Opera Genre

Grand Opera is a genre of 19th-century opera generally in four or five acts, characterised by large-scale casts and orchestras, and (in their original productions) lavish and spectacular design and stage-effects, normally with plots based on or around dramatic historic events. The term is particularly applied to certain productions of the Paris Opéra from the late 1820s to around 1850, (and has sometimes been used to designate the Paris Opéra itself) but is also used in a broader application in...

Savoy Operas denote a style of comic opera that developed in Victorian England in the late 19th century, with W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan as the original and most successful practitioners. The name is derived from the Savoy Theatre, which impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte built to house the Gilbert and Sullivan pieces, and later, those by other composer–librettist teams. The great bulk of the non-G&S; Savoy Operas either failed to achieve a foothold in the standard repertory, or have faded...

Comic opera, or light opera, denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending. Comic opera first developed in 18th-century Italy as opera buffa, an alternative to opera seria. It quickly made its way to France, where it became opéra comique, or opéra bouffe, and finally French operetta, with Jacques Offenbach as its most accomplished practitioner. Both the Italian and French forms were major artistic exports to other parts of Europe. Many countries...

Opera seria (usually called dramma per musica or melodramma serio) is an Italian musical term which refers to the noble and "serious" style of Italian opera that predominated in Europe from the 1710s to ca. 1770. The term itself was rarely used at the time and only became common usage once opera seria became unfashionable, and was viewed as a historical genre. The popular rival to opera seria was opera buffa, the 'comic' opera that took its cue from the improvisatory commedia dell'arte. ...

Opéra bouffon is the French term for the Italian genre of opera called opera buffa performed in 18th-century France, either in the original language or in French translation. The term is sometimes confused with the French opéra comique.

Opéra bouffe (plural, opéras bouffes) is a genre of late 19th century French operetta, closely associated with Jacques Offenbach, who produced many of them at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens that gave its name to the form. Opéra bouffes are known for elements of comedy, satire, parody and farce. The most famous examples are La belle Hélène, Barbe-bleue (Bluebeard), La vie parisienne, La Périchole and La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein.

Ballets de cour (Court ballet) is the name given to ballet performed in the 16th and 17th centuries at court. Jean-Baptiste Lully is considered the most important composer of music for ballets de cour and was instrumental to the development of the form. During his employment by Louis XIV as director of the Académie Royale de Music he worked with Pierre Beauchamp, Molière, Philippe Quinault and Mademoiselle De Lafontaine, (the first professional female dancer and Premiere danseuse of the Paris...

Opéra féerie (plural, opéras féeries) is a French genre of opera or opéra-ballet based on fairy tales, often with elements of magic in their stories. Popular in the 18th century, from the time of Jean-Philippe Rameau onwards, the form reached its culmination with works such as La belle au bois dormant by Michele Carafa and Cendrillon by Nicolas Isouard at the beginning of the 19th century. The distantly related English genre of "fairy opera" includes Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe. Earlier in...

Género chico (literally, "little genre") is a Spanish genre of short light dramas. It is a subgenre of zarzuela, the Spanish operetta. It differs from zarzuela grande and most other opera forms both by being short and by aiming at a proletarian audience. It could be considered to be in many ways the nineteenth-century Spanish equivalent of the modern televised soap opera. Zarzuela had developed together with Spanish politics, beginning during the reign of Philip IV (1605 – 1665, reigned from...

Science-fiction opera is a style of opera whose subject-matter fits in or near the science fiction genre. Although currently only a small number of science-fiction operas have been written, the style’s popularity is growing rapidly. Like science-fiction literature many science-fiction operas include futuristic scenarios such as [intergalactic travel]] or alien invasion. Other science-fiction opera focus on a more distopian view of the future. Many such operas, (Lorin Maazel’s 1984 for instance)...

Chamber opera is a designation for opera written to be performed with a chamber ensemble rather than a full orchestra. The term and form were invented by Benjamin Britten in the 1940s, when the English Opera Group needed works that could easily be taken on tour and performed in a variety of small performance spaces. The Rape of Lucretia was the first example of the genre. Other composers, including Thomas Adès and Philip Glass, have since adopted the term for their own works. Instrumentation...

Bel canto (Bel-Canto) (Italian, "beautiful singing"), an Italian musical term, refers to the art and science of vocal technique which originated in Italy during the late seventeenth century and reached its pinnacle in the early part of the nineteenth century during the Bel Canto opera era. Rossini (1792-1868), Bellini (1801-1835), and Donizetti (1797-1848) best exemplify this style, which flourished from approximately 1805 to 1830. Some have credited the 17th century composer Pietro Cavalli...