Bolshoi Theatre on 26 May 1939, during Kyrgyz Art Decade. It was composed by
Vladimir Vlasov,
Abdylas Maldybaev and
Vladimir Fere. The libretto was written by Joomart Bokonbaev, Jusup Turusbekov, and Kybanychbek Malikov. The opera is based on the Kyrgyz heroic epic
Manas. In Iran, opera gained more attention after the introduction of Western classical music in the late 19th century. However, it took until mid 20th century for Iranian composers to start experiencing with the field, especially as the construction of the
Roudaki Hall in 1967, made possible staging of a large variety of works for stage. Perhaps, the most famous Iranian opera is
Rostam and Sohrab by
Loris Tjeknavorian premiered not until the early 2000s.
Chinese contemporary classical opera, a Chinese language form of Western style opera that is distinct from
traditional Chinese opera, has had operas dating back to
The White-Haired Girl in 1945. In Latin America, opera started as a result of European colonisation. The first opera ever written in the Americas was 1701's
La púrpura de la rosa, by
Tomás de Torrejón y Velasco, a Peruvian composer born in Spain; a decade later, 1711's
Partenope, by the Mexican
Manuel de Zumaya, was the first opera written from a composer born in Latin America (music now lost). The first Brazilian opera for a libretto in Portuguese was
A Noite de São João, by
Elias Álvares Lobo. However,
Antônio Carlos Gomes is generally regarded as the most outstanding Brazilian composer, having a relative success in Italy with its Brazilian-themed operas with Italian librettos, such as
Il Guarany. Opera in Argentina developed in the 20th century after the inauguration of
Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires—with the opera
Aurora, by
Ettore Panizza, being heavily influenced by the Italian tradition, due to immigration. Other important composers from Argentina include
Felipe Boero and
Alberto Ginastera.
Contemporary, recent, and modernist trends Modernism Perhaps the most obvious stylistic manifestation of modernism in opera is the development of
atonality. The move away from traditional tonality in opera had begun with
Richard Wagner, and in particular the
Tristan chord. Composers such as
Richard Strauss,
Claude Debussy,
Giacomo Puccini,
Paul Hindemith,
Benjamin Britten and
Hans Pfitzner pushed Wagnerian harmony further with a more extreme use of chromaticism and greater use of dissonance. Another aspect of modernist opera is the shift away from long, suspended melodies, to short quick mottos, as first illustrated by
Giuseppe Verdi in his
Falstaff. Composers such as Strauss, Britten, Shostakovich and Stravinsky adopted and expanded upon this style. Operatic modernism truly began in the operas of two Viennese composers,
Arnold Schoenberg and his student
Alban Berg, both composers and advocates of atonality and its later development (as worked out by Schoenberg),
dodecaphony. Schoenberg's early musico-dramatic works,
Erwartung (1909, premiered in 1924) and
Die glückliche Hand display heavy use of chromatic harmony and dissonance in general. Schoenberg also occasionally used
Sprechstimme. The two operas of Schoenberg's pupil Alban Berg,
Wozzeck (1925) and
Lulu (incomplete at his death in 1935) share many of the same characteristics as described above, though Berg combined his highly personal interpretation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique with melodic passages of a more traditionally tonal nature (quite Mahlerian in character) which perhaps partially explains why his operas have remained in standard repertory, despite their controversial music and plots. Schoenberg's theories have influenced (either directly or indirectly) significant numbers of opera composers ever since, even if they themselves did not compose using his techniques. Composers thus influenced include the Englishman
Benjamin Britten, the German
Hans Werner Henze, and the Russian
Dmitri Shostakovich. (
Philip Glass also makes use of atonality, though his style is generally described as
minimalist, usually thought of as another 20th-century development.) However, operatic modernism's use of atonality also sparked a backlash in the form of
neoclassicism. An early leader of this movement was
Ferruccio Busoni, who in 1913 wrote the libretto for his neoclassical
number opera Arlecchino (first performed in 1917). Also among the vanguard was the Russian
Igor Stravinsky. After composing music for the
Diaghilev-produced ballets
Petrushka (1911) and
The Rite of Spring (1913), Stravinsky turned to neoclassicism, a development culminating in his opera-oratorio
Oedipus rex (1927). Stravinsky had already turned away from the modernist trends of his early ballets to produce small-scale works that do not fully qualify as opera, yet certainly contain many operatic elements, including
Renard (1916: "a burlesque in song and dance") and ''
The Soldier's Tale (1918: "to be read, played, and danced"; in both cases the descriptions and instructions are those of the composer). In the latter, the actors declaim portions of speech to a specified rhythm over instrumental accompaniment, peculiarly similar to the older German genre of Melodrama. Well after his Rimsky-Korsakov-inspired works The Nightingale (1914), and Mavra (1922), Stravinsky continued to ignore serialist technique and eventually wrote a full-fledged 18th-century-style diatonic number opera The Rake's Progress'' (1951). His resistance to serialism (an attitude he reversed following Schoenberg's death) proved to be an inspiration for many other composers.
