Comic opera Essays

Introduction. More than 2000 years ago, the ancient Greek built the first theatre and developed it until the plays of the ancient Greek becomes famous on today’s world. The origin of the Greek classical theatre was first started between 550 BC and 220 BC where the plays were first starting in Athens. Plays during the ancient Greece were produced during a festival. The festival was known as a festival of honoring one of the Greek God called Dionysus, the God of Wine and Fertility. Dionysus was the

An Opera is “… a staged drama set to music in its entirety, made up of vocal pieces with instrumental accompaniment and usually with orchestral overtures and interludes”. (Weinstock, 2014) However, in reality it is far more complicated than that: the genre Opera is broken down into many sub-genres all of which have distinct characteristics which set them apart. Some of these sub-genres include the: German Opera, Italian Opera, Opera Buffa and Opera Seria. By the turn of the seventeenth century the

century, two forms of musical theatre were popular in Britain: ballad operas (like John Gay’s ‘The Beggar’s Opera’, 1728) and comic operas (like Balde’s ‘The Bohemian Girl’, 1845). Other musical theatre forms developed by the 19th century, such as music hall, melodrama, burlesque and vaudeville. This became popular because most London theatres were licensed only as music halls and couldn’t perform plays without music. The comic opera is argued to be the earliest form of the musical theatre we know today

names which were inseparably linked in the history of opera collaborated to produce the operas Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte. Although both set in the Italian language, to Mozart, his music expressed that which language alone had worn out, human emotions, feelings and passions. Don Giovanni to some “the finest opera ever written” is an opera with a mixture of seriousness, comedy, horror and jest. Unlike most of Mozart’s previous operas where the opening overture had no musical significance to

In the seventeenth century, a mixture of sophisticated verse drama, allegorical opera, popular song, and dance, became the fashion of the Spanish court for over the next hundreds of years. This new lyric-dramatic genre of music was created in Spain by playwright/writer/poet Calderon De La Barca during Spanish Golden Age in 1657. Zarzuela, the new music theatrical genre, was capable of alternating spoken and sung scenes. People in Spain living in that era could finally enjoy a local dramatic representation

Donna Elvira from Mozart’s Don Giovanni is a very interesting character. Mozart has her characterizes both in opera seria and opera buffa. I will be analyzing her character and how Mozart composed her music and Da Ponte’s libretto to reflect Donna Elvira. Donna Elvira is unwavering in her goal throughout the opera. She is in love with Don Giovanni even while being completely aware of his faults. We are first introduced to her character through Don Giovanni and Leporello. Don Giovanni states that

captivate audiences due to the seamless blending of those three elements. First premiered in 1787, the opera incorporates elements of two styles of opera popular during the Classical time period, opera seria and opera buffa, which are prevalent in his female characters, and, in particular, Donna Anna and Zerlina, and their musical hallmarks throughout the opera. To begin with, opera seria and opera buffa contrast especially in the characterization prominent in the operatic

The opera that we are going to review is the Pirates of Penzance, which was written by W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. Before we continue we should learn a little about both W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. Gilbert was born in London and had three younger sisters. Growing up, his parents did not get along and their marriage ended up ending in 1876. As a child, Gilbert amused himself by writing plays. He would write plays for school performances and he would also paint the scenery to go along

boys or their mother being sent to concentration camps. In 1938, when the entire nation was preparing for war, Strauss created Friedenstag (Peace Day), a one-act opera set in a besieged fortress during the Thirty Years ' War. The work is essentially a hymn to peace and a thinly veiled criticism of the Third Reich. Productions of the opera ceased shortly after the outbreak of war in 1939. When his Jewish daughter-in-law Alice was placed under house arrest in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1938, Strauss

instrumental in the initial development of the opera and laid down the foundation for the musical vehicle of generations of expression. Jacopo Peri (20 August 1561 – 12 August 1633) was an esteemed court musician and composer from Italy. In musical history he is often cited as the transition composer between the Baroque and Renaissance periods. He is also attributed as the creator of opera. Dafne was composed in 1597 and it is the earliest known opera to be written however no copies exist. Euridice

