Opera Development in Italy
"Although opera did not originate in Venice...it found a most nurturing environment in the Most Serene Republic" (Rosand, p. 8). Much of Europe's music was dominated by Italian opera during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The wealthier upper class would commission huge works that combined music, drama, and dance for the first time in history. This combination of the fine arts was the birth of opera. Several cities in Italy, Florence, Naples, Rome, and Venice in particular, contributed to the development and perfection of the new genre (Kimbell, p. 26). The entire opera movement was born in Florence, Italy. It all started with Bardi and the Florentine Camerata, which met in an attempt to recreate Greek drama. At the time, it was assumed that early Greek tragedies were sung, and therefore, people wanted to recreate this sound (Sternfeld, p. 56). This camerata influenced the rise of music in Florence, but the city was not eager to support opera. One distinct characteristic of opera that was partially developed in Florence is monody. Monody is an ac
"The early eighteenth century has given us opera as we know it: a unified and artistically designed, dramatic enactment of human stories, expressed by the human voice and underscored by orchestral heartbeats" (Strohm, p. Florence's upper-class, wealthy community supported the opera greatly, which helped to establish Italy as one of the centers of opera during the entire Baroque movement. Italy was, and continues to be, one of the most popular countries for opera. A History ofWestern Music (6th ed). All of these cities and composers were crucial in the spread of the opera movement. Some parts were changed by different composers, but this story remains one of the most popular in Italian opera. Italy during the early eighteenth century was probably the most influential time and location of opera. Churches and convents sponsored academies that taught children how to produce proper music, which opera was very much considered to be at this time (Weaver, p. This Neapolitan opera, as it was called at the time, was only successful within the city, though.
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Acceptance Essays
