The Role of the Castroti Was Beloved and Reviewed Throughout the Entire Classical Era

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Poetry & Opera

The

Teatro alla Scala in Milan. Founded in 1778, La Scala is ane of the world'south most famous opera houses.

The

Sydney Opera House is one of the globe's most recognizable opera houses and landmarks.

Bolshoi Theatre.

Opera is a form of theatre in which the drama is conveyed wholly or predominantly through music and singing. Opera emerged in Italy around the year 1600 and is mostly associated with the Western classical music tradition. Opera uses many of the elements of spoken theatre such as scenery, costumes, and acting. Generally, even so, opera is distinguished from other dramatic forms by the importance of song. The singers are accompanied past a musical ensemble ranging from a minor instrumental ensemble to a total symphonic orchestra. Opera may also incorporate dance; this was especially true of French opera for much of its history.

Comparable art forms from various other parts of the earth, many of them aboriginal in origin, exist and are too sometimes called "opera" by analogy, usually prefaced with an adjective indicating the region (for example, Chinese opera). However, other than superficial similarities, these other fine art forms developed independently from and are unrelated to opera but are distinct art forms in their own right rather than mere derivatives of opera. Opera is not the merely blazon of Western musical theatre: in the ancient world, Greek drama featured singing and instrumental accompaniment; and in modern times, other forms such as the musical take appeared.

Operatic terminology

The words of an opera are known equally the libretto (literally "niggling volume"). Some composers, notably Richard Wagner, have written their own libretti; others accept worked in close collaboration with their librettists, due east.g. Mozart with Lorenzo da Ponte. Traditional opera consists of two modes of singing: recitative, the plot-driving passages often sung in a not-melodic style characteristic of opera, and aria (an "air" or formal song) in which the characters limited their emotions in a more structured melodic mode. Duets, trios and other ensembles frequently occur, and choruses are used to comment on the action. In some forms of opera, such as Singspiel, opéra comique, operetta, and semi-opera, the recitative is mostly replaced by spoken dialogue. Melodic or semi-melodic passages occurring in the midst of, or instead of, recitative, are also referred to as arioso. During the Baroque and Classical periods, recitative could appear in two basic forms: secco (dry) recitative, accompanied only by " continuo", which was often no more than than a harpsichord; or accompagnato (besides known as "stromentato") in which the orchestra provided accompaniment. By the 19th century, accompagnato had gained the upper hand, the orchestra played a much bigger function, and Richard Wagner revolutionised opera past abolishing well-nigh all distinction between aria and recitative in his quest for what he termed "countless melody". Subsequent composers take tended to follow Wagner's case, though some, such as Stravinsky in his The Rake'south Progress have bucked the trend. The terminology of the various kinds of operatic voices is described in Department iii beneath.

History

Origins

Claudio Monteverdi

The word opera ways "works" in Italian (from the plural of Latin opus meaning "piece of work" or "labour") suggesting that it combines the arts of solo and choral singing, declamation, acting and dancing in a staged spectacle. Dafne by Jacopo Peri was the primeval composition considered opera, as understood today. It was written around 1597, largely under the inspiration of an elite circumvolve of literate Florentine humanists who gathered as the " Camerata". Significantly, Dafne was an attempt to revive the classical Greek drama, part of the wider revival of artifact characteristic of the Renaissance. The members of the Camerata considered that the "chorus" parts of Greek dramas were originally sung, and perchance even the entire text of all roles; opera was thus conceived as a way of "restoring" this state of affairs. Dafne is unfortunately lost. A later work by Peri, Euridice, dating from 1600, is the commencement opera score to have survived to the present mean solar day. The accolade of being the first opera even so to be regularly performed, nonetheless, goes to Claudio Monteverdi's Orfeo, equanimous for the courtroom of Mantua in 1607.

Italian opera

The Baroque era

Opera did not remain confined to court audiences for long; in 1637 the idea of a "season" ( Funfair) of publicly-attended operas supported by ticket sales emerged in Venice. Monteverdi had moved to the urban center from Mantua and equanimous his concluding operas, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria and L'incoronazione di Poppea, for the Venetian theatre in the 1640s. His nearly important follower Francesco Cavalli helped spread opera throughout Italy. In these early Baroque operas, wide comedy was composite with tragic elements in a mix that jarred some educated sensibilities, sparking the first of opera's many reform movements, sponsored by Venice's Idealized University which came to be associated with the poet Metastasio, whose libretti helped crystallize the genre of opera seria, which became the leading form of Italian opera until the cease of the 18th century. Once the Metastasian ideal had been firmly established, comedy in Baroque-era opera was reserved for what came to be called opera buffa.

