Jump to content

Portal:Opera

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Portal topics - (Random portal)

Activities
Culture
Geography
Health
History
Mathematics
Nature
People
Philosophy
Religion
Society
Technology
edit 

The Opera Portal

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work (called an opera) which combines a text (called a libretto) and a musical score. Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery and costumes and sometimes includes dance. The performance is typically given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble.

Opera started in Italy at the end of the 16th century (with Jacopo Peri's lost Dafne, produced in Florence around 1597), and was championed by Claudio Monteverdi with works such as L'Orfeo. It soon spread through the rest of Europe: Schütz in Germany, Lully in France, and Purcell in England all helped to establish their national traditions in the 17th century. However, in the 18th century, Italian opera continued to dominate most of Europe, except France, attracting foreign composers such as Handel. Opera seria was the most prestigious form of Italian opera, until Gluck reacted against its artificiality with his "reform" operas in the 1760s. Today the most renowned figure of late 18th century opera is Mozart, who began with opera seria but is most famous for his Italian comic operas, especially The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte, as well as The Magic Flute, a landmark in the German tradition.

The first third of the 19th century saw the highpoint of the bel canto style, with Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini all creating works that are still performed today. It also saw the advent of Grand Opera typified by the works of Meyerbeer. The mid to late 19th century is considered by some a golden age of opera, led by Wagner in Germany and Verdi in Italy. This 'golden age' developed through the verismo era in Italy and contemporary French opera through to Puccini and Strauss in the early 20th century. During the 19th century, parallel operatic traditions emerged in Central and Eastern Europe, particularly in Russia and Bohemia. The 20th century saw many experiments with modern styles, such as atonality and serialism (Schoenberg and Berg), Neo-Classicism (Stravinsky), and Minimalism (Philip Glass and John Adams). With the rise of recording technology, singers such as Enrico Caruso became known to audiences beyond the circle of opera fans. Operas were also performed on (and written for) radio and television.

More about Opera...
edit 

Selected article

Orpheus with his viol; a 17th century painting
L'Orfeo (SV 318), sometimes called L'Orfeo, favola in musica, is an early Baroque opera by Claudio Monteverdi, with a text by Alessandro Striggio. It is based on the Greek legend of Orpheus, and tells the story of his descent to Hades and his fruitless attempt to bring his dead bride Eurydice back to the living world. Written in 1607 for a court performance during the annual Carnival at Mantua, L'Orfeo is one of the earliest music dramas still regularly performed. Within the musical theatre at the beginning of the 17th century the traditional intermedio—a musical sequence between the acts of a straight play—was evolving into the form of a complete musical drama or "opera". Monteverdi's L'Orfeo moved this process out of its experimental era, and provided the first fully developed example within the new genre. After its initial performance the work was staged again in Mantua, and possibly in other Italian centres in the next few years. After the composer's death in 1643 the opera remained unperformed, and was largely forgotten until a revival of interest in the late 19th century led to a spate of modern editions and performances. At first these tended to be unstaged versions within institutes and music societies, but following the first modern dramatised performance in Paris, in 1911, the work was seen increasingly in theatres. In 2007 the quatercentenary of the premiere was celebrated by performances throughout the world.
edit 
Credit: Unknown artist, restored by Adam Cuerden
Julie d'Aubigny, (1670/1673–1707), better known as Mademoiselle Maupin or La Maupin, was a 17th-century opera singer. Little is known for certain about her life; her tumultuous career and flamboyant lifestyle were the subject of gossip, rumor, and colourful stories in her own time, and inspired numerous fictional and semi-fictional portrayals afterwards. Théophile Gautier loosely based the title character, Madeleine de Maupin, of his novel Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835) on her. The part written for her in Tancrède, Clorinde, is considered the first example of writing for the contralto voice in French opera.
edit 

