20 interesting Opera facts | Facts About All Facts About All 20 interesting Opera facts The word opera means "work" in Italian (it is the plural of Latin opus meaning "work" or "labour") The words of an opera are known as the libretto (literally "little book"). Some composers, notably Richard Wagner, have written their own libretti. During the seventeenth century, women were not allowed to sing onstage, not even in a chorus. Castrated males, or castrati, would sing the soprano/mezzo/alto parts. The shortest opera is only seven minutes long and is Darius Milhaud’s The Deliverance of Theseus. Traditional opera, often referred to as "number opera," consists of two modes of singing: recitative, the plot-driving passages sung in a style designed to imitate and emphasize the inflections of speech, and aria (an "air" or formal song) in which the characters express their emotions in a more structured melodic style. Opera composers would sometimes hire a group of people to cheer their works or boo the works of their rivals. Dafne by Jacopo Peri was the earliest composition considered opera, as understood today.

It was written around 1597, largely under the inspiration of an elite circle of literate Florentine humanists who gathered as the "Camerata de' Bardi". When Charles Gounod’s (1818-1893) opera Faust wasn’t selling tickets, the producer gave away tickets for the first three performances to people out of town and declared the performances were sold out. Wondering what all the fuss was about, the public began buying tickets, and Faust became a hit. The honour of being the first opera still to be regularly performed, goes to Claudio Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, composed for the court of Mantua in 1607. Mozart wrote his first opera, Bastien und Bastienne, a parody of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s operatic intermezzo Le devin du village (The Village Soothsayer), when he was only 12 years old. Beethoven wrote only one opera, Fidelio. Wagner revolutionized opera by disposing of existing operatic rules and structures. He also created the “Leitmotif” (or leading theme), which is a musical theme that is associated with a main character.

Whistling at many European operas actually means “boo!” The earliest surviving opera (written by Jacopo Peri and Ottavio Rinuccini) is Euridice which was performed in Florence in 1600. Opera quickly spread from Florence to Rome, Venice, and all other major cities in Italy. Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868) wrote one of the most famous operas, The Barber of Seville, in just two weeks. Enrico Caruso (1873-1921), arguably the greatest opera singer of all time, was the 18th of 21 children, only three of whom lived beyond infancy. After Plácido Domingo performed the title role in Verdi's Otello in Vienna on July 30, 1991, the audience clapped for one hour and 20 minutes (and 101 curtain calls), setting a new world record for the longest applause ever. Luciano Pavarotti received 165 curtain calls on February 24, 1988, after singing in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore in Berlin.

Later in life, Wagner considered writing operas about Jesus Christ and Buddah. Contraltos are the lowest and most rare female voice category. They were often assigned roles originally written for castrati, or male singers who were castrated before puberty. What's the perfect length for an opera? | Music | The Guardian What's the perfect length for an opera? They can last minutes, or days. The Queen thinks 47 minutes is ideal. What about you? Share on Messenger Close What do you mean you've run out of garlic bread! Joan Rodgers in La Voix Humaine. Photograph Tristram Kenton. When Deborah Warner received her CBE from the Queen at Buckingham Palace last week, her majesty inquired what the nascent gong holder was up to. The theatre and opera director replied that her production of Poulenc's La Voix Humaine was opening at Sadler's Wells this week. Perhaps noting HRH's eyes rolling skywards at the unutterable tedium of a) having to make small talk with leading arts practitioners rather than watch I'm a Celebrity and b) that small talk concerning matters in which she has next to no interest (ie.

opera), Warner added: "It's just 47 minutes long." The Queen immediately beamed and added: "Sounds perfect." Forty seven minutes. No need for an interval. No time for HRH to shift irritably in her chair and hiss to Prince Philip: "Is there much more of this guff?" And yet this is a widely held view: operas are too long. The worst of them last for days and are often sung in German, which - no offence - is hardly the world's most mellifluous tongue. Wagner's Ring cycle lasts 18 hours and is commonly cited as the longest opera. But actually it consists of four relatively short operas - relative, that is, to Wagner's longest opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg which can take at least five hours and 15 minutes to reach its long-sought denouement, and quite possibly even longer if the stateliest of Wagnerian conductors, Howard Goodall , is holding the baton. But what is the problem with operas being long?

