Wonderful Opera

The world should really be grateful to Italy for gifting it an extra-ordinary musical legacy, The Opera!. The musical tradition is definitely the jewel in the crown of the western musical traditions. With Jacopo Peri’s Lost Dafne, produced in the late 16th century, Opera became popular throughout the Europe. Different artists propagated Opera in different countries across Europe, for eg. Schutz in Germany, Lully in France, and Purcell in England. However, Opera in the 18th century was majorly dominated by the Italians and among various style Opera Seria was the most popular. Out of this scenario, emerged Mozart who composed 600 compositions and is still considered one of the stalwarts of the Opera Tradition.

Mozart began with Opera Seria but is most famous for his Italian comic operas, like The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosi fan tutte, The Magic Flute, etc. Other famous Opera artists are Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Pacini, Mercadante, etc. Opera was also conducted by other countries such as Germany, France, England, Russia, Spain and many others, in their own style and manner. In the modern age, like other art forms, Opera also went through a transition that of atonality and advocates of this change included Richard Strauss, Claude Debussy, Giacomo Puccini, Paul Hindemith, Hans Pfitzner. Famous singers of the 21st century include, Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, and Jose Carreras.

These days important opera houses and production companies have started broadcasting their performances to local cinemas in United States and many other countries. The broadcasting of Metropolitan Opera began on high-definition television began in 2006. Many performances are now shown live in movie theaters. Other Opera festivals held around the world also broadcast their productions. These include, La Scala in Milan, the Salzburg Festival, La Fenice in Venice, Maggio Musicale in Florence, etc.

Use of Music in Theater

Music has been used in Theater for a long time. There are some productions that do not make use of music at all and the sound effects are created either by characters back-stage or on stage. There is no hard and fast rule as far as music is concerned in theater and is totally dependent on the script of the play. If the script demands it, then its inclusion seems but natural.

Musicals and Opera are two genres of Theater in which music plays a very important role and is the basis of the production. Musicals attract a lot of crowd and are favorite among the general public who love to see the beautiful spectacle and sensational choreography. Music in other productions is used to either highlight an effect, express the emotion of a character. Sometimes it is also used depict the state of mind of a character, communicate a particular feeling to the audience. Music, song and dance helps the audience to be aware of the fact that action on stage is unreal and is crafted. Inclusion of Music has been basically borrowed from Musicals and partly from the classical mode of Drama.