Western European Opera

Introduction

Like cinema, opera is a collaborative art requiring the skills of poets, composers, choreographers, set and costume designers, singers, musicians, and assorted stage technicians. However, unlike film, opera at first was neither a popular entertainment nor was it intended to be. Because of its luxuriousness and expensive production requirements, initially, the genre needed a rich patron, even a prince, to support it. Little wonder then that opera—often considered the most aristocratic of the arts—had its beginnings in the Renaissance courts of Italy in the 1580s. Tragedies, comedies, and related dramatic forms were featured at the royal courts of Florence and Mantua in northern Italy throughout the sixteenth century. Many of these plays were based on or influenced by Roman and Greek models. The revitalized interest in Greek culture was key to the Renaissance spirit of inquiry and artistic experimentation.

These plays were often accompanied by music, an attempt by the dramatists and their fellow musicians to emulate what they believed to be an integral part of the classical dramas of the ancient Greeks. Greek drama provided numerous uses of the chorus, for example, and the Renaissance playwrights and musicians sought to produce appropriate music for their own “modern” versions of these plays.

There were some important precursors to these early musical dramas, direct ancestors in the evolution of the full-fledged opera. Most important was the intermedio, a theatrical entertainment intended to keep the audience amused between the acts of the play. The intermedio was often more inventive and spectacular than the play it intended to complement. This mixture of song, music, and dance was generally accompanied by elaborate stage effects, often intended to serve as political allegories honoring the prince or patron whose financial backing supported the whole production. At the wedding of one of the Medici, for example, the intermedio featured a naked Venus descending from a cloud in a bejeweled car, surrounded by the three Graces, also nude, among a bevy of white swans. During Venus’s descent, music and the aroma of fresh flowers filled the air.

Though an important forerunner of opera, the intermedio relied more on theatrical effect than on the artistic integration of its parts. The music was simply an adornment to a poetic text and a luxurious stage set, while the action and characterization were never fully dramatically realized.

Another significant forerunner was the pastoral, a short, dramatic lyric poem glorifying the bucolic settings of nature and country life. Not as elaborate as the intermedio, the pastoral typically featured shepherds, nymphs, and sylvan deities as characters. Choruses, songs, and dances complemented the lyric quality of the poetry, but on the whole, the plot presented little dramatic action. The pastoral was more of a mood piece, a pleasant, idealized evocation of the mythical “Golden Age,” a candied artifice celebrating the storied notions of natural innocence and earthly bliss.

With the success of the pastoral and the intermedio, coupled with the frequent academic discussions among scholars and poets about music’s emotional contribution to drama, the time was ripe for the birth of opera. Dafne, first performed in 1598, is generally considered the first, though the music has been almost entirely lost. Based on the Greek myth of Daphne, who is turned into a laurel tree as she escapes the amorous advances of the god Apollo, the musical drama was the first to integrate fully the demands of plot with the emotional quality of music. Composed by Jacopo Peri, with a text by the poet Ottavio Rinuccini, the opera was performed only three or four times over the next two years, but it set a precedent in making music a major component of the drama. In Dafne, the god Apollo, the traditional voice of poetry, becomes a principal character, a figure effectively combining poetry with music.

Peri and Rinuccini’s second opera, Euridice, was even more influential. Again, the pair turned to Greek myth, the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. First performed at the wedding of Maria de’ Medici and Henry IV of France in October 1600, the opera established some techniques to become permanent genre characteristics. Besides being the first to deal with a myth as the subject of numerous operas, Euridice clearly understood the use of recitative, a form of musical declamation, which Peri first discussed in his published preface to the opera. As a kind of middle ground between song and speech, recitative verse, used for both action and dialogue, was a key innovation in early opera’s attempt to mesh the flexibility of music with the formalities of verse.

