Opera

Opera is an art form that consists in the performance on a stage of story (whose text is called the "libretto") entirely or almost entirely sung. It draws from many other art forms. Its backbone is certainly music, but as it is performed on a stage, [decorative art]?s are important, as is dance, which sometimes appears in it.

Its origins can be found in Italy in the Renaissance. Opera means simply "work" in Italian. The first opera is considered to have been written in 1597.

For a long time, Italian opera was the standard of the form, and many operas written by Mozart, for example, are in Italian.

The form of the opera consisted of several sung pieces, (aria?s), separated by recitation over accompaniment Recitation in opera is a form of singing intermediate between ordinary melodic singing and formal spoken recitation. Early operas consisted of recitative accompanied only by harpsichord and arias accompianed by full orchestra. Later operas involved the full orchestra throughout the opera to provide a smoother transition between parts.

This changed reached a climax when Richard Wagner introduced the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerke or the Total Work of Art, where the action is continued, with no stops and repetitions, and the music is a continuous flux, not a few pieces separated by recitatives. Wagner also introduced leitmotif, where each character or idea in the story is represented by a musical line that appears whenever they appear or are mentioned.

The themes of the opera at the beginning were mythological or historical, usually tragic and moral, but later on themes closer to everyday life were introduced.

Great opera composers

• Claudio Monteverdi
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Gioacchino Rossini
• Giacomo Puccini
• Giuseppe Verdi
• [Georges Bizet]?
• Richard Wagner

See also operetta?, musical?,singspiel?,zarzuela

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Opera is also the name of a popular alternative web browser; see Opera browser