Opera seria is an Italian musical term which refers to the noble and "serious" style of Italian opera that predominated in Europe from the 1710s to about 1770. The term itself was rarely used at the time and only attained … 查看更多內容

The age of opera seria corresponded with the rise to prominence of the castrati, often prodigiously gifted male singers who had undergone … 查看更多內容

After peaking during the 1750s, the popularity of the Metastasian model began to wane. New trends, popularized by composers such as Niccolò Jommelli and Tommaso Traetta, began to seep into opera seria. The Italianate pattern of alternating, … 查看更多內容

With a few exceptions, opera seria was the opera of the court, of the monarchy and the nobility. This is not a universal picture: Handel in London composed not for the court but for a much more socially diverse audience, and in the Venetian republic composers … 查看更多內容

Opera seria built upon the conventions of the High Baroque era by developing and exploiting the da capo aria, with its A–B–A form. The first section presented a theme, the second a complementary one, and the third a repeat of the first with ornamentation … 查看更多內容

Opera seria acquired definitive form early during the 1720s. While Apostolo Zeno and Alessandro Scarlatti had paved the way, the genre only truly came to fruition due to Metastasio and … 查看更多內容

Gluck's reforms made most of the composers of opera seria of the previous decades obsolete. The careers of Hasse, Jommelli, 查看更多內容