Italian opera is the earliest recognized opera form. Even though the Greek and Roman Theater had inspired it, it inspired numerous countries around the world, which includes most of Europe. Some say that the word opera has been derived from the Italian words 'Opera in Musica' which means work in music. The evidence of the extremely 1st opera performed in Italy was at the wedding of Marie de Medici and Henry IV of France. The Italian opera had 3 stages namely the baroque, the romantic and also the contemporary.
Baroque period is the name of that period of Italian opera that originated in Italy inside the beginning of the 17th century. The voice used was quite high pitched along with instrumental music. This style was known as monody and was developed by Giulio Caccini and Jacopo Peri. It was reflected in the opera Euridice that was based on the story of Eurydice and Orpheus. When there were no dialogues throughout the performance, there had been songs with music. This type of opera inspired quite a few other writes, on of them was Claudio Monteverdi who wrote La Favola D'Orfeo that had the monody style. It was his very first play and it still is renowned with the audience currently. Monteverdi worked hard on synchronizing instrumental music with the words and showed this effort in Mantua, with huge choruses with practically forty instruments that developed a seriously good effect. He was named as the Maestro Da Cappela in Venice in the year 1613.
The very first opera home for public was opened in the year 1637. Monteverdi wrote quite a few compositions for this theater and his works L'Incoronazione di Poppae and I Ritomo d'Ullise in Patria were prominent out of the lots of. He even brought the Bel Canto and Buffa styles into Italian opera. Bel canto had an additional even tone and eased the singing tension. Buffa had far more comic touch with amusing and mocking elements. All these acted as the stepping-stone for a lot of other later composers. At the end of the century there were 3 hundred and fifty opera created for the Theaters of Venice alone. Many young artists were inspired to work in these Theaters and bring out their talents. Persons came from outside Italy too.
In the 19th century romantic opera began to rise and Gioacchino Rossini was responsible for it. The romantic opera involved lots of emotions and imagination along with plenty of music and arias. This music was so fine that it over shadowed the blunders within the stories. His composures including La Cenerentola and Barber of Seville are renowned till today. Many other people including Vincenzo Bellini, Giuseppe Verdi and Gaetano Donizetti followed him.
Giuseppe Verdi changed the way opera was written at that time. Nabucco was his initial work and it was an incredibly large success because of the good choruses together with enormous liveliness in the music. He even wrote Va pensiero, a chorus presentation to inspire the warriors at the time of Italian independence struggle. The works, which followed this had a far more patriotic theme and were also based on older romantic works. He began to venture into different musical forms and finally his creation Otello replaced Rossini's opera. His last work Falstaff finally changed the conventional type of theater and made music and words extra no cost flowing.
Author Resource:
The InterOpera.co.uk site gives information on opera in the uk and a comprehensive list of operas around the world.