The Seventeenth Century

Within a decade after the introduction of opera as a legitimate artistic medium, its first great composer emerged. Claudio Monteverdi was already a masterful composer of madrigals—songs usually in five parts with sophisticated contrasts in structure—which revealed his command of polyphonic technique—two or more melodic lines played at once and complementing each other. Seven years after Euridice, Monteverdi produced another version of the story. With a libretto by Alessandro Striggio, L’Orfeo (pr. 1607; Orfeo, 1949), the first great opera, broke fresh ground in its use of new kinds of arias and duet writing, culminating in Orfeo’s Act 3 aria as he enters the gates of Hades. The instrumental accompaniment is intensely dramatic, imaginative, and emotionally powerful, effectively complementing the action.

By the second quarter of the seventeenth century, Venice—where Monteverdi had come permanently to live and work—had become the opera capital of the world. The city’s theatrical traditions, always geared more toward public festivities than private entertainment, encouraged the growth and prosperity of the new medium. By 1650, the city could boast four opera houses; European tourists were captivated by Venetian opera. Monteverdi wrote three new operas in Venice. His last, composed in the year of his death, is arguably his finest. L’incoronazione di Poppea (pr. 1642; The Coronation of Poppea, 1964) tells the story of the scandalous and dishonorable love affair between the Roman emperor Nero and his mistress, Poppea. Despite the basic problem of presenting murderers and unprincipled lovers as central characters, Monteverdi succeeded in writing music of extraordinary sensuousness, particularly in the arias and duets. The music is among some of the finest in the operatic repertory.

The last half of the seventeenth century saw Italian opera being exported to other countries. Opera was slow to get started in France, largely because of the nationalist policy of the royal court. However, with the arrival in Paris in 1646 of Jean-Baptiste Lully, Italian opera was to be adapted to French tastes. An Italian by birth—he changed his name from Lulli to the Gallic form—Lully became the chief composer for the court of Louis XIV. It quickly showed his skill at identifying and integrating French qualities into his operas. Though his operas were meant largely as political allegories to the reigning spirit of Louis XIV, their musical depth and richness—particularly the powerful choruses and the clear, graceful melodic lines—are hallmarks of French opera of the period. A dancer in his youth, Lully added ballet as an integral part of the action. His last operas, such as Armide (pr. 1686), are models of the French operatic tradition. An opulent musical score is supported by spectacular stage effects, as in Act 5 in which the title character summons demons to destroy her palace while she returns to Syria on a chariot drawn by dragons.

Although England had a strong musical tradition dating from the Middle Ages, opera appeared late in the seventeenth century. Like France, England had its own musical genres supported by and primarily performed in the royal court. Notable among these was the masque, a blend of music, dance, spectacle, and poetic text. Strongly influenced by the Italian intermedio as well as French forms, the masque was more theatrical than dramatic. With the coming of the English Civil War in the 1640s and its aftermath, theaters were closed and drama stilled. However, musical entertainments were excluded from the ban, and with the commencement of the Restoration era after 1660, a full theatrical life was reborn. Several small, courtly operas were produced, notably John Blow’s Venus and Adonis in the 1680s, but the greatest English opera of this period—and of the century—is Dido and Aeneas (pr. 1689) by Henry Purcell. Based on a story from Vergil’s Aeneid (c. 29-19 BCE; English translation, 1553), the opera treats the love affair between the queen of Carthage and the Trojan hero, Aeneas, who is destined by the gods to leave the queen and continue his journey to Italy, where he is to be the progenitor of the Roman state. Particularly brilliant is Dido’s lament in the last scene, as she sees Aeneas boarding his ship, abandoning her to unrequited love and tragic suicide.

Opera Seria

The closing years of the seventeenth century saw opera suffering from those very excesses that, to a lesser degree, had prompted its birth. Poets and theater managers were more concerned with spectacular stage effects, including supernatural occurrences, than on plots that maintained at least a pretense to credibility and human motive. Texts had become degraded by scenes of low, coarse comedy, complicated plots, and irrelevant subplots and characters. Whereas opera had begun as an esteemed entertainment for the aristocracy, by this period it had become, in some ways, a vulgar amusement for the masses.