Those of us who are not the Queen are temperamentally quite able to spend a great deal of concentrated time with works of art, and yet our culture is too readily derided for its short attention span. The truth, however, is more complicated. Even many of those most regularly attacked for their dearth of attention spans, ie TV viewers, increasingly spend their time immersed in shows of Wagnerian length ( Lost , 24 etc). In any case, operas don't need to be long. Poulenc's La Voix Humaine is a case in point: it's a riveting monologue of a mistress on the phone to the man who is leaving her bereft and suicidal. It has more emotional power than many grander theatre pieces. Poulenc even wrote a shorter opera than La Voix Humaine, namely La Dame de Monte-Carlo, a six minute 30 second work for soprano and orchestra. His French contemporary, Darius Milhaud , is frequently charged with writing the shortest opera, The Deliverance of Theseus, which lasts only seven minutes. But shorter still is The Sands of Time by Simon Rees and Peter Reynolds.

At its world premiere in Cardiff in March 1993 it lasted four minutes and nine seconds. By September that year it had got shorter: it took three minutes 34 seconds to perform in London. Here is a puzzler for you: assuming that rate of shrinkage from March to September to be constant, in which month and which year would it have taken The Sands of Time 0 minutes 0 seconds to perform? There is no prize for the correct answer, but you will feel very clever if you get it right. But The Sands of Time isn't the shortest opera. My still unperformed Two Coughs for Baritone and Orchestra lasts 10 seconds, though for artistic reasons that I am unwilling to discuss right now, I insist on a five-week interval between the two acts/coughs during which time the audience is not allowed to leave the theatre. As a result, it is both the world's shortest and longest opera, depending on whether you count intervals as part of the experience. Which, in my view, you sometimes should. As for the longest single performed opera, step aside Richard Wagner.

The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin by Robert Wilson was performed in 1973 in New York City and lasted almost 13 hours and 25 minutes. But this is hardly as long as Karlheinz Stockhausen 's Licht, a 24-hour cycle of seven operas scored for choir, orchestra with synthesizer, string quartet playing from helicopters above the concert hall, and also features fragrances released towards the audience and lots of other multimedia devices. Each opera can be performed separately, but really to get the full experience of the work upon which Stockhuasen spent three decades, you should hear it in its entirety with performances on seven successive nights. The next full performance of Licht will be in Dresden in 2008 and, if Her Majesty is free that week, I am quite prepared to accompany her and supply the necessary straps and Clockwork Orange eye clamps to keep her in her seat and attentive for the duration. In the meantime, what are your favourite long and short operas? And is there a perfect length for a performance?

The Boeuf Chronicles | Milhaud, Claudel & Hoppenot in Rio Paul Claudel, Henri Hoppenot & Darius Milhaud in Rio (photo courtesy of Antonio Campos) In his autobiography Notes Without Music, Darius Milhaud related the circumstances that resulted in his coming to Brazil during WWI: I was rejected for military service on medical grounds. [...] I left the Foyer Franco-Belge to work at the Maison de la Presse, grouped with the propaganda services directed by Philippe Berthelot, and therefore came under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I was sworn into the Army, and attached to the Army photographic service. I made friends with a number of young diplomatists. We used to meet occasionally in a restaurant in the Place Gaillon. We had delightful meals, enlivened by the spicy anecdotes of Paul Morand and Ren� Chalupt, the musician-poet, and by Saint-L�ger L�gers tales of the West Indies, to all of which Henri Hoppenot and I listened in silence.

I had just finished my Po�mes juifs, settings for some anonymous poems I had come across in a revue, and I was seriously thinking of composing music for Les Eum�nides in Claudels translation. I mentioned it to him one day when I met him at the Maison de la Presse. He complained of having too much to do at Rome; he needed a secretary, and proposed that I should get Berthelot to send me there on detachment. Before the scheme could materialize, however, he was appointed Minister to Brazil. He renewed his request, and the idea of going with him so far away, and the great longing for solitude I had felt since L�os death, made me decide to accept. At the end of December, my parents and my friend Yvonne Giraud accompanied the great man and his secretary to the Gare dOrsay. The crossing took eighteen days. [...] We reached Rio on February 1st, 1917, on a blazing hot day like midsummer.