Opera seria was elevated in tone and highly stylised in class, usually consisting of secco recitative interspersed with long da capo arias. These afforded peachy opportunity for virtuosic singing and during the golden age of opera seria the singer really became the star. The office of the hero was ordinarily written for the castrato voice; castrati such equally Farinelli and Senesino, likewise as female sopranos such as Faustina Bordoni, became in corking demand throughout Europe every bit opera seria ruled the phase in every country except French republic. Italian opera set the Baroque standard. Italian libretti were the norm, even when a German composer like Handel found himself writing for London audiences. Italian libretti remained ascendant in the classical period also, for example in the operas of Mozart, who wrote in Vienna well-nigh the century's shut. Leading Italian-born composers of opera seria include Alessandro Scarlatti, Vivaldi and Porpora.

Reform: Gluck, the assail on the Metastasian ideal, and Mozart

Opera seria had its weaknesses and critics, and the taste for embellishment on behalf of the superbly trained singers, and the use of spectacle equally a replacement for dramatic purity and unity drew attacks. Francesco Algarotti'south Essay on the Opera (1755) proved to exist an inspiration for Christoph Willibald Gluck's reforms. He advocated that opera seria had to render to basics and that all the various elements -- music (both instrumental and vocal), ballet, and staging -- must be subservient to the overriding drama. Several composers of the period, including Niccolò Jommelli and Tommaso Traetta, attempted to put these ideals into practice. The get-go to actually succeed and to go out a permanent imprint upon the history of opera, however, was Gluck. Gluck tried to reach a "beautiful simplicity". This is illustrated in the first of his "reform" operas, Orfeo ed Euridice, where vocal lines lacking in the virtuosity of (say) Handel'due south works are supported by simple harmonies and a notably richer-than-usual orchestral presence throughout.

Gluck's reforms take had resonance throughout operatic history. Weber, Mozart and Wagner, in particular, were influenced past his ideals. Mozart, in many ways Gluck'due south successor, combined a superb sense of drama, harmony, melody, and counterpoint to write a series of comedies, notably Così fan tutte, The Marriage of Figaro, and Don Giovanni (in collaboration with Lorenzo Da Ponte) which remain among the most-loved, popular and well-known operas today. Just Mozart's contribution to opera seria was more than mixed; past his time it was dying abroad, and in spite of such fine works as Idomeneo and La Clemenza di Tito, he would not succeed in bringing the art form back to life again.

Bel canto, Verdi and verismo

Giuseppe Verdi, past

Giovanni Boldini, 1886 (National Gallery of Mod Art, Rome)

The bel canto opera movement flourished in the early 19th century and is exemplified past the operas of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Pacini, Mercadante and many others. Literally "cute singing", bel canto opera derives from the Italian stylistic singing school of the aforementioned proper noun. Bel canto lines are typically florid and intricate, requiring supreme agility and pitch command.

Following the bel canto era, a more directly, forceful style was rapidly popularized by Giuseppe Verdi, beginning with his biblical opera Nabucco. Verdi's operas resonated with the growing spirit of Italian nationalism in the mail service-Napoleonic era, and he quickly became an icon of the patriotic move (although his own politics were possibly not quite so radical). In the early 1850s, Verdi produced his three virtually popular operas: Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La traviata. But he continued to develop his mode, composing mayhap the greatest French Chiliad opera, Don Carlos, and ending his career with two Shakespeare-inspired works, Otello and Falstaff, which reveal how far Italian opera had grown in sophistication since the early 19th century.

Later on Verdi, the sentimental "realistic" melodrama of verismo appeared in Italy. This was a style introduced by Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana and Ruggiero Leoncavallo's Pagliacci that came virtually to boss the world'south opera stages with such popular works as Giacomo Puccini'due south La Boheme, Tosca, and Madama Butterfly. Later Italian composers, such equally Berio and Nono, have experimented with modernism.

