Theatre

The meaning of the word, opera, is the plural of the Latin word opus, meaning, work.  Often people explain opera as being a play in which the performers sing rather than speak, but this definition is perhaps too simplistic.  A more specified explanation would be to define opera as drama through music.  In this case, the music acts as a partner and does not merely accompany the drama, it contributes to it.  Although opera as it is known today began during the Italian Renaissance, its roots go back to Greek drama.  The ancient Greeks always combined the poetry of their drama with music.  Greek plays were accompanied by string instruments or pipes and the words were sung or chanted.  The early church gave form to the chants and the accompanying music, supplying scales and notation.  First there were only single line melodies, but later these were woven together to form polyphony and harmonies.  By the beginning of the sixteenth century, it was a ritual in Italy to perform short musical dramas during intermissions of other plays, and small orchestras accompanied these intermezzi (Otten, E.  San Diego Opera, 2010).
    The earliest advancement in the development of opera was the style of solo singing called recitative.  This literary musical quality was midway between spoken recitation and singing.  Solo vocal lines of one melody at a time with instrumental accompaniment, monody, as opposed to polyphony, was regarded as being the correct way, as it would enhance the natural speech inflections with music being subservient to the words.  Jacopo Peri, Giulio Caccini, and Emilio del Cavaliere in the Florentine Camerata were the founders of the new style of solo singing.  In 1602, Caccini published first compilation of short vocal pieces with thorough bass accompaniment in monodic style, Le nuove musiche (The new music).  In dramatic monody, a simple melody trails the rhythms and inflections of speech, complimented by simple chords.  Opera as it is known today, however, would ultimately bring together almost every form of art, including painting, poetry, drama, dance, and music (Dovak, 2006).
    Jacopo Peri (1561-1633) is recognized for creating the first opera, Dafne, based on the Greek myth.  Although this opera was famous throughout Europe at the time, it has since been lost.  Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) is the earliest opera composer whose works are still performed today.  He was able to bring together the music and the poetry of the libretto to create a multidimensional theatrical form.  These early operas were typically rooted in history or mythology.  This kind of opera is called opera seria, in contrast to opera buffa, or comic opera, which would by a later advancement.  Mozart (1756-1791) was one of the first composers to write not just for, but about, the aristocracy and their servants.  A wonderful example of this type of opera isThe Marriage of Figaro.  In the early nineteenth century, with the development of more intricate orchestrations and the supplementation of more flexible woodwind and brass instruments, conductors became essential in coordinating and molding the sound and tone of the whole work.  By the end of the nineteenth century, opera was recanting accounts of the steamier side of life among the lower classes, and the singing became more informal.  This final advancement in opera style is identified asverismo, or real (Otten, E.  San Diego Opera, 2010).
    Brockett and Hildy describe the idea that theater is often used by artists not merely to copy life, but to reveal its ideal moral patterns (2007, 156).  I believe that the beginnings of opera in the intermezzi were truly joined together with the idea of a social movement to be expressive about ethics and what they mean to human life through the passion of musical theater.  The fact that the blend of simple yet precisely sung words, instrumental notes, and dramatic tales meant so much to the early opera is an expression of deep passion which cried out from the human heart in these beautiful yet short moments of the intermezzi.  Because there was such power in this new form of art, the opera had no choice but to develop and flourish, caught up in the energy of the society of its time, and working with and amongst the people in a spirit of meaningful purpose in acting, music, and vocal song.  Instead of being relegated to the intermission times of other plays, the new style of opera matured and progressed into its own art form with its own spotlight.
    The early opera is my favorite aspect of theater history, because there is artistic depth in the combination of acting, music, and vocal song in telling a very passionate tale of the moral triumphs and failures of the human heart.  The fact that opera sprang from the intermezzi of other plays performed for aristocracy during the late 1500s calls attention to the fact that perhaps this is when the stirrings of social change was yearning to be heard.  By the 1700s, there was a decisive vision and impulse to bring the life of the lower classes into the stories being so beautifully expressed by the artists of the opera.  With the development of opera comes a marked decision to pay attention to the relationship between master and servant in the modern world as a focal point of society, and the catalyst of this desire was born in the intermezzi.  I have no doubt that there was a significant springboard to the idea of being artistically expressive about the moral needs and desires of the human heart within the birth of opera, and this is one of the main reasons why I love the history of this form of theater.