Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that can help answer the question.
Query: When was the first opera written?
"Dafne" by Jacopo Peri was the earliest composition considered opera, as understood today, although with only five instrumental parts it was much more like a chamber opera than either the preceding intermedi or the operas of Claudio Monteverdi a few years later. It was written around 1597, largely under the inspiration of an elite circle of literate Florentine humanists who gathered as the "Camerata". Significantly, "Dafne" was an attempt to revive the classical Greek drama, part of the wider revival of antiquity characteristic of the Renaissance. The members of the Camerata considered that the "chorus" parts of Greek dramas were originally sung, and possibly even the entire text of all roles; opera was thus conceived as a way of "restoring" this situation. The libretto was by Ottavio Rinuccini, who had written some of the 1587 Medici intermedi, in which Peri had also been involved; Rinuccini appears to have recycled some of the material, at least from the scene illustrated at right. Most of the music for "Dafne" is lost (the libretto was printed and survives), but one of Peri's many later operas, "Euridice", dating from 1600, is the first opera score to have survived to the present day.
"Verismo" is a style of Italian opera that began in 1890 with the first performance of Mascagni's "Cavalleria rusticana", peaked in the early 1900s, and lingered into the 1920s. The style is distinguished by realistic – sometimes sordid or violent – depictions of everyday life, especially the life of the contemporary lower classes. It by and large rejects the historical or mythical subjects associated with Romanticism. "Cavalleria rusticana", "Pagliacci", and "Andrea Chénier" are uniformly considered to be "verismo" operas. Puccini's career as a composer is almost entirely coincident in time with the "verismo" movement. Only his "Le Villi" and "Edgar" preceded "Cavalleria rusticana". Some view Puccini as essentially a "verismo" composer, while others, although acknowledging that he took part in the movement to some degree, do not view him as a "pure" "verismo" composer. In addition, critics differ as to the degree to which particular operas by Puccini are, or are not, properly described as "verismo" operas. Two of Puccini's operas, "Tosca" and "Il tabarro," are universally considered to be "verismo" operas. Puccini scholar Mosco Carner places only two of Puccini's operas other than "Tosca" and "Il tabarro" within the "verismo" school: "Madama Butterfly", and "La fanciulla del West." Because only three "verismo" works by Puccini continue to appear regularly on stage (the aforementioned "Cavalleria rusticana", "Pagliacci", and "Andrea Chénier"), Puccini's contribution has had lasting significance to the genre.
This is an audio and video discography of Tristan und Isolde, an opera by Richard Wagner which was first performed on 10 June 1865 in Munich.
Puccini completed "La fanciulla del West", based on a play by David Belasco, in 1910. This was commissioned by, and first performed at, the Metropolitan Opera in New York on 10 December 1910 with Met stars Enrico Caruso and Emmy Destinn for whom Puccini created the leading roles of Dick Johnson and Minnie. Toscanini, then the musical director of the Met, conducted. This was the first world premiere of an opera at the Met. The premiere was a great success. However, the compositional style employed in the opera, with few stand-alone arias, was criticized at the time and remains a barrier to the opera's complete acceptance into the standard repertoire. Some contemporaries also criticized the opera for failing to achieve an "American" tone. However, the opera has been acclaimed for its incorporation of advanced harmonic language and rhythmic complexity into the Italian operatic form. In addition, one aria from the opera, "Ch'ella mi creda", has become a staple of compilation albums by operatic tenors. It is said that during World War I, Italian soldiers sang this aria to maintain their spirits. The 2008 Italian film, "Puccini e la fanciulla" ("Puccini and the Girl"), is based on the period of his life when he was composing the opera.
On Christmas Eve 1950 Gian Carlo Menotti's Christmas opera "Amahl and the Night Visitors" was premiered by the NBC Opera Theater as the inaugural presentation made by the newly created Hallmark Hall of Fame. The first opera written specifically for television, it was immensely popular at its premiere and was dubbed by "Life" magazine as a Christmas Classic in 1952. Menotti never intended for the work to remain solely confined to the medium of television, and "Amahl and the Night Visitors" has since been the only Christmas themed opera to become an enduring part of the live opera performance repertory; particularly with smaller opera companies and at colleges and music conservatories. While predominately overlooked by larger opera houses, "Amahl" has been performed and recorded by The Royal Opera and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The success of Menotti's opera is also credited with inspiring the future investment in Christmas specials on American television which resulted in the creation of more than 50 Christmas operas and musicals for that medium.
The first performance of "Manon Lescaut" took place in the Teatro Regio in Turin on 1 February 1893; it was Puccini's third opera and his first great success. The opera was first performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York on 18 January 1907 in the presence of the composer with Lina Cavalieri in the title role, Enrico Caruso as des Grieux, Antonio Scotti as Lescaut, and Arturo Vigna conducting.
