Techniques

1 of 2 Pages     Next ›

The performers in the Greek tragedy were of two distinct types: the choros and the solo actors. The choros was a group of 12 or 15 adult men drawn from the general citizenry of Athens. Its role was largely passive in the drama, usually commenting upon the action or sympathizing with the solo characters. Although the choros (and particularly its leader, the choregos) engaged in dialogue with the solo actors, its ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
227 Words Read More

Bel canto – beautiful singing – is a vocal technique that is deliberately designed to sound effortless but is, in reality, extremely difficult to achieve. Although the technique reached full flower in the nineteenth century, especially in the operas of Vincenzo Bellini (1801–35), elements of bel canto style first appeared in the Baroque era, in Venetian opera of the mid-seventeenth century. The technique goes back even further, though, to Medieval ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
244 Words Read More

Claudio Monteverdi was a great innovator who achieved the quantum leap of musical style that largely freed opera from its Medieval and religious origins. To achieve this, he broke some rules, put his own interpretations on others and made changes that, in seventeenth-century terms, were revolutionary. The recitative, for example, was already an established pattern in singing, but Monteverdi used it in a new way, as a lead-in to an ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
199 Words Read More

Although endeavours to formulate a native style of English opera were all doomed to long-term failure, John Gay’s spoof The Beggar’s Opera was tremendously successful. Gay chose existing popular tunes, but Johann Christoph Pepusch provided the musical substance of the arrangements. Like Handel, Pepusch was an immigrant composer from Germany who had worked for James Brydges, the Earl of Carnarvon, during the 1710s. In fact, the so-called ‘ballad opera’ is ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
217 Words Read More

The eighteenth-century pasticcio, a rather uncomplimentary term meaning ‘hotch-potch’, was an opera written by several composers. One example was Muzio Scevola (1721), which was based on the story of an early Roman hero who burned his hand to ashes in a fire rather than assist the Etruscan enemies of Rome. Filippo Amadei, Giovanni Bononcini (1670–1747) and George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) composed one act each, in that order. Normally, though, the ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
212 Words Read More

The Singspiel was a German form of opera in which songs and other music alternated with dialogue. Although the Singspiel originated in the seventeenth century, the term was not generally used until the eighteenth. Croesus (1711) by Reinhard Keiser (1674–1739) was an early example of Singspiel. Towards the middle of the eighteenth century, other forms of opera – the French opéra comique and the English ballad opera – exerted their ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
219 Words Read More

One of Mozart’s most brilliant achievements in his mature operas is the way he harnesses the symphonic energies and key structures of the Classical sonata style to reveal character and propel the action forward. The sextet from Figaro is a famous example: here the sonata design is a perfect musical equivalent of the stage action as the initial situation spawns confusion, discord (in the central ‘development’) and, with the restoration ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
225 Words Read More

All Mozart’s operas, from Idomeneo to La clemenza di Tito, are touched by a Shakespearean wisdom and compassion. In the spirit of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, tolerance, forgiveness and reconciliation lie at the heart of each of these works, sometimes encapsulated in music of sublime, transfiguring stillness. The hushed reflections on forgiveness in the two finales of Die Entführung aus dem Serail, and the Countess’s pardon of her errant husband at ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
207 Words Read More

Vaudevilles, which took melodies from well-known operas, were popular tunes incorporated into works performed at venues such as the Comédie-Italienne in Paris. The vaudeville – taken from voix de ville, ‘voice of the town’, had its own identifiable pattern. Its title was the same as the first line of the melody: this, in turn, was the first line as it appeared in the original opera. In the sixteenth century, ‘vaudeville’ ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
197 Words Read More

Mozart was, with Handel, the composer Beethoven revered above all others. And Fidelio could hardly have been written without the example of Mozart’s mature operas. Yet with his strongly ethical, idealistic outlook, even to the point of priggishness, Beethoven regarded works such as Don Giovanni (1787) and, especially, Così fan tutte (1790) as flippant and immoral. His favourite Mozart opera by far was Die Zauberflöte, though we can guess that ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
243 Words Read More

The cabaletta or cavaletta came from the Italian word for ‘grasshopper’. Originally, the cabaletta was a short popular aria with a simple, repetitive rhythm. However, by the nineteenth century the cabaletta had a more specialized meaning; now, it described the final, lively section of an aria or a duet, which followed a ‘smoothly sung’ cantabile and so ignited the enthusiasm of the audience with an exciting ending. Unfortunately, the cabaletta ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
217 Words Read More

In France audiences had a taste for imposing grandeur and the big canvas of elemental events that manifest itself in opera after about 1820 as French grand opéra. Everything about grand opéra was supersized and deliberately made so by its chief architects, the artist and set designer Pierre-Luc-Charles Cicéri (1782–1868), the lighting expert Louis Daguerre, the librettist Eugène Scribe and the co-ordinator of all their efforts Louis Véron (1798–1867), manager ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
236 Words Read More

The demise of the aria, as suggested by Wagner and to a lesser extent by Verdi, never really happened. The aria, of course, had its disadvantages. To start with, it encouraged performers to show off and hog the stage for much longer than was justified. This was a real possibility as the fame of individual singers increased, and their egos expanded to match. However, even if this did not occur, ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
222 Words Read More

The banda was an onstage band, which originated in the eighteenth century and by the nineteenth comprised around 20 brass and woodwind players. Although essentially a military band, the banda was used for ballroom scenes or on-stage parades or processions. The on-stage band was not part of the regular orchestra, but was recruited by the theatre impresario. Consequently, its musicianship was not always expert. The banda appeared occasionally at first, ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
218 Words Read More

In Italian they called it verismo, in French naturalisme. Bizet’s Carmen was the starting point of a movement that increasingly probed the problems of modern life by representing a series of realistic events. Carmen was an opéra comique where ‘realistic’ spoken dialogue was essential, communicating more like a play than an opera, and raising more contemporary questions than mythical or historical operas. And there’s more local colour too: here are ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
226 Words Read More
1 of 2 Pages     Next ›

AUTHORITATIVE

An extensive music information resource, bringing together the talents and expertise of a wide range of editors and musicologists, including Stanley Sadie, Charles Wilson, Paul Du Noyer, Tony Byworth, Bob Allen, Howard Mandel, Cliff Douse, William Schafer, John Wilson...

CURATED

Classical, Rock, Blues, Jazz, Country and more. Flame Tree has been making encyclopaedias and guides about music for over 20 years. Now Flame Tree Pro brings together a huge canon of carefully curated information on genres, styles, artists and instruments. It's a perfect tool for study, and entertaining too, a great companion to our music books.

Rock, A Life Story

Rock, A Life Story

The ultimate story of a life of rock music, from the 1950s to the present day.

David Bowie

David Bowie

Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers his life, music, art and movies, with a sweep of incredible photographs.