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Opera

What is the specialty of Opera:

An opera is a form of theater in which music is an essential component and singers take on dramatic roles. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is usually a collaboration between a composer and songwriter and includes a number of performing arts, such as acting, scenery, costumes, and sometimes dance or ballet. The performance is usually given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or a smaller orchestra, which has been led by a conductor since the early 19th century. Although the musical theater is closely related to opera, they are considered to be different from each other.

Opera is an essential part of the Western classical music tradition. Originally understood as an all-singing piece, as opposed to a play with songs, opera has come to encompass many genres, including some that include spoken dialogue such as musical theatre, Singspiel and Opéra comique. In traditional opera numbers, singers use two styles of singing: slow singing, vocalized style, and stand-alone melodies. The nineteenth-century saw the rise of continuous musical drama.

Opera originated in Italy at the end of the sixteenth century (with Daphne mostly lost by Jacopo Peri, produced in Florence in 1598) mainly from the works of Claudio Monteverdi, notably Lorvio, and soon spread throughout Europe: Heinrich Schutz in Germany and assisted Jean-Baptiste Lully in France and Henry Purcell in England on consolidating their national traditions in the seventeenth century. In the 18th century, Italian opera continued to dominate most of Europe (with the exception of France), attracting foreign composers such as Georg Friedrich Handel. The ceria was the finest form of Italian opera until Christoph Willibald Gluck responded against its manufacture with "Reformation" opera in the 1760s. The most famous character in late eighteenth-century opera is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who started with the opera Seria but is best known for Italian comic operas, especially The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nuz di Figaro), Don Giovanni, and Cozzo van Toot, as well as Die Entführung aus dem Serail ( The Abduction of Seraglio) and The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte), milestones in the German tradition.

The first third of the 19th century saw the heyday of the Bel canto style, with Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, and Vincenzo Bellini creating works distinct in this style. It also saw the emergence of the Grand Opera, exemplified by the works of Daniel Uber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, as well as Carl Maria von Weber's introduction to the German Romantic Opera. The mid to late 19th century was a golden age for opera, led and dominated by Giuseppe Verdi in Italy and Richard Wagner in Germany. The popularity of opera continued during the verismo era in Italy and contemporary French opera until Giacomo Puccini and Richard Strauss in the early 20th century. During the 19th century, parallel operatic traditions emerged in Central and Eastern Europe, particularly in Russia and Bohemia. The twentieth century saw many experiments with modern styles, such as atonement and serialization (Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg), neoclassicism (Igor Stravinsky), and Minimalism (Philip Glass and John Adams). With the advent of recording technology, singers such as Enrico Caruso and Maria Callas became known to a much wider audience that went beyond the circle of opera lovers. Since the invention of the radio and television, operas have also been performed on (and written for) these media. Beginning in 2006, a number of major opera houses began offering live, high-definition video broadcasts of their performances in cinemas around the world. Since 2009, full shows can be downloaded and streamed live.

History of Opera Specialization:

The Italian word opera means "work," both in terms of the work done and the result produced. The Italian word is derived from the Latin word opera, a singular noun meaning "work" as well as a plural noun opus. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the Italian word was first used in the sense of "composition in which poetry, dance and music are combined" in 1639; The first recorded use of the English language in this sense dates back to 1648.

Jacobo Perry's Dafne was the first composition considered opera, as it is understood today. Written around 1597, it was largely inspired by the elite circle of educated Florentine humanists who gathered as the "Camera di Bardi". Significantly, Daphne was an attempt to revive classical Greek drama, as part of a broader revival of archaic features of the Renaissance. Camerata members considered that the "chorus" portions of the Greek drama were originally sung, and perhaps even the full text of all the roles; Thus the opera was conceived as a way to "restore" this situation. Daphne, however, is lost. A later work by Berry, Eurydice, dating from 1600, is the first opera score that has survived to the present day. However, the honor of being the first opera to be performed regularly goes to Claudio Monteverde L'Orfeo, who composed for the court of Mantua in 1607. The court of Mantua in Gonzagas, Monteverde's employers, played an important role in the origin of operas that used not only court singers in Concerto Delle Don (until 1598), but also one of the first actual "opera singers", Madama Europa. 

The importance of studying the specialty of Opera:

Opera offers us a reflection of who we are, how we relate to others, and what it means, collectively and individually, to be human. Live opera is an exciting and unique experience - it is at its best extremely powerful and most emotionally direct of all art forms. The combination of dramatic narrative, theatrical music, and music, especially the extent and weakness of the human voice, make opera the art form closest to expressing pure emotion. It is storytelling at its most vivid and manipulative. Oprah seeps into the popular consciousness and bleeds into other forms, TV shows follow the sound, sports anthems, advertisements and films - her music is often used as a shortcut to create heightened emotional tension in prime moments. Those big moments in operas are usually those that deal directly with the big human themes: life, love, death, loss, passion, joy, anger - but operas can be subtle and exhilarating.

Almost any Janacek opera - true stories, real characters, great music. Or La Bohème is perfect - its theme is universal, emotionally powerful, deep and contains some of the most beautiful music ever written on stage.

Casper Holten, Director of Opera, Royal Opera House

When I meet people who say they don't like opera, it turns out that nine out of 10 haven't actually seen one. Isn't it the opera where they sing 'I love you, I love you, I love you or 'I'm dying, I'm dying, I'm dying now - and it takes 10 minutes to do it? I asked. Expressing something about love or death in 10 minutes is fast! These are feelings we struggle with all our lives. In operas, we spend time talking about the important things in life: emotional climaxes and great abyss. Opera is the world's first multimedia. By combining music and theater, we can identify with the characters, but then - when they feel love, despair, loneliness, fear, hope and jealousy - stop time and explore these moments further through music and movement, finding a language for emotions that can be hard to talk about, though They define our lives. Opera can make us see, feel, and hear the world differently, and remind us to connect with the things under the surface, the things that really matter.

Fields of work for the Opera major:

  • Music Producer.
  • Music therapist.
  • Musician or instrumentalist.
  • Private music teacher.
  • High school teacher.
  • sound designer.
  • Sound Engineer.
  • Audio Technician, Radio/Film/Video.

Best Universities for Opera in Turkey:

  • Istanbul Halic University
  • Baskent University