Opera, a History of the Impossible Genre

Jeffrey Langford is Associate Dean for Doctoral Studies at the Manhattan School of Music in New York, NY. He is author of A History of the Symphony (Routledge, 2019) and Evenings at the Opera (Amadeus Press, 2011).

1 First steps toward a new genre ; 2 Claudio Monteverdi, the first genius; 3 The rise of Italian opera seria; 4 French opera of the 17th and 18th centuries; 5 The birth of comic opera; 6 Gioachino Rossini, a bridge to the 19th century; 7 Gaetano Donizetti, a master of Italian Romantic opera; 8 Giuseppe Verdi, Part I: Italian opera in revolution; 9 The rise of German Romantic opera; 10 Hector Berlioz and 19th-century French grand opera; 11 Charles Gounod and French opéra lyrique; 12 Russian opera, Part I: Modest Mussorgsky and the nationalist style; 13 Russian opera, Part II: Pyotr (Peter) Ilyich Tchaikovsky andthe cosmopolitan style; 14 Giuseppe Verdi, Part II: The final years; 15 Bizet, Puccini, and the rise of verismo opera; 16 Richard Strauss and the changing styles of symphonic opera; 17 Claude Debussy and Impressionism in opera; 18 Alban Berg and the problem of atonal opera; 19 Béla Bartók, a 20th-century nationalist; 20 Benjamin Britten and 20th-century operatic conservatism; 21 Igor Stravinsky and neoclassical opera; 22 Minimalist opera; 23 Opera today: A sample