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    Puccini's Operas
    Puccini's Operas
    Puccini's Operas
    Ebook101 pages1 hour

    Puccini's Operas

    By Merritt Wilson

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    About this ebook

    Opera was and still is one of the oldest forms of entertainment. It’s been around longer than any other art form known to mankind, longer than radio, the internet, video games, television and even movies. It’s an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining a script called a libretto and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates music, singing, scenery, costumes and sometimes dancing. Some operas have spoken dialogue called a Singspiel in which the singers talk between songs aka arias. Other operas have a singing style called a Recitative in which the singers imitate spoken dialogue by singing their lines instead of talking.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherXlibris US
    Release dateAug 28, 2019
    ISBN9781796047950
    Puccini's Operas

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      Book preview

      Puccini's Operas - Merritt Wilson

      Copyright © 2019 by Merritt Wilson. 799370

      ISBN:   Softcover   978-1-7960-4796-7

                   EBook        978-1-7960-4795-0

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

      The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      Rev. date: 07/27/2019

      Xlibris

      1-888-795-4274

      www.Xlibris.com

      Contents

      Giacomo Puccini

      Le Villi

      Edgar

      Manon Lescaut

      La Boheme

      Tosca

      Madame Butterfly

      The Girl of the West

      The Swallow

      I1 trittico/The Cloak/ Sister Angelica

      Gianni Schicchi

      Turandot

      Opera was and still is one of the oldest forms of entertainment. It’s been around longer than any other art form known to mankind, longer than radio, the internet, video games, television and even movies. It’s an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining a script called a libretto and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates music, singing, scenery, costumes and sometimes dancing. Some operas have spoken dialogue called a Singspiel in which the singers talk between songs aka arias. Other operas have a singing style called a Recitative in which the singers imitate spoken dialogue by singing their lines instead of talking. An opera is performed in a theater called an opera house and each performance is accompanied by an orchestra in large section in front of the stage called the orchestra pit. The conductor not only cues the musicians in the orchestra, he or she also cues the singers on stage as well. Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition. It started in Italy at the end of the 16th century with Jacopo Peri’s lost Dafne and soon spread all over Europe. In the 18th century, Italian opera continued to dominate most of Europe, attracting foreign composers such as George Fredrick Handel and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. By the 19th century, parallel operatic traditions emerged in central and eastern Europe, particularly in Russia and Germany. The 20th and 21st centuries saw many experiments with modern styles, such as Serialism, Neoclassicism, and Minimalism. Many opera singers such as Enrico Caruso, Maria Callas, Nelson Eddy, Joan Sutherland, Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Juan Diego Flórez, Renee Fleming and others became known to audiences beyond the circle of opera fans and many of them are as famous as movie stars. Many people these days think that operas and musicals are the same thing, but they are completely different. Musicals are a form of theatre that involves telling a story using dialogue, songs, dance and acting. Musicals can be sung in any language. Many people think that Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera is an opera, but it’s not an opera at all, it’s a musical so in reality it’s more like The Phantom of the Musical, but Andrew was inspired by real operas and used operatic styles in his music to tell the story as if it was an opera. The three operas in The Phantom of the Opera are fictional but they are parodies of real operas, Hannibal is a parody of Verdi’s Nabucco, Il Muto is a parody of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and the Phantom’s Don Juan Triumphant is a parody of Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

      Operas are an art form in which singers and musicians tell a story using a libretto and a musical score. The word ‘opera’ means work in Italian. The focus in operas is just singing and very little acting. Operas are usually sung in the languages that they were written in like Italian, German, Russian, French, and even English. However, there are some musicals that were influenced by operas like for instance Jonathan Larson’s musical Rent was influenced by Giacomo Puccini’s opera La Bohème, Stephen Sondheim’s musical Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber on Fleet Street was sort of influenced by Gioacchino Rossini’s opera The Barber of Seville and there are two versions of Aida, the opera by Giuseppe Verdi and the musical by Elton John and Tim Rice.

      These days most people are more familiar with what’s on screen then what’s on stage. They would rather watch a movie than an opera, however some people still watch operas today. There are some filmmakers like Steven Spielberg and film score composers like Alan Menken that were influenced by operas, but nobody ever made a movie based on opera before.

      About the Composer

      GIACOMO PUCCINI

      (1858-1924)

      1.psd

      Giacomo Puccini was considered one of the greatest composers to write for the human voice. He brought the art of Italian opera into the dawn of the 20th century and looked beyond Italy for his ideas. Puccini’s operas take place in different countries around the world including his native Italy, Germany, Belgium, France, Japan, China, and even the United States. Puccini’s music has thrilling, memorable and beautiful melodies but he never conducted a single piece of music that he wrote. Puccini’s operas demonstrate a style called verismo, which was popular in Italy during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Verismo aimed for realism in operas: everyday characters, recognizable situations, and relatable emotions. He would often write certain music that represents a character, an emotion, a plot device and even a prop. These themes known as leitmotifs were first used by the German composer Richard Wagner, Puccini was influenced by Wager and used leitmotifs in his operas. Leitmotifs are still used in film music today.

      Giacomo Puccini was born in Lucca, Italy in 1858, his father Michele was a composer, choirmaster and organist and his mother Albina was a musician. The Puccini family was established in Lucca as a local musical dynasty by Puccini’s great-great grandfather who is also named Giacomo, but he was maestro di cappella of Cattedrale di San Martino in Lucca. He was succeeded in this position by his great grandfather Antonio Puccini, then by Antonio’s son and Giacomo’s grandfather Domenico and then by Giacomo’s father Michelle. Each of these men studied music in Bologna Italy and some took additional studies elsewhere. When Puccini was six years old his father died, and his uncle Fortuanto Magi took his place as the church organist and Puccini was to take over, but he was too young for the job. He never took over, but as a child, Puccini nevertheless participated in the musical life of the Cattedrale di San Martino as a member of the boys’ choir and later as a substitute organist. When Puccini was fifteen years old he and his friends walked 20 miles from Lucca to Pisa to see a performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida which is an opera that takes place in ancient Egypt about a soldier named Radames who falls in love with an Ethiopian princess named Aida who was captured

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