History of opera

In the 20th century opera, like the rest of music and the arts in general, entered the period of Modernism, a new way of conceiving artistic creation in which new compositional methods and techniques emerged, which were expressed in a great variety of styles.

From its beginnings until the consolidation of classicism, the text enjoyed greater importance, always linked to the visual spectacle, the lavish decorations and the complex baroque scenographies; Claudio Monteverdi said in this respect: "the word must be decisive, it must direct the harmony, not serve it."

The most immediate was the intermedio (Italian: intermezzo), interludes that were interspersed between the various acts of a theatrical work, which brought together song, dance, instrumental music and scenographic effects, with plots based on Greco-Roman mythology, allegories or pastoral scenes.

[10] At the end of the 16th century, in Florence, a circle of scholars sponsored by Count Giovanni de' Bardi created a society called Florentine Camerata, aimed to study and critical discussion of the arts, especially drama and music.

[40] Pier Francesco Cavalli premiered his Ercole amante in Paris in 1662, at the newly opened Tuileries Palace a commission of Cardinal Mazarin for the celebration of the wedding of Louis XIV with Maria Theresa of Austria.

The most successful was Alceste, based on a tragedy by Euripides and composed to celebrate the victory of Louis XIV in the Franche-Comté, which included a minor plot with a comic air and some catchy melodies that greatly pleased the public.

[139] Henri Desmarets was a chapel master in the French Jesuit Order until, accused of the murder of his wife, he settled in Spain, where he served Philip V. He later lived in the Duchy of Lorraine, where his opera Le Temple d'Astrée opened the Nancy Theater in 1708.

[116] Some exponents were Samuel Arnold (The Maid of the Mill, 1765),[164] Charles Dibdin (The Waterman, 1774),[129] Stephen Storace (The Haunted Tower, 1789; The Pirates, 1792)[116] and William Shield (The Magic Cavern, 1784; The Enchanted Castle, 1786; The Crusade, 1790).

[181] In the Germanic sphere was the golden age of singspiel: in 1778, Joseph II renamed the French Theater in Vienna as Deutsches Nationaltheater (now Burgtheater) and dedicated it to this genre, which premiered with Die Bergknappen (The Miners), by Ignaz Umlauf.

[240] In Russia, a taste for opera began at this time at the court of the tsars, thanks especially to the support of Empress Catherine II, who brought numerous composers to St. Petersburg, such as Baldassare Galuppi, Tommaso Traetta, Giovanni Paisiello, Domenico Cimarosa, Giuseppe Sarti and Vicente Martín y Soler.

[263] A new taste for so-called "gothic" themes also emerged, which in opera gave a variant called morte ("death"), provoked by the grim events of the French Revolution; a good example would be Lucia di Lammermoor, by Gaetano Donizetti.

In Démophon (1788) he began the course of what would become French romantic opera, which he would put on track with Lodoïska (1791), where he introduced more real characters and more dramatic situations, with a richer and more powerful orchestration, and effects based on nature, in this case a fire.

He was the introducer of numerous components of the grand-opéra, such as large choirs, processions or bands on stage, culminating in his Fernand Cortez (1809), about the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés, which included a cavalry charge and fleet fire.

In 1810 he premiered in Venice La cambiale di matrimonio, a comic farce in one act, indebted to the Neapolitan opera, but with the new romantic spirit, more dynamic, with a more marked rhythm and with the tonal gradations introduced by the Mannheim school.

After a few years of unsuccessful plays, his greatest successes came in the 1920s: Káťa Kabanová (1921), Příhody lišky bystroušky (The Cunning Fox, 1924) and Věc Makropulos (The Makropoulos Case, 1926), inspired by his obsessive love for the young Kamila Stösslová.

[456] In Denmark, there had been some operas in Danish since the late 18th century, but it was with the advent of Romanticism that Danish opera germinated, with composers such as Christoph Ernst Friedrich Weyse (Festen på Kenilworth [Kenilworth Castle], 1836), Johan Peter Emilius Hartmann (Ravnen [The Raven], 1832; Korsarerne [The Privateers], 1835), Niels Gade (Mariotta, 1850), Peter Heise (Drot og Marsk [King and Marshal], 1878), August Enna (Keksen [The Witch], 1892),[458] Carl Nielsen (Saul og David, 1902; Maskarade, 1906)[166] and Paul von Klenau (Gudrun auf Island [Gudrun in Iceland], 1924).

