Opera’s Evolution from Baroque Era to Classical.

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Brian Naughton MUSC1100_30 Opera Evolution Essay4 4 March, 2012 Opera’s Evolution from Baroque Era to Classical. Classical Opera's expansion and evolution owes a great deal of gratitude to the Baroque era of the early eighteenth century, but where Baroque opera was mainly designed and created for aristocracy or royal audiences, Classical opera branched out as a form of musical entertainment for the general public using the opera house as a center of experimentation. The population of the middle class would eventually become the mainstream participant engaging in opera entertainment as a response to aristocratic forms of opera. Some of Baroque's composers like Handel and Monteverdi used speech-like melodies in polyphonic textures in a linear-horizontal dimension consisting of continuous melody with wide leaps and chromatic tones for emotional effect where as classical composers such as Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven incorporated homophonic textures of chordal-vertical dimension with melody in balanced phrases and cadences with diatonic scales involving narrow leaps in their compositional works. The Baroque expressive effects of chromatic harmonies established in the major-minor key system with very brief expansions to other keys would evolve into Classical opera's favoring of diatonic harmonies expanding on the tonic-dominant scale which became the basis for classical opera's large scale form. Early baroque masters like Claudio Monteverdi wrote operas based on mythology and Roman history and English composer Henry Purcell wrote Dido and Aeneas, based on The Aeneid, a Roman epic by Vigil. These large-scale musicals combined acting, poetry, scenery and costumes accompanied by singing and instrumental music characterized by regular rhythms and continuous melodic expansion to evoke the emotions of the listener. The emotions of the Baroque revolved around a

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