Claudel found quarters for me with him at the French legation; magnificently situated in the Rua Paysandu, a street bordered with royal palms from the isle of R�union sometimes more than two hundred feet in height and crowned with swaying fronds over twenty feet long. [...] The palm-lined Rua Paissandu Rio had a potent charm. It is difficult to describe the lovely bay, ringed with fantastically shaped mountains covered with a light shading of forest or crowned with solitary red-brown pinnacles of rock, sometimes topped with lines of palm-trees that stood out like ostrich feathers in the murky light of the tropics against a sky shrouded in pearly grey cloud. I would often stroll in the centre of the city wherea refreshing contrast with the broad Avenida Rio Brancothe cool, shady streets were too narrow for wheeled traffic. In the most colourful of them all, the Rua Ouvidor, antique shops crowded with furniture from the Imperial period stood next to displays of luscious fruit where I tasted delicious refrescos of mango or coconut.

Not far away, on a hill, the little Gloria church, eighteenth-century baroque in style, like most of the ecclesiastical architecture in Brazil, displayed its colors of pink, blue and tender green, and its azulejos among which were to be seen magnificent examples of wood carvings. I would also sometimes go to Copacabana beach, facing the Atlantic. Along it stood a few houses, including one delightfuly amusing by the architect Virzi. In the evenings I often walked around the Tijuca. I loved to see the panorama of Rio gradually spread out before me, with the bay clearly outlined in glittering lights; or else I would take a boat to the other side of the bay, near Nichteroy, and lie on the lonely beach for a whole part of the night with the moonlight so bright that I could read easily. Copacabana in 1921 A month or two after our arrival in Rio, Henri Hoppenot was appointed secretary to the Legation. Overjoyed, I went to the boat to meet him and his wife H�l�ne. Already I felt how much their presence was going to mean to me.

Henri Hoppenot was a young writer and a great admirer of Claudel. What a curious legation that was, with two writers and a musician... During our long walks together we got to know one another better and our friendship deepened. The friendship with the Hoppenots turned into a life-long affair. Milhaud dedicated to them two dances in Saudades do Brazil: Corcovado for Madame Henri Hoppenot, Sumar� for her husband (Paul Claudel was the dedicatee of Paysandu). Henri Hoppenot (18911977) went on to become one of Frances most illustrious diplomats. Seemingly always posted to the hot spots, in 1943 Hoppenot was the Provisionary Government of the French Republics ambassador to Washington. From there he was dispatched to Martinique, where he assumed control of the French Antilles from the Vichy government on behalf of Free France. In the early 1950s, he was Frances ambassador to the United Nations and its representative on the Security Council.

It was there, on 31 March 1953, that Hoppenot formally proposed the name of the Swedish Minister of State, Dag Hammarskj�ld, for the position of U.N. Secretary-General. In 1955 Hoppenot was ambassador to Vietnam, at a time France was eager to remove its forces from that country and into North Africa. By 1958 Hoppenot himself had been posted to Algeria, at the time of the Alg�rie fran�aise referendum. In 1951, the Hoppenots published the photographic book Extr�me-Orient, with photos by H�l�ne and texts by Henri. But even earlier, Hoppenot wrote three libretti for Milhauds Op�ras-minute. Recalled the composer in his autobiography: Between 1922 and 1932 Paul Hindemith was organizing concerts of contemporary music, first at Donaueschingen under the patronage of the Prince of F�rstenberg, and then in Baden-Baden under the auspices of the municipal authorities, and finally in 1930 in Berlin.

Hindemith was absolutely his own master, and he tried out all kinds of musical experiments. In 1927 he asked me to write an opera, which had to be as short as possible. Henri Hoppenot wrote a libretto for me, on the subject of LEnl�vement dEurope, off-handed, poetic, and slightly ironic in its treatment, and containing all the essential elements on a miniature scale. It was produced in conjunction with Die Prinzessin auf der Erbst by Toch, lasting one hour, Kurt Weills Mahagonny lasting 30 minutes, and Hindemiths Hin und Zur�ck, lasting fourteen minutes.

