The Opera

The Opera is an artistic gender that consists of a drama encenado with music.
The drama is presented using the typical elements of the theater, such as cenografia, clothes and performance. However, the letter of the opera (known as libreto) it is sung instead of being spoken. The singers are accompanied by a musical group, that in some operas can be a symphonic orchestra it completes.
The singers and its characters are classified in agreement with its vocal emblems. The masculine singers are classified in bass, low-baritone (or low-singer), baritone, tenor and contratenor. The feminine singers are classified in contralto, mezzosoprano and soprano. Each one of these classifications has subdivisions, I eat for example: a baritone can be a lyrical baritone, a character baritone or a baritone puff, which associate the singer's voice with the characters more adapted for the quality and the emblem of its voice.
Origin THE word opera means " work " in Latin and Italian, related with I opposed, suggesting that this combines the arts of song chorale and soil, recitative and ballet, in a show encenado.
The first considered work an opera, in the sense generally understood, it dates approximately of the year 1597. Dafne was called (now disappeared), written by Jacopo Peri for a circle elitista of humorists florentinos letrados, whose group was known like Camerata. Dafne was an attempt of reviving the classic Greek tragedy, as part of a wide reappearance of the antiquity that characterized the Renaissance. A posterior work of Peri, Eurídice, that dates of the year 1600, is the first opera that survived until the present time. Nevertheless, the use of the term opera begins to be used starting from middles of the century XVII to define the musical plays, to which he/she referred, until then, with universal formulations like Dramma per Music (Musical Drama) or Favola in Music (musical fable). Spoken dialogue or declaimed - called recitative in opera - accompanied by an orchestra, it is the fundamental characteristic of the melodrama, in its original sense. The bel song was a present style in the Italian opera that was characterized by the virtuosity and the decoration that it demonstrated the soloist in its representation. In the first half of the century XIX the bel song reached its higher level, through Gioacchino Rossini's operas, Vincenzo Bellini and Gaetano Donizetti.
French opera Competing with imported productions of the Italian opera, a separate French tradition, tune in French, it was founded by the Italian composer Jean-Baptiste Lully, who monopolized the French opera since 1672. The openings of Lully, its disciplined recitals and flowed and its intermezzos established a pattern that Gluck fought for reforming almost later one century. The opera in France stayed, including ballet interludes and one elaborated it would plan cenográfica.
The French opera was influenced by the bel song of Rossini and other Italian composers.
Opera-comique THE French opera with spoken dialogues is known as opera-comique, independent of its content. This had its peak between the years of 1770 and 1880 and one of its recognized representatives it was Carmen of Bizet in 1875. The opera-comique it served as model for the development of the German singspiel and it can resemble each other to the operetta, according to the weight of its thematic content. The elements of Grand French Opera appeared for the first time in the works Guillaume Tell of Rossini in 1829 and Robert reads Diable of Meyerbeer in 1831. It is characterized by having luxurious and elaborated decorations, a great choir, a great orchestra, obligatory ballets and a high number of characters. Grand Opera's apex in Italy gives him with Verdi with you Read Vespres Siciliennes and Don Carlos and in Germany with Wagner's German Opera Rienzi THE German singspiel Mozart's Magic Flute meets ahead of the tradition of the German Opera that was developed in the century XIX by names as Carl Maria von Weber, Heinrich Marschner and Wagner. This last one introduced the concept of the musical drama, in that the opera left of being composed by " numbers " and the music starts to have a continuous flow, without divisions in arias, duets, etc. The opera Tristão and Isolda were the first to be structured this way.
In a general way, the German opera has the characteristic of approaching mythological and fantastic themes, of high dramaticidade, but that not if enquadram as " comedies " or " tragedies ", as it happens in the Italian opera and in the French opera.