1597 – 1700 The Beginnings of Opera (Italy) Monteverdi, Purcell.

1670 – 1750 Tragédie lyrique (France) Rameau, Lully.

1700 – 1790 Opera seria (Italy, Europe), Handel, Gluck, Mozart.

1700 – 1790 Opera buffa (Italy) Paisiello, Cimarosa.

1780 – 1850 Singspiel (Germany, Austria) Mozart, von Weber, Lortzing.

1792 – 1890 Opéra comique (France) Massenet, Auber, Bizet.

1800 – 1850 Belcanto (Italy) Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini.

1822 – 1870 Grand Opéra (Italy) Meyerbeer, Auber, Rossini.

1842 – 1889 Musical drama by Verdi and Wagner (Europe) Wagner, Verdi.

1890 – 1926 Verismo and Puccini (Italy) Puccini, Giordano, Cilea, Leoncavallo, Mascagni.

1902 – 1945 Late Romanticism and Modernism (Europe) Strauss, Berg, Debussy.

Florence is generally considered the birthplace of modern opera. In the so-called Florentine Camerata (Camerata fiorentina), the elite of art and nobility met since the 1570s with the aim of reviving the art of antiquity. The main focus was on promoting the textual intelligibility of vocal music. The motto was: prima le parole, poi la musica (first the text, then the music). The music should adapt to the text and not obscure it. The goal was not elaborate melodies and gifted ideas, but a vocal style similar to speech (cantar recitando). From these efforts came the original form of opera. Jacopo Peri was its first creator.

It is thanks to the genius of Claudio Monteverdi that this rather dispassionate adaptation developed into a dramma per musica with flesh-and-blood people and brought the passions into the art form of opera (stile concitato). With L’incoronazione di Poppea he wrote the greatest masterpiece and the first opera with castrati in the leading roles.

Gradually, the art form reached other parts of Italy (Naples: Scarlatti) and northern Europe (Germany: Schütz, England: Purcell). In France, a French variant developed 70 years later, the tragédie lyrique.

The dominant secular art form of the preceding 16th century was the madrigal, an elaborate, polyphonic vocal piece. Because of its elaborate counterpoint and polyphony (polyphony), text intelligibility was extremely poor. The Camerata wanted to overcome this flaw of the madrigal and create a new art form

1576 Foundation of the Florentine Camerata
1598 The first opera: Dafne, by Jacopo Peri
1607 The first dramma per musica and masterpiece: Orfeo, by Claudio Monteverdi
1637 The first opera house, the Teatro San Cassiano in Venice,
163x New comic operas are written for the carnival season
1643 Castrati appear in leading roles: L’incoronazione di Poppea
1678 First opera house in Germany (Hamburg, Oper am Gänsemarkt)
1689 The greatest masterpiece of the early days outside Italy: Dido and Aeneas by Purcell

Recitar cantando: Clear and text comprehensible voice, sparingly accompanied by basso continuo.
Ritornello: The solo sections are juxtaposed with contrasting choruses of the orchestra.
Monody: It is solo (monophonic) singing, chordally accompanied, high text intelligibility, opposite of polyphony (polyphonic).
Seconda pratica: the opposite of the polyphonic, traditional prima pratica. Monteverdi used the term seconda pratica for his text-comprehensible, passionate, dissonant arias.
Lamento: Expressive lament (see more: lamento).
Stile concitato: Monteverdi called passages composed in an excited style stile concitato.

1607 L’Orfeo (Monteverdi)
1640 Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria (Monteverdi)
1642 L’incoronazione di Poppea (Monteverdi).
1683 Dido and Aeneas (Henry Purcell).
1692 The Fairy-Queen (Purcell)

Pur ti miro, pur ti godo (L’incoronazione di Poppea)
When I lie in the earth(Dido and Aeneas)

Lully (1632-1687) is considered the founder of the tragédie lyrique and French opera. Born in Florence, he was taken to Paris as a 14-year-old garcon de chambre to a noble house. He was responsible for French opera taking a very different path than Italian (and later European) opera.

Lully was a talented musician and very good dancer when he met the 14-year-old future Sun King Louis XIV at the age of 20. Louis was also an enthusiastic dancer and a friendship developed between the two.

Because of Louis XIV’s high standards, the tragédie lyrique developed a comprehensive artistic ambition that required the expenditure of great resources to provide the court with a grand spectacle. Lully first composed popular comedies in collaboration with Molière and then, in collaboration with Quinault, the first operas, the so-called “tragédies lyrique,” in which chorus and ballet played an important role, but without castrati (as was customary in Italy at the time).

