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An opera is a musical play performed on stage with costumes, scenery and props.

Opera began in Italy in the 16th Century and was performed at court to entertain royalty. It soon became the ideal musical style for celebrating mythological and historical characters and performing to public audiences.

Early operas tell the story of Greek drama and were sung in Italian. Italian dominated the musical form until the 18th Century. By this time composers across Europe, such as Henry Purcell, were composing operas and establishing their own national traditions. Now operas are sung in many languages including German, English and Spanish.

This form of vocal music was in contrast to the religious music being composed at the time. Instead of music that was safe and in a style that could be used mainly for church occasions, opera could express a range of strong emotions both musically and in staging, costumes and scenery.

Influential opera composers include:

• Giuseppe Verdi - Italian composer whose work covered political themes, Shakespeare and historical and modern settings
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - introduced German language texts
• Richard Wagner - introduced through-composed style of opera. Famous for his epic Ring Cycle of operas.

Vocals and instruments

Operas consist of solo singers and a chorus. The orchestra that will provide the musical accompaniment to opera singers will consist of strings, woodwind, brass and percussion.

There is no speaking in an opera, only singing. Solo singers perform arias - solo songs that drive the narrative of the opera's story. The chorus will join in for the bigger songs and consist of a SATB choir who will sing mostly in harmony.

The parts that comprise an SATB choir are:

• Soprano
• Alto
• Tenor
• Bass

In this video, soprano Sophie Bevan sings 'Dido's Lament', an aria from the baroque opera 'Dido and Aeneas' by Henry Parcel (1687).

At certain points in the opera, soloists may join together to perform a duet or trio. If a singer's voice comes somewhere in between a soprano and alto they are called a mezzo soprano. Likewise if a male singer comes somewhere in between a tenor and bass he is a baritone. Opera singing uses a lot of vibrato and is highly recognisable compared to popular singing.

Listen to Kiri Te Kanawa's performance of 'Pie Jesu' by Gabriel Fauré to hear an example of soprano singing.

To make the music more effective, composers include melismatic and syllabic word setting.

Syllabic word setting is when a composer uses one note per syllable in order to make a word sound confident and clear.

Melismatic word setting is when a composer uses more than one note per syllable in order to make the word last longer so as to highlight a word for dramatic effect.

Watch the video of 'Juan' with the baritone singer Christopher Maltman. He is playing a very dramatic role and there is a need for the words to be clear. This is a good example of syllabic singing.

Types of opera

Operas tell stories of historical or mythological events:

• Handel's 'Giulio Cesare' by Handel tells the story of Julius Casear and his political rival Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus
• 'A Life for the Tsar' by Glinka tells the tale of a peasant who sacrificed his life in order to protect the Tsar
• 'War and Peace' by Prokovief tells the story of the 1812 invasion of Russia by Napoleon Bonaparte

Composers during the Romantic period would take inspiration from literature and poetry, seen with Verdi adapting Shakespeare’s play into the opera 'Otello', which premiered in La Scala Opera House in 1887.

Just as there are many styles of orchestral music, there are many styles of opera, for example:

• Henry Purcell's 'Dido and Aeneas' is an example of Baroque opera
• Mozart's 'Don Giovanni' is a Classical opera
• Heinrich Marschner's 'Der Vampyr' is a Romantic opera
• John Adam's 'Nixon in China' is a Minimalist opera