![]() ![]() Before such elements were forced out of opera seria, many libretti had featured a separately unfolding comic plot as sort of an "opera-within-an-opera." One reason for this was an attempt to attract members of the growing merchant class, newly wealthy, but still not as cultured as the nobility, to the public opera houses. Once the Metastasian ideal had been firmly established, comedy in baroque-era opera was reserved for what came to be called opera buffa. ![]() In these early baroque operas, broad comedy was blended with tragic elements in a mix that jarred some educated sensibilities, sparking the first of opera's many reform movements, sponsored by the Arcadian Academy, which came to be associated with the poet Metastasio, whose libretti helped crystallize the genre of opera seria, which became the leading form of Italian opera until the end of the eighteenth century. His most important follower Francesco Cavalli helped spread opera throughout Italy. ![]() Monteverdi had moved to the city from Mantua and composed his last operas, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria and L'incoronazione di Poppea, for the Venetian theatre in the 1640s. ![]() In 1637, the idea of a "season" (Carnival) of publicly attended operas supported by ticket sales emerged in Venice. Portrait of Italian poet Pietro Metastasio (1698-1782)ĭespite its origins, opera did not remain confined to court audiences for long. ![]()
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