Interesting facts about opera

Interesting facts about opera

Presents you a selection of the most interesting facts related to the genre of opera. Perhaps you will discover something new and otherwise look at some of the operatic masterpieces.

• The word opera translated from Italian means "product", "work", "work". Such concepts as "soap opera" and "space opera" ("kosmoopera") have nothing to do with musical theater.
• The composer of the first opera created for the original Russian text was Italian F. Araya. The opera was called Cefas and Proksis, and it was staged in 1755 at the court of Elizaveta Petrovna.
• In the 17th century, women were forbidden to sing on stage. All women's parts - soprano, mezzo-soprano and viola were performed by singers.
• The heroine of one of the famous Italian operas of the 19th century named Fanella is mute, and she has a mimic part. The composer of the opera is DF. Ober.
• Before opera performances, composers always hired a special group of people, who supported the statement with stormy ovations, or, conversely, booed her. This group was called "clak".
• The three most famous Italian operas, The Barber of Seville, La Traviata and Madama Butterfly, failed in their premiers. But the biggest opera fiasco of all time is considered to be the premiere of Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly, in which the public crowed, lowed and bleated, in general, arranged for the reception in the best farming traditions.
• Mozart was a member of the secret Masonic brotherhood. It is believed that in his last opera, The Magic Flute, the composer encrypted the secrets of Freemasonry. The composer died 9 days after its premiere. One of the versions of his death is the revenge of the Masons for revealing some secrets of the order.

• The first opera, created by a female composer, dates from 1625. And Francesca Caccini wrote it.
• R. Wagner created tetralogy "Ring of the Nibelung". These are the 4 largest operas - The Gold of the Rhine, The Valkyrie, Siegfried and The Death of the Gods, which have many parallels with the Lord of the Rings trilogy of J. Tolkien. Today, all these operas are staged separately, but Wagner conceived them as a whole. The duration of tetralogy is about 14 hours (18 with intermissions). That is how they were continuously - they were put in the Bayreuth Theater, built by Wagner exclusively for the performance of their works.
• In 1812, J. Rossini worked on the writing of the opera Cyrus in Babylon. The singing of one of the second roles, Anna Savinelli, was fake and very annoying to the composer. After checking her abilities, Rossini found out that the singer can brilliantly sing only one note - B flat of the first octave. And he wrote a "one-note" aria in which the heroine sang only that note. This number became the most discussed and brought fame to the worthless singer.