By the beginning of the eighteenth century, reform was inevitable. Librettists such as Apostolo Zeno and, more importantly, Pietro Metastasio began to free opera from its excesses. They drew their plots largely from ancient history rather than mythology, emphasizing a logical, efficient, dignified action and usually calling for a cast of fewer than ten characters. The subject matter was serious, the action restrained, and the music characterized by a simpler melodic line with a clearer distinction between recitative and aria. This shift from the improbable to the rational, from the exuberant to the controlled, from the complicated to the simple was given the term opera seria, “serious” or “Neapolitan” opera, so called because the Italian city of Naples was the cultural hub from which these reforms emanated.

In time, opera seria became the dominant form of the eighteenth century, and Metastasio its most influential practitioner. His work was of such quality that his librettos were sometimes performed as straight dramas, and he himself was often compared favorably to the great literary figures of the past. His themes announced an artistic reflection of Order and Monarchy, of a world controlled by reason and a distrust of the passions. His heroes and heroines are noble princes, kings, and queens who ultimately subdue their base “human” drives and adhere to an ideal—patriotism, duty, or honor. Conflicts in Metastasian drama are thus not physical but psychological. Characters often philosophize but rarely bleed. The action of such dramas revolves about the protagonist’s resolution of the conflict, a resolution sometimes closed by death but more often also by happiness and salvation. In the end, dignity triumphs, and order is restored. Metastasio even constructed his librettos in an almost mathematical balance: aria followed by recitative followed by aria.

One of the most popular composers of this period was Johann Hasse. Called “the beloved Saxon” by the Italians, Hasse was Metastasio’s most devout follower. He wrote more than eighty operas, most of them set to a libretto by Metastasio. His operas were highly regarded, especially his arias, which were rich in elegant, if facile, melodies.

Three other German composers were to produce the finest examples of opera seria. The operas of George Frideric Handel remained largely unknown in the operatic capitals of Europe. Working in London throughout most of his career, Handel was free to compose in his own style, unhampered by the demands of making a living by following the popular musical fashion. Between 1712 and 1741, he composed some thirty-six operas. Though his later works, such as Orlando (pr. 1733), show the influence of the Neapolitan school (Handel had visited Italy in the late 1720s), his early works in the genre are among his best. In Giulio Cesare (pr. 1724), he composed an Act 2 aria, for example, in which Cleopatra sings of her love in strongly expressive tones, penetrating psychology suffusing a context of deep emotion. Though the least influenced by Metastasian principles—he set only three of Metastasio’s librettos—his personal style proved the rule by being an exception.

While Handel came late to the methods of Metastasio, Christoph Willibald Gluck, who met Metastasio in Vienna in the late 1730s, based his first three operas on Metastasio’s librettos. However, it was not until Gluck collaborated with the Italian poet Raniero de Calzabigi that he produced the first of his great reform operas. Orfeo ed Euridice (Orpheus and Eurydice, 1770), produced in Vienna in 1762, was a landmark in the development of opera seria. The work is characterized by a mood of calm repose. The action is simplified, almost austere, each scene musically depicting a specific emotion of the character. Like the libretto, the music is spare, economical, free of the ornamental phrases and vocal caprices typical of the period. Its music perfectly complements the text, so that one is artistically dependent on and nourished by the other. Orpheus and Eurydice was a departure from Metastasian principles in that it used mythological rather than historical subjects and made greater use of the chorus and ballet.

Gluck’s masterpiece was produced near the end of his life. In Iphigénie en Tauride (Iphigenia in Tauris, 1916), produced in 1779, the composer successfully combined the elements of aria, chorus, and ballet into a highly expressive musical drama. His use of the orchestra in the depiction of tone and mood showed what could result when a first-rate text is enhanced by a first-rate score.

The summit of opera seria was attained by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. His opera Idomeneo (pr. 1781; English translation, 1961) is generally considered a masterpiece of the form. It represents a synthesis of the major musical traditions of France, Germany, and Italy. The sonority of the arias is distinctly in the Italian mode, while the orchestral tone, particularly the dramatic use of the woodwinds, suggests an advanced conception of symphonic composition then being worked out by the famous orchestra in the German city of Mannheim.