French opera

1875 poster for Bizet'due south Carmen

In rivalry with imported Italian opera productions, a dissever French tradition was founded by the Italian Jean-Baptiste Lully at the courtroom of King Louis 14. Despite his foreign origin, Lully established an Academy of Music and monopolised French opera from 1672. Starting with Cadmus et Hermione, Lully and his librettist Quinault created tragédie en musique,a form in which dance music and choral writing were particularly prominent. Lully's operas also bear witness a concern for expressive recitative which matched the contours of the French language. In the 18th century, Lully's about important successor was Rameau, who composed five tragédies en musique as well as numerous works in other genres such as opera-ballet, all notable for their rich orchestration and harmonic daring. After Rameau'southward death, the High german Gluck was persuaded to produce six operas for the Parisian stage in the 1770s. They show the influence of Rameau, just simplified and with greater focus on the drama. At the aforementioned time, by the middle of the 18th century some other genre was gaining popularity in French republic: opéra comique. This was the equivalent of the German singspiel, where arias alternated with spoken dialogue. Notable examples in this fashion were produced by Monsigny, Philidor and, in a higher place all, Grétry. During the Revolutionary period, composers such equally Méhul and Cherubini, who were followers of Gluck, brought a new seriousness to the genre, which had never been wholly "comic" in whatever case.

By the 1820s, Gluckian influence in France had given way to a taste for Italian bel canto, especially later on the arrival of Rossini in Paris. Rossini'south Guillaume Tell helped found the new genre of 1000 opera, a form whose most famous exponent was another foreigner, Giacomo Meyerbeer. Meyerbeer'south works, such as Les Huguenots emphasised virtuoso singing and extraordinary stage effects. Lighter opéra comique besides enjoyed tremendous success in the hands of Boïeldieu, Auber, Hérold and Adolphe Adam. In this climate, the operas of the French-born composer Hector Berlioz struggled to gain a hearing. Berlioz's epic masterpiece Les Troyens, the culmination of the Gluckian tradition, was not given a full performance for almost a hundred years.

In the second half of the 19th century, Jacques Offenbach created operetta with witty and cynical works such as Orphée aux enfers; Charles Gounod scored a massive success with Faust; and Bizet equanimous Carmen, which, once audiences learned to accept its alloy of Romanticism and realism, became the most pop of all opéra comiques. Massenet, Saint-Saëns and Delibes all composed works which are nevertheless role of the standard repertory. At the same fourth dimension, the influence of Richard Wagner was felt as a claiming to the French tradition. Many French critics angrily rejected Wagner's music dramas while many French composers closely imitated them with variable success. Possibly the virtually interesting response came from Claude Debussy. As in Wagner's works, the orchestra plays a leading role in Debussy's unique opera Pelléas et Mélisande ( 1902) and there are no real arias, only recitative. Just the drama is understated, enigmatic and completely unWagnerian.

Other notable 20th century names include Ravel, Dukas, Roussel and Milhaud. Francis Poulenc is one of the very few mail-war composers of any nationality whose operas (which include Dialogues des carmélites)) take gained a foothold in the international repertory. Olivier Messiaen's lengthy sacred drama Saint François d'Assise ( 1983) has also attracted widespread attention.

High german-language opera

The start German opera was Dafne, equanimous by Heinrich Schütz in 1627 (the music has not survived). Italian opera held a slap-up sway over German-speaking countries until the late 18th century. Nevertheless, native forms developed too. In 1644 Sigmund Staden produced the beginning Singspiel, a popular form of High german-language opera in which singing alternates with spoken dialogue. In the late 17th and early on 18th centuries, the Theatre am Gänsemarkt in Hamburg presented German language operas by Keiser, Telemann and Handel. Yet many of the major German language composers of the time, including Handel himself, as well as Graun, Hasse and afterwards Gluck, chose to write most of their operas in foreign languages, specially Italian.

Mozart's Singspiele, Dice Entführung aus dem Serail ( 1782) and Die Zauberflöte ( 1791) were an important breakthrough in achieving international recognition for German opera. The tradition was developed in the 19th century past Beethoven with his Fidelio, inspired by the climate of the French Revolution. Carl Maria von Weber established German Romantic opera in opposition to the dominance of Italian bel canto. His Der Freischütz ( 1821) shows his genius for creating supernatural temper. Other opera composers of the fourth dimension include Marschner, Schubert, Schumann and Lortzing, only the most important figure was undoubtedly Richard Wagner.

