140-900: Opera Australia is the principal opera company in Australia . Based in Sydney , New South Wales , its performance season at the Sydney Opera House accompanied by the Opera Australia Orchestra runs for approximately eight months of the year, with the remainder of its time spent at the Arts Centre Melbourne , where it is accompanied by Orchestra Victoria . In 2004, the company gave 226 performances in its subscription seasons in Sydney and Melbourne , Victoria , attended by more than 294,000 people. It
280-605: A Monastery , and War and Peace ; as well as Dmitri Shostakovich in The Nose and Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District , Edison Denisov in L'écume des jours , and Alfred Schnittke in Life with an Idiot and Historia von D. Johann Fausten . Czech composers also developed a thriving national opera movement of their own in the 19th century, starting with Bedřich Smetana , who wrote eight operas including
420-573: A cello; or accompagnato (also known as strumentato ) in which the orchestra provided accompaniment. Over the 18th century, arias were increasingly accompanied by the orchestra. By the 19th century, accompagnato had gained the upper hand, the orchestra played a much bigger role, and Wagner revolutionized opera by abolishing almost all distinction between aria and recitative in his quest for what Wagner termed "endless melody". Subsequent composers have tended to follow Wagner 's example, though some, such as Stravinsky in his The Rake's Progress have bucked
560-506: A complex web of leitmotifs , recurring themes often associated with the characters and concepts of the drama, of which prototypes can be heard in his earlier operas such as Der fliegende Holländer , Tannhäuser and Lohengrin ; and he was prepared to violate accepted musical conventions, such as tonality , in his quest for greater expressivity. In his mature music dramas, Tristan und Isolde , Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg , Der Ring des Nibelungen and Parsifal , he abolished
700-475: A concern for expressive recitative which matched the contours of the French language. In the 18th century, Lully's most important successor was Jean-Philippe Rameau , who composed five tragédies en musique as well as numerous works in other genres such as opéra-ballet , all notable for their rich orchestration and harmonic daring. Despite the popularity of Italian opera seria throughout much of Europe during
840-600: A digital strategy in order to bring high-definition recordings of its operas to cinemas (in collaboration with CinemaLive), as well as launching DVD, Blu-ray and CD releases on its own label and broadcasting these recordings on ABC Television. The ARIA Music Awards is an annual awards ceremony that recognises excellence, innovation, and achievement across all genres of Australian music . They commenced in 1987. Opera Australia has released numerous video recordings, on VHS, DVD and BluRay, of whole productions and of thematic selections, including: Sources Opera Opera
980-466: A fully produced and staged opera, designed to be an opera "event". The production of La traviata was directed by Francesca Zambello and attracted an audience of 40,000 people. In 2013, Opera Australia staged an open-air production of Carmen on Sydney Harbour, directed by Gale Edwards . It reached similar audience numbers. The harbour has since received annual stagings, followed by Madama Butterfly (2014), Aida (2015), and Turandot (2016),
1120-589: A hearing. Berlioz's epic masterpiece Les Troyens , the culmination of the Gluckian tradition, was not given a full performance for almost a hundred years. In the second half of the 19th century, Jacques Offenbach created operetta with witty and cynical works such as Orphée aux enfers , as well as the opera Les Contes d'Hoffmann ; Charles Gounod scored a massive success with Faust ; and Georges Bizet composed Carmen , which, once audiences learned to accept its blend of Romanticism and realism, became
1260-499: A highly varied body of operatic works, often with libretti by the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal . Other composers who made individual contributions to German opera in the early 20th century include Alexander von Zemlinsky , Erich Korngold , Franz Schreker , Paul Hindemith , Kurt Weill and the Italian-born Ferruccio Busoni . The operatic innovations of Arnold Schoenberg and his successors are discussed in
1400-458: A large variety of works for stage. Perhaps, the most famous Iranian opera is Rostam and Sohrab by Loris Tjeknavorian premiered not until the early 2000s. Chinese contemporary classical opera , a Chinese language form of Western style opera that is distinct from traditional Chinese opera , has had operas dating back to The White-Haired Girl in 1945. In Latin America, opera started as
1540-621: A later Broadway version. Opera Australia (OA) was formed by the merger of the Australian Opera and the Victoria State Opera (VSO) companies in 1996, following the financial collapse of the Melbourne-based VSO. Adrian Collette was appointed general manager of the new company, and developed a three-year plan to restructure the company involving twice yearly seasons in both Sydney and Melbourne, integrating
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#17327833131591680-548: A music-theatre work composed with the direct participation from the earliest stages by the singers who performed it and marking director Baz Luhrmann 's first association with the Australian Opera. Sutherland gave her farewell performances for the Australian Opera in 1990 in a production of Meyerbeer 's Les Huguenots . Two years later, the company named its major rehearsal studio after Dame Joan. Also in 1990, Baz Luhrmann's La bohème premiered in Sydney, establishing Cheryl Barker and David Hobson as important principals in
1820-515: A new phrase. This fashion of opera directed opera from Verdi, onward, exercising tremendous influence on his successors Giacomo Puccini , Richard Strauss , and Benjamin Britten . After Verdi, the sentimental "realistic" melodrama of verismo appeared in Italy. This was a style introduced by Pietro Mascagni 's Cavalleria rusticana and Ruggero Leoncavallo 's Pagliacci that came to dominate
1960-504: A new production of Carmen in 2017, La bohème (2018), West Side Story (2019), La Traviata (1920, 2021), The Phantom of the Opera (2022), Madama Butterfly (2023), West Side Story (2024) In 2012, Opera Australia replaced the regular Gilbert and Sullivan productions that had formed part of the company's repertoire for some years with a series of Broadway musicals. A Lincoln Center Theatre production of South Pacific played at
2100-528: A new seriousness to the genre, which had never been wholly "comic" in any case. Another phenomenon of this period was the 'propaganda opera' celebrating revolutionary successes, e.g. Gossec's Le triomphe de la République (1793). By the 1820s, Gluckian influence in France had given way to a taste for Italian bel canto , especially after the arrival of Rossini in Paris . Rossini's Guillaume Tell helped found
2240-483: A nineteenth-century peak of Polish national opera . In the 20th century, other operas created by Polish composers included King Roger by Karol Szymanowski and Ubu Rex by Krzysztof Penderecki . The first known opera from Turkey (the Ottoman Empire ) was Arshak II , which was an Armenian opera composed by an ethnic Armenian composer Tigran Chukhajian in 1868 and partially performed in 1873. It
2380-757: A period of six to twelve weeks in 2014. Terracini resigned in October 2022 and in December Opera Australia announced Welsh-born Jo Davies as his replacement. She was the first woman to be appointed artistic director of the company, but left in August 2024, following "differences of opinion" with the CEO. Oz Opera was established after the merger of the AO with the VSO in 1996 with Lindy Hume as its director. Its aim