With the death of Lully, the art form ossified; only the genius of Rameau was able to revive the tragedie lyrique with the so-called Opéra Ballets and the virtuoso orchestral pieces that populated his operas. By 1750, however, the time had passed, and the controversy of the Buffonists and later the Piccinists established opera seria and the influence of Italian opera.”

Lully deliberately turned away from early Italian opera, whose emphasis was on the aria and the recitative. He saw opera as a total art form of singing, chorus, dance, drama, orchestral music, and stage decoration. As a result, these elements took on more weight and became mandatory components (e.g., overture, ballet, stage effects, etc.). Rameau finally established ballet in French opera, which never played a role in Italian and German opera.

1673 Lully writes the first Tragédie lyrique (Cadmus et Hermione)
1674 Lully writes the first masterpiece (Armide)
1687 Lully dies
1735 The most famous ballet opera Les Indes galantes (Rameau)
1750 The so-called Buffonist controversy between the supporters of Italian and French opera

French Overture: It consists of a fast middle section framed by heavy sections with dotted rhythms.
Ballet de cour, Ballet opéra: The ballet had great importance in this genre (Lully and Louis XIV: Ballet de cour). The climax was reached with the ballet interludes of Les Indes galantes (Ballet opéra) (Rameau).
Haut-contre: The abandonment of the castrati in the tragédie lyrique had developed the vocal range of a tenor with a high register.
Prosody: The art of reciting the word is highly valued in the solo interludes (mixture of recitative and aria).

Alceste (Jean-Baptiste Lully)
Armide (Jean-Baptiste Lully)
Les Indes galantes (Jean-Philippe Rameau)

130 years after the beginnings of opera, this art form had developed into scenic and musical arbitrariness. The fact that opera seria was able to develop into a powerful art form is (somewhat simplified) due to three men:

The German Händel established the castrati as primi uomini and the coloratura sopranos as prime donne. After three years of learning and traveling in Italy, he decided to seek his fortune in London – at his own risk. To make his opera house thrive, he used thestar principle (castrati and prima donnas) to attract the nobility and the wealthy to his theaters. Their weapon was the da capo aria, which allowed them to show off their virtuosity with coloratura, cadenzas, and ornamentation.

The Italian Metastasio reformed the poetry of opera seria and his libretti became blueprints. He purified the plot and established fixed formulas. His heroes were gods, knights, and nobles. No other librettist in the entire history of opera set more works to music. When he moved to Vienna, he also became influential for German-speaking Europe.

Thirty years after Handel, it was finally up to Gluck to reform opera seria and lead it to a silver flowering. With his so-called reform operas he domesticated the stars. No longer hollow affects, but noble feelings were to appeal to the opera-goer.

Mozart was the last great to write works for opera seria; he himself counted his Idomeneo among his greatest creations.

Opera seria opened up to the bourgeois audience, thus music became more international and the star principle was invented. Virtuosity became the main thing and literature a secondary matter.

1709 Handel writes his first and greatest opera seria masterpiece (Rinaldo) at the age of 24.
1722 The castrato Farinelli becomes the first megastar singer
1723 Beginning of Handel’s great operatic stardom in London with Cuzzoni (soprano) and Senesino (castrato).
1724 Metastasio writes his first libretto
1726 War of the Divas Cuzzoni and Bordoni at the Handel Opera in London
1730 Metastasio goes to Vienna
1735 Handel composes Semele, his last masterpiece in the genre of opera
1762 Gluck composes his reform opera Orfeo ed Euridice
1781 Mozart writes Idomeneo, his first masterpiece in the genre of opera
1791 The last masterpiece of opera seria: La clemenza di Tito by Mozart

Da-capo aria: The da-capo aria (da-capo means repetition) is written in three parts A-B-A’. Usually the A’ part is embellished by the performer with coloratura, etc.
Coloratura: The ballet had great importance in this genre (Lully and Louis XIV: Ballet de cour). The climax was reached with the ballet interludes of Les Indes galantes (Ballet opéra, Rameau).
Castrato: A castrato is a male singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano or mezzo-soprano. The voice is produced by castration of the singer before puberty,

1711 Rinaldo (Handel)
1724 Giulio Cesare (Handel)
1735 Alcina (Handel)
1744 Semele (Handel)
1762 Orfeo ed Euridice (Gluck)
1779 Iphigénie en Tauride (Gluck)
1781 Idomeneo (Mozart)
1791 La clemenza di Tito (Mozart)

Venti turbini, Rinaldo (Handel).
Unis dès la plus tendre enfance Iphigénie en Tauride, (Gluck)
Fuor del mar ho un mar nel seno, Idomeneo (Mozart)

Opera buffa was the folk opera in the 18th century. It was based on the commedia dell’arte and was the antithesis of the aristocratic opera seria in Italy. The most famous work is La serva del padrone, a 50-minute piece by Paisiello that served as an intermezzo between two acts of an opera seria.

