Italian Opera: Origins, Evolution, and Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo
The Origins of Opera in Italy
Opera emerged from the addition of music to theatre in the late 16th century, occurring simultaneously with the dramatisation of music. For a work to be considered opera, there needed to be continuous musical action, and the influence of ancient Greek theatre was crucial. The declamatory, singing performance of text was the missing factor, brought in by means of the recitative. The themes of the earliest operas were generally pastoral or historical.
The 17th Century: Shift to Public Theatres
In the 17th century, opera moved from courts to public theatres, and the middle class began to influence music culture. Themes shifted from pastoral to historical, and the solo singer became more important, with more virtuoso and ornamented moments. The choir became smaller and even disappeared from Monteverdi’s late operas. The singer would dominate Italian opera for centuries, and the opera seria gained a moralizing function.
Alessandro Scarlatti and the Aria Opera
Alessandro Scarlatti was the most important representative of Italian opera in the 18th century. His work focused on the solo singer, generally a castrato, and usually in the form of arias, leading to the term ‘aria operas’. The central themes were historical and Roman. Italian opera saw the establishment of the da capo aria and the Italian opera overture, the sinfonia, which were very important to the further development of this and other genres.
Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (1607)
L’Orfeo has the honor of being the earliest surviving opera that is still regularly performed today. It was composed by Claudio Monteverdi and is considered the beginning of the Baroque era. L’Orfeo contains a variety of recitatives, arias, dance songs, and concertato madrigals for two voices and choirs. The extensive orchestra, already used in the interludes, consisted of strings, keyboard, and wind instruments. It had an independent role in the ouverture, interludes, and epilogue, but was also used to accompany the singers, and Monteverdi uses instruments symbolically. It is based on the Greek legend of Orpheus and tells the story of his descent to Hades and his fruitless attempt to bring his dead bride Euridice back to the living world.
Latin Hymns
An important genre was the Latin hymn. Latin had become the official language of the liturgy, and a hymn is a song of praise. The melody was usually simple and easy to perform and identical in each verse. There were also frequent repetitive structures with a text setting mainly syllabic, with one note in each syllable, alternating with slightly neumatic passages, with two to four notes in each syllable. The rhythmic organization of the melody was based on classical verse feet; the most common were the short-long or iambic and long-short or trochaic. The hymns were given a place in the Divine Office and were usually performed with monks singing verses in alternation or direct psalmody. The texts were standardized in terms of the number of syllables, lines in a verse, verses, and metric feet; melodies could be interchanged. The transferral of the melody to different texts is called ‘contrafactum’.