Emil Hertzka, the managing director of Universal-Edition, did not consider the publication of my work to be a commercial proposition: What an idea, an opera that lasts only nine minutes! Now, said he, if you would only write me a trilogy... Once more I had recourse to Henri Hoppenot, who in spite of his official duties (at that time he occupied a post in Berlin) dashed off two more librettos of the same kind as the previous one: LAbandon dAriane and La D�livrance de Th�s�e. The three operas together lasted twenty-seven minutes. The trilogy was immediately produced at the Operas of Wiesbaden and Budapest, and I did a recording for Columbia. I have never been able to understand why the firm did not make more publicity of the fact that each opera only occupied one disc. Other Milhaud compositions born of his connection with Hoppenot were La Lib�ration des Antilles and Le Bal Martiniquais.

As Milhaud recalled it: Shortly after the landings in North Africa, Henri Hoppenot, who represented the Algiers Committee in Washington, was placed in charge of the operations for the liberation of the Antilles. He went there on a warship, was acclaimed by the Gaullist population and received the capitulation of Admiral Robert. In local folklore, the name of Hoppenot is now honored like that of an angel of deliverance. The Governor sent me some musical material which he thought might interest me and some popular melodies which I used in La Lib�ration des Antilles. I could not resist using the popular songs which included works like: Mawning, Massa Minister Hoppenot... I used the same material in Le Bal Martiniquais for two pianos, which I later arranged for orchestra. Milhauds friendship with Paul Claudel (18681955) preceded his Hoppenot connection by five years. In 1911, the composer first encountered Claudels poetry and immediately set some poems to music. Claudel became one of his three favorite authors, along with Francis Jammes and Andr� Gide.

The following year, when Milhaud was 20, the two met. Between Claudel and myself, Milhaud would write years later, understanding was immediate, our mutual confidence absolute. Their friendship and artistic collaboration lasted until the poets death. Their 368-page correspondence between 1912 and 1953 was published by Gallimard in 1961 with a preface by Hoppenot. Although both poet-diplomats served in Brazil with Milhaud, none of their collaborations took on Brazilian character. In his unpublished article Influence of Latin-American music on my work, written at Mills College in 1944, the composer reminisced: The two years which I spent in Brazil with Claudel were glorious. In the first place, I had the leisure to study the folklore of this country, to attune myself to the rhythms of the tangos, maxixes and sambas, to the melancholy of the Portuguese fados.

I could watch the Carnival balls of the Negroes and could assimilate gradually the curves of these rhythms which [are] as supple as the huge leaves of the royal palms swaying at the height of sixty meters. However, the Brazilian influence would not become evident in his work until 1919, after he had returned to Paris and composed Le Boeuf sur le Toit. His first musical work in Brazil was the final installment in his Orestie trilogy, consisting of two works for chorus & orchestra and an opera, based on the tragedies by Aeschylus in Claudels translation. Milhaud had composed Agamemnon, op. 14 in 191314 and Les Cho�phores, op. 24 in 191516. In Notes Without Music he described the creation of the opera, op. 41: As soon as I arrived in Rio, I started work on Les Eum�nides. In Les Cho�phores I had used chords superimposed in masses; the nature of the musical thought in Les Eum�nides led me to adopt the same device.

Claudel, Milhaud & Hoppenot riding horseback in Brazil (from Paul Collaer: Darius Milhaud) While in Rio, Claudel wrote the po�me plastique LHomme e son Desir, which Milhaud would set to music for a ballet by the same title, his op. 48. Also born in Rio was Dans les rues de Rio, op. 44a (1918), a mini-suite of two songs based on Claudels poems Le R�mouleur (The Knife Sharpener) and Le Marchand de Sorbets (The Ice Cream Seller), which were a follow-up to the suite Chansons Bas, op. 44 (1917), eight melodies on poems by St�phane Mallarm�, all describing various tradesmen. Claudels satiric drama Prot�e gave rise to Milhauds incidental music, op. 17 (191317). In the 1920s and 40s Milhaud would set eleven Claudel poems to music.

The poet and the composer would go on to collaborate on other creations, including the opera Christophe Colomb, op. 102 and the cantatas Cantate de la paix, op. 166 and Invocation � lange Rapha�l, op. 395. As for the Brazilian influence on Milhauds music, that too lasted for many years, albeit intermittently. Following Le Boeuf sur le Toit (1919) came Saudades do Brazil for piano solo, op. 67 (1920) and for orchestra, op.

