Collection: OPERA
Our selection of complete opera recordings will give due prominence to the beginnings of the genre, from an immediate precursor by de Cavalieri to the birth of the genre itself in a first (private) performance of Dafne by Peri in 1598. Later, as a member of the Florentine Camerata, Peri collaborated with Caccini to produce Euridice (1600), which encouraged contemporaries such as da Gagliano in Dafne (1608) to try their hand, but the first ackowledged masterwork was Orfeo (1607) by Monteverdi. A gifted musical dramatist, Monteverdi's surviving operas are still regarded - 400 years later - musically and dramatically as exemplary and the work of a genuius.
Opera - the new music - was described by da Gagliano as 'the delight of princes' and so it was in its infancy, but that changed with the opening of the first public opera house in Venice in 1637. Once established as a commercial enterprise, the new music took wing and the 17th century saw the emergence of notable composers, such as Cavalli whose 39 operas were enthusiastically received and his Jiasone (1649) became the most popular opera of the 17th century.
Thereafter opera flourished - the Viking Guide to Opera lists 800 composers up to the end of the 20th century - but the legacy of wonderful operas must include Mozart, whose masterpieces The Magic Flute, The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni have become staples of the repertoire, and in the 19th century Verdi, one of the giants of the genre, is famed for a succession of masterpieces including La Traviata, Aida and Otello. Wagner is celebrated for his German language music dramas culminating in The Ring. Puccini continued the grand Italian tradition of opera with many popular works including Tosca, La Boheme and Madama Butterfly. France has contributed many distinguished operas, with perhaps Bizet’s Carmen the most popular, but Gounod's Faust and Massenet's Manon and Werther are significant examples of the Gallic touch. Benjamin Britten, England's most successful composer for the theatre reshaped 20th-century opera with Peter Grimes.
