What are the similarities and differences between opera and drama, ballet and oratorio?

Opera originated in Verdi during the Renaissance and began in Eurydice. /kloc-in the 0/9th century, Italian opera flourished at the same time, and ballet developed in the 20th century.

Oratorio, China's first oratorio is Huang Zi's Song of Eternal Sorrow, which was produced in the Baroque period and added drama. The most famous is Han Deer's Mass. The classic lyrics are "Hallelujah" opera, which combines music (vocal music and instrumental music), drama (script and performance), literature (poetry) and dance (folk dance and ballet). As early as in ancient Greek drama, there was chorus accompaniment, and some recitations even appeared in the form of singing; In the Middle Ages, miracle dramas with religious stories as the theme and promoting religious views were also filled with incense and continued to this day. Modern western opera, which can really be called "musical", came into being at the end of16th century and the beginning of17th century with the secularization of music culture in the Renaissance.

The origin of opera

It is generally believed that European opera came into being at the end of 16. The first opera recognized by the west is Daphne (another translation of Daphne), which was produced under the influence of humanism and tried to restore the spirit of ancient Greek drama. Screenwriter O. Rinuccini and composer J. Perry and J. Colsy performed at the court of Count G. Baldi in Florence on 1597 (completed on 1594). Due to the popularity of opera, Venice established the world's first opera house in 1637.

The development of opera

/kloc-at the end of 0/7, which was the most influential in Rome? The Naples Opera School represented by scarlatti. The school did not use chorus and ballet scenes in the play, but highly developed the solo technique called "Bel Canto" by later generations. When this style of "focusing only on singers" goes to extremes, the original dramatic expression and ideological connotation of opera are almost lost. Therefore, in the 1920s of 18, the Xi opera school with daily life as its theme, humorous plot and simple music rose. The first masterpiece of Italian comic opera is the Maid as a Housewife by Paglassie (premiered at 1733), which was originally an opera interlude. 1752 was vilified by conservatives when it was staged in Paris, thus setting off the famous "Great Debate on Happy Opera" in the history of opera. Rousseau's first French comedy opera "Village Diviner" was born under the inspiration of this debate and this opera.

Italian opera was first transformed in France and combined with French national culture. Lu Li is the founder of French opera ("lyric tragedy"). He not only created a solo melody closely combined with French, but also took the lead in applying ballet scenes to opera. In Britain, purcell created the first British national opera Didong and Ignace on the basis of his mask drama tradition. In Germany and Austria, Haydn, Dietdorf, Mozart and others developed folk operas into German-Austrian national operas, including Mozart's Magic Flute. By the18th century, Gluck insisted that opera must have profound content, music and drama should be unified, and performance should be simple and natural. His thoughts and works, such as Orflo and Eurydice and Figini of Orid, had a great influence on the development of later operas.

/kloc-After the 9th century, Italian opera masters such as G Rossini, G Verdi, G Puccini, German R Wagner, French G Bizet, Russian M.I. glinka, M.P. Musorgskiy and P.N. Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky all made important contributions to the development of opera. Operas, formed in18th century, have evolved into an independent genre. It is characterized by short structure and popular music. Besides solo, duet, chorus and dance, it also uses popular English. Austrian composer Suo Beier and German composer Owen Bach are the founders of this genre.

Among the opera composers in the 20th century, Richard Strauss was a representative influenced by Wagner in the early days. After World War I, it was Berger who applied the atonality principle to opera creation. Since the 1940s, there have been: Stravinsky, prokofiev, Mi Yue, Manotti, Barbier, Orff, Janus Della, Henze, Moore and the famous British composer Britten.

vocal music

The vocal part of the opera includes solo, duet and chorus, and the lyrics are the lines of the characters in the play (depending on the style, they can also be said in plain English); Instrumental music usually has a prelude or overture at the beginning of the whole play, and early operas also have a dedication prelude (including vocal music). In each scene, instrumental music is not only the accompaniment of singing, but also plays a connecting role. Scenes are often interspersed, or each scene has its own prelude. Dance can also be inserted into the process of drama. The musical structure of opera can be composed of relatively independent pieces of music, or it can be a unified structure with continuous development.

The important vocal styles in opera include recitation, aria, aria, recitation, duet and chorus. Its genre style includes opera, comic opera, grand opera, operetta, operetta, musical comedy, chamber opera, musical and so on.

aria

Aria is the main aria for the protagonist to express his feelings in opera. Their music is very beautiful and the structure is relatively complete, which can show the singer's vocal skills. Therefore, we often hear them in concerts, such as the aria Sunny Days in Madame Butterfly, why is my heart so excited in La Traviata, and Lin Xiawei's aria There is a voice in my heart.