Although the works of opera buffo are almost extinct today, their influence was not insignificant.

Rossini’s comedies are inconceivable without opera buffa, and Mozart was also exposed to the influence of opera buffa via the Italian da Ponte (Don Giovanni, Le nozze di Figaro and Cosi fan tutte bear witness to this), even if as cross-over works they are not counted as part of the genre. Above all, the classical theme of the different status of opera buffa was of great importance to Mozart.

The Buffonist controversy in Paris between Italian and French opera was also sparked by Italian touring theaters of opera buffa. Rousseau in particular addressed the “naturalness” of Italian opera in contrast to the “artificiality” of tragédie lyrique.

With the rise of the aristocratic opera seria, popular opera had lost its place. Based on commedia dell’arte, it was reinvented as 0pera buffa in the marketplaces and later in theaters. The music is simplified and the dialogues are sparsely punctuated, sometimes written in dialect. In contrast to the mythological world of opera seria, everyday themes and class distinctions form the plots.

Commedia dell’arte in Piazza San Marco, Venice 1615

Milestones

What were the years of opera buffa and what were the main milestones?

170x First theater in Naples with works of opera buffa.
1724 Paisiello composes la serva padrone as an intermezzo
1752 Buffonist controversy in Paris
1792 Cimarosa composes il matrimonio segreto, the last important work

Parlando: fast singing with well-articulated pronunciation and easy intonation, paying attention to rhythm.
Intermezzo: Interlude between two acts of an opera seria.
Castrato: A castrato is a male singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano or mezzo-soprano. The voice is produced by castration of the singer before puberty.

1724 La serva padrone (Paisiello) composed as Intermezzo
1792 Il matrimonio segreto (Cimarosa)

Lo conosco a quegli occhietti, (La serva padrone)

The popular Singspiel has existed in the German-speaking world since the beginning of the 18th century. When the Austrian emperor began to promote the Singspiel as a counterweight to Italian opera, an elaborate genre developed that attracted the best German-speaking composers. In this way, he opened the opera house to musical theater with spoken dialogue and songs (folk songs).

Mozart wrote Die Entführung aus dem Serail, the first masterpiece to which the emperor had personally invited him. Less than 10 years later, Mozart had The Magic Flute follow.
Fidelio is also classified as a Singspiel, although strictly speaking this applies only to the first part. With the advent of German early Romanticism (the Biedermeier period) came the great age of the Singspiel. Weber’s Freischütz inspired a whole generation of composers, and with Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor the Singspiel found a worthy final climax.

What was new?

How were the beginnings of singspiel different from the past time?

The Singspiel differs from Italian and aristocratic opera. It differs in the spoken dialogues (instead of accompanied recitatives), the use of songs (instead of elaborate arias) and popular stories (e.g. fairy tales). The artistic level is very high in the top works of singspiel (e.g. Magic Flute, Fidelio, Freischütz).

1766 Emperor Joseph II declares the Burgtheater in Vienna to be the venue for the German Singspiel
1782 Emperor Joseph personally commissions Mozart to compose The Abduction from the Seraglio
1811 World premiere of Der Freischütz
1849 The last masterpiece of Singspiel (The Merry Wives of Windsor)

Song: Solo piece with simple melodies and chorus.

1782 The Abduction from the Seraglio (Mozart)

1791 The Magic Flute (Mozart)

1805 Fidelio (Beethoven)

1811 Der Freischütz (by Weber)

1837 Tsar and Carpenter (Lortzing)

1849 The Merry Wives of Windsor (Nicolai)

Der Vogelsänger bin ich ja (Magic Flute)

Der Hölle Rache (Magic Flute)

Wolfsschlucht Scene (Der Freischütz)

Durch die Wälder durch die Auen (Der Freischütz)

Leise, leise von meiner Weise (Der Freischütz)

Horch, die Lerche singt im Hain (The Merry Wives of Windsor)

Belcanto describes an Italian singing technique before 1900 that includes purity and delicacy of tone, flow (legato), singing with the breath (canto sul fiato) and further dynamic flexibility (messa di voce) and agility in ornamentation. Famous (classical) bel canto composers were Donizetti, Bellini and Rossini, but Verdi also composed mostly in the bel canto style.
This bel canto style was perfected by the castrati in the 18th century (see chapter Opera seria). In these sections, we speak of classical bel canto, which from 1800 is associated mainly with Donizetti, Be