2520-475: A permanent nucleus of singers and staff was retained throughout the year and the company had made appearances at regional festivals, including the Adelaide Festival . It was also able to establish the first Elizabethan Trust Orchestra for the company by 1967 with additional government aid. During this time, Stefan Haag played an important role in the development of the company. A major milestone for
2660-775: A result of European colonisation. The first opera ever written in the Americas was 1701's La púrpura de la rosa , by Tomás de Torrejón y Velasco , a Peruvian composer born in Spain; a decade later, 1711's Partenope , by the Mexican Manuel de Zumaya , was the first opera written from a composer born in Latin America (music now lost). The first Brazilian opera for a libretto in Portuguese was A Noite de São João , by Elias Álvares Lobo . However, Antônio Carlos Gomes
2800-611: A scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London, where his piano teacher was Herbert Fryer . He gave up his music scholarship, continuing his private piano studies, and became a coach for singers. One of these was Joan Sutherland, whom he had accompanied in Australia. They married in 1954 and became a duo , performing operatic recitals until 1962. When the scheduled conductor for a recital of operatic arias became ill and
2940-522: A separate French tradition was founded by the Italian-born French composer Jean-Baptiste Lully at the court of King Louis XIV . Despite his foreign birthplace, Lully established an Academy of Music and monopolised French opera from 1672. Starting with Cadmus et Hermione , Lully and his librettist Quinault created tragédie en musique , a form in which dance music and choral writing were particularly prominent. Lully's operas also show
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#17327833131593080-586: A series of performances in a few opera houses around the U.S. ( Florida Grand Opera , Michigan Opera Theatre ), and now is mostly involved with the Opera Australia company ( Lucia di Lammermoor in August 2008, and in 2006 for Opera Queensland ; I Capuleti e i Montecchi in Melbourne and Sydney in middle of 2009). He lives in Les Avants , Switzerland and maintains a home in Sydney. He
3220-734: A speech-inflected style, and self-contained arias . The 19th century saw the rise of the continuous music drama . Opera originated in Italy at the end of the 16th century (with Jacopo Peri 's mostly lost Dafne , produced in Florence in 1598) especially from works by Claudio Monteverdi , notably L'Orfeo , and soon spread through the rest of Europe: Heinrich Schütz in Germany, Jean-Baptiste Lully in France, and Henry Purcell in England all helped to establish their national traditions in
3360-469: A superb sense of drama, harmony, melody, and counterpoint to write a series of comic operas with libretti by Lorenzo Da Ponte , notably Le nozze di Figaro , Don Giovanni , and Così fan tutte , which remain among the most-loved, popular and well-known operas. But Mozart's contribution to opera seria was more mixed; by his time it was dying away, and in spite of such fine works as Idomeneo and La clemenza di Tito , he would not succeed in bringing
3500-527: Is a 10 CD "Compendium of Ballet Rarities" which have been rarely recorded but are often performed by established ballet companies, such as several famous Pas de deux and ballets performed in operas. His recordings also include some works with no operatic or balletic associations, such as the Harp Concerto in E-flat by Reinhold Glière , with harpist Osian Ellis . Commencing in 2007, he has conducted
3640-566: Is a form of Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers . Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librettist and incorporates a number of the performing arts , such as acting , scenery , costume , and sometimes dance or ballet . The performance is typically given in an opera house , accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble , which since
3780-537: Is an Australian conductor and pianist. He is the widower of Australian dramatic coloratura soprano Dame Joan Sutherland . Bonynge conducted virtually all of Sutherland's operatic performances from 1962 until her retirement in 1990. Bonynge was born in Epping , a suburb of Sydney , and educated at Sydney Boys' High School before studying piano at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and gaining
3920-455: Is funded by government grants, corporate sponsorship, private philanthropy, and ticket sales. The proportion of its revenue from ticket sales is considerably higher than that of most companies, approximately 75 per cent. The company is perhaps best known internationally for its association with Dame Joan Sutherland , for Baz Luhrmann 's production of Puccini 's La bohème in the early 1990s and more recently, for, apart from performances inside
4060-622: Is generally regarded as the most outstanding Brazilian composer, having a relative success in Italy with its Brazilian-themed operas with Italian librettos, such as Il Guarany . Opera in Argentina developed in the 20th century after the inauguration of Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires—with the opera Aurora , by Ettore Panizza , being heavily influenced by the Italian tradition, due to immigration. Other important composers from Argentina include Felipe Boero and Alberto Ginastera . Perhaps
4200-561: Is held in Melbourne. The second was the establishment of The Esso Young Artists' Development Program for the Australian Opera while the third was the Australian Compositions Program launched with a new production of Brian Howard's Metamorphosis . Another innovative program, The National Opera Workshop, was established to enable selected Australian composers to present works in workshop form with artists from
4340-629: Is most famous for his Italian comic operas , especially The Marriage of Figaro ( Le nozze di Figaro ), Don Giovanni , and Così fan tutte , as well as Die Entführung aus dem Serail ( The Abduction from the Seraglio ), and The Magic Flute ( Die Zauberflöte ), landmarks in the German tradition. The first third of the 19th century saw the high point of the bel canto style, with Gioachino Rossini , Gaetano Donizetti and Vincenzo Bellini all creating signature works of that style. It also saw
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4480-620: Is regularly involved in the philanthropic activities of the Joan Sutherland & Richard Bonynge Foundation , often chairing the panel of judges for their annual Bel Canto Award. Bonynge was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his services to music in 1977. In 1983, he was made Officer of the Order of Australia , and in 1989 a Commandeur de l' Ordre des Arts et des Lettres . On 26 January 2012, Bonynge
4620-487: Is the first opera score to have survived until the present day. However, the honour of being the first opera still to be regularly performed goes to Claudio Monteverdi 's L'Orfeo , composed for the court of Mantua in 1607. The Mantua court of the Gonzagas , employers of Monteverdi, played a significant role in the origin of opera employing not only court singers of the concerto delle donne (till 1598), but also one of
4760-830: Is the shift away from long, suspended melodies, to short quick mottos, as first illustrated by Giuseppe Verdi in his Falstaff . Composers such as Strauss, Britten, Shostakovich and Stravinsky adopted and expanded upon this style. Operatic modernism truly began in the operas of two Viennese composers, Arnold Schoenberg and his student Alban Berg , both composers and advocates of atonality and its later development (as worked out by Schoenberg), dodecaphony . Schoenberg's early musico-dramatic works, Erwartung (1909, premiered in 1924) and Die glückliche Hand display heavy use of chromatic harmony and dissonance in general. Schoenberg also occasionally used Sprechstimme . The two operas of Schoenberg's pupil Alban Berg, Wozzeck (1925) and Lulu (incomplete at his death in 1935) share many of
