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The Early History and Development of Opera

The Early History and Development of Opera

The origins of opera

Ballet and opera were born out of royal

entertainments in 17th-century Italy and
France. These were spectacular productions
celebrating marriages or political visits used
by kings or nobles to show off their wealth
and power. They were unashamed
propaganda aimed at impressing foreign Private Group Tours & Talks
dignitaries and other royals.

These entertainments mixed music, dance,

and magnificent processions with
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spectacular technical effects and ✕
extravagant costumes. The stories or
themes were taken from classical
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mythology (the ancient stories and myths
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Engraving of a court ballet, Vlasislav Hall, Prague
mythological gods or heroes. Groups Team can help.
Castle, Czech Republic, 1617

This print shows a court ballet performed View our Private Group Tours & Talks
before Maxmilian, Duke of Bavaria, in Vlasislav Hall, Prague Castle, in 1617. Spending
vast sums on such lavish, ephemeral spectacles was quite usual in 16th and 17th century
Europe. Related objects

Their purpose was often to impress visiting dignitaries and present a positive image of a
ruler and his court. They included vast processions, dances, sung episodes, and acted
interludes, all sumptuously costumed with elaborate coaches and chariots and stage
effects. From these spectacles evolved ballet and opera. In this production, the dancers
form geometric patterns on the floor of the theatre before what we would now think of
as the proscenium arch, which is 'designed' as a rocky archway.
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It helps to give the perspective illusion to

the scenery behind it, as well as helping to
mask the ropes, pulleys and counterweights
that worked the cloud machine and the
god descending in his chariot.

This engraving shows a comedy-ballet

called the Princess of Navarre being
performed at the French Royal Palace of
Versailles, just outside Paris. It was
produced as part of the celebrations of a
royal marriage: the King's son, the Dauphin,
had become engaged to Maria Theresa of
Spain. Charles Nicolas Cochin, Ballet at Versailles in 1745,
Engraving, 1745
The composer Jean Philippe Rameau was
asked to write the ballet in partnership with the author Voltaire (now best known for
his satirical novels such as Candide). Voltaire found the commission a trial. He had to
write to a precise specification, and everything he wrote was constantly checked by a
number of officials. To make matters worse, he and the official in charge of the
entertainment  disagreed about everything. The magnificent decorations were arranged
by Charles Nicolas Cochin who also made this engraving of the event.

The ballet La Princesse d'Elide was part of a seven day fête held in May 1664 at the
Palace of Versailles. The festivities celebrated the birth of a son to Louise de La Vallière,
mistress of the French king Louis XIV. Versailles had no theatre, so temporary stages
were set up around the palace and in the gardens.

Here the stage has been set up in the

grounds with the palace itself visible in the
background. Such lavish celebrations helped
impress foreign dignitaries and reinforced
Louis' image as absolute ruler.

Louis and his courtiers often took part and

Louis' nickname, The Sun King came from
his performance as Apollo, the Greek god of Engraving of the ballet La Princess d'Elide, Palace of

the sun, in the Ballet de la Nuit in 1653. In Versailles, Paris, published in 'Les Plaisirs de L'Isle',
Paris, 1673-4
some ways Louis' whole life was a
performance, played out on the stage of
Versailles - people even watched him get up in a morning and go to bed.

The first opera in the UK

Monteverdi was the first composer to write what we now think of

as a recognisable opera, with the story told through song and
music.

Orfeo was first performed in Mantua in Italy in 1607. It retells the

Greek myth of the musician Orpheus, who descends into Hades to
bring back his dead wife Euridice. Orfeus then tames the fiends of
hell with his music.

Opera quickly became very popular in Italy and throughout

Europe in the early 17th century. In 1636 William Davenant secured
a royal patent from Charles I to build an opera house in London
but because of the Civil War and subsequent closure of the
theatres in 1642 this never materialized.

The first English opera is generally regarded as Davenant's The Newspaper review of
Siege of Rhodes which was performed in 1656 at Rutland House. Monteverdi's Orfeo, 29
In 1661 Davenant converted a covered tennis court into Lincoln's December 1929

Inn Fields theatre and presented an expanded version of The Siege

of Rhodes. This was also the first theatrical production to use perspective scenery.

This review is for the first London production of Monteverdi's Orfeo, which took place
more than 300 years after the opera was written in 1607. Although Orfeo remains the
earliest opera still regularly performed today, it was not heard outside Italy until the
20th century, and then usually only in concert versions.

The first staged performance in England was given by a band of early music enthusiasts
at Oxford in 1925, and given in London in 1929. Its austerity and formality would have
seemed very strange to audiences used to the full-blooded musical sound of the 19th
century, but the reviewer notes how the music remained as fresh and charming as it had
been when it was written.

 
The cast included the great bass, Norman Allin, as Charon, the ferryman of the dead,
who should have had a major international opera career, but the established opera
houses of Italy and Germany still thought that English singers were unsuited to operatic
roles.

