TPO 12 Lecture 3　Music history
　　Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in a music history class. The professor has been discussing Opera.

　　Professor: The word opera means work, actually it means works. It’s the plural of the wordopus from the Latin. And in Italian it refers in general to works of art. OperaLyric or lyric of opera refers to what we think of as opera, the musical drama.Opera was commonplace in Italy for almost thousands of years before itbecame commercial as a venture. And during those years, several thingshappened primarily linguistic or thematic and both involving secularization.

　　Musical drama started in the churches. It was an educational tool. It was usedprimarily as a vehicle for teaching religion and was generally presented in theLatin, the language of the Christian Church which had considerable influencein Italy at that time. But the language of everyday life was evolving in Europeand at a certain point in the middle ages it was really only merchants, Socraticsand clergy who can deal with Latin. The vast majority of the population used their own regional vernacular in all aspects to their lives. And so in what is nowItaly, operas quit being presented in Latin and started being presented inItalian. And once that happened, the themes of the opera presentations alsostarted to change. And musical drama moved from the church to the plaza rightoutside the church. And the themes again, the themes changed. And operawas no longer about teaching religion as it was about satire and aboutexpressing the ideas of society your government without committing yourselfto writing and risking imprisonment or persecution, or what have you.

　　Opera, as we think of it, is of course a rather restive form. It is the melodiousdrama of ancient Greek theater, the term ‘melodious drama’ being shortenedeventually to ‘melodrama’ because operas frequently are melodramatic, not tosay unrealistic. And the group that put the first operas together that we havetoday even, were, they were…well…it was a group of men that included GalloLeo’s father Venchesil, and they met in Florence he and a group of friends ofthe counts of the party and they formed what is called the Camarola DayirBardy. And they took classical theater and reproduced it in the Renaissance’stime. This…uh…this produced some of the operas that we have today.

　　Now what happened in the following centuries is very simple. Opera originatedin Italy but was not confined to Italy any more than the Italians were. And so asthe Italians migrated across Europe, they carried theater with them and operaspecifically because it was an Italian form. What happened is that the majordivide in opera that endures today took place. The French said operaauto-reflect the rhythm and Kevin of dramatic literature, bearing in mind thatwe are talking about the golden age in French literature. And so the music wassecondary, if you will, to the dramatic Kevin of language, to the way the rhythmof language was used to express feeling and used to add drama and of courseas a result instead of arias or solos, which would come to dominated Italianopera. The French relied on that what is the Italian called French Word 1 orFrench Word 2 in English. The lyrics were spoken, frequently to theaccomp**nt of a harpsichord.

　　The French said you really cannot talk about real people who lived in operaand they relied on mythology to give them their characters and their plots,mythology, the past old traditions, the novels of chivalry or the epics of chivalryout of the middle Ages. The Italian said, no this is a great historical tool andwhat a better way to educate the public about Neo or Attalla or any number ofpeople than to put them into a play they can see and listen to. The Englishappropriated opera after the French. Opera came late to England because all theaters, public theaters were closed, of course, during their civil war. And itwasn’t until the restoration in 1660 that public theaters again opened andopera took off. The English made a major adjustment to opera and exportedwhat they had done to opera back to Italy. So that you have this circle ofmusical influences, the Italians invented opera, the French adapted it, theEnglish adopted it, and the Italians took it back.

　　It came to America late and was considered to elites for the general public. ButBroadway musicals fulfilled a similar function for a great long while. GeorgeChampon wrote about opera, “If an extraterrestrial being or two appear beforeus and say, what is your society like, what is this Earth thing all about, youcould do worse than take that creature to an opera.” Because opera does, afterall, begin with a man and a woman and any motion.