Other exponents were: Ole Olsen (Stig Hvide, 1876; Lajla, 1893; Stallo, 1902), Catharinus Elling (Kosakkerne [The Cossacks], 1897), Johannes Haarklou (Marisagnet [The Legend of Mary], 1910) and Christian Sinding (Der heilige Berg [The Holy Mountain], 1914).

[469] Also worth mentioning among British composers are: Granville Bantock (Caedmar, 1893; The Seal Woman, 1924),[470] John Barnett (The Mountain Sylph, 1834; Fair Rosamond, 1837),[471] Julius Benedict (The Lily of Killarney, 1862),[445] Isidore de Lara (Messaline, 1899; Naïl, 1912)[472] and Ethel Smyth (The Boatswain's Mate, 1916).

Albéniz began in zarzuela, until he signed a contract with an English banker to write operas, the fruit of which were The Magic Opal (1893), Henry Clifford (1895), Pepita Jiménez (1896) and Merlin (1897–1902), the latter on a cycle based on King Arthur of which he only made this first title.

[546] In the early 19th century Italian opera predominated, until the second half saw the first local productions with authors such as Melesio Morales (Romeo and Juliet, 1863; Ildegonda, 1866; Gino Corsini, 1877), Aniceto Ortega (Guatemotzin, 1871), Felipe Villanueva (Keofar, 1892), Ricardo Castro (Atzimba, 1900) and Gustavo Campa (El rey poeta, 1901).

He made veristic works, as well as serious and comic operas, among which stand out: Cenerentola (1900), Le donne curiose (1903), I quatro rusteghi (1906), Il segreto di Susanna (1909) and L'amore medico (1913), which have not lasted in the operatic repertoire.

With a Basque mother, he felt great attraction for Spanish culture, which is evident in his first opera, L'heure espagnole (La hora española, 1911), a one-act comic work, with sound effects of machines and clocks.

[606] This century saw numerous novelties in the field of scenography: from verismo emerged a more sober and realistic trend in stage representation, whose pioneers were André Antoine, founder of the Théâtre Libre in Paris, and Otto Brahm, at the head of the Freie Bühne in Berlin.

In 1901 the Munich Festival appeared, followed by the Savonlinna (1912), Verona (1913), Salzburg (1920), Florence (Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, 1933), Glyndebourne (1934), Ravinia (1936), Edinburgh (1947), Aldeburgh (1948), Aix-en-Provence (1948), Santander (1952), Spoleto (1958), Tanglewood (1970) and Peralada (1987), among the most famous.

[619] Paul Hindemith started in expressionism with three one-act operas (Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen [Murder, Hope of Women], 1919; Das Nusch-Nuschi, 1920; Sancta Sussana, 1921), but later evolved into a neo-baroque style with use of polyphony.

[602] Kurt Weill was a representative of the so-called New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit), a movement that in a certain way reacted against expressionist subjectivism, although it used many of its resources, while having points in common with neoclassicism and assimilating new musical forms such as jazz, tango or cabaret.

After them, he began a new stage of a more sober musicality, reducing instrumental resources, which is evident in his first opera, Le rossignol (The Nightingale, 1914), based on a tale by Hans Christian Andersen, which combined neo-romantic and orientalist influences.

As a reaction, between the 1970s and 1980s the anti-anti-opera emerged, which recovered the narrative text and the traditional resources of opera, although with a contemporary language and a certain ironic and satirical component; some exponents would be: We Come to the River by Hans Werner Henze (1976), Le Grand Macabre by György Ligeti (1978), Jakob Lenz by Wolfgang Rihm (1979) and Un re in ascolto by Luciano Berio (1984).

[681] Philip Glass was one of the most prominent representatives of minimalism, a style that, as opposed to the dense structures used at the time in Europe, sought to elaborate music with few elements, using for example repetitive patterns in different speed, duration and volume, in staggered or superimposed alterations.

He composed four operas, of difficult vocal interpretation due to the orchestral density —with glissandos and vibratos— and the guttural sounds integrated in his compositions: The Devils of Loudun (1969), Paradise Lost (1978), Die Schwarze Maske (1986) and Ubu Rex (1991).