According to legend, Davenant was the

illegitimate son of William Shakespeare. He
contributed to the last of the Stuart
masques and was a fervent Royalist.

After Charles II was restored to the throne,

Davenant and Thomas Killigrew were
granted royal patents, which gave them
virtual monopoly over presenting drama in
London. These monopolies were not
revoked until the 19th century.

Davenant opened the Duke’s Theatre where

he presented adaptations of Shakespeare’s
plays with music, forerunners of the semi-
operas of Purcell. Most scholars consider
that Davenant’s The Siege of Rhodes was
the first English opera. It was performed in
1656 at Rutland House in London. Davenant  Engraved frontispiece in 'The Works of Sir William
Davenant', 1673
wrote the text but the score was the work
of several different musicians. At this time,
the theatres were closed and plays forbidden by law, although music was still played. It
is possible that the entertainment was rather a way of getting round the law than an
attempt to write a true opera.

Purcell and English semi-opera

Henry Purcell developed a peculiarly English

form of opera, the half-sung and half-
spoken semi-opera. This strange English
hybrid flourished in the 1670s and lasted
into the 18th century. It combined spoken
dialogue with elaborate costumes, scenery
and effects, dancing and music. Singing was
rarely required from the professional actors
Newspaper cutting showing a performance of
who took the lead roles.
Monteverdi's Orfeo, 29 December 1929

Purcell's most famous opera, Dido and

Aeneas, based on Greek mythology, was written in 1689 for the Young Gentlewomen of
Mr. Josias Priest's Boarding School at Chelsey. Unusually for the time this was an all-
sung opera and designed for private performance.

This engraving of the composer Henry Purcell is after a portrait by Sir Geoffrey Kneller,
the leading portrait painter of the late 17th century.

Purcell was one of the greatest composers

of his day. As Court composer to Charles II,
James II, and William and Mary, he wrote
songs and instrumental music, but the
public knew him best for his incidental
music for the theatre.

In his lifetime, people had tried to introduce

opera into England from France and Italy,
but without much success. In the last five
years of his life, Purcell devised the semi-
opera, a peculiarly English form, which
combined singing and spoken dialogue,
with elaborate costumes, scenery and
effects, dancing and music.

The mixture horrified the French and

Italians, for whom opera was very formal,
and one French traveller of the time
Engraving of Henry Purcell from portrait by Sir
described it as a 'Hotch Potch'. All-sung
Geoffrey Kneller, November 1798
opera in English was not established for
another 200 years.

The Fairy Queen, based on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, was the most
lavish of Purcell’s semi-operas. It was barely performed after Purcell’s death in 1695 until
the 20th century, and then only rarely.

English National Opera, who mounted it in 1995, have probably given more
performances of it than all other 20th-century performances put together.

Typically, ENO’s approach was to try to make the opera accessible to as wide a public as
possible. Producer David Pountney eliminated the actors and transformed it into a
dance drama centered on Oberon and Titania.

Even Bottom was eliminated. Puck wore a bra, and a huge tenor appeared in a leopard
skin ballgown. Other characters wore designer underwear with wellington boots.
Oberon had to sing while working out on the parallel bars.

In 1946, when the Royal Opera House re-

opened after World War II, The Fairy Queen
was the showcase for the newly formed
opera company and resident ballet
company, the Sadler’s Wells Ballet.

The actors included the multi-talented

Robert Helpmann, principal dancer of the
Sadler’s Wells Ballet, who also happened to
be a notable actor. It was an ambitious and
lavish production which seemingly pleased
nobody. The opera audience was bored by
the dancing, the dance audience was bored
by the singing and the drama audience did
not come at all.

The Fairy Queen, based on Shakespeare’s A

Midsummer Night’s Dream, was the most Scene from the English National Opera's The Fairy
lavish of Purcell’s semi-operas. He did not Queen, 1998. Museum no. TM.10317-2/19

use any of Shakespeare’s words in the

songs, but inserted five self contained ‘masques’ into the play.

After Purcell’s death in 1695, it was not performed until 1911, when it was staged by the
students of Morley College under Gustav Holst. As only one copy of the score existed,
the students spent a year copying out the 1,500 pages of manuscript.

Clayton's Arsinoe

John Rich staged Clayton's Opera Arsinoe at Drury Lane in 1705. It was the first full
length English opera in the Italian style. There was considerable prejudice against
English opera composers and English singers - the fashionable audiences preferred
‘exotic' foreign singers. Indeed it was thought that the English singers' voices were too
light for serious opera.

James Thornhill's designs for Arsinoe are amongst the very earliest designs to survive in
British Theatre.

Click on the images below for larger version.

Sir James Thornhill, set design for Sir James Thornhill, set design for Sir James Thornhill, set design for
Arsinoe - Act 1 Scene 1, early 18th Arsinoe - Act 1 Scene 3, early 18th Arsinoe - Act 2 Scene 1, early 18th
century. Museum no. D.26-1891 century. Museum no. D.28-1891 century. Museum no. D.27-1891

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