Western Opera Music

What is an Opera?
An art form in which singer
actors as well as musicians
perform a dramatic work.
Incorporates many of the
elements of spoken theater, such
as acting, scenery, and costumes
and even includes dance.
The presentation is a
combination of a text called

How did Western Opera came

about?
It had its origin in the Last years of the
16th century and spread through the
rest of Europe.
Opera began as an entertainment at
the courts.
Has exerted great influence on other
forms of music.
Mozart is the most renowned figure of
late 18th-century.

Comic operas
- deal with ordinary people
and
places and end happily.
Opera seria
- treats mythological or
historical subjects typically
ends tragically.

What is the Opera today?

In present day, comic opera, singing
alternates with passages that are
half sung and half spoken and
accompanied by a keyboard.
Richard Wagner developed for his
sprawling operas shaped the
subsequent course of many musical
forms.

Instruments in an Orchestra
Strings
- violins, violas, cellos, basses, and harps
Woodwinds
- oboes, flutes, saxophones, clarinets,
and bassoons
Brass
- trumpets, french horns, and trombones
Percussion
- timpani, bells, chimes, and xylophones

Baroque Opera
(1600-1750)
The opera was used to entertain the
upper classes.
Dafwenas- first opera ever written,
was performed in 1597 in Florence Italy
composed by Jacopo Peri.
Euridice by Giulio Caccini, having a
solo singer who can tell a story through
singing presented inn a sort of a club
called camerata.
Orfeo- by Claudio Monteverdi.

Classical Opera
(Late 18th Century)