Die Herzogin von Chicago ("The Duchess of Chicago") is an operetta in two acts, a prologue, and an epilogue. The music was composed by Hungarian composer Emmerich Kálmán with a libretto by Julius Brammer and Alfred Grünwald. It premiered in Vienna at the Theater an der Wien, on April 5, 1928 and played for 372 performances. The work was presented in out-of-town tryouts in Newark, New Jersey and Springfield, Massachusetts by the Shuberts in 1929, but it did not make it to Broadway. The piece was forgotten until 1997, when the Lubo Opera Company performed it in concert in New York, after which Light Opera Works of Illinois performed the work in 1998 in a fully staged version with a new translation by Philip Kraus and Gregory Opelka. In 1999, Richard Bonynge made a recording of the work, which revived international interest in it.
Giacomo Puccini wrote a trio of operas named "Il trittico" comprising "Il tabarro", "Suor Angelica" and "Gianni Schicchi". Florence created the role of Lauretta at the world premiere of Puccini¹s "Gianni Schicchi" on 14 December 1918 at the Metropolitan Opera, New York; she was the first to sing the famous aria "O mio babbino caro" ("O My Beloved Papa"). Puccini could not get to New York for the premiere, so the Met's general manager Giulio Gatti-Casazza sent a telegram to Puccini after the performance of the Trittico:
Rimsky-Korsakov and Belsky first became interested in writing an opera on the Kitezh legend during the winter of 1898-1899, while they were working on the libretto to "The Tale of Tsar Saltan". The idea of combining the legend of St. Fevroniya into the story was part of the project from the beginning. The project remained in the minds of both composer and the librettist, but would have to wait until 1903 until serious work could begin. During the period between 1898 and the beginning of 1903, the composer was occupied with the composition of the operas "The Tale of Tsar Saltan", "Servilia", "Kashchey the Immortal" and "Pan Voyevoda". In his "My Musical Life", Rimsky-Korsakov mentions "In the midst of work on "Pan Voyevoda" Belsky and I pondered intensively the subject of "The Tale of the Invisible City of Kityezh and of the Maiden Fyevroniya"." Rimsky-Korsakov had written a rough draft of the first act by the end of summer, and Belsky had completed the libretto by spring. By summer of 1904, Rimsky-Korsakov had finished the composition of the second tableau of Act III and was orchestrating the opera. During the summer of 1905, while writing his "Principles of Orchestration", Rimsky-Korsakov also polished the orchestral score to "Kitezh", and made a clean final copy to send to the printers.
In the late 17th century Louis XIV founded the Académie Royale de Musique (the Paris Opera) within which emerged the first professional theatrical ballet company, the Paris Opera Ballet. The predominance of French in the vocabulary of ballet reflects this history. Theatrical ballet soon became an independent form of art, although still frequently maintaining a close association with opera, and spread from the heart of Europe to other nations. The Royal Danish Ballet and the Imperial Ballet of the Russian Empire were founded in the 1740s and began to flourish, especially after about 1850. In 1907 the Russian ballet in turn moved back to France, where the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev and its successors were particularly influential. Soon ballet spread around the world with the formation of new companies, including London's The Royal Ballet (1931), the San Francisco Ballet (1933), American Ballet Theatre (1937), the Royal Winnipeg Ballet (1939), The Australian Ballet (1940), the New York City Ballet (1948), the National Ballet of Canada (1951), and the National Ballet Academy and Trust of India (2002).
Designed in 1885 by Thomas J. Welsh, a prominent San Francisco architect, for the amount of $28,000, it was the first opera house to serve the Sacramento Valley. The builder for the community theater was Woodland contractor William Henry Curson. Several years later in July 1892 a fire that started in Dead Cat Alley behind the Opera House destroyed much of what is now the Downtown Woodland Historic District, including the Opera House. There was uncertainty whether the House would be rebuilt when a locally renowned businessman, David N. Hershey, purchased the site. Other local businessmen supported the project in addition to Hershey. The Opera House was rebuilt between 1895 and 1896 by local contractor William H. Winne at the cost of $8,990. Many of the materials from the original building were used including some of the partially standing walls.