Reciting

The recitative is a paragraph in which the plot unfolds, and the story often unfolds in the recitative. At this time, there are more dialogues between characters. This passage is not suitable for chorus, so it is called recitative, which is very similar to the rhyme in Beijing opera. In Beijing Opera, Tsing Yi, Xiao Sheng or the old students all chant with exaggerated pronunciation and intonation. Although it is not very melodious, it can make Daobai easily associated with the singing before and after, which is very similar to the recitation in western operas. The early recitative of European opera is very non-singing, which is called "dry recitative". Usually, a chord is played into a tune on the clavichord, and the singer uses this tune to repeat it with many homophones. The repeated translation of this homonym into Chinese is very ugly, because there are four cadences in China's language, and we in China can't sing in a flat tone: Have you eaten today? That must sound funny. So when we encounter this kind of "dry recitation", we simply take off the rap and change it into a dialogue. But in the19th century, with the gradual melody of opera recitative, for example, when we sang operas such as La Traviata and Carmen, we translated the recitative into Chinese. With a little melody, we can find four Chinese sounds that are suitable for the melody.

An ensemble of two or more singers.

A duet is that several different characters sing at the same time according to their specific emotions and drama plots. When two people sing at the same time, it is called a duet. Sometimes, the supporting and opposing roles are organized in a work. It could be a trio, a quartet, a quintet. There are sextets in Rossini's The Barber of Seville, and even in Mozart's The Wedding of Figaro. A dozen people sing together, sometimes in groups. A group of three or five people expressed their opinions, some sympathized with Figaro, some sympathized with the count, and some looked at jokes. This composer is outstanding.

Another form is the chorus of mass scenes. As mentioned above, it can be male voice, female voice, mixed voice of men and women or children's voice according to the requirements of the plot.

Opera has stories, singing has lyrics, and lyrics are closely related to the development of music and drama. So, is it better to introduce western opera into China by translating or singing the original text to keep its "original flavor"? There have always been two opinions, each with its own merits. After the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC), Chinese opera workers made great efforts in translation when introducing western operas. There is an important problem here, that is, literary language should not only be translated well, but also conform to the rules of music when it is matched with music, so that the audience can feel comfortable and accepted. This is a knowledge and a very arduous task, and it can only be done well with the cooperation of translators with high musical literacy or translators and musicians. My personal opinion is that since the audience is here to see the play, it should be understood. When western operas are introduced into China, it is best to translate them into Chinese, so that people can easily understand the plot and drama of opera music at any time and enjoy singing and performance. At least it can make our audience in China feel that our musicians really want them to understand the charm of western opera. The social fashion in recent years is that the original text is sung with Chinese subtitles. Although it can show the level of our actors singing the original text, and may be attracted by foreign agents and invited to perform abroad, as far as I know, for the audience, the acceptance of western opera is farther and the audience is narrower. Everyone will think, forget it. You don't want us to understand anyway. Besides, some actors' original text level is not high, in fact, no one can understand it

A form of drama. Composed of dramatic texts (lyrics) with music, usually accompanied by music when singing. In addition to soloists, singers, choruses and musicians, opera performances often include dancers from the beginning. For five centuries, this complex and expensive form of music, drama and entertainment has been loved by the audience. The obvious difference between it and other forms of drama is that its lines are expressed by singing instead of words; It differs from operetta, musical comedy and other musicals in the seriousness of its works, the rigor of its structure and the seriousness of its accompanying sound.

In ancient times, there were works combining poetry and drama with music. Ancient Greek playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles and euripides all adopted chorus in their plays. Medieval religious dramas based on the Bible, such as miracle dramas and miracle dramas, were generally accompanied by some kind of music. These and other forms of music and drama can be considered as the precursors of opera. The opera was produced in Florence, Italy at the end of 16. The first opera, Daphne, composed by Renaissance pastoral poets ottavio Rinuccini and Jacob Perry, has been lost. The earliest existing opera script Euridice is also their work. However, the works of the two fathers of opera are exploratory in genre and structure. About 10 years later, claudio monteverdi's representative opera Favras dolfi Ou came out. Among them, instrumental accompaniment has become a dramatic factor; At that time, the themes of opera were mostly Greek and Roman myths, legends and fictional historical stories.

opera house

1637, the world's first opera house, Teatro di San Cassiano, was completed in Venice and opened to the general audience, thus ending the era when opera was monopolized by royalty and nobility and greatly promoting the development of opera. Francesco Cavalli, a student of Monteverdi, is the most famous opera composer of this era. He composed about 40 operas for the Venice Opera House from 1639 to 1669, the most famous of which was Giasone. Pietro antonio Cesti, an Italian opera writer who was contemporary with Caffari, also wrote many operas, the most famous of which is Seven Nights. /kloc-After the middle of the 0/7th century, the school of Venetian opera began to decline, although there were still several talented composers, such as Galluppi, who was called the "father of opera" as usual.

Other cities in Italy, such as Rome, quickly developed their own local dramas. Different from Venice, Roman operas do not emphasize the grandeur of the stage, but prefer to dilute the tragic atmosphere of the whole play with funny episodes, and pay attention to the overture of musical instruments and the interlude movement of overture. There are also many famous opera writers in Rome, such as Virgilio Mazzocchi Marco Marazzo, who wrote the first complete comic opera Chisov sperry.

