When was the first opera written?
7098540#1
"Dafne" by Jacopo Peri was the earliest composition considered opera, as understood today, although with only five instrumental parts it was much more like a chamber opera than either the preceding intermedi or the operas of Claudio Monteverdi a few years later. It was written around 1597, largely under the inspiration of an elite circle of literate Florentine humanists who gathered as the "Camerata". Significantly, "Dafne" 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. The libretto was by Ottavio Rinuccini, who had written some of the 1587 Medici intermedi, in which Peri had also been involved; Rinuccini appears to have recycled some of the material, at least from the scene illustrated at right. Most of the music for "Dafne" is lost (the libretto was printed and survives), but one of Peri's many later operas, "Euridice", dating from 1600, is the first opera score to have survived to the present day.
Origins of opera
542026#5
The world's first opera was "Dafne" by Jacopo Peri, which appeared in Florence in 1598. Three decades later Heinrich Schütz set the same libretto in a translation by the poet Martin Opitz, thus creating the first ever German-language opera. The music to Schütz's "Dafne" is now lost and details of the performance are sketchy, but it is known to have been written to celebrate the marriage of Landgrave Georg II of Hessen-Darmstadt to Princess Sophia Eleonora of Saxony in Torgau in 1627. As in Italy, the first patrons of opera in Germany and Austria were royalty and the nobility, and they tended to favour composers and singers from south of the Alps. Antonio Cesti was particularly successful, providing the huge operatic extravaganza "Il pomo d'oro" for the imperial court in Vienna in 1668. Opera in Italian would continue to exercise a considerable sway over German-speaking lands throughout the Baroque and Classical periods. Nevertheless, native forms were developing too. In Nuremberg in 1644, Sigmund Staden produced the "spiritual pastorale", "Seelewig", which foreshadows the "Singspiel", a genre of German-language opera in which arias alternate with spoken dialogue. "Seelewig" was a moral allegory inspired by the example of contemporary school dramas and is the first German opera whose music has survived.
Opera in German
7532443#2
He based his first book, "Opera as Drama" (1956), on a series of essays written for "The Hudson Review" beginning in 1948. Published in several languages and multiple editions, "Opera as Drama" expresses Kerman's view that an opera's story is key and provides the basis for the structuring of both the librettist's text (which expresses the narrative) and the composer's music (which expresses the emotions in the story). For Kerman, the value of an opera as drama is undermined when there is a perceived disconnection between text and music. Among the operas Kerman discussed in the book was Puccini's "Tosca" which he controversially described as a "shabby little shocker." (Kerman's assessment echoed George Bernard Shaw's earlier description of Sardou's play "La Tosca" on which the opera was based as an "empty-headed turnip ghost of a cheap shocker.")
Joseph Kerman
21780#37
In 1951, NBC commissioned Italian-American composer Gian Carlo Menotti to compose the first opera ever written for television; Menotti came up with "Amahl and the Night Visitors", a 45-minute work for which he wrote both music and libretto, about a disabled shepherd boy who meets the Three Wise Men and is miraculously cured when he offers his crutch to the newborn Christ Child. It was such a stunning success that it was repeated every year on NBC from 1951 to 1966, when a dispute between Menotti and NBC ended the broadcasts. However, by 1978, Menotti and NBC had patched things up, and an all-new production of the opera, filmed partly on location in the Middle East, was telecast that year.
NBC
1192229#44
Musical programs distinguished the decade. Gian Carlo Menotti's "Amahl and the Night Visitors", the first opera written for television, was performed on December 24, 1951, at the NBC studios in New York City, where it was telecast as the debut production of the Hallmark Hall of Fame. The opera was performed live on or near Christmas Eve annually until the mid-1960s when a production starring Teresa Stratas was filmed and telecast for several years. The Broadway musical "Peter Pan" was televised in 1955 on NBC with Mary Martin and Cyril Ritchard in their original roles as Peter Pan and Captain Hook. The telecast drew the largest ratings for a single television program up to that time, and was restaged in 1956 and 1960. On January 28, 1956, Elvis Presley made his first televised appearance on "Stage Show", while, the same year, musical film "The Wizard of Oz" starring Judy Garland saw its first telecast on November 3 on CBS. Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella" was written for a live television broadcast in 1957 and starred Julie Andrews. In 1957, American Bandstand hosted by Dick Clark debuts, highlighting most of the popular rock and roll acts of the 1950s.
