Monteverdi was the first great Italian opera composer in the history of music, a figure who straddled the two eras of the Renaissance and the Baroque, combining the pastoral style of Gesualdo with the musical style of the Venetian school, and who, taking these traditions as a point of departure, used his imagination to revolutionize each of the genres he used for his compositions to develop new, distinctive styles that were entirely his own. He used these traditions as a starting point for his compositions and used his imagination to revolutionize each of the genres he used to compose, developing a new style that was entirely his own and distinctive. Moreover, because of his long engagement in the composition of pastoral songs, he mastered the skill of expressing the characteristics of the lyrics by musical means, which became a solid and indispensable foundation for his operatic creation. In his creative thinking, Monteverdi particularly emphasized that music should be based on truth, to express the whole person, to depict the world of the human mind, and to express the strong emotions rooted in human nature. His Orfeo, completed in 1607, is a masterpiece of practicing his own creative ideas, and is also the first mature opera in history. Although it is still in the form of the opera when it was born, the music is richer, the dramatic effect is further strengthened by the use of a larger orchestra, and the bold application of dissonance and stringed instrument vibrato to enhance the expressive power of the music, and the use of different musical instruments to show the characterization, and the use of short phrases to foreshadow or express certain important scenes and dramatic moods in the opera. --These characteristics were more fully developed in his later operas. Monteverdi's Orfeo is also based on the story of Orfeo and Eurydice, though with a tragic ending quite different from Perry's Eurydice. In Monteverdi's Orfeo, the King of the Underworld asks Orfeo not to look at Euridice until he has crossed the River Styx, but Orfeo, driven by his feelings to turn back and look at his bride, and thus lose Euridice forever, sings a song of sorrow: "The mountains are sad, the stones are sad," and the echoes of the song reverberate everywhere. Apollo, the god of the sun, admitted him to heaven, and Orfeo asked his father in anguish, "Shall I never again see the sweet eyes of my beloved Eurydice?" Apollo replies soothingly, "You will feel her beautiful presence in the sunlight and starlight." The opera begins with a toccata, a prologue in which the Muses tell the story of Orfeo, and five scenes throughout the ****, ending with a festive chorus and dance by the shepherds.
In this way, opera, born in Florence, flourished in Venice. Monteverdi composed more than a dozen operas in his lifetime***, the most famous of which include Arianna, Ulysses Returns Home and The Coronation of Poppea. Arianna" now only one "Arianna's Lament" has been handed down, Arianna that is, Ariadne in ancient Greek mythology, was a princess of the Cretan state, she helped Theseus to kill the Minotaur, the minotaur, then the two of them fled to the island of Naxos, and spent a period of happiness, and then the goddess of destiny told Theseus that, according to the arrangement of destiny, Ariadne should become the god of wine, Dionysus, his wife and persuaded him to give up his love for Ariadne, whereupon Theseus left without saying goodbye, much to Ariadne's grief (Note 3). Ariadne's Lament sings:
Let me die,
Oh, let me die!
Faced with such a cruel fate,
In such great pain,
Who will comfort me?
Let me die.
......
