Opera

So, how much do you know about Opera? Okay that is the start… but how would you like to know
more about it …. How do you mean … come on it Art it is culture…

Opera is a drama set to music. An opera is like a play in which everything is sung instead of spoken.
Operas are usually performed in opera houses. The singers who sing and act out the story are on the
stage, and the orchestra is in front of the stage but lower down, in the orchestra pit, so that the
audience can see the stage.

An opera is normally divided into two, three, four or even five acts.

. During the
recitative things would happen in the story. The aria was a song for a solo singer, a setting of a lyric.
The chorus were a group of singers who sing in the crowd scenes. The opera would start with an
overture for the orchestra. The overture would usually include tunes that are going to be heard later
in the opera.

Types of opera
Not all operas have music all the time.

Grand opera is opera which is all set to music.

Opéra buffe (French) or Opera buffa (Italian) is comic opera. The story is very light-hearted
and funny.

The singers
Opera singers have to have powerful voices as well as a good technique. Most opera houses
are very big, and the singers need to be heard at the back. They also need to be good at acting.
They need to be able to learn their music quickly and to sing from memory. It is a help to be
good at languages because operas are often in Italian, German, French, English or Russian
etc. Some opera companies, like the English National Opera, sing their operas in English.
Others, like the Royal Opera House, sing operas in whatever language they were composed
in. Translations are printed on a screen above the front of the stage ("subtitles") so that the
audience can understand what is being sung.

Although singers train to get a wide range (good top and bottom notes) they cannot be
expected to sing any role in their voice range. ork combining text (libretto) and musical scoren
traditional opera, singers do two types of singing: recitative, a speech-inflected style[2] and arias, a
more melodic style. Operapera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting,
scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance. The performance is typically given in an opera
house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble, which since the early 1800s has
been led by a conductor. It started in Italy at the end of the 16th century (with Jacopo Peri's lost
Dafne, produced in Florence in 1598) and soon spread through the rest of Europe: Schütz in
GermaLullyDafne is unfortunately lost. A later work by Peri, Euridice, dating from 1600, is the first
opera score to have survived to the present day.