Opera Buffa

While Metastasian principles provided the form and content of opera seria in the first part of the eighteenth century, the free-wheeling, boisterous humor of the comic opera, or opera buffa, existed side by side with its serious counterpart. Comic scenes, called intermezzi in Italy, were often used to divert the audience between the acts of a serious opera. Stock character types portrayed in spontaneous, improvisational incidents had been a feature of the Italian commedia dell'arte, the traditional national comedy. Yet, during this period, broad comic routines were performed with suitable music. Over the century, the scenes evolved into full-sized operas, the texts and music becoming perfectly teamed.

The most brilliant intermezzo of the first half of the eighteenth century is La serva padrona (The Maid Mistress, 1955) of 1733 by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. Characterized by an infectious gaiety and an economy of effect, including a small orchestra and only two singers, the piece illustrated the artistic possibilities of a simple, rapidly moving score melded seamlessly with its text. The plot, revolving around a servant’s attempt to outwit her master, became an archetype of the genre. The comic possibilities in the conflict between upper and lower classes appealed to a broader audience, especially as the language of the text was more realistic, vernacular, and dialectic than the idealized abstractions typical of opera seria.

A key figure in the development of comic opera in Italy was . His librettos contain an array of characters—usually seven drawn from a broad cross-section of society. He introduced an important theatrical innovation of the “finale,” an ensemble in which several actions unfold at the end of an act, allowing for a complex pattern of music and gesture.

One of the great figures in the history of opera buffa is Giovanni Paisiello. Among his more than one hundred operas, La molinara (pr. 1789), one of his best, displays his gift for orchestration and ensemble writing in which the music justly complements the action of the text.

Domenico Cimarosa, composer of more than eighty operas, wrote one of the most famous comic operas of the period. His Matrimonio segreto (pr. 1792; The Secret Marriage, 1877) was marked by a tuneful spontaneity and a witty, lively charm.

Just as he had brought opera seria to its highest levels, Mozart also produced three works generally considered the masterpieces of opera buffa, as well as landmarks in the entire operatic literature. Le nozze di Figaro (pr. 1786; The Marriage of Figaro, 1819) was the first of three operas composed to texts by Lorenzo Da Ponte. Da Ponte’s libretto was based on a famous play by , La Folle Journée: Ou, Le Mariage de Figaro (pr. 1784; The Marriage of Figaro, 1784). The story about a barber who outwits a duke was a familiar one; a version of the story had already been set to music by Paisiello a few years earlier. However, Da Ponte’s piece was sharper, more incisive, and intrinsically more dramatic from a musical point of view than any of its predecessors.

The score that Mozart produced brought its characters to life as few operas had ever done. Character delineation was subtly achieved by harmonic combinations and strategic use of particular instruments of the orchestra. Ensembles carry much of the characterization as well, especially in the finales. Il dissoluto punito, ossia, Il Don Giovanni (pr. 1787; Don Giovanni, 1817) was written to take advantage of the success of The Marriage of Figaro, but the darker aspects of both the plot—especially when the unrepentant Don is carried off to hell—and the music—which was less festive and more somber than was expected in a comic opera—disappointed and puzzled the audience.

Mozart’s last comic opera was Cosi fan tutte (pr. 1790; They All Do That, 1811). Da Ponte’s libretto about lovers testing each other’s fidelity was light and cheerful, and Mozart’s music was richly melodious. The last finale has been called “an apotheosis” of the spirit of eighteenth-century comic opera.

Die Zauberflöte (pr. 1791; The Magic Flute, 1819) was Mozart’s last opera. The absurdities of a confused fairy-tale plot by the librettist Emmanuel Schikaneder are deepened when, by Act 2, the action turns into a symbolic presentation of the principles of Freemasonry. However, it is the music that redeems and even glorifies the opera. Mozart’s tone color and melodic charm make the work a masterpiece of German Singspiel, a kind of folk vaudeville in which spoken dialogue, not recitative, advances the storyline while music deepens the characterization.