When Monteverdi composed this opera, it was at the time of his wife's death, and this dirge is a reflection of his state of mind. According to legend, the opera was performed at a prince's wedding, and the dirge made more than 6,000 people weep. 1608, Monteverdi adapted Arianna's Lament into a five-voice pastoral, and later adapted it and included it in the Spiritual and Moral Forest, which shows the author's own degree of treasure. 1641 completed Ulysses Returns to His Country, which is based on the Homeric poems, Ulysses is Odysseus, and Ulysses is the son of Odysseus. Ulysses is Odysseus, the opera tells the story of Ulysses' twenty years of wandering, his wife Penelope is still waiting for him to come back faithfully, in the face of a large number of suitors, she held an archery tournament, promised to marry Ulysses if anyone who can open the hard bow of Ulysses, but none of them succeeded. Has quietly returned to Ulysses disguised as a beggar sneaked into the palace, pull open the hard bow and shot all the suitors, Penelope long hesitation, when Ulysses to her to say that only the two of them know the secret, she finally recognized standing in front of her husband is their own longing for. This is an opera on a large scale, beginning with an ancient overture and prologue and totaling *** five acts and 35 scenes, more structurally fleshed out than Orfeo, and with a declamatory tone that has drifted away from the pastoral style. The Coronation of Poppea" is Monteverdi's last opera, composed in 1642, is also the first opera based on real historical events, about the brutal and lustful Roman Emperor Nero fell in love with his general Otto's sultry and beautiful wife Poppea, trying to oppose his minister Seneca was given to death, Nero's wife, Ottavia, and Otto conspired with the intention of assassination of Poppea, but unfortunately failed to be exiled. Nero finally got his wish and crowned Poppea as the Empress of Rome. This opera consists of the prologue of the Gagau Overture and 34 scenes in three acts, with a performance length of more than three and a half hours, and successfully portrays historical figures such as Nero and Poppea. When we touch such a great work, we will be amazed at the fact that it is a great creation of more than 350 years ago, which is why some people say that Monteverdi's position in the history of music is fully comparable to Shakespeare's (1564-1616) position in the history of literature. literary history, and this could not be a more accurate assessment.
Outside of opera, Monteverdi's pastoral and sacred music works are also quite operatic. The dramatic pastoral, "The War of Tancredi and Clorinda," is like a mini-opera, with three roles for the hero, heroine, and narrator; the story of the pastoral is taken from a long poem, "Jerusalem Delivered," by the late Renaissance Italian poet Tasso (1544-1594), and Tancredi is a Crusader knight who falls in love at first sight with Clorinda, a warrior woman in the rival Muslim army, and once rescued her from a crusader's siege in a battle, but in a night battle under the walls of Jerusalem, Tancredi tragically injures Clorinda by mistake, and Clorinda confides her love to Tancredi in her dying moments. The Vespers of the Virgin Virgin of Chaste Blessing is Monteverdi's best-known religious work, all totaling ****13 pieces on a scale never before seen; it is a further development of the Venetian school of Scripture song, and is very operatic. --In this respect, Verdi's Requiem may be compared with it. This Vespers contains a variety of singing forms, such as soloists, repetitions, and choruses of various types, and these forms sometimes appear successively in the same piece of music, and echo effects are used in some of the pieces, such as in the ninth, "Kingdom of Heaven, Hear Me," a church concerto sung in the male voice, with echoes as if it were a dialogue between heavenly and earthly worlds; and in the thirteenth, "Canticle to the Blessed Virgin," for example "Glory to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit", in the holy children's chorus and the organ background, with the tenor singing, the echo of this song, as if from heaven, is really wonderful; this "Hymn to the Blessed Virgin Mary" in the "He spreads his power from their throne" section, the solo violin, the soloist sings in a church concerto, the echo effect is like a dialogue between heaven and earth. The section "He spreads his power from their thrones" in the Canticle of the Virgin, where the solo violin accompanies the male soloist in an echoey fashion, is reminiscent of Vivaldi's (1678-1741) Concerto in A major "Echo".
After Monteverdi, Italian opera continued to develop in Venice and Rome, but for about half a century it failed to break out of the style established by Monteverdi. Pietro? Francesco Cavalli. Cavalli (1602-1676), the most famous composer of this period, was Monteverdi's disciple, whose historical role was to expand the potential of the theater and to use the comic element with ease, bridging the gap between Monteverdi and the Neapolitan school. He composed more than forty operas in his lifetime, the most famous being Callisto, whose structure, inherited from his teacher, consists of a prologue and 34 scenes in three acts, ending with a chaconne. The libretto is based on the story in Ovid's Metamorphoses, in which Callisto is a nymph under Diana, the goddess of the hunt, and one day while she is resting in the woods, Jupiter takes advantage of the opportunity to possess her, and Juno, Jupiter's jealous wife, transforms Callisto into a great bear, and Jupiter, fearing that Callisto may be harmed by the hunters So he lifted her up into the sky and turned her into a constellation.