/kloc-in the 0/8th century, the Italian opera center moved to Naples, and various opera schools appeared one after another, thus affecting Italian and many foreign opera activity centers. Its focus is to make music obey the lyrics and make people understand. Lyrics writers Nuo Ze and Metastasio Pietro contributed to this. The aria of opera, especially the three-part aria, is dominant. Naples opera is simple in harmony and lighter in melody, with a gorgeous tone of Rococo style. Representative writers are Alessandro Scarlatti, porpora, Finch and Leo.

1720, Venetian Marce Marcello wrote "modern drama, also known as the foolproof method of creating and performing Italian opera" (Il teatro alla moda, O sia me todo sicuro e easible per Ben comprore ed ese guire opera italiane in musica), satirizing the growing stereotype in opera, which made the drama weak, thus causing the experiment of opera reform, but with little effect.

/kloc-in the 0/7th century, independent satirical comedy operas developed. At the beginning, it is often interspersed between opera scenes. In the process of maturity, it has restored some serious feelings of orthodox operas, thus making many cross talks mixed. The Barber of Serbia, The Wedding of Figaro and Marriage are the representative works of this period.

Opera was introduced to France 1650 years ago, and the first French opera Beaumont premiered at the opening ceremony of the Royal Conservatory of Music (now Paris Opera House) in 167 1 year. However, it was not until the time when Giovanni Batista Luli lived that opera became a real French art. Italian Luli went to Paris to learn from the characteristics of French drama and ballet and created French opera. He doesn't like Italian arias and advocates short and lively songs instead. He reformed the recitation according to the recitation of the French comedy troupe and developed the French overture. Luli's style reached its peak in Jean-Philippe Ramo's operas, and his major works include hippolyte and Aric.

1627 After opera was introduced into Germany and Austria, "folk opera" rose, and a number of opera writers emerged, such as Mozart, Gandel and Beethoven. His major works include The Magic Flute, Orlando, The Wedding of Figaro, Don Juan, Federio and The World on the Moon. 1769, Ranieri de Calzabigi and Ge Luke published an important document on opera innovation: the preface of the opera Alsi. He believes that the redundant and fancy three-part aria should be abolished and replaced by simple expression and true feelings. The duty of music is to "serve poetry". Gluck's representative works include Evy Gneyn Orid of Olid and Gneyn Torid of Evy. His reform thought has a great influence.

After opera was introduced into England, it took a long time to take root in England. The first English opera was henry purcell's dido and aeneas. It breaks the boundary between recitation and song. The performance of The Beggar's Opera finally made the British audience accustomed to listening to a stage play sung in their mother tongue.

From the end of 18 century to the beginning of 19 century, French comedy opera has been greatly developed. 1752, Rousseau's one-act opera Guerre des Bouffons was staged. He wrote a score in the form of mixed music, which combined the tunes reflecting very popular romantic love with vaudeville performances, which was very French. Since then, this new mixed opera has occupied a dominant position in the opera stage in Paris and other regions. Famous playwrights include Monsigny, Gretry, Mayhur and Fran? ois-Adrian Erdi. Since Bois Erdi, French comedy opera has become more Italian, reflecting Rossini's influence. During this period, Italian opera once declined. Later, brilliant opera composers such as John Simon Mayer, Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti and Bei Lini created a number of world-renowned opera works such as The Barber of Serbia, Anna Bolena and Il Pirata.

Grand Opera was born in Paris in the19th century. It is a large-scale opera with international style, with historical or fictional historical stories as the theme, and the stage is full of exotic costumes, ballet and various walk-on queues. It almost abandoned the subtlety of Bel Canto and greatly expanded the orchestra itself and its role in drama. The first recognized large-scale opera was giacomo meyerbeer's Robert Le Deiab. After Meyer Bell and Fromen Tal Halevy, the grand opera began to reflect the new music trend and developed into various mixed forms. There were also French opera writers in this period, including Berlioz and Baking Bach. Their major works include Orphee, Troy and The Story of Hoffman.

German romantic opera is the pioneer of German romantic music, such as Der Freischutz. During this period, there was also the rise of operetta, which reached its peak with johann strauss's masterpiece Bat.

/kloc-The famous opera composers after the 0/9th century are: Verdi, Puccini, busoni, etc. German and Austrian Wagner, Richard Strauss, Hans Pfitzner, Xunbaike, Berger, etc. French Cournot, Bizet, Thomas, Jules Massenet, Debussy, Ravel.

After the opera was introduced into Russia, foreign works were first performed, and then a number of outstanding opera composers such as glinka, the father of Russian opera, were produced, such as Linsky Kosakov, Bao Luoting, Modest Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky and ProGao Fei.

By the middle of the 20th century, opera had almost become a museum art, mostly repeating old works and few new ones. Some writers believe that the future of opera lies in stage plays and other mixed opera forms that are similar to operas and bring surprises to the audience, while others believe that the future of opera lies in various operas created for performances in factories and schools.