4900-805: Is to present opera to audiences throughout metropolitan and regional Australia. It presents performances in primary schools across New South Wales and Victoria, adapting large-scale scores to suit young audiences. Oz Opera, now called Opera Australia Touring and Outreach (Opera Australia's education, access and development arm), presented the La bohème production in Victoria , the Northern Territory and Western Australia , attended by 13,350 people, while OzOpera's Schools Company performed to over 63,500 primary age children in more than 360 performances in urban and regional New South Wales and Victoria. Since then
5040-807: The Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra , Sydney and Orchestra Victoria , Melbourne). Another successful concert with Sutherland and Marilyn Horne was held in the Concert Hall. Several innovative features characterised this period of the 1980s. The first, Esso Opera in the Park in the Sydney Domain , quickly became an annual event, and it is now called "Opera in the Domain". Typically, it attracts almost 100,000 people each year. A similar annual outdoor event, which attracts more than 25,000 people,
5180-530: The English Restoration , foreign (especially French) musicians were welcomed back. In 1673, Thomas Shadwell 's Psyche , patterned on the 1671 'comédie-ballet' of the same name produced by Molière and Jean-Baptiste Lully . William Davenant produced The Tempest in the same year, which was the first musical adaption of a Shakespeare play (composed by Locke and Johnson). About 1683, John Blow composed Venus and Adonis , often thought of as
5320-612: The Ring Cycle to audiences across the country. In April 2013, Opera Australia announced a 44 per cent growth in total revenue based on an increase in box office sales of more than 55 per cent. For the second year in a row, the company reported an operating profit following two successive deficits. In January 2013, the board of Opera Australia announced they would extend Lyndon Terracini's contract as artistic director for five more years. Later that year, Terracini announced that singers on 12-month contracts will be "rested" without pay for
5460-599: The Sinfonietta and the Glagolitic Mass . 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. During the late 18th century up until the mid-19th century, Italian opera was immensely popular in Spain, supplanting the native form . In Russian Eastern Europe, several national operas began to emerge. Ukrainian opera
5600-577: The dramatist Sir William Davenant produced The Siege of Rhodes . 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. This success was followed by The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru (1658) and The History of Sir Francis Drake (1659). These pieces were encouraged by Oliver Cromwell because they were critical of Spain. With
5740-462: The libretto (meaning "small book"). Some composers, notably Wagner, have written their own libretti; others have worked in close collaboration with their librettists, e.g. Mozart with Lorenzo Da Ponte . Traditional opera, often referred to as " number opera ", consists of two modes of singing: recitative , the plot-driving passages sung in a style designed to imitate and emphasize the inflections of speech, and aria (an "air" or formal song) in which
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5880-471: The 1640s. His most important follower Francesco Cavalli helped spread opera throughout Italy. 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 the Arcadian Academy , which came to be associated with the poet Metastasio , whose libretti helped crystallize
6020-451: The 17th century. In the 18th century, Italian opera continued to dominate most of Europe (except France), attracting foreign composers such as George Frideric Handel . Opera seria was the most prestigious form of Italian opera, until Christoph Willibald Gluck reacted against its artificiality with his "reform" operas in the 1760s. The most renowned figure of late 18th-century opera is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , who began with opera seria but
6160-557: The 18th century another genre was gaining popularity in France: opéra comique . This was the equivalent of the German singspiel , where arias alternated with spoken dialogue. Notable examples in this style were produced by Monsigny , Philidor and, above all, Grétry . During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period, composers such as Étienne Méhul , Luigi Cherubini and Gaspare Spontini , who were followers of Gluck, brought
6300-528: The 1974 season, three Australian works were performed: The Affair by Felix Werder , Lenz by Larry Sitsky , and Rites of Passage by Peter Sculthorpe . ( Rites of Passage was to have been the inaugural opera presentation at the Sydney Opera House, but was not ready in time.) By 1976, Richard Bonynge had become musical director and he led the company on its first overseas tour to New Zealand with Verdi's Rigoletto and Janáček's Jenůfa ,
6440-464: The 19th century in Russia, there were written such operatic masterpieces as Rusalka and The Stone Guest by Alexander Dargomyzhsky , Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina by Modest Mussorgsky , Prince Igor by Alexander Borodin , Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades by Pyotr Tchaikovsky , and The Snow Maiden and Sadko by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov . These developments mirrored
6580-562: The 20th century for his innovative works. His later, mature works incorporate his earlier studies of national folk music in a modern, highly original synthesis, first evident in the opera Jenůfa , which was premiered in 1904 in Brno . The success of Jenůfa (often called the " Moravian national opera") at Prague in 1916 gave Janáček access to the world's great opera stages. Janáček's later works are his most celebrated. They include operas such as Káťa Kabanová and The Cunning Little Vixen ,
6720-547: The 20th century, English opera began to assert more independence, with works of Ralph Vaughan Williams and in particular Benjamin Britten , who in a series of works that remain in standard repertory today, revealed an excellent flair for the dramatic and superb musicality. More recently Sir Harrison Birtwistle has emerged as one of Britain's most significant contemporary composers from his first opera Punch and Judy to his most recent critical success in The Minotaur . In
6860-475: The Age of Therapy by Paul Grabowsky (OzOpera 2002); Lindy by Moya Henderson (2003); Madeline Lee by John Haddock (2004); Bliss (2010) by Brett Dean ; and The Rabbits by Kate Miller Heidke (2015). In 2015, OA produced the television opera The Divorce by Elena Kats-Chernin and Joanna Murray-Smith based on an original idea by Terracini for ABC Television . In 2011, Opera Australia launched
7000-675: The Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust established the Armstrong-Martin Scholarship to further the musical education of professional opera singers. During the 1980s, after many years of recording performances by the Australian Opera for television, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and The Australian Opera presented their first live simulcast, Johann Strauss's Die Fledermaus , and it
7140-724: The Australian Opera Company was formed in Sydney under the auspices of the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust . It commemorated the Mozart bicentenary by presenting four Mozart operas in all capital cities, travelling more than 10,000 kilometres, and giving 169 performances. By 1957, it changed its name to the Elizabethan Theatre Trust Opera Company. In 1959 the company's laid-off singers gave
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#17327833131597280-623: The Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra was integrated with the Australian Opera to produce a permanent opera and ballet orchestra for the company. In its first performances outside Australasia in 1994, the company performed Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Edinburgh International Festival . In addition, the Baz Luhrmann production of La bohème was screened over more than 300 North American television stations, followed by worldwide video release and
