Opera
A stage work with continuous music.
What it means
Opera is a stage work in which the plot is presented through singing. Involved are soloists, usually chorus and orchestra, plus set design, costume, and staging. The musical building blocks are arias, in which a character lingers, recitatives, which drive the plot forward, ensembles, in which several characters sing at once, as well as choruses and orchestral pieces. Its basis is the libretto, the text book.
Musical use
The genre arose around 1600 in Italy from the attempt to connect language and music so that plot could be presented through singing. From the strict separation of recitative and aria in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the through-composed scene develops in the nineteenth, in which the transitions become fluid. National and regional forms arose with their own conventions — for instance spoken dialogue in certain forms used instead of recitatives. For the music, the stage means a particular condition: intelligibility, projection to a distance, and coordination with scenic action shape the writing.
Performance practice
Read the whole libretto and not only your own part; connections arise from the whole. Clarify cuts and the version used early, since many works exist in several versions. Plan your strength over the whole evening and mark it in rehearsals where possible. Work on clarity of text, because large orchestral scorings swallow consonants. In the orchestra pit, eye contact with the conductor matters more than the ear, because stage and pit are at different distances.
Bear in mind that work in music theatre lives from agreements: scenic action, positions on stage, and musical entries interlock, and what is agreed in rehearsal must stand in the parts. Keep a list of the changes. Learn the part with the vocal score and also know the parts of your partners, in order to find entries securely. Work on clarity of text and, in the pit, take your bearings from the conductor, because stage and orchestra are at different distances.
Check before the first rehearsal whether the orchestral material and the vocal score reflect the same version, because discrepancies cost a lot of time.