BALLAD OPERA & OPERETTA Ballad operas and operettas both share qualities found in traditional opera. Just like the opera, these genres are both sung in an operatic style. The ballad opera originated in England around the eighteenth century, and developed to become a type of comic opera. It typically featured farcical plots and light-hearted music that was mainly confined to ballads and folk songs that were interspersed with spoken dialogue. The Beggar 's Opera is an example of a ballad opera. An

One of Mozart’s most well-known operas is The Magic Flute, which is classified as a Singspiel. A Singspiel is a German comic opera-play that connects musical numbers with spoken dialogue. The content, called the libretto, was considered simple, silly, and easy to follow. This simplicity made it a popular form of entertainment among people of the lower and middle classes. Mozart collaborated with, the librettist, Emanuel Schihander in the creation of this Singspiel. They chose to write The Magic Flute

Le nozze di Figaro is an opera buffa (comic opera) that was composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1786 during his time in Vienna, with an Italian libretto written by Lorenzo da Ponte. It was originally a play, written by Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais, called La folle journée, ou Le mariage de Figaro. Due to how scandalous the play was, Beaumarchais’s play was not allowed to be performed in Vienna, but after the composition of the opera by Mozart and the writing of the libretto by da Ponte, the

technically a British opera called Flora. After this play the colonies started to form together as a nation and a new type of play was developed, the burlesque. The burlesque was all about tragedies and parodies of other plays with performers and dancers in song, dance, pantomime and dialogue.  This quickly became popular within the nation, one of the earliest

“Don Giovanni” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Don Giovanni or Il dissoluto punito, ossia il Don Giovanni is an opera that was composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) and Lorenzo Da Ponte (1749-1838) and first performed in 1787. I used the second scene of the Act I in this essay. The work combines serious and comic actions that make it dramma giocoso. The opera belongs to the Classical period of music that existed from 1750 to 1820 according to experts. Opera’s instrumentation, according to description

Mozart still chooses to settle in Vienna. “I pay no attention whatever to anybody’s praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.”(Mozart) He composed over 600 sonatas, concertos, sonatinas, minuets, librettos, serenades, oratorios, cantatas, óperas, and symphonies, “Mozart’s famous partnership with Lorenzo Da Ponte resulted in the Marriage of Figaro, which is based on a play by Beaumarchais. Their partnership is one of the most famous in the history of music” “ which give insights into the personalities

Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) “I see no conflict in being both serious and comic in the same piece. In fact, I cannot have one without the other.” - Alfred Schnittke Soviet and Jewish born composer Alfred Schnittke was born in 1934 to German parents. In addition to composing for concert hall repertory, he also scored for films, more specifically cartoons. Although Schnittke studied and later taught at the Moscow Conservatory, his approach in composing still held influences of his education in Vienna

In 1975 Zwilich enrolled in Juilliard. She played in the New York City American symphony orchestra, under the composer Leopold Stokowski for about seven years. She then married Joseph Zwilich. Joseph was a violinist and played in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, but later died in 1979. She was the first woman to earn the doctorate degree in musical arts in composition from

The orchestra used for the premiere of Symphony No. 9 was the largest orchestra assembled for any of Beethoven’s works and this made the masterpiece even more majestic and a force to be reckoned with. The instrumentation used for Symphony No. 9 included: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets in A, 2 clarinets in B-flat, 2 clarinets in C, 2 bassoons, 2 Horns (1 and 2) in D and B-flat, 2 Horns (3 and 4) in B-flat (bass), B-flat and E-flat, 2 Trumpets in D and B-flat, 3 Trombones (alto, tenor, and bass; second

A Clockwork Orange Over the past two weeks we saw, for one more time, that Kubrick has a very distinct and tremendous understanding when it comes to using classical music. For “A Clockwork Orange” the writer of the novel, Anthony Burgess, has some kind of obsession and own taste about classical music, when these two understanding combines we get a unique synthesis, it is mostly Kubrick’s, though. In the following part of this paper, the use of music will be examined in order of the course of events