The text of an opera is called a libretto. the earliest opera libretti were based on mythology, epic poetry, and ancient history.

Henry Purcell wrote Dido and Aeneas, based on The Aeneid, a Roman epic by Virgil. The closing Lament by Dido is a powerful expression of grief that reflects contemporary ideals about womanhood.

The principal components of opera include the orchestral overture, solo arias (lyrical songs), and recitatives (speechlike declamations of the text), and ensemble numbers, including choruses.

The most important new genre of the Baroque era was opera, a large-scale music drama that combines poetry, acting, scenery, and costumes with singing and instrumental music.

An opera is a large-scale drama that is sung. It combines the resources of vocal and instrumental music - soloists, ensembles, chorus, orchestra, and sometimes ballet - with poetry and drama, acting and pantomime, scenery and costumes.

The plot and action are generally advanced through a kid of musical declamation, or speech, known as recitative.

Recitative gives way from time to time to the aria, which releases through melody the tension accumulated in the course of the action.

The orchestra sets the appropriate mood for the different scenes. It also performs the overture, heard at the beginning of most operas, which may introduce melodies from the arias.

Each act of the opera normally opens with an orchestral production, and between scenes we may find interludes, or sinfonias.

The libretto, the text of script of the opera, must be devised to give the composer an opportunity to write music for the diverse numbers - recitatives and arias, ensembles, choruses, interludes - that have become the traditional features of this art form.

In early seventeenth century England, the masque, a type of entertainment that combined vocal and instrumental music with poetry and dance, became popular among the aristocracy.

In the last act of Dido and Aeneas, Purcell begins the act with a sprightly tune in the style of a hornpipe, a dance form often associated with sailors, and characterized by a reversed dotted figure called a Scotch snap.

Aria in two sections, each repeated (A-A-B-B), over ground bass

Mozart's Requiem Mass, left unfinished at the composer's death, exemplifies the grand style of Catholic music in Vienna.

"Among all the arts, music alone can be purely religious."
-Madame de Stael

Sacred music genres of the later 1700s included the oratorio and the Mass.

A Mass is a music setting of the most solemn service of the Roman Catholic Church, and a Requiem is a musical setting of the Mass for the Dead.

Classical composers continued the tradition of writing worship music for their communities.

The oratorio, of which Handel's Messiah is a prime example, is generally focused on a biblical story.

Ultimately myths surrounding a remarkable composer's early death continue to shape our culture's notions of creative genius.

"I am writing a Requiem for myself." -Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Over the centuries since the composition of Mozart's Requiem, the expressive power of the Requiem has been widely recognized by audiences form many cultures. Mozart could never have imagined how much his work would ultimately mean to the world.

Involves vocal and instrumental music, poetry, acting, scenery, and costumes

Not mythological stories about love triangles and historical figures

Combined vocal and instrumental music with poetry and dance

Last act features a lively hornpipe and concludes with a lament over a ground bass

Orchestra included more instruments - bassoon and basset horn

The moving work was chosen for the funeral of President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963

Played in 2002 on the one-year anniversary of the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York, a rolling performance of Mozart's Requiem was given in all corners of the globe, each beginning at 8:46 am, the time of the first attack.

Forceful, accented duple meter

Set in eight verses, each treated with different performing forces

Mood shifts from fear (loud, accented) to wonderment to a quiet plea for salvation

Hector Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique is a five-movement program symphony unified by a recurring theme (indée fixe) that represents the composer's beloved.

"The painter turns a poem into a painting; the musician sets a picture to music." -Robert Schumann

Many Romantic composers cultivated program music - instrumental music - instrumental music with a literary or pictorial association supplied by the composer - over absolute music.

The genre that evokes images and ideas became known as program music, or instrumental music with literary or pictorial associations.

Program music is distinguished from absolute, or pure, music, which consists of musical patterns that are designed without intended literary or pictorial meanings, like Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

Program music was especially important during the nineteenth century, when musicians became sharply conscious of the connection between their art and the world around them. Adding a programmatic title brought music closer to poetry and painting, and helped composers relate their own work to the moral and political issues of their time.

Symphonie fantastique's recurrent theme, called an indée fixe, acts as a musical thread unifying the five diverse movements, though its appearances are varied in harmony, rhythm, meter, tempo, dynamics, register, and instrumental color.

This type of unification, called thematic transformation, serves the huge, expansive form of Berloiz's symphony.

Hector Belioz's works, showing the favorite literary influences of the Romantic period, draw on Goethe, Lord Byron, and especially Shakespeare, the source for his overture King Lear, his opera Beatrice et Benedict, and his dramatic symphony Romeo and Juliet.

Different from absolute music = musical patterns designed without meanings

Program music = instrumental music with literary or pictorial associations specified by the composer

Fell in love with Harriet Smithson - Actress performed Shakespeare

Married her, but loved her as a Shakespeare actress more than he loved her for own personality

"The musician remembers the weariness of soul, the indefinable yearning he knew before meeting his beloved. Then, the volcanic love with which she at once inspired him, his delirious suffering...His religious consolation."

"Amid the tumult and excitement of a brilliant ball, he glimpses the loved one again."

"On a summer evening in the country he hears two shepards piping. The pastoral duet, the quiet surroundings... all unite to fill his heart with a long-absent feeling of calm. But she appears again, his heart contracts. Painful forebodings fill his soul."

"He dreams that he is killed by his beloved, that he has been condemned to die and is being led to the scaffold.... At the very end, the fixed idea reappears for an instant, like a last thought of love interrupted by the fall of the blade."

"He sees himself at a witch's sabbath surrounding by a host of fearsome spirits that have gathered for his funeral. Unearthly sounds, groans, shrieks of laughter. The melody of his beloved is heard, but it has long lost its noble and reserved character. It has become a vulgar tune, trivial and grotesque. It is she who comes to the infernal orgy. A howl of joy greets her arrival. She joins the diabolical dance. Bells toll for the dead. A burlesque of the Dies irae. Dance of the witches. The Dance and the Dies Irae combined."

Program: A lovesick artist in an opium trance is haunted by a vision of his beloved, which becomes an idée fixe (fixed idea).

I. Reveries, Passions: Largo; Allegro agitato e appassionato assai (lively, agitated, and impassioned)

"Young musician of morbid sensibility and ardent imagination in lovesick despair."

Varied throughout by harmony, meter, timbre, dynamics, and registrar

Sonata-like, with two themes introduced, developed, then recapped

Sudden dynamic changes, idea of the beloved at the end as a clarinet solo, then a sudden chord (beheading)

Theme A - an energetic, downward minor scale in low strings, then violins (with bassoon countermelody)

Theme B - diabolical march tune, played by brass and woodwinds

This was an opera in which the lead singer wore a red dress and had big hair.