What is Opera?

An Opera is simply a play that is sung. Opera uses music to tell a story. Lines of dialogue that would normally be spoken by actors in a movie or play are sung in an opera.

Opera can tell serious stories or dramas (opera seria) as well as humorous stories or comedies (opera buffa). Opera sometimes tells stories based on true facts or stories based on fiction – stories from a book or play. Most often, opera plots are about love and adventure, and deal with very emotional situations such as joy, sadness, excitement, fear, anger, mystery, death, desire, and passion.

Opera is most often sung in the language in which it was originally written to better capture the descriptive relationship between the music and the story. Since many composers of opera lived in Europe and wrote in languages other than English, opera is frequently sung in a foreign language such as Italian, French, or German.

Today, supertitles or surtitles, which translate opera into the language of the audience, are projected above the stage. Supertitles allow singers to perform the music in the original language while enabling the audience to understand what is being sung.

Some operas are constructed with action scenes called recitative. Personal commentary or scenes involving inner thoughts and emotions are called arias. An aria is a song in which a character may share his or her feelings with the audience and fellow characters. Occasionally this is done in an ensemble with two or more singers and then the aria becomes a duet, trio, quartet, etc. depending on the number of singers involved. Composers used recitative to advance the story while arias, duets, trios, and quartets often were comments on the action. In most modern opera, composers no longer use the structure of recitative and aria, but blend the two styles together to create a more realistic picture of continuous drama.

Characters in opera are developed by the composer and given certain voices to best illustrate their personality and role. Voices are classified as high and low: a soprano is the highest female voice, a contralto the lowest, and a mezzo-soprano in the middle range. For men, a counter-tenor is the highest male voice and sounds very much like a female contralto; next is tenor, followed by baritone, and finally bass, which is the lowest of the voice types.

Opera is thought to be the single greatest art form because it combines many artistic disciplines into one. The talents of many different artists are needed to create opera: composers, librettists, copyists, writers, singers, dancers, actors, designers, instrumentalists, orchestrators, painters, technicians, costumers, seamstresses, wigmakers, hairdressers, cosmetologists, carpenters, electricians, sound engineers, linguists, managers, projectionists, and producers.

After the librettist writes the play and the composer finishes the music, the stage director is the person responsible for bringing an opera to life on the stage. The stage director decides how best to tell the story dramatically so that all the action fits with the music. The choreographer is responsible for creating any dance moves necessary, and the music director or conductor instructs and directs the musicians. The conductor paces the performance and keeps all the elements in sync so the story may be told clearly and effectively with dramatic impact and beautiful artistry.

Opera for Beginners - expanded content

What is Opera?
What's it all about? - The stories behind the Opera
Opera Terms
Common Questions
Discussion Topics
The Composer - A Historical Context