Where Did Opera Originate?

Although today many people associate opera with countries such as Italy, the origins of this musical art form can be found in Ancient Greece. It is this civilization that first introduced the world to opera. Though little of this music survives to the present, you can get a feel for the Ancient Grecian opera by studying Greek drama.

Ancient Greece is well known for their development of drama. One little known fact, however, is that most of these famous plays, including such works as “Antigone” and “Oedipus Rex,” were performed not in prose, but in song.

These plays were usually broken up into dialogue and choral verses. The dialogue was sung or spoken with a musical inflection by the actors, while a chorus sang to the most advanced music of the day. This rudimentary opera was accompanied by flutes and lyres.

Early Opera

Following the Ancient Greek era, there are few other examples of opera until modern times. One composer, Adam de la Hale (1240-1287 C.E.), produced comic operettas (a “lighter” form of opera; the music and subject matter are usually not as dramatic as in standard opera), but these works were never widely embraced.

Minstrelsy, in which traveling performers would sing ballads which told a story, was a very popular form of embryonic opera in the Middle Ages. Minstrelsy was most popular between 1300-1700 C.E. However, this elementary musical form never really evolved beyond the ballad.

Modern Opera

Beginning in the 18th century, the Enlightenment period brought about a surge of rationality and logic. This trend extended to musicians and composers as well. Music became a matter more of science and math than of art and emotion. Composers used mathematical formulas to combine pieces of music and vocalization. Fortunately for the development of opera, however, this musical trend soon fell out of favor. The artists were taking back the music.

Not all music of this era was mathematically derived.  In fact, it was at the end of the 16th century that modern opera originated. These operas, first written in Florence, Italy, were an attempt to recreate the musical dramas of Ancient Greece. According to the preface of the opera “Euridice: by Jacopo Peri, the piece was written "to test the effect of the particular kind of melody" which musicians of that day imagined "to be identical with that used by the Greeks and the Romans throughout their dramas."

Composers and Advances

One of the most prolific composers of this new genre was Claudio Monteverde. Unable to find his niche in the musical forms of the day, he found his calling in opera. His works did more for the popularization of opera than perhaps anything else. Critics at the time stated that his operas "visibly moved the entire theatre to tears."

It was because of Monteverde’s success that he gained a large number of fans and pupils. These students would go on to further refine the genre. From the students of Monteverde came many advances in opera.

Cavalli, one of these pupils, was the originator of the aria. Before the aria (a more ornamental type of song sung by only one person), “musica parlante” was popular. In the style of “musica parlante” modeled after the Ancient Greek choral verses, the singing of the opera was more less eloquent, being sung by a large chorus rather than a single person. It was Cavalli that broke with this tradition for the first time.

Spread of Opera

By 1637 the first public opera house was opened in Venice, Italy. This proved immensely popular. By the end of the 17th century there were more than sixteen opera houses in Venice alone.

Opera did not stay confined to Italy for long. Soon, the form had spread to Germany, France, England, Spain, and Russia. Famous German composers, such as Handel and Mozart, emerged and became very famous. Originally even these German operas were in Italian (as opera was still considered primarily an Italian art). However, by the 18th century, operas were being written in many languages around the world.

It was not until the 19th century that opera made the journey across the Atlantic. In 1883 the Metropolitan Opera House opened in New York City. Even today, the “Met” is still one of the most popular opera houses in the United States. Opera continues to captivate fans all over the world with its dramatic orchestral music and stunning vocalizations. It remains to many the embodiment of musical perfection.