Spain also produced its own distinctive form of opera, known as zarzuela, which had two separate flowerings: one from the mid-17th century through the mid-18th century, and another beginning around 1850. Since his theatre was not licensed to produce drama, he asked several of the leading composers (Lawes, Cooke, Locke, Coleman and Hudson) to set sections of it to music. Significantly, Dafne was an attempt to revive the classical Greek drama, part of the wider revival of antiquity characteristic of the Renaissance. The two operas of Schoenberg’s pupil Alban Berg, Wozzeck (1925) and Lulu (incomplete at his death in 1935) share many of the same characteristics as described above, though Berg combined his highly personal interpretation of Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique with melodic passages of a more traditionally tonal nature (quite Mahlerian in character) which perhaps partially explains why his operas have remained in standard repertory, despite their controversial music and plots. Without a doubt, the Four Seasons is Antonio Vivaldi’s most famous work. Yo-Yo Ma - Bach: Cello Suite No. Dafne by Jacopo Peri was the earliest composition considered opera, as understood today. Francesco Algarotti’s Essay on the Opera (1755) proved to be an inspiration for Christoph Willibald Gluck’s reforms. During the late 18th century up until the mid-19th century, Italian opera was immensely popular in Spain, supplanting the native form. Show Boat, West Side Story, Brigadoon, Sweeney Todd, Evita, The Light in the Piazza, The Phantom of the Opera and others tell dramatic stories through complex music and are now sometimes seen in opera houses. ^^^ In that case they mispelled his name. Opera did not remain confined to court audiences for long. The story of Baroque opera from 1600 1. Lully’s operas also show a concern for expressive recitative which matched the contours of the French language. (Men sometimes sing in the “female” vocal ranges, in which case they are termed sopranist or countertenor. Well after his Rimsky-Korsakov-inspired works The Nightingale (1914), and Mavra(1922), Stravinsky continued to ignore serialist technique and eventually wrote a full-fledged 18th century-style diatonic number opera The Rake’s Progress (1951). With the rise of recording technology, singers such as Enrico Caruso became known to audiences beyond the circle of opera fans. Arne was the first English composer to experiment with Italian-style all-sung comic opera, with his greatest success being Thomas and Sally in 1760. San Francisco Opera began prerecorded video transmissions in March 2008. 2. It was composed by one of the best baroque composers, Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706). The tradition was developed in the 19th century by Beethoven with his Fidelio, inspired by the climate of the French Revolution. Calm, peaceful and relaxing opera arias. The Italian word derives from the Latin opera, a singular noun meaning “work” and also the plural of the noun opus. Operatic vocal technique evolved, in a time before electronic amplification, to allow singers to produce enough volume to be heard over an orchestra, without the instrumentalists having to substantially compromise their volume. Today, operas are only rarely performed in translation. For example, opera houses in Italy routinely staged Wagner in Italian. Although Arne imitated many elements of Italian opera, he was perhaps the only English composer at that time who was able to move beyond the Italian influences and create his own unique and distinctly English voice. Stanisław Moniuszko’s opera Straszny Dwór (in English The Haunted Manor) (1861-4) represents a nineteenth-century peak of Polish national opera. These afforded great opportunity for virtuosic singing and during the golden age of opera seria the singer really became the star. Also among the vanguard was the Russian Igor Stravinsky. As of June 2008, approximately 125 theaters in 117 U.S. cities carry the showings. In these early Baroque operas, broad comedy was blended with tragic elements in a mix that jarred some educated sensibilities, sparking the first of opera’s many reform movements, sponsored by theArcadian Academy, which came to be associated with the poet Metastasio, whose libretti helped crystallize the genre of opera seria, which became the leading form of Italian opera until the end of the 18th century. With Wagner came an emphasis on vocal heft for his protagonist roles, with this vocal category described as Heldentenor; this heroic voice had its more Italianate counterpart in such roles as Calaf in Puccini’s Turandot. Operas were also performed on (and written for) radio and television. At the same time, the influence of Richard Wagner was felt as a challenge to the French tradition. Singers are then further classified by size – for instance, a soprano can be described as a lyric soprano,coloratura, soubrette, spinto, or dramatic soprano.