Historical Periods in Music

• Pre medieval (before 500)

• Middle Ages (c. 500 – 1400)
• Renaissance (c. 1400 – 1600)
• Baroque (c. 1600 – 1750)
• Classical (c. 1750 – 1820)
• Romantic (c. 1780 – 1910)
• 20th Century (1900 – 2000)
• 21st Century (2000 – present)

Voice Types

The female voices are an octave higher than the male voices – When men and women sing together
they usually sing an octave apart.

• Soprano: highest voice (female) (Mariah Carey, Julie Andrews)

• Mezzo-soprano: middle range voice for females (Taylor Swift)
• Contralto (or alto): lowest female voice (Adele)
• Castrati: Male signer who can sing in the same range as females because of castration
• Countertenor: highest male voice. Usually sings in falsetto (when men shift their voice to a
higher register) (Michael Jackson)
• Tenor: highest male voice using the modal register (the vocal registry commonly used for singing
and speaking – otherwise not in falsetto) (Justin Timberlake, Steven Tyler)
• Baritone: middle range male voice (Elvis Presly)
• Bass: lowest male voice (Johnny Cash, Barry White)

A Brief History of Opera

You can also read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera

Born in Italy more than 400 years ago during the Renaissance, opera—a combination of vocal and
orchestral music, drama, visual arts and dance—has been inspiring people for ages.
In the Palazzo Bardi In Florence, a small group of artists, statesmen, writers and musicians known as the
Florentine Camerata decided to recreate the storytelling of Greek drama through music. Enter Jacopo
Peri (1561–1633), who composed Dafne (1597), which many consider to be the first opera. It was
inspired by the ideals of the Camerata and tells the story of Apollo’s pursuit of the nymph Dafne. From
that beginning, two types of opera began to emerge: opera seria, or stately, formal and dignified pieces
to befit the royalty that attended and sponsored them, and opera buffa, or comedies.

By the Baroque era (1600–1750), opera had taken Europe by storm and was a spectacular, expensive
affair full of florid arias and ornate stage sets with moving parts. One of the greatest composers of
Italian Baroque opera was a German who lived most of his life in London—Georg Frideric Handel (1685–
1759). This period also saw the rise of castrati—male singers who were castrated as boys to preserve
their soprano voices. The few who survived and made it to the top were the singing stars of the 17th
and 18th century. Today those roles are sung by countertenors, or by women.

Opera content began to change in the Classical period (1750–1830). This was brought about by the
social movement known as the Enlightenment, with less elaborate musical forms and more realistic
plots (read: fewer gods, more humans) and a reaction against excessive vocal display.

The ultimate Classical opera composer was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91). Take his The
Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze di Figaro), a farce where servants ultimately outwit their aristocratic
masters, based on a play by French writer Beaumarchais. It’s fast, irreverent and funny, but also full of
stunning music. Mozart was also a master of high drama, as seen in his masterpiece Don Giovanni.

Opera continued to flourish, and got bigger, louder and longer during the Romantic period (1830–1900).
Grand opera was suddenly all the rage. One important style during this time was the Italian bel canto
movement (literally meaning “beautiful singing”), which was all about vocal brilliance and
ornamentation bolstered by a simpler harmonic structure.

Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868) had a particular talent for ebullient comedy and unforgettable
melodies—like his The Barber of Seville (Il Barbiere di Siviglia). However, many bel canto composers
enjoyed a good tragedy—often making their heroines go mad via a thwarted love affair. It was a good
excuse to indulge in lengthy and elaborate vocal display. The most famous ‘mad scene’ occurs in
Gaetano Donizetti’s (1797–1848) Lucia di Lammermoor, where the heroine, coerced into marriage,
murders her husband on their wedding night and then spectacularly loses her mind.

The best-known opera of the 19th century—and possibly the most popular of all time—is French
composer Georges Bizet’s (1838–75) Carmen. It’s for good reason—the story of a Gypsy woman who
values her free-spirited life above all, and the soldier who becomes obsessed with her, is packed with
catchy melodies.

The late 19th century was dominated by two giants of opera: Italian Giuseppe Verdi and German
Richard Wagner, both born in 1813. Verdi, whose operas include Rigoletto, Il Trovatore and Aida wrote
in a tuneful and dramatic style. Verdi understood the human voice and the internal processes behind
the characters he created. Perhaps his most popular opera is La Traviata, which tells the story of
Violetta, a beautiful courtesan who is fatally ill with tuberculosis.

Meanwhile, in Germany, Wagner singlehandedly changed the course of opera with his huge ambition
and talent by introducing new ideas in harmony, the use of leitmotifs and expanded use of the orchestra
and operatic structure. Probably his best-known music is his 15-hour, four-opera Ring cycle: Das
Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung. Wagner was a significant influence on the
music world, particularly for composers Gustav Mahler, Anton Bruckner, Jules Massenet and Richard
Strauss—whose operas Salome and Der Rosenkavalier, characterized by their virtuosity in orchestral
writing and tone color, are steeped in Wagner’s late-Romantic style.

The early 20th century was dominated by another Italian with a fluent gift for melody, Giacomo Puccini
(1858–1924). He wrote hugely popular works in the Italian grand opera tradition (usually featuring the
tragic death of the heroine) with a new emphasis on realism—known as verismo—including La Bohème,
Tosca, Madama Butterfly and Turandot.

20th century politics clashed with art in the 1934 opera by Dmitri Shostakovich, Lady Macbeth of the
Mtsensk District; so disturbingly, brilliantly dramatic it was condemned by the Soviet government. In the
U.K., Benjamin Britten proved himself one of the masters of opera with his 1945 debut Peter Grimes. Set
on the Suffolk coast, it’s the story of a difficult, outcast fisherman, his mistrustful neighbors and the sea
that dominates their lives. Politics and opera come full circle with one of the most successful and
engaging works of the late 20th century: John Adams’s Nixon in China (1987), based on Richard Nixon’s
historic visit to China to meet Chairman Mao in 1972.

One of the most controversial operas of recent years is British composer Mark Anthony Turnage’s Anna
Nicole, based on the life of Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith. What may seem a bizarre contemporary
choice of subject in fact reveals itself to be a plot in the best grand operatic tradition, featuring a larger-
than-life heroine with a tragic life story and sharp social commentary on the price of fame.

From: https://sfopera.com/discover-opera/intro-to-opera/a-brief-history-of-opera/