For the fourth season in 1723, for which his first opera was "Ottone", Handel assembled a cast of star singers including the internationally famous castrato, Senesino, beginning a long and sometimes stormy association with Handel that included creating seventeen leading roles in his operas for London, at a vast salary. The star soprano Margherita Durastanti, who had sung in many of Handel's early works in Italy as well as his previous operas in London, joined the cast, as did English soprano Anastasia Robinson, who was unhappy about much of the music Handel had written for her to sing in "Ottone", feeling that she could not portray, as he desired, scorn and anger, and appealed in a letter to one of the patrons of the Royal Academy to intervene with Handel to write gentler music for her to suit her abilities. Also in the cast was another internationally renowned castrato, Gaetano Berenstadt, in the first of three roles he created in Handel operas.
In 1733, a second opera company, The Opera of the Nobility was set up to rival Handel's, employing several of Handel's former star singers including the celebrated castrato Senesino. Handel's lease on the King's Theatre in the Haymarket expired at the end of the 1733 - 34 season, and the Opera of the Nobility moved into what had been Handel's artistic home for years. In addition to Senesino, the rival opera company had also hired the renowned castrato Farinelli, who created a sensation. These were considered serious setbacks for Handel as the French author Antoine François Prévost wrote in 1734:He has so suffered great losses and written so many wonderful operas, which proved to be utter failures, that he will be forced to leave London and return to his home country but, undeterred, Handel moved into a new theatre, the Theatre Royal Covent Garden, built by John Rich largely on the proceeds of the extremely successful "The Beggar's Opera" which had parodied Italian opera of the kind Handel supplied for London. Rich had equipped his new theatre with the latest technology in stage machinery and also employed a troupe of dancers, which had not been the case at the King's Theatre in the Haymarket. Handel opened his first season at Covent Garden with a re-working of his earlier "Il Pastor Fido" with an entirely new prologue, "Terpsichore", featuring the internationally famous French dancer Marie Sallé. The pasticcio "Oreste", which followed, also features dances unlike the operas Handel had previously composed for London.
"Romeo and Juliet" belongs to a tradition of tragic romances stretching back to antiquity. The plot is based on an Italian tale translated into verse as "The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet" by Arthur Brooke in 1562 and retold in prose in "Palace of Pleasure" by William Painter in 1567. Shakespeare borrowed heavily from both but expanded the plot by developing a number of supporting characters, particularly Mercutio and Paris. Believed to have been written between 1591 and 1595, the play was first published in a quarto version in 1597. The text of the first quarto version was of poor quality, however, and later editions corrected the text to conform more closely with Shakespeare's original.
Seven works of Sophocles have survived, the most acclaimed of which are the three Theban plays, which center around the story of Oedipus and his offspring. The Theban Trilogy consists of "Oedipus the King", "Oedipus at Colonus", and "Antigone". Although the plays are often called a "trilogy," they were actually written many years apart. "Antigone", the last of the three plays sequentially, was actually first to be written, having been composed in 441 BC, towards the beginning of Sophocles's career. "Oedipus the King", the most famous of the three, was written around 429 BC at the midpoint of Sophocles's career. "Oedipus at Colonus", the second of the three plays chronologically, was actually Sophocles's last play and was performed in 401 BC, after Sophocles's death.
The Merry Wives of Windsor (in German: Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor) is an opera in three acts by Otto Nicolai to a German libretto by Salomon Hermann Mosenthal based on the play "The Merry Wives of Windsor" by William Shakespeare.
In the course of his life Beethoven composed five sonatas for cello and piano. The Op. 69 was the first he had written since his Op. 5 over a decade earlier. Mark Kaplan writes: "In general, the writing in op. 69 is thinner than in the early cello sonatas ... greater compositional technique allowed Beethoven the possibility of using fewer notes with confidence." The contemporary cellist Steven Isserlis describes it as the first cello sonata in history to give the two instruments equal importance.
Puccini's next work after "La bohème" was "Tosca" (1900), arguably Puccini's first foray into "verismo", the realistic depiction of many facets of real life including violence. Puccini had been considering an opera on this theme since he saw the play "Tosca" by Victorien Sardou in 1889, when he wrote to his publisher, Giulio Ricordi, begging him to get Sardou's permission for the work to be made into an opera: "I see in this "Tosca" the opera I need, with no overblown proportions, no elaborate spectacle, nor will it call for the usual excessive amount of music."
The music of "Tosca" employs musical signatures for particular characters and emotions, which have been compared to Wagnerian leitmotivs, and some contemporaries saw Puccini as thereby adopting a new musical style influenced by Wagner. Others viewed the work differently. Rejecting the allegation that "Tosca" displayed Wagnerian influences, a critic reporting on the 20 February 1900 Torino premiere wrote: "I don't think you could find a more Puccinian score than this."