67b (192021), a suite of dances bearing the names of Rio districts and dedicated to various friends the composer knew in Brazil: Sorocaba (pour Madame Regis de Oliveira) Botafogo (pour Oswald Guerra) Copacabana (pour Godofredo Le�o Velloso) Ipanema (pour Arthur Rubinstein) G�vea (pour Madame Henrique Oswald) Corcovado (pour Madame Henri Hoppenot) Tijuca (pour Ricardo Vines) 52 Interesting Facts about Opera | FactRetriever.com 52 Interesting Facts about Opera By Karin Lehnardt, Senior Writer Published January 7, 2017 The term “opera” comes from the Latin opus, or “work.” The term “soap opera” was first recorded in 1939 as a derogatory term for daytime radio shows that were sponsored by soap manufacturers.[6] When the notorious soprano Francesca Cuzzoni refused to sing the aria “Falsa immagine” from Handel’s Ottone, Handel grabbed her by the waist and swore he would throw her out the window if she did not agree.[3] In eighteenth-century

 opera seria (serious opera), the main singers would stand in ballet’s third position, with bent, bowlegged knees and heels together, with one ankle in front of the other.

They remained in that position the entire song.[10] During the seventeenth century, women were not allowed to sing onstage, not even in a chorus. Castrated males, or castrati, would sing the soprano/mezzo/alto parts. The first of the great castrati was Baldassare Ferri (1610-1680).

He was so famous that the town’s people met him three miles outside the city and filled his carriage with flowers.[5] After hearing of scandalous behavior at the Tor di Nona in 1697, Pope Innocent XII (1615-1700) decreed the opera house immoral and ordered it to be burned to the ground.[3] Amalie Materna, who played Brünnhilde during Wagner's lifetime (1876), may be the first proverbial "fat lady" The famous proverb “the opera ain’t over ‘til the fat lady sings” in reference to buxom Brunhilde’s 10-minute aria at the end of Wagner’s Ring cycle operas is usually attributed to pro basketball coach Dick Motta, who in turn attributes it to San Antonio sportswriter/broadcaster Dan Cook, who says he overheard a friend say it.[1] Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) is considered the father of French opera, though he was actually born in Italy. He pioneered the concept of the conducting stick but, unfortunately, he hit his own foot with a heavy conducting staff.

His foot became gangrenous, ultimately killing him.[3] When Charles Gounod’s (1818-1893) opera Faust wasn’t selling tickets, the producer gave away tickets for the first three performances to people out of town and declared the performances were sold out. Wondering what all the fuss was about, the public began buying tickets, and Faust became a hit.[10] The founder of German opera is Christoph Willibald von Gluck (1714-1787) who was a major force in moving opera away from unnatural and dramatic practices to more realistic performances. He influenced greats such as Mozart and Wagner.[9] Mozart wrote his first opera, Bastien und Bastienne, a parody of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s operatic intermezzo Le devin du village (The Village Soothsayer), when he was only 12 years old.[12] Beethoven wrote only one opera, Fidelio, a fiercely humanistic opera. He worked on it for 11 years, revising it over and over again.

It was produced in 1805, just as his deafness was plunging him into depression.[10] Richard Wagner’s “Walkürenritt“ (“Ride of the Valkyries”) from Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), which debuted in 1870, is extremely popular in movies and TV shows, most notably in Apocalypse Now when U.S. soldiers blast this music from their helicopters to terrify the Vietnamese.[3] I love the smell of opera in the morning Wagner revolutionized opera by disposing of existing operatic rules and structures. He also created the “Leitmotif” (or leading theme), which is a musical theme that is associated with a main character. For example, in Star Wars, there is a different musical theme associated with Princess Leia, with Luke Skywalker, with Obi-Wan Kenobi, and with Yoda.[4] After an opera, it is appropriate to yell bravo for a man and brava for a woman. If you want to cheer for two or more singers, use the plural form, which is bravi.

If the group consists only of women, yell brave (BRAH-vay).[11] In 1994, Warner Brother’s 1957 classic “What’s Opera, Doc?” featuring Elmer Fudd chasing Bugs Bunny in a parody of Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle operas, was voted #1 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons. It was also deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.[3] Whistling at many European operas actually means “boo!”[11] The La Scala Opera House (inaugurated in 1778) in Milan, Italy, is famous for having the hardest-to-please audience in opera. The audience has been known to make a performer keep singing until he or she “gets it right.”[3] Madama Butterfly is now a staple of the operatic repertoire around the world and is ranked 6th by Operabase The first performance of Puccini’s opera Madama Butterfly was one of opera’s all-time worst flops. The audience made bird, cow, and goat calls and booed.