Illustration inspired by Wagner'due south music drama Das Rheingold

Wagner was one of the nearly revolutionary and controversial composers in musical history. Starting nether the influence of Weber and Meyerbeer, he gradually evolved a new concept of opera as a Gesamtkunstwerk (a "complete piece of work of fine art"), a fusion of music, verse and painting. In his mature music dramas, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Der Ring des Nibelungen and Parsifal, he abolished the stardom between aria and recitative in favour of a seamless menses of "countless melody".He greatly increased the part and power of the orchestra, creating scores with a complex web of leitmotivs, recurring themes ofttimes associated with the characters and concepts of the drama; and he was prepared to violate accepted musical conventions, such as tonality, in his quest for greater expressivity. Wagner also brought a new philosophical dimension to opera in his works, which were normally based on stories from Germanic or Arthurian legend. Finally, Wagner congenital his ain opera house at Bayreuth, exclusively defended to performing his ain works in the style he wanted.

Opera would never be the same after Wagner and for many composers his legacy proved a heavy burden. On the other hand, Richard Strauss accepted Wagnerian ideas but took them in wholly new directions. He start won fame with the scandalous Salome and the dark tragedy Elektra, in which tonality was pushed to the limits. Then Strauss changed tack in his greatest success, Der Rosenkavalier, where Mozart and Viennese waltzes became every bit important an influence as Wagner. Strauss continued to produce a highly varied body of operatic works, often with libretti by the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal, right up until Capriccio in 1942. Other composers who made individual contributions to German opera in the early on 20th century include Zemlinsky, Hindemith, Kurt Weill and the Italian-born Ferruccio Busoni. The operatic innovations of Arnold Schoenberg and his successors are discussed in the section on modernism.

English-linguistic communication opera

England'due south kickoff notable composer working in operatic formats was John Blow, the composer of Venus and Adonis, oftentimes thought of equally the first truthful English-linguistic communication opera. Accident's firsthand successor was the far more well-known Henry Purcell. Despite the success of his masterwork Dido and Aeneas, in which the activity is furthered by the use of Italian-way recitative, much of Purcell'southward best piece of work was not involved in the composing of typical opera just instead he unremarkably worked within the constraints of the semi-opera format, where isolated scenes and masques are independent inside the structure of a spoken play. The master characters of the play tend not to be involved in the musical scenes, which means that Purcell was rarely able to develop his characters through song. Despite these hindrances, his aim (and that of his collaborator John Dryden) was to found serious opera in England, just these hopes concluded with Purcell'southward early on death at the age of 36.

Following Purcell, for many years Peachy Britain was essentially an outpost of Italianate opera. Handel'southward opera serias dominated the London operatic stages for decades, and even abode-grown composers such equally Thomas Arne wrote using Italian models. This situation continued throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, including Michael Balfe, except for ballad operas, such every bit John Gay'south The Ragamuffin's Opera, which spoofed operatic conventions, and late Victorian era light operas, notably Arthur Sullivan's Savoy Operas. French operetta was likewise ofttimes heard in London through the 1870s.

However, in the 20th century, English opera began to assert more independence with works of Ralph Vaughn Williams and in particular Benjamin Britten, who in a series of fine works that remain in standard repertory today revealed an splendid flair for the dramatic and superb musicality. Today composers such as Thomas Adès proceed to export English opera abroad.

Also in the 20th century, American composers similar Gershwin, Gian Carlo Menotti, and Carlisle Floyd began to contribute English-language operas infused with touches of popular musical styles. They were followed past modernists like Philip Glass, Mark Adamo, John Coolidge Adams, and Jake Heggie.

Russian opera

Feodor Chaliapin as

Ivan Susanin in

Glinka's A Life for the Tsar

Opera was brought to Russian federation in the 1730s by the Italian operatic troupes and soon information technology became an important office of entertainment for the Russian Majestic Court and aristocracy. Many foreign composers such as Baldassare Galuppi, Giovanni Paisiello, Giuseppe Sarti, and Domenico Cimarosa (as well as diverse others) were invited to Russia to etch new operas, more often than not in the Italian language. Simultaneously some domestic musicians like Maksym Berezovsky and Dmytro Bortniansky were sent abroad to learn to write operas. The first opera written in Russian was Tsefal i Prokris by the Italian composer Francesco Araja (1755). The development of Russian-language opera was supported by the Russian composers Vasily Pashkevich, Yevstigney Fomin and Alexey Verstovsky.