7420-569: The Australian Opera and Cillario until his retirement in 2003. Some of his first rehearsals in the country involved conducting the Elizabethan Sydney Orchestra and the Australian Opera Chorus, both newly formed and on permanent contracts. While not yet appearing with this company, Joan Sutherland , then an internationally known Australian soprano, and her husband, the conductor Richard Bonynge , helped
7560-560: The Australian Opera. Lastly, OperaAction, the Youth Education Program, established a program of events, including three youth performances of Puccini's Madama Butterfly and, in 1986, Winds of the Solstice , an original youth opera created by 70 students working on libretto , music, choreography and orchestration and presented at the Sydney Opera House. The company re-organised its administration gradually throughout
7700-582: The Baroque period, Italian opera never gained much of a foothold in France, where its own national operatic tradition was more popular instead. After Rameau's death, the Bohemian-Austrian composer Gluck was persuaded to produce six operas for the Parisian stage in the 1770s. They show the influence of Rameau, but simplified and with greater focus on the drama. At the same time, by the middle of
7840-586: The Beach ), Mark Adamo , John Corigliano ( The Ghosts of Versailles ), Robert Moran , John Adams ( Nixon in China ), André Previn and Jake Heggie . Many contemporary 21st century opera composers have emerged such as Missy Mazzoli , Kevin Puts , Tom Cipullo , Huang Ruo , David T. Little , Terence Blanchard , Jennifer Higdon , Tobias Picker , Michael Ching , Anthony Davis , and Ricky Ian Gordon . Opera
7980-552: The Czech national spirit, as were some of his choral works. By far the most successful of the operas is Rusalka which contains the well-known aria "Měsíčku na nebi hlubokém" ("Song to the Moon"); it is played on contemporary opera stages frequently outside the Czech Republic . This is attributable to their uneven invention and libretti, and perhaps also their staging requirements – The Jacobin , Armida , Vanda and Dimitrij need stages large enough to portray invading armies. Leoš Janáček gained international recognition in
8120-614: The London stage from the mid-19th century into the 1870s. London's Daily Telegraph agreed, describing The Yeomen of the Guard as "a genuine English opera, forerunner of many others, let us hope, and possibly significant of an advance towards a national lyric stage". Sullivan produced a few light operas in the 1890s that were of a more serious nature than those in the G&S series, including Haddon Hall and The Beauty Stone , but Ivanhoe (which ran for 155 consecutive performances, using alternating casts—a record until Broadway's La bohème ) survives as his only grand opera . In
8260-407: The OA and VSO staff and planning a viable financial structure so as to manage the inherited debt. The first few years of the present century saw the retirement of Moffatt Oxenbould, Opera Australia's artistic director for 15 years, and the appointment of Simone Young as musical director. Immediately on taking up her position in 2001, Simone Young appointed the Australian director Stuart Maunder to
8400-445: The Opera (1755) proved to be an inspiration for Christoph Willibald Gluck 's reforms. He advocated that opera seria had to return to basics and that all the various elements—music (both instrumental and vocal), ballet , and staging—must be subservient to the overriding drama. In 1765 Melchior Grimm published " Poème lyrique ", an influential article for the Encyclopédie on lyric and opera librettos . Several composers of
8540-429: The Sydney Opera House and Melbourne's Princess Theatre in 2012, kicking off a national tour which continued in 2013. An extensive philanthropic drive enabled the company to program its first full-length Ring Cycle , which was performed in Melbourne over four weeks at the end of 2013. After tickets to the event sold out in just one day, ABC Classic FM and Opera Australia announced the radio station would live broadcast
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#17327833131598680-499: The acts of stage plays, operas in the new comic genre of intermezzi , which developed largely in Naples in the 1710s and 1720s, were initially staged during the intermissions of opera seria. They became so popular, however, that they were soon being offered as separate productions. Opera seria was elevated in tone and highly stylised in form, usually consisting of secco recitative interspersed with long da capo arias. These afforded great opportunity for virtuosic singing and during
8820-485: The advent of grand opera typified by the works of Daniel Auber and Giacomo Meyerbeer as well as Carl Maria von Weber 's introduction of German Romantische Oper (German Romantic Opera). The mid-to-late 19th century was a golden age of opera, led and dominated by Giuseppe Verdi in Italy and Richard Wagner in Germany. The popularity of opera continued through the verismo era in Italy and contemporary French opera through to Giacomo Puccini and Richard Strauss in
8960-457: The art form back to life again. The bel canto opera movement flourished in the early 19th century and is exemplified by the operas of Rossini , Bellini , Donizetti , Pacini , Mercadante and many others. Literally "beautiful singing", bel canto opera derives from the Italian stylistic singing school of the same name. Bel canto lines are typically florid and intricate, requiring supreme agility and pitch control. Examples of famous operas in
9100-411: The bel canto style include Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia and La Cenerentola , as well as Bellini's Norma , La sonnambula and I puritani and Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor , L'elisir d'amore and Don Pasquale . Following the bel canto era, a more direct, forceful style was rapidly popularized by Giuseppe Verdi , beginning with his biblical opera Nabucco . This opera, and
9240-480: The cause of opera in general in Australia during the 1960s. Sutherland's name was also linked to the progress of the Sydney Opera House , begun in 1957 and still undergoing a lengthy and controversial construction. By the time "La Stupenda" appeared there in 1974, one year after the opening of the theatre, the company was a leading repertory company with a large chorus and a roster of experienced Australian principals supplemented by guest singers and conductors. In 1970,
9380-459: The characters express their emotions in a more structured melodic style. Vocal duets, trios and other ensembles often occur, and choruses are used to comment on the action. In some forms of opera, such as singspiel , opéra comique , operetta , and semi-opera , the recitative is mostly replaced by spoken dialogue. Melodic or semi-melodic passages occurring in the midst of, or instead of, recitative, are also referred to as arioso . The terminology of
9520-410: The circle of opera fans. Since the invention of radio and television, operas were also performed on (and written for) these media. Beginning in 2006, a number of major opera houses began to present live high-definition video transmissions of their performances in cinemas all over the world. Since 2009, complete performances can be downloaded and are live streamed . The words of an opera are known as
9660-420: The company became known as The Australian Opera. The 1970s saw considerable changes both in administration and location. In 1972, Edward Downes , formerly associated with London's Royal Opera House , became musical director, and his first new production was the Australian premiere of Richard Strauss 's Der Rosenkavalier at the Princess Theatre, Melbourne , followed closely by Prokofiev's War and Peace as
9800-404: The company have been The Little Mermaid by Anne Boyd (1985); Metamorphosis by Brian Howard (1985); Voss by Richard Meale (1986); Whitsunday by Howard (1988); Mer de glace by Richard Meale (1992); The Golem by Larry Sitsky (1993); The Eighth Wonder by Alan John (1995); Summer of the Seventeenth Doll by Richard Mills (1999); Batavia by Richard Mills (2001); Love in
