Opera

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Notes

^ Some definitions of opera: dramatic performance or composition of which music is an essential part, branch of art concerned with this (Concise Oxford English Dictionary); any dramatic work that can be sung (or at times declaimed or spoken) in a place for performance, set to original music for singers (usually in costume) and instrumentalists (Amanda Holden, Viking Opera Guide); musical work for the stage with singing characters, originated in early years of 17th century (Pears Cyclopaedia, 1983 ed.).
^ Comparable art forms from various other parts of the world, many of them ancient in origin, are also sometimes called "opera" by analogy, usually prefaced with an adjective indicating the region (for example, Chinese opera). These independent traditions are not derivative of Western opera, but are rather distinct forms of musical theatre. Opera is also not the only type of Western musical theatre: in the ancient world, Greek drama featured singing and instrumental accompaniment; and in modern times, other forms such as the musical have appeared.
^ Oxford Illustrated History of Opera, Chapter 1; articles on Peri and Monteverdi in The Viking Opera Guide.
^ Oxford Illustrated History of Opera, Chapters 1-3.
^ Man and Music: the Classical Era, ed. Neal Zaslaw (Macmillan, 1989); entries on Gluck and Mozart in The Viking Opera Guide.
^ Oxford Illustrated History of Opera, Chapters 5, 8 and 9. Viking Opera Guide entry on Verdi.
^ General outline for this section from the The Oxford Illustrated History of Opera, Chapters 1-3, 6, 8 and 9, and The Oxford Companion to Music; more specific references from the individual composer entries in The Viking Opera Guide.
^ General outline for this section from the The Oxford Illustrated History of Opera, Chapters 1-4, 8 and 9; and The Oxford Companion to Music (10th ed., 1968); more specific references from the individual composer entries in The Viking Opera Guide.
^ ^a ^b ^c From Webrarian.com's Ivanhoe site.
^ the Daily Telegraph's review of Yeomen stated, "The accompaniments... are delightful to hear, and especially does the treatment of the woodwind compel admiring attention. Schubert himself could hardly have handled those instruments more deftly. ...we have a genuine English opera, forerunner of many others, let us hope, and possibly significant of an advance towards a national lyric stage. (quoted at p. 312 in Allen, Reginald (1975). The First Night Gilbert and Sullivan. London: Chappell & Co. Ltd.). Sullivan produced a few light operas in the 1890s that were of a more serious nature than those in the G&S series, including Haddon Hall and The Beauty Stone, but Ivanhoe (which ran for 155 consecutive performances, using alternating casts – a record until Broadway's La Boheme) survives as his only grand opera.
^ Oxford Illustrated History of Opera, Chapters 1, 3 and 9. The Viking Opera Guide articles on Blow, Purcell and Britten.
^ Taruskin, Richard: Russia in 'The New Grove Dictionary of Opera', ed. Stanley Sadie (London, 1992); Oxford Illustrated History of Opera, Chapters 7-9.
^ See the chapter on "Russian, Czech, Polish and Hungarian Opera to 1900" by John Tyrrell in The Oxford Illustrated History of Opera (1994).
^ Stravinsky had already turned away from the modernist trends of his early ballets to produce small-scale works that do not fully qualify as opera, yet certainly contain many operatic elements, including Renard (1916: "a burlesque in song and dance") and The Soldier's Tale (1918: "to be read, played, and danced"; in both cases the descriptions and instructions are those of the composer). In the latter, the actors declaim portions of speech to a specified rhythm over instrumental accompaniment, peculiarly similar to the older German genre of Melodrama.
^ Oxford Illustrated History of Opera, Chapter 8; The Viking Opera Guide articles on Schoenberg, Berg and Stravinsky; Malcolm MacDonald Schoenberg (Dent,1976); Francis Routh, Stravinsky (Dent, 1975).
^ However, something similar happened in French opera during the Revolutionary era. One example is Gossec's Le triomphe de la République (1793), depicting the French victory at Valmy the previous year. Such works were obviously intended as propaganda.
^ General reference for this section: Oxford Illustrated History of Opera, Chapter 9.
^ Information about Metropolitan Opera Company student discounts
^ Opera Carolina discount information
^ On Air & On Line: 2007–08 HD Season. The Metropolitan Opera (2007). Retrieved on 2008-04-10.
^ Sound Systems- Why?!
^ Entertainment Design, Mar 1, 2001 http://industryclick.com/magazinearticle.asp?releaseid=5643&magazinearticleid=66853&siteid=15&magazineid=138
^ The Oxford Illustrated History of Opera (ed. Parker, 1994), Chapter 11

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References

Silke Leopold, "The Idea of National Opera, c. 1800," United and Diversity in European Culture c. 1800, ed. Tim Blanning and Hagen Schulze (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 19-34.

The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, edited by Stanley Sadie (1992), 5,448 pages, is the best, and by far the largest, general reference in the English language. ISBN 0-333-73432-7 and ISBN 1-56159-228-5

The Viking Opera Guide (1994), 1,328 pages, ISBN 0-670-81292-7

The Oxford Illustrated History of Opera, ed. Roger Parker (1994)

The Oxford Dictionary of Opera, by John Warrack and Ewan West (1992), 782 pages, ISBN 0-19-869164-5

Opera, the Rough Guide, by Matthew Boyden et al. (1997), 672 pages, ISBN 1-85828-138-5

Opera: A Concise History, by Leslie Orrey and Rodney Milne, World of Art, Thames & Hudson

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Further reading

DiGaetani, John Louis: An Invitation to the Opera Anchor Books, 1986/91. ISBN 0-385-26339-2
Simon, Henry W.: A Treasury of Grand Opera. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1946.