Opera is a form of theatre in which music has a leading role and the parts are sung by soloists. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance. Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition. Operas are usually staged in opera houses.
The word “opera” is from Italian: operare, meaning “to work”. Originally applied to dramas performed accompanied by music in late medieval Italy, the term gradually came to be used for all drama involving singing—whether on stage or not—and finally for the musical genre we know today. In French the word opéra originally referred to any kind of dramatic work that was sung; however it later acquired its present meaning (musical drama with recitative). In Spanish farsa del arte means simply “comic farce”. In German das Drama mit gesungenen Dialogen heißt Opera seria (“serious opera”), while Singspiel (“singing play”) denotes comic works with interspersed dialogue sections. The Italian opera buffa (“comic opera”) had its origins in popular commedia dell’arte troupes who brought their pantomimes and improvisational comedies into formal theatres in cities like Naples during the seventeenth century; these eventually became codified into some thirty stock characters.
The first truly public opera house was Teatro di San Cassiano in Venice, opened in 1637. Although Venice had been an important centre for musical performance since at least the Renaissance period with performances taking place within private palazzi as well as more public venues such as churches, it was only with this opening that professional musicians were able to make a living performing full-time for large audiences.:21 The basso continuo group consisted of a keyboard player (usually harpsichord) often joined by one or two lute players playing either archlute or theorbo/chitarrone combinations.:215 While most 17th century Italian operas were written for specific patronage families at court or private academies, beginning around 1650 public commercial theatres began to dominate productions giving rise to what we think of more typically as “opera houses”.
In France Louis XIV’s Académie Royale de Musique gave birth not only to grand operatic works by composers like Lully but also ballet which would have an enduring influence on both serious music and musical theatre right up until modern times. The three-act tragédie lyrique was codified by Jean-Baptiste Lully with his 1677 piece Psyché which established many conventions that would last well into the nineteenth century such as highly stylized recitative followed by da capo arias repeating sections of text already heard earlier in order allow audience members who may have arrived late to catch up on plot points.:72
While there had been experiments before—such as Peri’s Euridice (1600), Monteverdi’s Orfeo (1607), Caccini’s La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina (1625)—the first real success wasn’t until Jacopo Peri wrote Dafne set to Rinuccini’s libretto based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses while working under Cardinal Francesco Maria Bourbon del Monte at Rome’s Villa Medici circa 1597–1599.:257 It wasn’t produced until after his death and some scholars believe it may never have actually been performed at all despite claims to the contrary made later on behalf of Cardinal Montalto who oversaw its premiere production circa 1608–09). Nevertheless this work marks an important starting point for what would become known as opera semiseria—”half-serious”—which along with comedy constituted much early baroque era opera making use of mythological plots drawn from ancient Greece or Rome where gods mingled freely with mortals without disrupting too greatly contemporary social conventions surrounding rank and marriage alliances thereby making them accessible yet still relevant to aristocratic viewers familiar enough with Latin literature sources but perhaps less so Greek ones requiring surtitles projected above proscenium stages listing character names alongside their corresponding Roman counterparts (e.g., Jupiter = Jove).:24 – 27 These samecommentators also see Dafne