Opera
a musical drama, that is, a dramatic composition set to music and sung on the stage, accompanied with musical instruments and enriched by the accessories of co costumes, scenery, dancing, etc. The component parts of an opera are recitatives, solos, duets, trios, quartettes, choruses, etc., and they are usually preceded by an instrumental overture. The lighter kind of opera in Germany and England, as well as the French opéra comique, is of a mixed kind -partly spoken, partly sung. The chief varieties of opera are the grand opera or opera seria, the name given to that kind which is confined to music and singing, of which the recitativo is a principal feature; the romantic opera, or opera drammatica of the Italians, embracing an admixture of the grave and lively; the comic opera, or opera buffa; as well as many intermediate varieties. Though the Greek dramas were operatic in character, the opera proper is of modern date and of Italian origin, and would seem to have developed naturally from the miracle play of the Middle Ages, the first operas dating from the 16th century.
About the close of that century the poet Rinuccini wrote a drama on the classical story of Daphne, which was set to music by Peri, the most celebrated musician of the age. There was no attempt at airs, and a recitative was merely a kind of measured intonation. Monteverde, a Milanese musician, improved the recitative by giving it more flow and expression; he set the opera of "Ariadne," by Rinuccini, for the court of Mantua; and in the opera of "Giasone" (Jason), set by Cavalli and Cicognini, for the Venetians (1649), occur the first airs connected in sentiment and spirit with the OPERA dialogue. The first regular serious opera was performed at Naples in 1615, and was entitled "Love Not Bound by Law." The first opera buffa is said to have been represented at Venice in 1624, where also the first stage for operas was erected in 1637. In 1646 the opera was transplanted to France by Cardinal Mazarin, about the same time to Germany, and somewhat later to England. In France there arose Lulli; in Germany, Keiser; in Italy, Scarlatti; and in England, and, Purcell, who are the chief operatic composers of the second half of the 17th century. The chief Italian operatic composers include, besides those already mentioned, Piccini, Jomelli, Cimarosa, Paisiello, in the 18th century, and Cherubini, Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, etc., in the 19th. Among the French composers are Grétry, Monsigny, Rousseau, Méhul, belonging to the 18th century, Boieldieu, Auber, Halévy, Herold, A. Thomas, and Gounod to the 19th.
The chief recent composers of French comic opera are Offenbach, Lecoq, Hervé, Bizet, and Massinet. Among English composers of operas may be mentioned Arne and Shields in the 18th century; and of recent times Balfe, Wallace, Macfarren, Sullivan, Mackenzie, Thomas, farren, Stanford, and De Koven and Herbert in the United States. It is the German composers, however, who have raised opera to the highest pitch of perfection, the list including such names as Handel, Gluck, and Mozart in the 18th century, Beethoven, Weber, Flotow, etc., in the 19th. Meyerbeer, though German by birth, is to be classed rather with the French composers. Richard Wagner was the leader of a school that changed the character of German operatic composition. In his work the vocal music is made subordinate to text, instrumentation, and scenic decoration. In the present century many novelties were introduced in lyric stage drama. The weird operatic music of the Russian composers Moussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov made a wide appeal. Impressive, and to many startling in their departure from accepted convention were: Debussy's "Peleas and Melisande" (1902); Strauss's "Salome" (1905) and such variations on operatic themes as Stravinsky's pantomime-ballets "Petruchka" and "L'Oiseau du Feu." In the United States, American composers have in recent years engaged more actively in the lyric stage drama. The most important efforts since Damrosch's "Scarlet Letter" (1894) have been "Cyrano" by the same composer in 1903, Nevin's "Poia" (Berlin, 1910); Parker's "Mona" (1911); "Fairyland" (1913); "Shanewis" by Letter" OPIUM OPERA BOUFFE Charles Cadman (1918), and "The Le- hydrous silicate of magnesia with alumgend" by J. C. Breil (1919).