TURANDOT https://www.sunny.org/listings/florida-grand-opera/2114/
Students were introduced to Western Opera, its origin and developmental stages: Baroque, Classical, Romantic and 20th century.
Baroque
Italian opera that would dominate what is now known as the
Baroque period spanning from around 1600 to the 1740s. This form of opera came
to the fore in wealthy courts across Europe, royalty frequently patrons of
composers, but it rapidly became an art form that appealed to all classes,
George Friedrich Handel’s work, for example, wildly popular in England.
Some of the major opera composers of this period were
Antonio Vivaldi, Handel and Jean-Baptiste Lully.
Classical
In the mid 1700s Willibald Christoph Gluck took opera in new
directions, expanding the structure, harmony and narratives away from the
highly formalised forms that had dominated the previous 150 years. He made the
orchestra more integral by developing “recitativo accompagnato”, recitative
supported by full orchestra rather than just continuo. Opera became steadily
more international and varied in style, Italian opera seria mixing with French
opera comique and German singspiel amongst many other operatic genres.
Romantic
Romantic opera has dominated operatic stages for the better
part of two centuries. Emerging around the turn of the 19th century,
Romanticism was the predominant artistic and literary movement until the 1st
World War. As a movement it isn’t easily defined but it was born out of the
French Revolution and Germany’s Sturm und Drang playing heavily towards strong
emotions and a rebellion against the scientific conformity of the enlightenment
and latterly the industrial revolution. Opera became steadily bigger and more
dramatic, vast choruses and a swelled orchestra, to upwards of 100 players,
building towards the immense operatic works of Richard Wagner.
There are too many composers to mention here but Germany was
dominated by Wagner, Italy by first Giuseppe Verdi and then Giacomo Puccini and
Russia made its first real operatic impact with initially Mikhail Glinka and
then Modest Mussorgsky and Pyotr Tchaikovsky.
XX Century
More or less for the first time in operatic history, the
20th Century was dominated not by contemporary works but by those of the
previous three hundred years. Few were writing new Romantic works but the old
ones dominated the modern stage. It hasn’t been all doom and gloom for lovers
of new music though, with sophisticated contemporary music making its way onto
the operatic stages albeit sporadically and seldom popularly. Composers have
become more inventive with the scoring, frequently using fewer orchestral
players and creating more intimate dramas relative to the bombast of the
Romantic period.
The first half of the century was dominated by the
modernists particularly Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg who developed atonal
and then twelve-tone techniques (lots of dissonance used to chilling dramatic
effect). Benjamin Britten and Dmitri Shostakovich came to the fore through the
middle years of the 20th Century, Britten in particular arguably the most
successful opera composer born after 1900. Minimalism came in full throttle by the
70s, Philip Glass and most recently John Adams the most successful composers in
recent times.
Source:
Opera's History: From Baroque to Present. https://www.theopera101.com/operaabc/history/