However, the real nascency of Russian opera came with Mikhail Glinka and his 2 great operas A Life for the Tsar, (1836) and Ruslan and Lyudmila (1842). Afterward him in the 19th century in Russia there were written such operatic masterpieces as Rusalka and The Stone Guest by Alexander Dargomyzhsky, Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina by Pocket-size Mussorgsky, Prince Igor by Alexander Borodin, Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades past Pyotr Tchaikovsky, and The Snow Maiden and Sadko by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. These developments mirrored the growth of Russian nationalism across the artistic spectrum, as function of the more general Slavophilism move.

In the 20th century the traditions of Russian opera were developed past many composers including Sergei Rachmaninov in his works The Miserly Knight and Franchesca da Rimini, Igor Stravinsky in Le rossignol, Mavra, Oedipus rex, and The Rake's Progress, Sergei Prokofiev in The Gambler, The Beloved for Iii Oranges, The Fiery Angel, Betrothal in a Monastery, and War and Peace; as well as Dmitri Shostakovich in The Nose and Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk Commune, Edison Denisov in Fifty'écume des jours, and Alfred Schnittke in Life With an Idiot, and Historia von D. Johann Fausten.

Other national operas

Spain likewise produced its ain distinctive class of opera, known as zarzuela, which had 2 separate flowerings: one in the 17th century, and another beginning in the mid-19th century. During the 18th century, Italian opera was immensely pop in Spain, supplanting the native form.

Czech composers also developed a thriving national opera movement of their own in the 19th century, starting with Bedřich Smetana who wrote eight operas including the internationally pop The Bartered Bride. Antonín Dvořák, most famous for Rusalka, wrote 13 operas; and Leoš Janáček gained international recognition in the 20th century for his innovative works including Jenůfa, The Cunning Piddling Vixen, and Káťa Kabanová.

The key figure of Hungarian national opera in the 19th century was Ferenc Erkel, whose works generally dealt with historical themes. Among his most often performed operas are Hunyadi László and Bánk bán. The most famous modernistic Hungarian opera is Béla Bartók's Knuckles Bluebeard'due south Castle. Erkel'southward Polish equivalent was Stanislaw Moniuszko, near celebrated for the opera Straszny Dwór.

Gimmicky, recent, and Modernist trends

Modernism

Perhaps the near obvious stylistic manifestation of modernism in opera is the development of atonality. The move away from traditional tonality in opera had begun with Wagner, and in item the Tristan chord, just later on his expiry no further innovations in style were introduced for a considerable length of time. Composers such as Richard Strauss, Giacomo Puccini, Paul Hindemith and Hans Pfitzner adjusted and worked inside Wagnerian parameters but did not go very far beyond them.

Operatic Modernism truly began in the operas of two Viennese composers, Arnold Schoenberg and his acolyte Alban Berg, both composers and advocates of atonality and its later development (every bit worked out by Schoenberg), dodecaphony. Schoenberg's early musico-dramatic works, Erwartung (1909, premiered in 1924) and Die Gluckliche Paw display heavy use of chromatic harmony and dissonance in full general. Schoenberg as well occasionally used Sprechstimme, which he described as: "The vocalism rising and falling relative to the indicated intervals, and everything being spring together with the fourth dimension and rhythm of the music except where a pause is indicated".

The 2 operas of Schoenberg's pupil Alban Berg, Wozzeck and Lulu (left incomplete at his decease) share many of the same characteristics as described above, though Berg combined his highly personal interpretation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique with melodic passages of a more traditionally tonal nature (quite Mahlerian in character) which perhaps partially explains why his operas have remained in standard repertory, despite their controversial music and plots. Schoenberg'southward theories have influenced (either straight or indirectly) significant numbers of opera composers e'er since, even if they themselves did non compose using his techniques. Composers thus influenced include the Englishman Benjamin Britten, the German Hans Werner Henze, and the Russian Dmitri Shostakovich. ( Philip Glass as well makes use of atonality, though his style is generally described as minimalist, usually thought of every bit another 20th century evolution.)

