Welcome '25!
- Lyn Richards
- Jan 6
- 6 min read
Updated: Jan 28
Our Opera Group is entering its tenth year. We've explored opera in every century and most countries, and we've never run out of new works, new subjects, composers and music. Such is opera.
Our first meeting for the year is on Friday 7th February, 10.30am till 12.30pm, on Zoom. A post about that meeting - on Monteverdi - will come next week.
So how to start our tenth year? We agreed this was the time to go back to the beginnings of opera, in the Baroque period. That topic takes us to the early 17th century, first in Italy, and then to France and Germany, and belatedly to England. It sends us across a century and a half, to opera composers you may never have heard of, and works that challenge modern orchestras and directors. It raises fascinating questions: not least, how did this revolution in music and drama happen? And it offers some of the most beautiful music and fascinating drama in all the centuries of operatic works.
"It was the early 17th century when composers such as Monteverdi and Cavalli first set dramatic stories to music. Add lavish costume, striking sets and a heavenly chorus, and early opera was born. The art form was born in Italy, and quickly spread throughout continental Europe to flourish and transform in places like France and Germany.
"Baroque opera is revered for the weird and wonderful instruments that often appear in a baroque orchestra, including a lute, harpsichord and contrabassoon. Story lines in Baroque opera range from gut wrenching drama to uproarious comedy (and everything in between) and are often based on Greek and Roman mythology.
"If you love a good story, told with passion and flair, Baroque opera is for you." Read more about Baroque - and Pinchgut - here.
What's Baroque?
The context of these operas is social change and flourishing innovation in this period, innovation that was so revolutionary it earned a name that in French (barroque) meant (as in pearls) 'irregularly shaped and in Italian means 'bizarre'. It was felt across European life, nurtured in the life of the aristocracies and monarchies: in society, in art, in music, and, entangled with all of these, in opera. There, as in art and architecture, it elaborately celebrated emotions and contrasts, light, color, and movement, and mirrored human form and life.
Do music appreciation teachers doing intros on video help or annoy you? This one's really useful.
You still want an introduction? This is a good one, highlighting the changes we'll see and hear as we play baroque operas, and offering clips to illustrate the sounds of the new music and instruments.
The Baroque opera period is normally dated from 1600 to 1750, but it has been dramatically revived two centuries later. Google and you'll find many wiki-level summaries and accounts by music historians. But some of the best intros are from opera gurus involved in or critiquing attempts to produce Baroque opera today. (Here's the opinionated critic, Brian Robins.) That's another challenge we'll discuss as we play productions.
Of course, no homework is required for this course. But read on if you want some places to go for more information. Alternatively, let Baroque opera introduce itself, opera by opera, as we will do this term.
What was so new?
The rise of Baroque music, from around 1600, marked a sharp departure from established Renaissance musical forms, purposes and instruments. But of course, change was already happening. Here's a swift introduction.
Renaissance music was mainly religious, vocal with instrumental accompaniment. It was typically polyphonic - several separate melodies played simultaneously.
The complexity of these works served church, court and salon, and fitted with the humanism of Renaissance literature and painting.
By the end of the sixteenth century, music was linked to poetry and expressed the singer's emotions. Inspired by the classical world, and in Italy driven by the wealthy, educated Camerata, Renaissance composers fit words and music together in an increasingly dramatic fashion. Therein lay the ingredients for the first operas.
But why don't we ever hear of Jacopo Peri (1561–1633), the composer who wrote (probably) the first opera, La Dafne in 1598, and then, spot on, in 1600, the oldest surviving opera, Eurydice? Dafne's libretto was lost. Euridice survived, but ironically because of Peri's major innovation, it faded in popularity. He was member of the Florentine Camerata, leading the push for drama in poetry and music, with emphasis (as with Greek classics) on the words. Peri's innovation was what we still know as 'recitative', a huge break from the polyphonic music of the recent past.
There's a great account here of the dawn of opera: "Peri sought a kind of speech-song, a style he hoped would resemble the ancient Greek oratory style. He would write a vocal line that moved through consonances and dissonances accompanied by basso continuo. This style would develop into the recitative style of Baroque and Classical opera." The result? Opera Scribe reports here: "Listening to it, I feel like a palaeontologist staring at a single-celled organism from the Pre-Cambrian. I know it’ll turn into armoured fish, nimble Hypsilophodons, lumbering sauropods, powerful T-Rexes, and eventually us – but it has a long way to evolve... Euridice, then, is nearly two hours of arrhythmic, tuneless recitative, accompanied by a harpsichord. It’s quite pleasant arrhythmic, tuneless recitative, accompanied by a harpsichord. But it’s monodonous (so to speak)."
It was Monteverdi (see our next blog post) who caught the tumultuous cultural wave to Baroque. As Baroque began, melody became a stronger feature – rhythm was stronger and more energetic. This paralleled an increase in emotive content, becoming expressive and dramatic with the use of contrasts, deliberately aiming to evoke emotions in the listener.
And of course, new instruments were needed, and devised. Renaissance music had centred around the lute, recorder, and viol with the harpsichord behind them. There's a beautifully illustrated discussion of these sounds and the music written for them here.
The Baroque period greatly expanded the use of instruments; the organ arrived, with violin and many other plucked stringed instruments, creating early forms of the orchestra and opera. The lute grew up - to the huge long necked theorbo, a major personality in these orchestras. And the double bass dominated, with music held together by the basso continuo ('through bass').
Modern orchestras committed to "historically informed performance" of Baroque sound have a formidable task of collecting and preserving - and playing! - these instruments. They're all described here.
Well known Renaissance composers were Josquin des Prez, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, and Thomas Tallis. Here’s a typical Renaissance score.
Famous baroque names were Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, and Antonio Vivaldi. Baroque scores look more familiar!
To hear the contrast, listen to Palestrina’s Missa Brevis (21 m!) and Bach’s Mass in B Minor (1h 49m – but a minute or two of each will show up the difference!)
And if you still want 'a brief tour of the extravagant last period of early music', there's a beautifully illustrated account of Baroque here.
Our journey
Here's the lineup of composers we'll visit on the way. Apart from great hairdos, they have in common that they drove the remaking of music and music drama.
As always, we've no set schedule, just a story about operas to explore. We go where the story takes us. We may make it to Handel, commonly seen as the principal composer of Baroque opera (!), by the end of term 1. Or we may decide to hover over Handel, exploring his amazing works for the following term. Join us for the journey!
Come back soon for a post for our first meeting (Friday 7th February, 10.30am till 12.30pm).
See you then...
Lyn and Tom, 6/1/25
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