9940-407: The company was a television recording of Puccini's Tosca filmed in 1968 at the Adelaide Festival. This starred Tito Gobbi as Scarpia alongside two Australian singers, soprano Marie Collier in the title role, and tenor Donald Smith as Cavaradossi, with the Argentinian born, Italian conductor Carlo Felice Cillario conducting. This was the commencement of a long and fruitful association between
10080-708: The company. Such was its impact that the production went on to play at the Broadway Theatre in New York in 2002 for 228 performances. The early 1990s were to see two important changes in the way that the company worked: firstly, in 1991, with the formation of the Artistic Associates of The Australian Opera, a body of people was created which comprised some of the most important figures in the Australian musical and performing arts world. Secondly,
10220-606: The decade, appointing Moffatt Oxenbould as artistic director in 1984, and announcing that Bonynge would become Musical Director Emeritus and principal guest conductor from 1987, after his decade long contract as musical director expired. In 1988, in association with the Australian Bicentennial Authority, the company toured Brisbane, Darwin, Hobart, Melbourne, Perth and the National Opera Workshop in Melbourne with The Ra Project ,
10360-408: The distinction between aria and recitative in favour of a seamless flow of "endless melody". Wagner also brought a new philosophical dimension to opera in his works, which were usually based on stories from Germanic or Arthurian legend. Finally, Wagner built his own opera house at Bayreuth with part of the patronage from Ludwig II of Bavaria , exclusively dedicated to performing his own works in
10500-506: The drama is understated, enigmatic and completely un-Wagnerian. Other notable 20th-century names include Ravel , Dukas , Roussel , Honegger and Milhaud . Francis Poulenc is one of the very few post-war composers of any nationality whose operas (which include Dialogues des Carmélites ) have gained a foothold in the international repertory. Olivier Messiaen 's lengthy sacred drama Saint François d'Assise (1983) has also attracted widespread attention. In England, opera's antecedent
10640-558: The early 19th century has been led by a conductor . Although musical theatre is closely related to opera, the two are considered to be distinct from one another. Opera is a key part of Western classical music , and Italian tradition in particular. Originally understood as an entirely sung piece, in contrast to a play with songs, opera has come to include numerous genres , including some that include spoken dialogue such as Singspiel and Opéra comique . In traditional number opera , singers employ two styles of singing: recitative ,
10780-577: 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 ( Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg ), neoclassicism ( Igor Stravinsky ), and minimalism ( Philip Glass and John Adams ). With the rise of recording technology , singers such as Enrico Caruso and Maria Callas became known to much wider audiences that went beyond
10920-427: The emergence of the separate but closely related art of musical theatre in the late 19th century. Sullivan wrote only one grand opera, Ivanhoe (following the efforts of a number of young English composers beginning about 1876), but he claimed that even his light operas constituted part of a school of "English" opera, intended to supplant the French operettas (usually performed in bad translations) that had dominated
11060-433: The end of 2003. At the end of 2003, Richard Hickox was named music director-designate of Opera Australia, and took up the post full-time from January 2005. During his tenure, Hickox diversified the repertoire with the addition of more 20th-century works such as The Love for Three Oranges , Rusalka and Arabella , recording live performances of many of these works for Chandos Records . The company's 50th anniversary
11200-678: The end of the 19th century. He obtained a tattered vocal score of it in Paris, and subsequently bought the full orchestral score from an auction in New York City. Although Sutherland was initially sceptical about Esclarmonde , Bonynge became an enthusiast of the work and eventually convinced her that she should perform the role of Esclarmonde herself. The San Francisco Opera and the Metropolitan Opera premieres of Esclarmonde took place in 1974 and 1976 respectively. In 1977 he
11340-415: The fact ... or we can change ... brave programming is having the courage to programme what critics will criticise you for, but will make a genuine connection to a real audience." Terracini pursued a program designed to bring opera to wider audiences. In 2012 through the sponsorship of Haruhisa Handa and Destination NSW , Opera Australia staged the first Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour, a three-week season of
11480-529: The first actual "opera singers", Madama Europa . Opera did not remain confined to court audiences for long. In 1637, the idea of a "season" (often during the carnival ) of publicly attended operas supported by ticket sales emerged in Venice . Monteverdi had moved to the city from Mantua and composed his last operas, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria and L'incoronazione di Poppea , for the Venetian theatre in
11620-672: The first decade of the 21st century, the librettist of an early Birtwistle opera, Michael Nyman , has been focusing on composing operas, including Facing Goya , Man and Boy: Dada , and Love Counts . Today composers such as Thomas Adès continue to export English opera abroad. Also in the 20th century, American composers like George Gershwin ( Porgy and Bess ), Scott Joplin ( Treemonisha ), Leonard Bernstein ( Candide ), Gian Carlo Menotti , Douglas Moore , and Carlisle Floyd began to contribute English-language operas infused with touches of popular musical styles. They were followed by composers such as Philip Glass ( Einstein on
11760-476: The first of many regional tours (presented by state Arts Councils ) with Rossini's The Barber of Seville using reduced scenery and conducted from the piano by Georg Tintner (Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland). Subsequent Arts Council tours included Rigoletto (1960; Victoria, Queensland, New South Wales), Così fan tutte (1961; New South Wales, Queensland) and La traviata (1962; New South Wales, Queensland), all conducted by Tintner. However, by 1963
11900-461: The first true English-language opera. Blow's immediate successor was the better known Henry Purcell . Despite the success of his masterwork Dido and Aeneas (1689), in which the action is furthered by the use of Italian-style recitative, much of Purcell's best work was not involved in the composing of typical opera, but instead, he usually worked within the constraints of the semi-opera format, where isolated scenes and masques are contained within
12040-431: The form and style that would dominate opera throughout the twentieth century. Rather than long, suspended melodies, Falstaff contains many little motifs and mottos, that, rather than being expanded upon, are introduced and subsequently dropped, only to be brought up again later. These motifs never are expanded upon, and just as the audience expects a character to launch into a long melody, a new character speaks, introducing
12180-541: The genre of opera seria , which became the leading form of Italian opera until the end of the 18th century. Once the Metastasian ideal had been firmly established, comedy in Baroque-era opera was reserved for what came to be called opera buffa . Before such elements were forced out of opera seria, many libretti had featured a separately unfolding comic plot as sort of an "opera-within-an-opera". One reason for this
12320-452: The golden age of opera seria the singer really became the star. The role of the hero was usually written for the high-pitched male castrato voice, which was produced by castration of the singer before puberty , which prevented a boy's larynx from being transformed at puberty. Castrati such as Farinelli and Senesino , as well as female sopranos such as Faustina Bordoni , became in great demand throughout Europe as opera seria ruled