In this month

Nancy Storace

edit 

Selected biography

Facade of the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, NYC
Maria Friderike Radner (7 May 1981 – 24 March 2015) was a German contralto who performed internationally in opera and in concerts. Radner studied at the Robert Schumann Hochschule in Düsseldorf, Germany. Both Stern magazine and Munich's Abendzeitung described her as an "extremely talented interpreter of Wagner's music". Possessing the "rare pitch of a true alto", she frequently appeared as Erda in Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Leipzig Opera, Schwertleite in Die Walküre at the Teatro Comunale di Firenze with Zubin Mehta, and in Mahler's Symphony No. 2 (the Resurrection) conducted by Antonio Pappano in Rome and Milan. Her debut at the Metropolitan Opera (pictured) in 2012 in Götterdämmerung was part of that company's documentary Wagner's Dream. Radner died on 24 March 2015 along with her husband Sascha Schenk, their two-year-old son Felix, and her colleague Oleg Bryjak, when Germanwings Flight 9525 crashed near Prads-Haute-Bléone in France. The First Officer had a history of depression, barricaded himself into the cockpit, and deliberately crashed the plane into the mountains.
edit 

Selected quote

Thomas Beecham in a 1910 caricature
If an opera cannot be played by an organ-grinder — as Puccini and Verdi's melodies were played — then that opera is not going to achieve immortality.
edit 

Selected audio

"Donna non vidi mai"

From Giacomo Puccini's Manon Lescaut, sung by Enrico Caruso in 1913.

edit 

Did you know?

Image caption text here.

edit 
edit 

WikiProjects

Parent projects

WikiProject Arts • WikiProject Music • WikiProject Theatre

WikiProject Opera
Main project

WikiProject Opera

Descendant projects

WikiProject Richard Wagner • WikiProject Gilbert and Sullivan

Similar projects

WikiProject Classical music • WikiProject Composers

What are WikiProjects?

edit 

Main topics

Opera history: Origins of opera • Italian opera • Opera in German • French opera • Opera in English • Polish opera • Russian opera • Hungarian opera • Armenian opera • Opera in Latin America

Opera topics

Opera genres: Azione teatrale · Ballad opera · Comédie en vaudevilles · Comédie mêlée d'ariettes · Dramma giocoso · Dramma per musica · Farsa · Festa teatrale · Género chico · Grand Opera · Music Drama · Opéra-ballet · Opera buffa · Opéra bouffe · Opéra bouffon · Opéra comique · Opéra féerie · Opera semiseria · Opera seria · Operetta · Pastorale héroïque · Romantische Oper · Savoy opera · Semi-opera · Singspiel · Spieloper · Tragédie en musique · Verismo · Zarzuela · Zeitoper

Opera terms: Aria · Aria di sorbetto · Arioso · Bel canto · Breeches role · Burletta · Cabaletta · Cadenza · Cantabile · Castrato · Cavatina · Chest voice · Claque · Coloratura · Comprimario · Convenienze · Coup de glotte · Da capo aria · Diva · Entr'acte · Fach · Falsetto · Fioritura · Gesamtkunstwerk · Head voice · Intermezzo · Kammersänger · Leitmotif · Legato · Libretto · Literaturoper · Mad scene · Maestro · Melodrama · Melodramma · Monodrama · Messa di voce · Opera house · Passaggio · Portamento · Prima donna · Prompter · Recitative · Regietheater · Répétiteur · Sitzprobe · Spinto · Sprechgesang · Squillo · Stagione · Surtitles · Tessitura · Timbre · Vibrato

Opera voices: Baritenor · Baritone · Bass · Bass-baritone · Coloratura soprano · Contralto · Countertenor · Dramatic soprano · Haute-contre · Lyric soprano · Mezzo-soprano · Soprano · Soubrette · Spinto soprano · Tenor · Tenore contraltino · Tenore di grazia

Opera lists: Opera topics • List of operas by composer • Important operas • Major opera composers • Opera librettists • Opera houses • Opera companies • Opera festivals • Opera directors • Operetta composers • Orphean operas • Zarzuela composers • Opera genres • Operas set in the Crusades • The Record of Singing • Bayreuth canon

edit 

Featured content

Good articles

edit 

Categories

In the Loge by Mary Cassatt

Opera
Opera by century
Opera by city
Opera by country
Operas
Opera-related lists
Posters from operas
Opera composers
Opera critics
Opera designers
Opera directors
Opera librettists
Opera managers
Music directors (opera)
Répétiteurs
Opera singers
Opera controversies
Opera excerpts
Opera genres
Opera history
Opera houses
Opera libretti
Opera organizations
Opera recordings
Opera scholarship
Opera terminology
Works about opera
Opera stubs
edit 

Things you can do

Things you can do
edit 

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

Discover Wikipedia using portals
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Portal:Opera&oldid=1253867153"