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Later opera

An image of the French composer Bizet

In France, Bizet was the most prominent composer and two of his operas remain in the repertoire to this day, 'Carmen' and 'The Pearl Fishers'.  'Carmen', set in Spain, is a story of tragic love and has many famous arias, including the Flower song, the Toreadors' song and here, the Habanera. Listen to the mezzo soprano voice accompanied by by piano and an amateur mixed-voice choir.

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  The Pearl Fishers is most famous for its duet for tenor and bass. Listen to this excerpt and notice that the strings double up with the tenor melody and the arpeggios in the accompaniment.

Ramfis from Scottish Opera production of Aida

Italy

Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) wrote opera which was unashamedly for popular appeal, full of excellent, melodic arias and choruses which are still popular today and performed regularly throughout the world a hundred years after his death. The operas, while having an element of the bel canto style, became more refined as the plots and music became more sophisticated. The story of the operas, while sticking to the standard ingredients of recitative, aria and chorus, tended to flow better with the recitative sections accompanied by full orchestra, and while speech patterns were retained, these sections flowed much more easily into the arias and choruses. Listen to this excerpt from ‘Louisa Miller’ and notice the accompaniment from the orchestra, which is much more chromatic, that the ‘vamp’ has arpeggios rather than chords, and the smooth bel canto line from the tenor soloist. Notice also the use of rubato to emphasise the importance of the text at the end of the excerpt.

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   Now listen to this excerpt from the ‘Sicilian Vespers’ sung by a bass voice and notice how the recitative has changed, accompanied by the orchestra. However, this section still ends with a perfect cadence as recitative did a century earlier. Then listen to the bel canto line of the start of the aria and the rubato in the singing.
  Finally listen to one of the most famous choruses by Verdi, the chorus of slaves from the opera ‘Nabucco’, quite clearly using unison and homophonic singing. 

(A scene from the Scottish opera production of Verdi's 'Aida'. Photograph by Bill Coper.)

Scene from Die Walkure

Germany

Wagner was the principal opera composer of the period. His compositions, particularly the later ones, are notable for their rich chromaticism, harmonies, orchestration and the use of leitmotifs: themes associated with particular characters or elements of the plot.  He preferred his works to be known as ‘music dramas’, the merging of all the theatre arts of music, drama, staging, scenery, costumes and lighting into one form. He wrote the librettos (the words), himself.

Most notable of all his works is the cycle of four gigantic operas known as ‘The Ring’. The four operas, ‘The Rhinegold’, ‘The Valkyrie’, ‘Siegfried ‘and ‘The Twilight of the Gods’, were intended for performance on four successive evenings.

Listen to this excerpt from the last of these works and notice the massive orchestra and the enormous operatic voice required for the singer.

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   In the next example, which is from the middle period of his life and before he wrote ‘The Ring’, there is still some definition between recitative and the music which follows, which became known as arioso rather than aria in a continuous telling of the plot. Listen to this excerpt from the opera 'Tannhäuser' sung by a baritone voice and notice how the recitative section moves into the arioso style which was then fully developed in his later works. 

(This image is from the end of the Scottish Opera production of Die Walküre with Brunhilde having been left on the mountain by Wotan.)

Because of lack of time and space it is impossible to investigate this music fully in these pages. The idea of using leitmotif was to have a lasting effect in the coming 20th century. These ideas became an important feature of film music as it developed through the coming hundred years from the use of piano accompaniment with the first silent movies to the music used in the great blockbuster films of the late 20th century.