Madama Butterfly, however, became one of the best-loved operas in history.[10] Opera’s origins are typically traced to the dramas of ancient Greece, though the Egyptians had been performing the Heb-Sed (or Feast of the Tail) for 2,000 years previously. The Heb-Sed evolved into Passion Plays in which the Egyptians acted out stories from Egypt’s glorious past set to music and singing.[8] Medieval Easter and Christmas plays, which were performed to music, are considered precursors to opera. The most famous of these pre-operatic church dramas is the Quem Queritis (“Whom do you seek?”) play about a group of women who go to Christ’s tomb to anoint his body. As these plays evolved, they became more theatrical and less religious.[8] Jacopo Peri’s (1561-1633) Dafne (1597) with a libretto (words) by Ottavio Rinuccini (1562-1621) is considered the first “modern” opera and was an instant success.

Though the music is lost, music was most likely secondary to the story in the early years of opera.[9] The earliest surviving opera (written by Jacopo Peri and Ottavio Rinuccini) is Euridice which was performed in Florence in 1600. Opera quickly spread from Florence to Rome, Venice, and all other major cities in Italy.[9] Mozart joined the Freemasons in 1784 and wrote several cantatas for their ceremonies. In The Magic Flute, he incorporated many of their ideals of wisdom, friendship, nature, and sacrifice. His librettist was also a former mason. Mozart died nine weeks after the opera’s premier, and some say he was killed because his opera revealed the society’s secrets.[4] The arrival of Sarastro on a chariot in Mozart's The Magic Flute. In the background are the temples of Wisdom, Reason, and Nature Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) wrote one of opera’s most famous insanity scenes in Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), based on Sir Walter Scott’s novel The Bride of Lammermoor.

He himself later went mad due to syphilis and spent the last years of his life in an insane asylum.[3] Enrico Caruso (1873-1921), arguably the greatest opera singer of all time, was the 18th of 21 children, only three of whom lived beyond infancy. As a boy, he worked in a machine shop to help his family and sang on street corners to make money. He was the first opera singer to perform without dynamic modulation, which is to sing almost exclusively forte (loud).[8] Della Reese’s hit “Don’t You Know” is based on “Quando m’en vo” (“Musetta’s Waltz”) from Puccini’s La bohème.

Jackie Wilson’s hit “Night” is based on “Mon cur s’ouvre à ta voix” (“My Heart at Thy Sweet Voice”) from Saint-Saëns’ Samson et Dalila.[12] In 1727, the Italian sopranos and rivals Faustina Bordoni (1697-1781) and Francesca Cuzzoni (1696-1778) broke into fisticuffs while singing on stage in London.[8] The first public opera house (San Cassiano) opened in Venice in 1637 where “the father of opera,” Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), shifted the emphasis from a more dialogue-based opera to a more musical opera. Monteverdi helped place Venice as the opera capital of the world.[10] Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings. - Robert Benchley Opera was the fruit of the Italian Renaissance.

In the final decade of the sixteenth century, a group of artists, musicians, and poets who called themselves the Florentine Camerata met there to revive Greek drama and developed an opera in musica: a work in music. Galileo’s father, Vincenzo Galilei was reportedly a member.[11] Mozart inherited the legacy of opera seria and opera buffa as well as the German Singspiel, but he transformed them and incorporated music of rare inspiration. Opera history is often divided into pre-Mozart and post-Mozart.[9] Opera music has been incorporated into many popular movies and commercials. For example, Léo Delibes’ “The Flower Duet” (“Sous le dôme épais”) from Lakmé can be heard in The American President, Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, Superman Returns, and Meet the Parents (as well as in numerous TV shows and commercials). Rossini’s The Barber of Seville (Il barbiere di Siviglia) has been featured in Babe: The Pig in the City, Deep Impact, Jumanji, Space Jam, Under the Tuscan Sun, and in an award-winning Nike commercial starring Charles Barkley.