12460-410: The greatest French grand opera , Don Carlos , and ending his career with two Shakespeare-inspired works, Otello and Falstaff , which reveal how far Italian opera had grown in sophistication since the early 19th century. These final two works showed Verdi at his most masterfully orchestrated, and are both incredibly influential, and modern. In Falstaff , Verdi sets the pre-eminent standard for
12600-625: The growth of Russian nationalism across the artistic spectrum, as part of the more general Slavophilism movement. In the 20th century, the traditions of Russian opera were developed by many composers including Sergei Rachmaninoff in his works The Miserly Knight and Francesca da Rimini , Igor Stravinsky in Le Rossignol , Mavra , Oedipus rex , and The Rake's Progress , Sergei Prokofiev in The Gambler , The Love for Three Oranges , The Fiery Angel , Betrothal in
12740-504: The internationally popular The Bartered Bride . Smetana's eight operas created the bedrock of the Czech opera repertory, but of these only The Bartered Bride is performed regularly outside the composer's homeland. After reaching Vienna in 1892 and London in 1895 it rapidly became part of the repertory of every major opera company worldwide. Antonín Dvořák 's nine operas, except his first, have librettos in Czech and were intended to convey
12880-526: The late 18th century. Nevertheless, native forms would develop in spite of this influence. In 1644, Sigmund Staden produced the first Singspiel , Seelewig , a popular form of German-language opera in which singing alternates with spoken dialogue. In the late 17th century and early 18th century, the Theater am Gänsemarkt in Hamburg presented German operas by Keiser , Telemann and Handel . Yet most of
13020-631: The latter conducted by Georg Tintner. This was followed in 1978 by the first Australian Opera country tour with orchestra to north-eastern New South Wales ( Don Pasquale with the Queensland Theatre Orchestra, conducted by Tintner). The principal tenor for this tour was Robin Donald . From 1977 to 1990, the resident director was Elke Neidhardt . In 1977, the New South Wales Friends of the Australian Opera and
13160-609: The leadership Zacharia Paliashvili , who fused local folk songs and stories with 19th-century Romantic classical themes. The key figure of Hungarian national opera in the 19th century was Ferenc Erkel , whose works mostly dealt with historical themes. Among his most often performed operas are Hunyadi László and Bánk bán . The most famous modern Hungarian opera is Béla Bartók 's Duke Bluebeard's Castle . Stanisław Moniuszko 's opera Straszny Dwór (in English The Haunted Manor ) (1861–64) represents
13300-438: The major German composers of the time, including Handel himself, as well as Graun , Hasse and later Gluck , chose to write most of their operas in foreign languages, especially Italian. In contrast to Italian opera, which was generally composed for the aristocratic class, German opera was generally composed for the masses and tended to feature simple folk-like melodies, and it was not until the arrival of Mozart that German opera
13440-499: The most daring and revolutionary. In it, Verdi blurs the distinction between the aria and recitative as it never before was, leading the opera to be "an unending string of duets". La traviata was also novel. It tells the story of courtesan, and it includes elements of verismo or "realistic" opera, because rather than featuring great kings and figures from literature, it focuses on the tragedies of ordinary life and society. After these, he continued to develop his style, composing perhaps
13580-542: The most obvious stylistic manifestation of modernism in opera is the development of atonality . The move away from traditional tonality in opera had begun with Richard Wagner , and in particular the Tristan chord . Composers such as Richard Strauss , Claude Debussy , Giacomo Puccini , Paul Hindemith , Benjamin Britten and Hans Pfitzner pushed Wagnerian harmony further with a more extreme use of chromaticism and greater use of dissonance. Another aspect of modernist opera
13720-414: The most popular of all opéra comiques. Jules Massenet , Camille Saint-Saëns and Léo Delibes all composed works which are still part of the standard repertory, examples being Massenet's Manon , Saint-Saëns' Samson et Dalila and Delibes' Lakmé . Their operas formed another genre, the opéra lyrique , combined opéra comique and grand opera. It is less grandiose than grand opera, but without
13860-417: The most significant figure was undoubtedly Wagner . Wagner was one of the most revolutionary and controversial composers in musical history. Starting under the influence of Weber and Meyerbeer , he gradually evolved a new concept of opera as a Gesamtkunstwerk (a "complete work of art"), a fusion of music, poetry and painting. He greatly increased the role and power of the orchestra, creating scores with
14000-458: The musical stage in England. The only exceptions were ballad operas , such as John Gay 's The Beggar's Opera (1728), musical burlesques , European operettas , and late Victorian era light operas , notably the Savoy operas of W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan , all of which types of musical entertainments frequently spoofed operatic conventions; these genres contributed significantly to
14140-482: The new genre of grand opera , a form whose most famous exponent was another foreigner, Giacomo Meyerbeer . Meyerbeer's works, such as Les Huguenots , emphasised virtuoso singing and extraordinary stage effects. Lighter opéra comique also enjoyed tremendous success in the hands of Boïeldieu , Auber , Hérold and Adam . In this climate, the operas of the French-born composer Hector Berlioz struggled to gain
14280-586: The ones that would follow in Verdi's career, revolutionized Italian opera, changing it from merely a display of vocal fireworks, with Rossini's and Donizetti's works, to dramatic story-telling. Verdi's operas resonated with the growing spirit of Italian nationalism in the post- Napoleonic era, and he quickly became an icon of the patriotic movement for a unified Italy. In the early 1850s, Verdi produced his three most popular operas: Rigoletto , Il trovatore and La traviata . The first of these, Rigoletto , proved
14420-510: The opening night performance of the Sydney Opera House, a short time before the building's official opening. The Sydney Opera House, as well as quickly becoming a distinctive cultural landmark in that city, gave the company a permanent performance home and thus helped to expand its repertoire and develop local audiences. Audiences were boosted by Joan Sutherland's performances with The Australian Opera in Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann . In
14560-503: The opera house, large scale outdoor performances on Sydney Harbour. Many thousands of Australians also experience the company's work through television, radio, video, compact disc, DVD, and the annual free performance of opera in the Domain in Sydney. The company also performs in an annual outdoor event at Mrs Macquarie's Chair , Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour, where since 2012 operas such as La traviata , Madama Butterfly , Turandot , Aida and Carmen have played. In 1956,
14700-479: The operas of Mozart , who wrote in Vienna near the century's close. Leading Italian-born composers of opera seria include Alessandro Scarlatti , Antonio Vivaldi and Nicola Porpora . Opera seria had its weaknesses and critics. The taste for embellishment on behalf of the superbly trained singers, and the use of spectacle as a replacement for dramatic purity and unity drew attacks. Francesco Algarotti 's Essay on