In 1760, one year after Voltaire published "Candide", a sequel was published with the name . This work is attributed both to Thorel de Campigneulles, a writer unknown today, and Henri Joseph Du Laurens, who is suspected of having habitually plagiarised Voltaire. The story continues in this sequel with Candide having new adventures in the Ottoman Empire, Persia, and Denmark. "Part II" has potential use in studies of the popular and literary receptions of "Candide", but is almost certainly apocryphal. In total, by the year 1803, at least ten imitations of "Candide" or continuations of its story were published by authors other than Voltaire.
The operetta "Candide" was originally conceived by playwright Lillian Hellman, as a play with incidental music. Leonard Bernstein, the American composer and conductor who wrote the music, was so excited about the project that he convinced Hellman to do it as a "comic operetta". Many lyricists worked on the show, including James Agee, Dorothy Parker, John Latouche, Richard Wilbur, Leonard and Felicia Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Hellman. Hershy Kay orchestrated all the pieces except for the overture, which Bernstein did himself. "Candide" first opened on Broadway as a musical on 1 December 1956. The premier production was directed by Tyrone Guthrie and conducted by Samuel Krachmalnick. While this production was a box office flop, the music was highly praised, and an original cast album was made. The album gradually became a cult hit, but Hellman's libretto was criticised as being too serious an adaptation of Voltaire's novel. "Candide" would be more popular seventeen years later with a new libretto by Hugh Wheeler.
The Noblewoman Vera Sheloga (, "Boyarïnya Vera Sheloga") is an opera in one act by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Rimsky-Korsakov wrote the libretto, which he based on the first act of the play "The Maid of Pskov" by Lev Alexandrovich Mey. The opera was composed in 1898 from material omitted from the second version of Rimsky-Korsakov's setting of the play as an opera. The first and third versions of the opera "The Maid of Pskov" omit the first act of the play.
Musical notation was developed before parchment or paper were used for writing. The earliest form of musical notation can be found in a cuneiform tablet that was created at Nippur, in Sumer (today's Iraq) in about 2,000 BC. The tablet represents fragmentary instructions for performing music, that the music was composed in harmonies of thirds, and that it was written using a diatonic scale.
He based his first book, "Opera as Drama" (1956), on a series of essays written for "The Hudson Review" beginning in 1948. Published in several languages and multiple editions, "Opera as Drama" expresses Kerman's view that an opera's story is key and provides the basis for the structuring of both the librettist's text (which expresses the narrative) and the composer's music (which expresses the emotions in the story). For Kerman, the value of an opera as drama is undermined when there is a perceived disconnection between text and music. Among the operas Kerman discussed in the book was Puccini's "Tosca" which he controversially described as a "shabby little shocker." (Kerman's assessment echoed George Bernard Shaw's earlier description of Sardou's play "La Tosca" on which the opera was based as an "empty-headed turnip ghost of a cheap shocker.")
Musical programs distinguished the decade. Gian Carlo Menotti's "Amahl and the Night Visitors", the first opera written for television, was performed on December 24, 1951, at the NBC studios in New York City, where it was telecast as the debut production of the Hallmark Hall of Fame. The opera was performed live on or near Christmas Eve annually until the mid-1960s when a production starring Teresa Stratas was filmed and telecast for several years. The Broadway musical "Peter Pan" was televised in 1955 on NBC with Mary Martin and Cyril Ritchard in their original roles as Peter Pan and Captain Hook. The telecast drew the largest ratings for a single television program up to that time, and was restaged in 1956 and 1960. On January 28, 1956, Elvis Presley made his first televised appearance on "Stage Show", while, the same year, musical film "The Wizard of Oz" starring Judy Garland saw its first telecast on November 3 on CBS. Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella" was written for a live television broadcast in 1957 and starred Julie Andrews. In 1957, American Bandstand hosted by Dick Clark debuts, highlighting most of the popular rock and roll acts of the 1950s.
In 1951, NBC commissioned Italian-American composer Gian Carlo Menotti to compose the first opera ever written for television; Menotti came up with "Amahl and the Night Visitors", a 45-minute work for which he wrote both music and libretto, about a disabled shepherd boy who meets the Three Wise Men and is miraculously cured when he offers his crutch to the newborn Christ Child. It was such a stunning success that it was repeated every year on NBC from 1951 to 1966, when a dispute between Menotti and NBC ended the broadcasts. However, by 1978, Menotti and NBC had patched things up, and an all-new production of the opera, filmed partly on location in the Middle East, was telecast that year.
This was Donizetti's first opera, written in six days between 25 September and 1 October 1816 when the composer was 19 and a student at the Bologna Academy, a position acquired for him with the help of his teacher in Bergamo, Johann Simon Mayr and where his "gift for spontaneous composition flowered". It has been noted that although the comedy is "musically slender, the score, nevertheless, reveals the fledgling composer's flair for melody".