Unit 1: Opera

Question 1

Opera (Baroque) background and origins

Answer 1

• invented in Florence, Italy around 1600
• first operas composed by members of Florentine Camerata
• inspired by renewed interest in classical antiquity (Greek drama)
• precurers include Medieval liturgical drama (Hildegard von Bingen), madrigal cycles (Claudio Monteverdi), and Italian intermedio (musical interlude between acts of a play)

Question 2

Opera (Baroque) characteristic features

Answer 2

• dama presented through music
• all or most of the text is sung
• components include rectative, aria, ensembles, and chorsuses
• combines music with art, literature, theater, and dance

Question 3

Florentine Camerata

Answer 3

-met in Florence, Italy, in last decades of 16th century

• Giulio Caccini (singer an composer
• Jacopo Peri (singer and composer)
• Vincenzo Galilei (Composer, theorist, father of Galileo Galilei)
• Count Giovanni de’ Bardi (in whose Florentine home they met)
• discussed poetry, music, and the sciences
• their desire to recreate ancient Greek drama led to the invention of opera
• developed monody
• oldest surviving opera L’Euridice

Question 4

What was the monody that the Florentine Camerata invented?

Answer 4

musical texture that consisted of a vocal melody unfolding over a bass line supported by a simple chordal accompaniment

Question 5

What do you know about the oldest surviving opera L’Euridice?

Answer 5

• by Peri and Caccini

- was performed in 1600

Question 6

Le Nuove Musiche

Answer 6

• Italian: “The New Music”
• by Florentine composer Giulio Caccini
• contains musical examples and prose descriptions of monody
• Amarilli mia bella is one example of a solo song demonstrating the new “expressive style”

Question 7

What was the purpose of Le Nuove Musiche containing musical examples and prose descriptions of monody?

Answer 7

to illustrate the newly emerging musical texture

Question 8

opera

Answer 8

• Italian for “work”
• drama that is sung
• combines vocal and instrumental music with drama (Staging and acting), visual arts (costumes and scenery), and often dance
• components include recirarive, arias, ensembles, and chorsuses
• originated in Italy around 1600 and remains one of the most popular forms of musical entertainment

Question 9

(recitative)

Answer 9

• a speech-like, declamatory style of singing
• used in operas, oratorios, and cantatas
• follows inflections of the text: resulting in rhythmic flexibility
• usually used for dialogue and to advance plot
• replaced by spoken dialogue in some styles of opera