Grand Opera

During the first half of the nineteenth century, Paris was the leading center of the operatic world. This was partly the result of the revolutionary fervor that gripped Europe during the last years of the previous century, beginning with the American and French revolutions and culminating in the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte. Many of the leading musicians found Paris congenial to their creative ambitions. Among the most influential of the early nineteenth century was Luigi Cherubini, who produced Les Deux Journées (pr. 1800; The Escaper, 1801; also known as The Water Carrier, 1871), a superb example of the so-called rescue opera, a subgenre of the opera buffa, just then coming into vogue. It featured a plot replete with chase sequences, exhilarating escapes, and last-minute rescues. Napoleon’s own favorite composer was Gasparo Spontini, whose masterpiece, La Vestale (pr. 1807; The Vestale, 1925), offered spectacular and massive choral numbers.

In sheer theatricality, the opera was a forerunner of the large-scale works that have come to be called grand opera. Characterized by librettos on historical subjects involving protagonists of heroic stature and combined with lavish staging, singing, and orchestration, grand opera enjoyed its greatest popularity in the 1830s and 1840s. The leading composer of this period was Giacomo Meyerbeer. Robert le diable (pr. 1831; Robert the Devil, 1849); Les Huguenots (pr. 1836; The Huguenots, 1858), his masterpiece; and Le Prophète (pr. 1849; English translation, 1849), all with librettos by , the foremost librettist of his day, represent all those aspects of grand opera—good and bad—that became staples of the genre: long scores, irrelevant spectacle, improbabilities of plot and character, and a certain over-ripeness of the music.

One of the greatest French operas of the century is the five-act Le Troyens (pr. 1890, complete; The Trojans, 1957; two parts, The Capture of Troy and The Trojans at Carthage) by Hector Berlioz. For musical color and originality it stands as its composer’s masterpiece, but it has hardly ever been performed in totality because of its excessive length and high production costs.

Charles Gounod produced one of the most popular French operas ever written. Based on the medieval German legend of the scholar who sells his soul to the devil, Faust (wr. 1852-1859) is filled with rich musical numbers combining solemn dignity with deep, lyrical feeling. Faust was performed in Paris more than two thousand times before World War II.

Georges Bizet wrote his famous Carmen (English translation, 1895) in 1875, and it was produced in the same year. His most distinctive work, Carmen scandalized Parisians with its exotic realism and bold characterization. The music is tuneful, vital, and dramatically appropriate.

Italian Opera

While grand opera was developing in France, Italy was cultivating its own nationalist style that combined a distinct melodic quality with a more prominent use of the orchestra. No Italian composer more typifies this style than Gioacchino Rossini. He wrote both serious and comic operas, retiring early after composing his most ambitious work, Guillaume Tell (William Tell, 1839), in 1829. Though the opera is not frequently performed, its famous overture is an orchestral staple. However, his masterpiece is Barbiere di Siviglia (pr. 1816; The Barber of Seville, 1818). Generally considered the greatest opera buffa next to Mozart’s work, the work combines sunny, infectious melody with a clear, bright orchestration.

With Rossini’s retirement, Gaetano Donizetti became Italy’s leading composer in the 1830s and early 1840s. Lucia di Lammermoor (pr. 1835; English translation, 1856), a serious opera with a libretto based on a novel by , was filled with melodramatic effects and vocal histrionics, but its melodic line has kept it in the standard repertory. His comic operas, L’Elisir d’amore (pr. 1832; The Elixir of Love, 1848) and Don Pasquale (pr. 1843; English translation, 1848), are notable examples of effective theatrical music.

Vincenzo Bellini’s short career was characterized by operas such as La Sonnambula (pr. 1831; English translation, 1838), Norma (pr. 1831; English translation, 1841), and I Puritani (pr. 1835; English translation, 1836), compositions rich in purity of style, suave melodic line, and elegance.

