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Opera is a form of theatre in which the drama is conveyed wholly or predominantly through music and singing.Opera emerged in Italy around the year 1600 and is generally associated with the Western classical music tradition.Opera uses many of the elements of spoken theatre such as scenery,costumes,and acting.Generally,however,opera is distinguished from other dramatic forms by the importance of song and conventions of vocal technique.The singers are accompanied by a musical ensemble ranging from a small instrumental ensemble to a full symphonic orchestra.Opera may also incorporate dance; this was especially true of French opera for much of its history.
Comparable art forms from various other parts of the world,many of them ancient in origin,exist and are also sometimes called opera by analogy,usually prefaced with an adjective indicating the region (for example,Chinese opera).These independent traditions are not derivative of Western opera,but are rather distinct forms of musical theatre.Opera is also not the only type of Western musical theatre:in the ancient world,Greek drama featured singing and instrumental accompaniment; and in modern times,other forms such as the musical have appeared.
The word opera means works in Italian (from the plural of Latin opus meaning work or labour) suggesting that it combines the arts of solo and choral singing,declamation,acting and dancing in a staged spectacle.Dafne by Jacopo Peri was the earliest composition considered opera,as understood today.It was written around 1597,largely under the inspiration of an elite circle of literate Florentine humanists who gathered as the Camerata.Significantly,Dafne was an attempt to revive the classical Greek drama,part of the wider revival of antiquity characteristic of the Renaissance.The members of the Camerata considered that the chorus parts of Greek dramas were originally sung,and possibly even the entire text of all roles; opera was thus conceived as a way of restoring this situation.Dafne is unfortunately lost.A later work by Peri,Euridice,dating from 1600,is the first opera score to have survived to the present day.The honour of being the first opera still to be regularly performed,however,goes to Claudio Monteverdi's Orfeo,composed for the court of Mantua in 1607.