Opera

Opera, staged dramatic form in which the text is wholly or partly sung to an instrumental or orchestral accompaniment. It originated in 17th-century Italy, in an attempt to recreate Greek drama. Much early opera was a mere excuse for spectacle, but works by Claudio Monteverdi, Jean Baptiste Lully, and Henry Purcell advanced the art. Dramatic standards declined in the 18th century, despite fine works by George Frederic Handel. Christoph Willibald von Gluck sought to unify plot, music, and staging into a dramatic whole, while Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart introduced greater depth of feeling into the music and realism of character on stage. The form was further enriched by the Romantics: Ludwig van Beethoven and Karl Maria von Weber in Germany and Hector Berlioz and Georges Bizet in France. The great Italians Vincenzo Bellini, Gaetano Donizetti, and Gioacchino Rossini developed the stylized bel canto form to which Giuseppe Verdi, in his later operas, gave depth and naturalism, a trend carried further in the works and theories of Richard Wagner, who sought to add a philosophical basis to Gluck's synthesis by creating Gesamtkunstwerk, the total work of art. Wagner influenced such later composers as Richard Strauss and Claude Debussy. The Italian verismo (naturalistic) school produced smaller-scale, often sensational works: Giacomo Puccini mastered both this and a more epic, fantastic style. Among eminent 20th-century opera composers are Leos Janácek, Alban Berg, and Benjamin Britten.