By the end of the seventeenth century, a new school of opera, the Neapolitan School, was formed, and Italian opera underwent a radical transformation. Neapolitan composers made a clear distinction between declamation and aria, and leaned more heavily on aria, especially emphasizing beautiful singing techniques, the use of accompanied declamation, the development of orchestral music to serve the singing, but also fixed the three components of the opera overture, thus establishing the main features of the style of Italian opera in the later generations, and it can be argued that it was the Neapolitan school that established the future of the nineteenth century Italian The national character of opera. At the beginning of the 18th century, the Neapolitan School's distinctive operatic style reached a mature stage, and then the comic opera began to develop from the "interlude" of the opera. --The "interludes", also called "interludes", were short plays performed during the intermission of large-scale operas of the time. Famous composers of the Neapolitan School include Alessandro Scarlatti (A.S. Scarlatti) and Giovanni Scarlatti. A. Scarlatti (1660-1725), Giovanni Battista (1660-1725), and Giovanni Battista (1660-1725) were the most famous composers of the Neapolitan school. Battista? Pergolesi (1710-1736), Domenico Cimarosa (1710-1736), and the late Giovanni Battista (1710-1736), as well as the late Giovanni Battista. Cimarosa (1749-1801), and Nicola? Piccinni (1728-1800), etc. Among them, A. Scarlatti was one of the founders of the Neapolitan school, and the latter three represent the heyday of the Neapolitan school. Pergolesi's "The Maid as a Lady", composed at the age of 23, is an outstanding work of early Italian comic opera and the most representative work of the Neapolitan School, which is an "interlude" to the main opera "The Prisoner of Pride" staged in 1733, but the main opera did not cause much reaction. "Instead, it was a huge hit. This short play is less than fifty minutes long, *** two acts and thirteen songs, about a maid named Serpina and her master Uberto between the comedy story: Serpina often master angry to madness, she in order to get Uberto's love, so that the male servant Vespone disguised as a captain, pretending to be his own fiancé, caused Uberto's jealousy, and ultimately the Serpina's trickery succeeded, as their own master's Madame. Pergolesi lived a very short life, at the age of twenty-six, and special mention should be made of the Eulogy of the Virgin, which he completed shortly before his death, as a model of its kind. After The Handmaid as a Lady, the two comic operas, The Secret Marriage, by Chimarosa in 1766, and The Good Girl Cecina, by Piccini in 1760, became very mature in both scale and structure; the influence of the Neapolitan operatic style had by this time spread throughout Europe, and continued to do so for more than twenty years after the middle of the eighteenth century.
By the first half of the nineteenth century, the Italian operatic tradition had been handed down by composers such as Rossini (1792-1868), Donizetti (1797-1848), and Bellini (1810-1835) to Verdi, who became the greatest Italian opera composer of the Romantic era, and indeed of the whole of musical history. The greatest Italian opera composer in history, Puccini and Realist opera then continued the tradition into the early twentieth century. For more than four hundred years, from 1597 to the present day, Italian opera has always shown great vitality, and its innate frankness of character and overflowing passion have made it the favorite of generation after generation.
Note 1: Helicon is the name of a mountain in Greece, where Apollo and the Muses live
Note 2: The lyrics of "Song of Songs" are all taken from the Bible translation, and the words in parentheses are added for the sake of consistency of phrases, such as "Heshbon Batrach", "Heshbon's Batrach", "Heshbon's Batrach", "Heshbon's Batrach", "Heshbon's Batrach", and "Heshbon's".
Note 3: The story that follows is this: Ariadne met Dionysus, the god of wine, and, seeing that he was kind and handsome, broke down in tears, and the two were happily united, and at the wedding Dionysus offered his new wife a crown set with seven crystal-clear gems. But Ariadne was a mortal, and finally one day left Dionysus forever, and the god of wine was devastated, when the crown of splendor suddenly rose slowly, higher and higher, and in the twinkling of an eye flew up into the sky, and transformed into a group of brilliant stars, which is the constellation Corona Borealis in the winter starry sky.)