United States in the 1950s
20321966#0
George Frideric Handel's operas comprise 42 musical dramas that were written between 1705 and 1741 in various genres. He began composing operas in Germany and then for a brief time in Italy to modest success. It was not until he moved to England that he found great success in the genre. His first opera in England, "Rinaldo" (1711), was met with enthusiasm, and several more Italian operas soon followed. However, Handel's place as the central figure of opera in England during the eighteenth century was not solidified until, under the influence of Thomas Arne, he began composing large-scale works with English language texts. Though almost all his English language works are technically oratorios and not operas, several of them, such as "Semele" (1743), have become an important part of the opera repertoire. Handel's first opera (opera seria - serious Italian opera) was "Almira" (1705).
List of operas by George Frideric Handel
30875069#2
Bizet's first opera, the one-act ', was written in 1856 when the 18-year-old composer was a student at the Conservatoire de Paris. It was Bizet's winning entry in a competition organised by the celebrated composer Jacques Offenbach, and gained him a cash award, a gold medal, and a performance of the prize work at the . In 1857 Bizet was awarded the prestigious Prix de Rome, and as a result spent most of the following three years in Italy, where he wrote "Don Procopio", a short opera buffa in the style of Donizetti. By this time Bizet had written several non-stage works, including his Symphony in C, but the poor reception accorded to his 1858 ', a religious work he composed in Rome, helped convince him that his future lay primarily with the musical theatre. He planned and possibly began several operatic works before his return to Paris in 1860, but none of these projects came to fruition.
Les pêcheurs de perles
840691#2
Morlacchi was quickly successful as an opera composer. His first operatic works were written in 1807, and were a "farce" and a comic opera. His first truly effective theatre work was the "opera seria" "Corradino" (Parma, 1808), and lead to commissions from opera houses in Rome and Milan. In 1810 he was brought to Dresden by contralto Marietta Marcolini, and in 1811 Morlacchi was made Kapellmeister of the Italian Opera in Dresden. While in Dresden, he had to work to establish himself in the eyes of critics. By this time, German opera was well established, and Morlacchi and his compositions were seen to represent the old order both of composers and the aristocracy. In 1815 Morlacchi set "Il barbiere di Siviglia" with a libretto of Giuseppe Petrosellini and one year later Rossini presented his own with a newer libretto by Cesare Sterbini.
Francesco Morlacchi
48837128#3
On Christmas Eve 1950 Gian Carlo Menotti's Christmas opera "Amahl and the Night Visitors" was premiered by the NBC Opera Theater as the inaugural presentation made by the newly created Hallmark Hall of Fame. The first opera written specifically for television, it was immensely popular at its premiere and was dubbed by "Life" magazine as a Christmas Classic in 1952. Menotti never intended for the work to remain solely confined to the medium of television, and "Amahl and the Night Visitors" has since been the only Christmas themed opera to become an enduring part of the live opera performance repertory; particularly with smaller opera companies and at colleges and music conservatories. While predominately overlooked by larger opera houses, "Amahl" has been performed and recorded by The Royal Opera and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The success of Menotti's opera is also credited with inspiring the future investment in Christmas specials on American television which resulted in the creation of more than 50 Christmas operas and musicals for that medium.
List of Christmas operas
5939672#1
This was Donizetti's first opera, written in six days between 25 September and 1 October 1816 when the composer was 19 and a student at the Bologna Academy, a position acquired for him with the help of his teacher in Bergamo, Johann Simon Mayr and where his "gift for spontaneous composition flowered". It has been noted that although the comedy is "musically slender, the score, nevertheless, reveals the fledgling composer's flair for melody".
Il Pigmalione