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Literally, "serious opera". Dominant style of opera in the 18th century, not only in Italy but throughout Europe (except France). Rigorously formal works using texts, mainly based on ancient history, by poet-librettists led by Metastasio. Patronized by the court and the nobility. Star singers were often castrati.
Guillaume Tell might initially have been a failure but together with a work from the previous year, Auber's La muette de Portici, it ushered in a new genre which dominated the French stage for the rest of the century: grand opera. This was a style of opera characterised by grandiose scale, heroic and historical subjects, large casts, vast ...
Arne was the first English composer to experiment with Italian-style all-sung comic opera, with his greatest success being Thomas and Sally in 1760. His opera Artaxerxes (1762) was the first attempt to set a full-blown opera seria in English and was a huge success, holding the stage until the 1830s. Although Arne imitated many elements of ...
The history of opera has a relatively short duration within the context of the history of music in general: it appeared in 1597, when the first opera, Dafne, by Jacopo Peri, was created. Since then it has developed parallel to the various musical currents that have followed one another over time up to the present day, generally linked to the ...
George Frideric Handel's operas comprise 42 musical dramas that were written between 1705 and 1741 in various genres.Though his large scale English language works written for the theatre are technically oratorios and not operas, several of them, such as Semele (1744), have become an important part of the opera repertoire.
The list includes composers' principal operas and those of historical importance in the development of the art form. It covers the full historical period from the birth of opera in the late 16th century to the present day, and includes all forms of opera from light music to more formal styles.
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work (called an opera), which combines a text (called a libretto) and a musical score. [1] Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition. While the scale of opera can be larger or smaller—there are many different genres of opera—performance typically involves ...
Orontea is an opera in a prologue and three acts by the Italian composer Antonio Cesti with a libretto by Giacinto Andrea Cicognini (revised by Giovanni Filippo Apolloni). Performance history [ edit ]