A Brief History of Opera

Born in Italy more than 400 years ago during the Renaissance, opera - a combination of vocal and orchestral music, drama, visual arts and dance - has been inspiring people for ages.

In Florence, a small group of artists, statesmen, writers and musicians known as the Florentine Camerata decided to recreate the storytelling of Greek drama through music. Enter Jacopo Peri (1561–1633), who composed Dafne (1597), which many consider to be the first opera. From that beginning, two types of opera began to emerge: opera seria, or stately, formal and dignified pieces to befit the royalty that attended and sponsored them, and opera buffa, or comedies.

By the Baroque era (1600–1750), opera had taken Europe by storm and was a spectacular, expensive affair full of florid arias and ornate stage sets with moving parts. One of the greatest composers of Italian Baroque opera was a German who lived most of his life in London—Georg Frideric Handel (1685–1759). This period also saw the rise of castrati—male singers who were castrated as boys to preserve their soprano voices. The few who survived and made it to the top were the singing stars of the 17th and 18th century. Today those roles are sung by countertenors, or by women.

Opera content began to change in the Classical period (1750–1830). This was brought about by the social movement known as the Enlightenment, with less elaborate musical forms and more realistic plots (read: fewer gods, more humans) and a reaction against excessive vocal display.

The ultimate Classical opera composer was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91). Take his The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze di Figaro), a farce where servants ultimately outwit their aristocratic masters, based on a play by French writer Beaumarchais. It’s fast, irreverent and funny, but also full of stunning music. Mozart was also a master of high drama, as seen in his masterpiece Don Giovanni.

The best-known opera of the 19th century—and possibly the most popular of all time—is French composer Georges Bizet’s (1838–75) Carmen. It’s for good reason—the story of a Gypsy woman who values her free-spirited life above all, and the soldier who becomes obsessed with her, is packed with catchy melodies.

The late 19th century was dominated by two giants of opera: Italian Giuseppe Verdi and German Richard Wagner, both born in 1813. Perhaps his most popular opera is La Traviata, which tells the story of Violetta, a beautiful courtesan who is fatally ill with tuberculosis.

Meanwhile, in Germany, Wagner singlehandedly changed the course of opera with his huge ambition and talent by introducing new ideas in harmony, the use of leitmotifs and expanded use of the orchestra and operatic structure. Probably his best-known music is his 15-hour, four-opera Ring cycle: Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung.

The early 20th century was dominated by another Italian with a fluent gift for melody, Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924). He wrote hugely popular works in the Italian grand opera tradition (usually featuring the tragic death of the heroine) with a new emphasis on realism—known as verismo—including La Bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly and Turandot.

It seems that as long as there is a story to tell and ideas to be aired, opera will flourish. It is, after all, simply a heightened, multi-sensory means of making sense of the painful, glorious, complicated truths about the human condition.