![]() ![]() All of those works also owe a significant portion of their impact to Mozart’s preternatural ability to make his characters not only sympathetic, but relatable. This sophisticated and intentional musical synthesis, and his willingness to use whatever would produce the greatest effect according to his unerring theatrical instincts, would come to characterize all of Mozart’s later works of operatic genius, whether the subject be contemporary class and sexual politics, as in his great trio of collaborations with librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte ( Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte) or the unexpected yet transcendent mixture of earthy comedy and arcane mysticism of Die Zauberflöte. But it is also heavily influenced by Gluck’s reforms, incorporating the more organic, orchestrally accompanied approach to recitative, heavily involving the chorus and including several intricate ensemble numbers for groupings of the principals, and never letting the drama slacken.īut perhaps most of all, Idomeneo reflects Mozart’s unsurpassed ability to blend diverse styles and filter everything through his own unique voice. It is also illustrative of a moment of operatic transition: Composed in 17, Idomeneo is in some ways a throwback, a sort of neo–opera seria that dusts off then-passé conventions from that antiquated form. Idomeneo is a relatively early work from the great Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791), and the one that, more than any other, made the young composer’s name and started him on the path to immortality. For their first foray into this new, back-to-basics approach, Gluck and Calzabigi appropriately chose to retell the immortal Orpheus myth, something of an origin story for the power of music itself, and the inspiration for what many consider the first “proper” opera, Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (1607). Instead, they aimed for a new musical and emotional directness intended to draw the audience more deeply into the drama. In what came to be known as their “reform operas,” Gluck and Calzabigi stripped away the conspicuous virtuosity, labyrinthine plotlines, strict distinction between aria and recitative, and extensive repetition and florid manipulation of the text, all of which they felt bogged down the action and detached the listener from the characters’ emotions. He and his librettist Ranieri de’ Calzabigi objected to the operatic conventions that had dominated for some 100 years. One of his finest works, it is filled with electrifying, dramatically compelling, deeply affecting music, especially for the soprano singing the title role of the seventh-century Queen of Lombardy and the tenor portraying the usurper Grimoaldo.Ĭhristoph Willibald von Gluck (1714–1787) had a long and varied musical career, but he is best remembered for a trio of Italian operas he wrote between 17, which were self-consciously intended to revolutionize the genre. ![]() ![]() Handel, a giant of the Baroque era, built on this foundation and raised the stakes: His operas, despite largely following the “opera seria” conventions of the time-with plots based on stories from history or myth, and showy, virtuosic arias for the soloists separated by more speechlike sections, called recitative, that move the action forward-outstripped those of his contemporaries in their consistent musical brilliance, especially in the way the music reveals and deepens the characters’ emotions.ĭating from 1725, Rodelinda was written after Handel had moved to London and begun writing operas (in Italian) for the newly founded Royal Academy of Music. Earlier composers such as Jacopo Peri, Claudio Monteverdi, Francesco Cavalli, Jean-Baptiste Lully, and Henry Purcell had already developed this new merger of music and theater from its incipient form in late-Renaissance Florence to something we would recognize today as opera. ![]() Though George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) is one of the earliest composers whose works are frequently staged at today’s largest opera houses, he inherited an operatic tradition already some 100 years old by the time he wrote his first work in the genre. Below is a tour guide tracking the stylistic evolutions that can be observed along the way. The lineup for this first week of our tour through opera history begins with Handel, the master of Baroque opera, and concludes 150 years later with Wagner’s monumental style of music drama, with stops in between to appreciate Mozart, Rossini, Verdi, and more. ![]()
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