Debbie Young, age 15, of Greenville, Miss., for her question:
WHEN DID OPERA FIRST START?
Opera is a drama in which all parts of the dialogue are sung. An opera contains instrumental overtures, interludes and accompaniments. Opera began in Italy in the late 16th and early 17th Centuries.
Just before the first opera came about, there were many musical programs in Italy called madrigals, in which scenes involved dialogue set to music, but there was no stage action. There were also musical programs called masques, ballets de cour, intermezzi and other Renaissance court spectacles of pageantry, music and dance.
Opera itself was developed by a group of musicians and scholars who called themselves the Camerata. The Camerata had two chief goals: to revive the musical style used in ancient Greek drama and to develop an alternative to the highly contrapuntal music of the late Renaissance.
Specifically, the Camerata wanted composers to pay close attention to the texts on which their music was based, to set these texts in a simple manner and to make the music reflect, phrase by phrase, the meaning of the text.
The Camerata developed a style of vocal music called monody, or "solo song." It consisted of simple melodic lines with contours and rhythms that followed the spoken inflections and rhythms of the text. The melody was accompanied by basso continuo, that is, a series of chords on a harpsichord or other instrument, supported by a bass melody instrument.
Two members of the Camerata, Giulio Cannini and Jacopo Peri, realized monody could be used for soliloquies and dialogues in a staged drama. In 1597, Peri made use of this insight by writing the first opera, "Dafne."
In 1600, an opera incorporating music by both Peri and Caccini called "Euridice" was performed in Florence.
The first great opera composer was an Italian named Claudio Monteverdi.
Monteverdi demonstrated in his compositions that a wide variety of musical procedures and styles could be used in opera to enhance the drama.
Opera spread quickly throughout Italy. The principal Italian opera center during the middle and late 17th Century was Venice.
Venetian audiences liked the lavish stage settings and spectacular visual effects that early opera composers came up with. There were storms on stage and descents of the gods from heaven.
A new kind of opera developed in Naples in the late 17th Century. Solo singing became much more important than it had been in Venice.
By the beginning of the 18th Century, the Neopolitian style, with its emphasis on tuneful, entertaining music, had been established in most parts of Europe. The only country where this did not happen was France. There, an Italian born composer named Jean Baptiste Lully founded a French school of opera.