The dominant Italian composer of the nineteenth century—and one of the greatest in all opera—is Giuseppe Verdi. From his first early success, Nabucco (pr. 1842; English translation, 1960), to the masterpiece of his old age, Falstaff (pr. 1893; English translation, 1893), Verdi perfectly combined the melodic expressiveness of the human voice with a gradually sure command of orchestration. All but Falstaff are serious operas, and several, like Sicilian Vespers (pr. 1855) and Aida (pr. 1871; English translation, 1891), are supreme examples of the exuberant pageantry characteristic of grand opera. Though the plots of many of his operas, like Rigoletto (pr. 1851; English translation, 1888) and Il Trovatore (pr. 1853; English translation, 1855), are complex and often violent, his insistence on economy of scoring and musical characterization places his work among the most appropriately dramatic in all opera. The key to Verdi’s music is its spontaneity and its aptness in portraying the complexity of human passion. Such musical portrayal is most evident in his tragic masterpiece, Otello (pr. 1887; English translation, 1888), in which the voice and the orchestra unite, the voice nevertheless leading the way in rendering human emotion.

Verdi’s spiritual successor was Giacomo Puccini. He represents a musical bridge between the lush, vocal melody typical of Italian opera and the orchestral expressiveness characteristic of Richard Wagner’s musical drama. His most well-known operas are La Bohème (pr. 1896; English translation, 1896), Tosca (pr. 1900; English translation, 1899), and Madama Butterfly (pr. 1904; Madam Butterfly, 1906), each marked by lilting melody and rich, harmonic orchestration.

The school of Verismo (Verism), colorful, bleak realism, flourished briefly in the last decade or so of the nineteenth century and is represented by two famous one-act operas. Cavalleria rusticana (pr. 1890; Rustic Chivalry, 1891) by Pietro Mascagni and Pagliacci (pr. 1892; The Clowns, 1892) by Ruggiero Leoncavallo were sensational successes, filled with excessive passion and explosive emotion. They are often paired on the same performance bill.

Wagner and the Music Drama

A significant figure in the history of opera is Richard Wagner, whose dedication to the composition of the total artwork (Gesamtkunstwerk) gave opera a new direction and challenge. Among his innovations was the use of the leitmotif, musical themes or “signposts” attached directly or indirectly to certain characters or situations. Although he did not invent the technique—Cherubini had used it in the late eighteenth century, for instance—Wagner developed it from opera to opera, so it often took on highly suggestive and elusive patterns; the music connected emotionally and intellectually with the action and characterization. His early operas, Der Fliegende Hollander (pr. 1843; The Flying Dutchman, 1876), Tannhäuser (pr. 1845; English translation, 1891), and Lohengrin (pr. 1850; English translation, 1880), are examples of German Romantic opera, a modified blend of grand opera with spectacle and choral sections, but already revealing an integration that subordinated the traditional structure of aria and recitative into a more composed musical whole.

With the completion of his Nibelungenlied Cycle—four operas composed over twenty-five years—Wagner defined his legacy to opera. As with his major works, Wagner wrote his librettos—further emphasizing the artistic “wholeness” of the composition. Based on the medieval epic poem, the Nibelungenlied and various other Norse myths, the four operas—Das Rheingold (The Rhinegold, 1889), Die Walküre (The Valkyrie, 1882), Siegfried (English translation, 1882), and Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods, 1901)—were completed and first performed as a cycle in 1876. The theme of the works is the relationship of humankind to the gods and the interplay of human and divine forces that affect that relationship. Much of the action is both grand and deeply symbolic. At times, the didactic and heavy-handed pronouncements of the poetry get in the way of the music. Wagner, after all, had written numerous essays on the philosophy of art and music, especially Oper und Drama (1851; Opera and Drama, 1913), that served as a self-justification for his later work. However, the cycle—together with his last works, Tristan und Isolde (pr. 1865; Tristan and Isolde, 1886), Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (pr. 1868; The Master-Singers of Nuremberg, 1885), and Parsifal (pr. 1882; English translation, 1879)—remains the finest example of Wagner’s musical innovations. Aria, recitative, and other traditional elements of the number opera are eliminated. In their place is a system of through-composed Versmelodi, a synthesis of music and poetry that grows organically within the work, resulting not in an opera—a term Wagner rejected—but in a musical drama, all elements thoroughly integrated into one work of art.