14840-549: The other dominating force in English opera at this time was George Frideric Handel , whose opera serias filled the London operatic stages for decades and influenced most home-grown composers, like John Frederick Lampe , who wrote using Italian models. This situation continued throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, including in the work of Michael William Balfe , and the operas of the great Italian composers, as well as those of Mozart, Beethoven, and Meyerbeer, continued to dominate
14980-572: The period, including Niccolò Jommelli and Tommaso Traetta , attempted to put these ideals into practice. The first to succeed however, was Gluck. Gluck strove to achieve a "beautiful simplicity". This is evident in his first reform opera, Orfeo ed Euridice , where his non-virtuosic vocal melodies are supported by simple harmonies and a richer orchestra presence throughout. Gluck's reforms have had resonance throughout operatic history. Weber, Mozart, and Wagner, in particular, were influenced by his ideals. Mozart, in many ways Gluck's successor, combined
15120-485: The position of artistic director. Young proceeded to develop the company's core repertoire, including more German operas in the repertoire and diversifying the types of productions mounted and the standards of international and local artists employed. By late 2002 however, the OA board, faced with mounting deficits, announced that Young's future visions for the company were "unsustainable" and decided not to renew her contract after
15260-511: The quintessential designer of these productions, and this style was to dominate the English stage for three centuries. These masques contained songs and dances. In Ben Jonson 's Lovers Made Men (1617), "the whole masque was sung after the Italian manner, stilo recitativo". The approach of the English Commonwealth closed theatres and halted any developments that may have led to the establishment of English opera. However, in 1656,
15400-978: The replacement conductor was involved in a car accident, Bonynge stepped in and, from that time on, he conducted virtually all of his wife's performances. His debut as an opera conductor took place in 1963 in Vancouver , where he conducted Faust . The same year, also in Vancouver, he conducted Norma for the first time, starring Sutherland and Marilyn Horne . He also conducted the English Chamber Orchestra in many recordings. By doing some research and reading up on Massenet and Italian bel canto composers, Bonynge discovered Massenet's own statement about his opera Esclarmonde being his "best achievement." This filled Bonynge with curiosity, even more because Esclarmonde had sunk into almost total oblivion and had hardly been performed at all since
15540-686: 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. Schoenberg's theories have influenced (either directly or indirectly) significant numbers of opera composers ever since, even if they themselves did not compose using his techniques. Richard Bonynge Richard Alan Bonynge AC , CBE ( / ˈ b ɒ n ɪ ŋ / BON -ing ) (born 29 September 1930)
15680-568: The section on modernism . During the late 19th century, the Austrian composer Johann Strauss II , an admirer of the French -language operettas composed by Jacques Offenbach , composed several German-language operettas, the most famous of which was Die Fledermaus . Nevertheless, rather than copying the style of Offenbach, the operettas of Strauss II had distinctly Viennese flavor to them. In rivalry with imported Italian opera productions,
15820-419: The sense "composition in which poetry, dance, and music are combined" in 1639; the first recorded English usage in this sense dates to 1648. Dafne by Jacopo Peri was the earliest composition considered opera, as understood today. It was written around 1597, largely under the inspiration of an elite circle of literate Florentine humanists who gathered as the " Camerata de' Bardi ". Significantly, Dafne
15960-614: The spoken dialogue of opèra comique . At the same time, the influence of Richard Wagner was felt as a challenge to the French tradition. Many French critics angrily rejected Wagner's music dramas while many French composers closely imitated them with variable success. Perhaps the most interesting response came from Claude Debussy . As in Wagner's works, the orchestra plays a leading role in Debussy's unique opera Pelléas et Mélisande (1902) and there are no real arias, only recitative. But
16100-401: The stage in every country except France. Farinelli was one of the most famous singers of the 18th century. Italian opera set the Baroque standard. Italian libretti were the norm, even when a German composer like Handel found himself composing the likes of Rinaldo and Giulio Cesare for London audiences. Italian libretti remained dominant in the classical period as well, for example in
16240-830: The start of Hickox's tenure. The board expressed complete confidence in Hickox. On returning to the UK in November 2008 following the Sydney winter season, Hickox died suddenly from a heart attack after conducting a rehearsal in Swansea. On 30 June 2009, Lyndon Terracini was announced as the new artistic director. In 2011, Terracini gave a controversial speech as part of the annual Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address , in which he announced that Opera Australia had to change in order to survive. "Opera companies and orchestras of significance world wide are closing at an alarming rate ... We can blithely ignore
16380-525: The structure of a spoken play, such as Shakespeare in Purcell's The Fairy-Queen (1692) and Beaumont and Fletcher in The Prophetess (1690) and Bonduca (1696). The main characters of the play tend not to be involved in the musical scenes, which means that Purcell was rarely able to develop his characters through song. Despite these hindrances, his aim (and that of his collaborator John Dryden )
16520-593: The style he wanted. Opera would never be the same after Wagner and for many composers his legacy proved a heavy burden. On the other hand, Richard Strauss accepted Wagnerian ideas but took them in wholly new directions, along with incorporating the new form introduced by Verdi. He first won fame with the scandalous Salome and the dark tragedy Elektra , in which tonality was pushed to the limits. Then Strauss changed tack in his greatest success, Der Rosenkavalier , where Mozart and Viennese waltzes became as important an influence as Wagner. Strauss continued to produce
16660-438: The touring and outreach arm of the company has performed to a great many more people around Australia and toured other states, including South Australia, Queensland and Tasmania. Opera Australia is committed to the long-term development and performance of modern Australian operas. Since 1974, OA has fully staged 12 new Australian operas and workshopped over 20 new works in various stages of development. The main new works staged by
16800-534: The trend. The changing role of the orchestra in opera is described in more detail below . The Italian word opera means "work", both in the sense of the labour done and the result produced. The Italian word derives from the Latin word opera , a singular noun meaning "work" and also the plural of the noun opus . According to the Oxford English Dictionary , the Italian word was first used in
16940-453: The various kinds of operatic voices is described in detail below . During both the Baroque and Classical periods , recitative could appear in two basic forms, each of which was accompanied by a different instrumental ensemble: secco (dry) recitative, sung with a free rhythm dictated by the accent of the words, accompanied only by basso continuo , which was usually a harpsichord and
17080-399: The world's opera stages with such popular works as Giacomo Puccini 's La bohème , Tosca , and Madama Butterfly . Later Italian composers, such as Berio and Nono , have experimented with modernism . The first German opera was Dafne , composed by Heinrich Schütz in 1627, but the music score has not survived. Italian opera held a great sway over German-speaking countries until