Other trends A common trend throughout the 20th century, in both opera and general orchestral repertoire, is the use of smaller orchestras as a cost-cutting measure; the grand Romantic-era orchestras with huge string sections, multiple harps, extra horns, and exotic percussion instruments were no longer feasible. As government and private patronage of the arts decreased throughout the 20th century, new works were often commissioned and performed with smaller budgets, very often resulting in chamber-sized works, and short, one-act operas. Many of
Benjamin Britten's operas are scored for as few as 13 instrumentalists;
Mark Adamo's two-act realization of
Little Women is scored for 18 instrumentalists. Another feature of late 20th-century opera is the emergence of contemporary historical operas, in contrast to the tradition of basing operas on more distant history, the re-telling of contemporary fictional stories or plays, or on myth or legend.
The Death of Klinghoffer,
Nixon in China, and
Doctor Atomic by
John Adams,
Dead Man Walking by
Jake Heggie,
Anna Nicole by
Mark-Anthony Turnage, and
Waiting for Miss Monroe by
Robin de Raaff exemplify the dramatisation onstage of events in recent living memory, where characters portrayed in the opera were alive at the time of the premiere performance. The
Metropolitan Opera in the US (often known as the Met) reported in 2011 that the average age of its audience was 60. Many opera companies attempted to attract a younger audience to halt the larger trend of greying audiences for classical music since the last decades of the 20th century. Efforts resulted in lowering the average age of the Met's audience to 58 in 2018, the average age at
Berlin State Opera was reported as 54, and
Paris Opera reported an average age of 48.
New York Times critic
Anthony Tommasini has suggested that "companies inordinately beholden to standard repertory" are not reaching younger, more curious audiences. Smaller companies in the US have a more fragile existence, and they usually depend on a "patchwork quilt" of support from state and local governments, local businesses, and fundraisers. Nevertheless, some smaller companies have found ways of drawing new audiences. In addition to radio and television broadcasts of opera performances, which have had some success in gaining new audiences, broadcasts of live performances to movie theatres have shown the potential to reach new audiences.
From musicals back towards opera By the late 1930s, some musicals began to be written with a more operatic structure. These works include complex polyphonic ensembles and reflect musical developments of their times.
Porgy and Bess (1935), influenced by jazz styles, and
Candide (1956), with its sweeping, lyrical passages and farcical parodies of opera, both opened on
Broadway but became accepted as part of the opera repertory. Popular musicals such as
Show Boat,
West Side Story,
Brigadoon,
Sweeney Todd,
Passion,
Evita,
The Light in the Piazza,
The Phantom of the Opera and others tell dramatic stories through complex music and in the 2010s they are sometimes seen in opera houses.
The Most Happy Fella (1952) is quasi-operatic and has been revived by the
New York City Opera. Other
rock-influenced musicals, such as
Tommy (1969) and
Jesus Christ Superstar (1971),
Les Misérables (1980),
Rent (1996),
Spring Awakening (2006), and
Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 (2012) employ various operatic conventions, such as
through composition, recitative instead of dialogue, and
leitmotifs.
Acoustic enhancement in opera A subtle type of sound electronic reinforcement called
acoustic enhancement is used in some modern concert halls and theatres where operas are performed. Although none of the major opera houses "...use traditional, Broadway-style sound reinforcement, in which most if not all singers are equipped with radio microphones mixed to a series of unsightly loudspeakers scattered throughout the theatre", many use a
sound reinforcement system for acoustic enhancement and for subtle boosting of offstage voices, child singers, onstage dialogue, and sound effects (e.g., church bells in
Tosca or thunder effects in Wagnerian operas). ==Operatic voices==