The Twentieth Century

Composers of the new century could not ignore Wagner's innovations; they only reacted to them. Claude Debussy produced a new kind of opera by using a few leitmotifs combined with a story that is purposely vague or “impressionistic.” Pelléas et Mélisande (pr. 1902; Pelléas and Mélisande, 1907) is a symbolic, dreamlike composition that emphasizes mood rather than direct meaning. Unlike Wagnerian operas, the vocal parts are spare and closely akin to natural speech, and the opera looks back to Renaissance methods by using orchestral interludes and preludes played between scenes.

Richard Strauss was a direct spiritual descendant of Wagner. His romantic opera Der Rosenkavalier (pr. 1911; The Rose-Bearer, 1912) is filled with rich, tuneful orchestration, particularly waltzes. All the vocal parts have clear musical themes, so even minor characters have a certain individuality.

Arnold Schoenberg was one of the most influential composers of the first half of the twentieth century. He wrote only three operas, and the last, Von Heute auf Morgen (pr. 1930), was never finished. However, the three introduced dissonance as a controlling musical idea. This idea was the famous “twelve-tone” system that defied the conventional notion of key or tone. A stunning example of this system is the work of Schoenberg’s pupil, Alban Berg. His Wozzeck (pr. 1925; English translation, 1952) is a gloomy, shocking work with abrupt changes of tone emotionally punctuated by orchestral interludes. This opera, whose central character was a villain, lonely, confused, and alienated, became a major influence on opera composers in the first half of the century.

Igor Stravinsky's work shows another direction for opera in the twentieth century. The Rake’s Progress (pr. 1951), with a libretto by the poet W. H. Auden, is an outright celebration of Mozartian opera. Musical references to Don Giovanni abound, but the work’s eclectic character—its ironies, cynical ambiguity, and emotional constraint—makes its theme or intention unclear.

The influence of Wozzeck is shown in Peter Grimes (pr. 1945) by the English composer Benjamin Britten. Notable here are the orchestral interludes suggesting musical seascapes and enhancing the mood of tortured doubt endured by the title character.

The last quarter of the twentieth century was marked by works that questioned traditional operatic methods and experimented with avant-garde techniques, including atonality. Luigi Nono composed Prometeo (pr. 1984), a “tragedy of hearing,” as an opera for the ears only, with the audience sitting in total darkness. His earlier Intolleranza 1960 (pr. 1961) is called a “scenic action” containing quotations from Marxist writings, supported by electronic sound effects and music in the twelve-tone scale.

Twenty-first-century opera increasingly incorporates never-before-used techniques, styles, and themes. For example, jazz and rock are sometimes incorporated into traditional opera sounds, and storylines sometimes emphasize social justice, equality, and political issues relevant to modern audiences. Additionally, modern technology allows audiences improved access through live streaming platforms, and opera houses may utilize computer-generated sounds, electronic music, or projected images. Such works include George Benjamin's Written on Skin (2012), Thomas Adès's The Exterminating Angel (2016), and Anna Appleby's Drought (2022).

Bibliography

Brener, Milton. Opera Offstage. New York: Walker, 1996.

Burden, Michael, ed. London Opera Observed 1711-1844. Taylor & Francis, 2024.

Grout, Donald J. A Short History of Opera. 2nd ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1965.

Levin, David, ed. Opera Through Other Eyes. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993.

Mosse, George L. The Culture of Western Europe: The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. University of Wisconsin Press, 2023.

Newmarch, Rosa. The Russian Opera. DigiCat, 2022.

Sutcliffe, Tom. Believing in Opera. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996.

Wechsberg, Joseph. The Opera. Plunkett Lake Press, 2023.