17220-508: Was Tsefal i Prokris by the Italian composer Francesco Araja (1755). The development of Russian-language opera was supported by the Russian composers Vasily Pashkevich , Yevstigney Fomin and Alexey Verstovsky . However, the real birth of Russian opera came with Mikhail Glinka and his two great operas A Life for the Tsar (1836) and Ruslan and Lyudmila (1842). After him, during
17360-428: Was able to match its Italian counterpart in musical sophistication. The theatre company of Abel Seyler pioneered serious German-language opera in the 1770s, marking a break with the previous simpler musical entertainment. Mozart 's Singspiele , Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782) and Die Zauberflöte (1791) were an important breakthrough in achieving international recognition for German opera. The tradition
17500-449: Was able to move beyond the Italian influences and create his own unique and distinctly English voice. His modernized ballad opera, Love in a Village (1762), began a vogue for pastiche opera that lasted well into the 19th century. Charles Burney wrote that Arne introduced "a light, airy, original, and pleasing melody, wholly different from that of Purcell or Handel, whom all English composers had either pillaged or imitated". Besides Arne,
17640-409: Was an attempt to attract members of the growing merchant class, newly wealthy, but still not as cultured as the nobility, to the public opera houses . These separate plots were almost immediately resurrected in a separately developing tradition that partly derived from the commedia dell'arte , a long-flourishing improvisatory stage tradition of Italy. Just as intermedi had once been performed in between
17780-539: Was an attempt to revive the classical Greek drama , part of the wider revival of antiquity characteristic of the Renaissance . The members of the Camerata considered that the "chorus" parts of Greek dramas were originally sung, and possibly even the entire text of all roles; opera was thus conceived as a way of "restoring" this situation. Dafne , however, is lost. A later work by Peri, Euridice , dating from 1600,
17920-714: Was brought to Russia in the 1730s by the Italian operatic troupes and soon it became an important part of entertainment for the Russian Imperial Court and aristocracy . Many foreign composers such as Baldassare Galuppi , Giovanni Paisiello , Giuseppe Sarti , and Domenico Cimarosa (as well as various others) were invited to Russia to compose new operas, mostly in the Italian language . Simultaneously some domestic musicians of Ukrainian origin like Maxim Berezovsky and Dmitry Bortniansky were sent abroad to learn to write operas. The first opera written in Russian
18060-476: Was celebrated in 2006 with a gala concert in which tributes were paid to Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge, the principal artists, the chorus, production staff and the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra (the AOBO) for their "artistry and talent" and the "ensemble nature" of the company. In mid-2008, Hickox and Opera Australia were criticised by a singer for what she perceived as a decline in artistic standards since
18200-526: Was developed by Semen Hulak-Artemovsky (1813–1873) whose most famous work Zaporozhets za Dunayem (A Cossack Beyond the Danube) is regularly performed around the world. Other Ukrainian opera composers include Mykola Lysenko ( Taras Bulba and Natalka Poltavka ), Heorhiy Maiboroda , and Yuliy Meitus . At the turn of the century, a distinct national opera movement also began to emerge in Georgia under
18340-483: Was developed in the 19th century by Beethoven with his Fidelio (1805), inspired by the climate of the French Revolution . Carl Maria von Weber established German Romantic opera in opposition to the dominance of Italian bel canto . His Der Freischütz (1821) shows his genius for creating a supernatural atmosphere. Other opera composers of the time include Marschner , Schubert and Lortzing , but
18480-756: Was fully staged in 1945 in Armenia. The first years of the Soviet Union saw the emergence of new national operas, such as the Koroğlu (1937) by the Azerbaijani composer Uzeyir Hajibeyov . The first Kyrgyz opera, Ai-Churek , premiered in Moscow at the Bolshoi Theatre on 26 May 1939, during Kyrgyz Art Decade. It was composed by Vladimir Vlasov , Abdylas Maldybaev and Vladimir Fere . The libretto
18620-735: Was music of 18th and early 19th century, mostly in bel canto repertoire of Rossini , Bellini and Donizetti . Bonynge then gradually added also middle Verdi ( La traviata , Rigoletto , Il trovatore ), Offenbach ( Les Contes d'Hoffmann ), then also Massenet ( Esclarmonde and Werther ). Bonynge has recorded extensively in the ballet genre: Delibes 's three ballets – La Source , Coppélia , Sylvia ; Riccardo Drigo 's The Magic Flute and Le Réveil de Flore ; Jacques Offenbach 's Le papillon ; Friedrich Burgmüller 's La Péri ; and Tchaikovsky 's three ballets – Swan Lake , The Sleeping Beauty , The Nutcracker . One of Bonynge's most valuable contributions to ballet music
18760-486: Was promoted within the Order of Australia to Companion, for "eminent service to the performing arts as an acclaimed conductor and musical scholar, to classical singing and the promotion of opera, and through the collection and preservation of operatic manuscripts." The ARIA Music Awards is an annual awards ceremony that recognises excellence, innovation, and achievement across all genres of Australian music . They commenced in 1987. The Sir Bernard Heinze Memorial Award
18900-507: Was seen by more than two million people. Over the following years a series of simulcasts reached millions of Australian homes. Luciano Pavarotti and Joan Sutherland appeared at the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House in 1983, with the Elizabethan Sydney Orchestra conducted by Richard Bonynge (the sister orchestra in Melbourne was known as the Elizabethan Melbourne Orchestra. Now they are known respectively as
19040-535: Was the 17th-century jig . This was an afterpiece that came at the end of a play. It was frequently libellous and scandalous and consisted in the main of dialogue set to music arranged from popular tunes. In this respect, jigs anticipate the ballad operas of the 18th century. At the same time, the French masque was gaining a firm hold at the English Court, with even more lavish splendour and highly realistic scenery than had been seen before. Inigo Jones became
19180-418: Was the first English composer to experiment with Italian-style all-sung comic opera, with his greatest success being Thomas and Sally in 1760. His opera Artaxerxes (1762) was the first attempt to set a full-blown opera seria in English and was a huge success, holding the stage until the 1830s. Although Arne imitated many elements of Italian opera, he was perhaps the only English composer at that time who
19320-503: Was the founding music director of the Vancouver Opera Orchestra, when he conducted Le roi de Lahore staged there (in which his wife also took part). Bonynge made his Metropolitan Opera debut on 12 December 1966, and his last performance there was on 6 April 1991. Most of those performances he conducted there between 1966 and 1987 were with Sutherland singing. From the 1960s until the early 1970s, his speciality
19460-415: Was to establish serious opera in England, but these hopes ended with Purcell's early death at the age of 36. Following Purcell, the popularity of opera in England dwindled for several decades. A revived interest in opera occurred in the 1730s which is largely attributed to Thomas Arne , both for his own compositions and for alerting Handel to the commercial possibilities of large-scale works in English. Arne
19600-549: Was written by Joomart Bokonbaev, Jusup Turusbekov, and Kybanychbek Malikov. The opera is based on the Kyrgyz heroic epic Manas . In Iran, opera gained more attention after the introduction of Western classical music in the late 19th century. However, it took until mid 20th century for Iranian composers to start experiencing with the field, especially as the construction of the Roudaki Hall in 1967, made possible staging of
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