Other commercials that have incorporated opera include Handel’s Xerxes for AT&T, Wagner’s Lohengrin for Du Pont, Mozart’s The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte) for Kraft, and Bizet’s Carmen for Pepsi.[7] Salome's traditional Christian biblical themes coupled with erotic and murderous elements shocked opera audiences Richard Strauss’ 1905 opera Salome (“zahl-oh-may”) about Salome and John the Baptist was so graphically violent that it was banned at the Metropolitan Opera in New York for decades. It includes incest, nudity, murder, and a dramatic scene where Salome kisses the lips of John the Baptist’s severed head.[8] Early opera houses were often boisterous and unruly. They were also lit by candles which—when combined with perspiration, perfume, and little ventilation—made opera night fairly ripe.[8] Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) is a cycle of four operas (Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegried, and Göotterdämmurung). They are usually performed individually, but Wagner intended they be performed in a series as a coherent whole.

When an opera company dares to take on that herculean task, the The Ring becomes the world’s longest opera at over 14 hours (and close to 18 hours, including intermissions). Wagner wrote it over a 30-year span. It is based loosely on a Norse legend of the Nibelungenlied and has many parallels with J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.[5] Wagner had a special opera house, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus (Festival Theatre), to house his Ring cycle.

To “Wagnerians,” Bayreuth is a holy place where every year they make a pilgrimage to see and hear Wagner’s music.[12] After Plácido Domingo performed the title role in Verdi’s Otello in Vienna on July 30, 1991, the audience clapped for one hour and 20 minutes (and 101 curtain calls), setting a new world record for the longest applause ever.[5] Luciano Pavarotti received 165 curtain calls on February 24, 1988, after singing in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore in Berlin.[5] Nixon in China is an opera composed by John Adams (1947- ) about President Nixon’s 1972 visit to China. It is considered an important milestone in American minimalist music.[12] The first opera by a woman, Francesca Caccini (1587-1641), was the 1625 La liberazione di Ruggiero.[8] A professional French claqueur Opera composers would sometimes hire a group of people to cheer their works or boo the works of their rivals.

This group was called a claque (clapping) and was common at European opera performances.[8] The shortest opera is only seven minutes long and is Darius Milhaud’s The Deliverance of Theseus.[5] The National Endowment for the Arts reports that in 2002, 6.6 million adults attended at least one opera performance.[5] The most frequently performed operas in the 2007-2008 season were La bohème, Tosca, La traviata, Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro), Carmen, Don Giovanni, L’elisir d’amore (The Elixir of Love), Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), Aida, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot.[5] Antonio Salieri, Mozart’s rival, was rumored to “confess” to murdering Mozart before his own death in 1825.

In 1897, Nikolai Rimksy-Korsakov (1844-1908) wrote an opera called Mozart and Salieri.[9] Many great operas derived from literary sources, such as Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Nathanial Hawthorn’s The Scarlet Letter, Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, and John Milton’s Paradise Lost.[12] In 1859, Wagner wrote an essay titled “Jewry in Music” that decried the work of Jewish composers, which Hitler later admired.

Yet Wagner hired Hermann Levi (1839-1900), a Jew, to conduct Parsifal.[12] Later in life, Wagner considered writing operas about Jesus Christ and Buddha.[12] Rossini's Barber is considered one of the greatest masterpieces of comedy within opera Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868) wrote one of the most famous operas, The Barber of Seville, in just two weeks.[3] Beethoven originally called his opera Fidelio Leonore, which is why there are three Leonore overtures and one for Fidelio. Fidelio’s subtitle is “Die eheliche Liebe” or “Married Love.”[12] Contraltos are the lowest and most rare female voice category. They were often assigned roles originally written for castrati, or male singers who were castrated before puberty.[11] In September 2009, Pensacola (Florida) Opera conductor David Ott fell 14 feet into the orchestra pit after the first performance of The Widow’s Lantern, which he also composed. He broke nine vertebrae, dislocated his shoulder, and injured an ankle.

He is 95% sure he will be able to conduct operas again.[2] When six-foot-four, 330-pound basso Luigi Lablache (1794-1854) was cast as prisoner wasting away in a dungeon, the audience burst into laughter at the first words he sang: “I’m starving.”[11] Pinnable Facts Keyword Tags

Question: The opera ‘Deliverence of Theseus’ by Darius Milhaud lasts how many minutes?
Answer: Seven minutes