The Origin and Development of Opera

Origin: Opera, the representative word of opera in western languages, originated from Latin plural form (Opus, Opera), and was later extended to other European languages in Italian. As the name implies, the original intention of opera includes not only solo, duet and chorus on the stage, but also dialogue, performance and dance.

/kloc-at the end of 0/6, in Florence, Italy, a group of humanists formed a group called "Camerata with Good Society" to revive the stage performance art in ancient Greece. They think that the "chorus" part of ancient Greek drama is actually the chorus part. Some even think that ancient Greek drama is actually the same as today's opera, and all the plots are explained by songs.

Therefore, when Daphne, the first opera composed by Jacob Perry and based on ancient Greek mythology, premiered in 1597, it was praised by everyone, and everyone thought that "the drama spirit of ancient Greece was successfully revived".

However, Daphne was unfortunately defeated in the end, but another set of Perry's opera "Eurydice", which premiered on 1600, was rehearsed occasionally. But today, the oldest opera with a standard repertoire in the opera world is claudio monteverdi's works, which premiered at mantua Palace on 1607.

The development of opera:17th century, opera was born in Florence, Italy. The first recognized opera in the world is Oflo, which was composed by Monteverdi on 1607. Since then, opera has gradually become the most important music genre in Europe with its unique charm.

1,1end of 7 years

The most influential school in Rome is the Naples Opera School represented by scarlatti. He wrote the opera "Good and Evil" in 168 1, which established a typical model of opera overture, namely "fast-slow-fast" three-stage form.

At the same time, the singing format of Aba was also established in this period. At this time, grand scenes and chorus are often used in music, which brings a tendency to emphasize music over drama to opera. This tendency makes the future development of traditional Chinese opera more and more rigid. Therefore, in the 1920s of 18, the Xi opera school with daily life as its theme, humorous plot and simple music rose.

The first representative work of Italian comedy opera is Paglassie's Maid as a Housewife (premiered at 1733), which was originally an opera interlude and was vilified by conservatives when 1752 was staged in Paris.

So it set off a famous "debate about liking opera" in the history of opera. Rousseau's first French comedy opera "Village Diviner" was born under the inspiration of this debate and this opera.

Italian opera was first transformed in France and combined with French national culture. Lu Li is the founder of French opera ("lyric tragedy"). He not only created a solo melody closely combined with French, but also took the lead in applying ballet scenes to opera.

In Britain, purcell created the first British national opera Didong and Ignace on the basis of his mask drama tradition. In Germany and Austria, Haydn, Dietdorf, Mozart and others developed folk operas into German-Austrian national operas, including Mozart's Magic Flute.

By the18th century, Gluck insisted that opera must have profound content, music and drama should be unified, and performance should be simple and natural. His thoughts and works, such as Orflo and Eurydice and Figini of Orid, had a great influence on the development of later operas.

2./kloc-after 0/9th century.

Italian opera masters such as Rossini, Verdi and Puccini, German Wagner, French Bizet, Russian glinka, Musorgskiy and Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky all made important contributions to the development of opera. Operas, formed in18th century, have evolved into an independent genre.

It is characterized by short structure and popular music. Besides solo, duet, chorus and dance, it also uses popular English. Austrian composer Suo Beier and German composer Owen Bach are the founders of this genre.

3.20th century

Among opera composers, Richard Strauss, influenced by Wagner, was an early representative. After World War I, it was Berger who applied the atonality principle to opera creation.

Since the 1940s, there have been: Stravinsky, prokofiev, Mi Yue, Manotti, Barbier, Orff, Janus Della, Henze, Moore and the famous British composer Britten.

Extended data

Opera often has touching dramatic stories. In the performance, vocal music can include solo, duet, female chorus, male chorus, children's chorus, mixed chorus and so on, plus the performance of a huge orchestra.

In addition, in the three-dimensional space of the stage, in addition to the performance of actors, the relationship between characters and the display of dramatic plots, stage art means such as clothing, makeup, lighting, painting tools, props and mechanical devices are also used.

Its music part usually consists of the following parts:

Overture: A piece of music at the beginning of an opera performance. The overtures of most operas will interweave the dominant musical motives of the characters appearing in the opera with distinctive melodies, which will appear in the performance of overtures. Some overtures are only the prelude to the beginning, and have little connection with the music behind.

2. Recitation: A form of singing, which is closer to drama recitation, is set off by harmony, and is usually used for cohesion between paragraphs, and is mostly used for dialogue between characters and monologues of roles.

3. Aria: refers to solo, as opposed to recitation or recitation. It is often used to express the feelings of the characters in opera.

4. Duet: There are many forms of duet in opera, such as duet, trio, quartet, quintuple and even quartet. Ensemble means that at the same time, various characters use their different melodies to form a texture of polyphony or harmony to sing the same or different emotions of each character and describe or narrate their hearts.

5. Chorus: Chorus is the most expressive form in vocal music, which can fully express the thoughts and feelings of the characters in opera and promote the development of the plot. Opera will also use chorus as a rich form of expression when the drama climax appears. Chorus in opera can better reflect a kind of strength and sublimated group realm. Chorus expands musical expression with multi-part music monochrome texture.

6. Stage art production: The placement of scenery and the selection of production materials should first consider the transmission of songs that are beneficial to the actors on the stage. Production often embodies the artistic concept of painting, architecture and clothing at that time.

7. The application of dance in opera: In grand operas that emphasize luxurious scenes, there are dance scenes to adjust the atmosphere and cooperate with the development of drama, such as the two-act and four-act dance scenes in Carmen. The use of dance scenes makes the stage performance of traditional Chinese opera more dynamic, visual and ornamental.

8. Capella Opera House: Capella Opera House is a concert of opera performances, focusing on enjoying opera music. Usually, the pure music content in opera is kept, and some dramatic performances and transitional music passages are reduced without affecting the integrity of music and drama, so that the musical performances are relatively concentrated and more in line with the live atmosphere of the concert.

Source: Baidu Encyclopedia-Opera