There was a rapidly rising middle class in European society, and the year 1637 saw the opening, in Venice, of the first public opera house. It would also mean that someday, someone positioned here, using gestures that could be seen by all, could establish tempi, signal dynamic instructions and generally control the performance not just of the instrumentalists, but of the on-stage singers as well. This was an important decision, as it increased the distance between the stage and the audience, and meant singers would evermore need to sing at intensity levels that could carry across this space. It was finally decided that the best place for them was down in front of the stage where, in ancient Greek amphitheaters, there had been a 'dancing place' or orcheisthrai. Various arrangements behind, over, and on the stage were tried (there were no wing areas as yet). What was paramount was that the hero was a virtuosic vocalist.Įxperiments were made with where the instrumentalists should be located. Thus a Baroque hero may have looked like, sounded like, and been a female soprano, but the idea that he was any less a hero because of it, never crossed their minds. We must appreciate that at a time when the term soprano could mean a female, a male falsettist or either of two neuters (a boy soprano or a castrato), the concept of a voice type being exclusively linked to a particular gender had not yet developed. The element of virtuosity was so prized in their casting it quite outweighed whether the gender of the performer and the role matched. Instead, Baroque logic dictated that the most important roles be cast with the most skilled singers. In assigning performers to roles, for example, no thought was given to which voice type was most appropriate for a particular dramatic role. There were no compositional models or performance traditions everything was new and untried. The early years of opera were a time of experimentation. (The long established sacred style had offered little opportunity to make music sound as though it had either emotional content or programmatic meaning.) Singers were drawn to opera for the same reasons: it offered them new challenges and more artistic latitude than had sacred music. Composers came to the new form not only because their royal patrons demanded it, but because the theatrical style, stile rappresentativo, let them exercise their expressive skills and find ways to represent varying emotions and dramatic situations with their music. What began as a cerebral salon experiment by the Florentine Camerata, quickly became an elaborate and expensive entertainment format that allowed the leisure class-royalty and courtiers-to exhibit their wealth in displays of extravagance and excess and to do so under the guise of art and culture. Pertinent steps in the development of opera (conveniently, the longest active span of any musical form) now become the path of choice in tracing the evolution of vocal performance. It is my sincere hope that this, along with the performance practices of opera relating to such characteristics as acting, gestures, costumes, instrumentation and orchestra, ornamentation and singing style, and a discussion of performance halls common during baroque times and those used in modern times, will help singers interpret and understand baroque opera in the context of baroque music.Throughout its history, opera has consistently presented singers with the greatest challenges of any vocal genre. I offer a study of famous baroque arias from Handel’s masterpiece Giulio Cesare in Egitto, including different styles of ornamentation and interpretation from some of the best resources available, divas in our own time. Operatic art form, I decided to include in this dissertation an abridged history of the baroque period such as terms and ideas that every young musician should be familiar with, as well as contributions to baroque opera of famous composers and singers, whose names became synonymous with the term Baroque. Upon evaluating my own understanding of baroque music and its reaches into the The term baroque, in itself, has caused much confusion for those in academia and more so to students who endeavor to recreate an authentic baroque sound and performance. As I delved into this subject matter, I began to realize how much this subject could not be understood until the singer had an understanding of the beginnings of baroque music pertaining to its considerable historical significance in the development of opera as well as its overall perceived styles. University of California, Los Angeles, 2015Īt the start of this dissertation, my original intention was to offer insight into performance practices of opera in the late baroque period in the form of a guide to young singers. An Introductions to the Art of Singing Italian Baroque Opera:
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