However, operatic modernism's apply of dodecaphony sparked a backlash among several leading composers. Prominent among the vanguard of these was the Russian Igor Stravinsky. After composing obviously Modernist music for the Diaghilev-produced ballets Petrushka and The Rite of Bound, in the 1920s Stravinsky turned to Neoclassicism, culminating in his opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex. When he did etch a full-length opera that was without doubt an opera (afterward his Rimsky-Korsakov-inspired works The Nightingale (1914), and Mavra (1922)), in the The Rake's Progress he continued to ignore serialist techniques and wrote an 18th century-fashion "number" opera, using diatonicism. His resistance to serialism proved to exist an inspiration for many other composers.

Other trends

A common trend throughout the 20th Century, in both opera and general orchestral repertoire, is the downsizing of orchestral forces. Equally patronage of the arts decreases, new works are commissioned and performed with smaller budgets, very frequently resulting in sleeping accommodation-sized works, and 1 act operas. Many of Benjamin Britten's operas are scored for equally few equally 13 instrumentalists; Mark Adamo's two-deed realization of Piffling Women is scored for 18 instrumentalists.

Some other feature of 20th Century opera is the emergence of contemporary historical operas. The Death of Klinghoffer and Nixon in Mainland china by John Adams, and Dead Man Walking by Jake Heggie exemplify the dramatisation on phase of events in recent living memory, where characters portrayed in the opera were alive at the time of the premiere performance. Earlier models of opera generally stuck to more than distant history, re-telling gimmicky fictional stories (reworkings of popular plays), or mythical/legendary stories.

The Metropolitan Opera reports that the average age of its patrons is now 60. Many opera companies, take experienced a similar trend, and opera company websites are replete with attempts to attract a younger audience. This trend is role of the larger trend of greying audiences for classical music since the last decades of the 20th century.

From musicals dorsum towards opera

Also past the tardily 1930s, some musicals began to be written with a more operatic structure. These works include circuitous polyphonic ensembles and reverberate musical developments of their times. Porgy and Bess, influenced by jazz styles, and Candide, with its sweeping, lyrical passages and farcical parodies of opera, both opened on Broadway but became accepted every bit part of the opera repertory. Show Boat, W Side Story, Brigadoon, Sweeney Todd, Evita and others tell dramatic stories through complex music and are now sometimes seen in opera houses. Some musicals, beginning with Tommy (1969) and Jesus Christ Superstar (1971), are through-composed, written with recitative instead of dialogue, telling their emotional stories predominantly through the music, and are styled rock operas.

Operatic voices

Singers and the roles they play are initially classified according to their song ranges. Male singers are classified by song range equally bass, bass-baritone, baritone, tenor and countertenor. Female singers are classified by vocal range as contralto, mezzo-soprano and soprano. Additionally, singers' voices are loosely identified by characteristics other than range, such as timbre or colour, song quality, agility, power, and tessitura. Thus a soprano may be termed a lyric soprano, coloratura, soubrette, spinto, or dramatic soprano; these terms, although not fully describing a singing voice, associate the singer's voice with the roles most suitable to the singer's vocal characteristics. The German Fach organization is an especially organized arrangement of vocal classification. A particular singer's voice may change drastically over his or her lifetime, rarely reaching vocal maturity until the third decade, and sometimes not until middle historic period.

Histories

The soprano vocalism has typically been used throughout operatic history as the voice of choice for the female protagonist of the opera in question. The current emphasis on a wide song range was primarily an invention of the Classical period. Earlier that, the vocal virtuosity, not range, was the priority, with soprano parts rarely extending above a high A ( Handel, for case, simply wrote one role extending to a high C), though the castrato Farinelli was alleged to possess a top F. The contralto register enjoys only a limited operatic repertoire; hence the saying that contraltos only sing "Witches, bitches, and britches", and in recent years many of the trouser roles from the Bizarre era have been assigned to countertenors.

The tenor voice, from the Classical era onwards, has traditionally been assigned the role of male protagonist. Many of the most challenging tenor roles in the repertory were written during the bel canto era, such as Donizetti's sequence of 9 Cs above middle C during La fille du régiment. With Wagner came an accent on vocal weight for his protagonist roles, the vocal category of which is described by the term heldentenor. Bass roles have a long history in opera, having been used in opera seria for comic relief (and equally a contrast to the preponderance of high voices in this genre). The bass repertoire is wide and varied, stretching from the buffo comedy of Leporello in Don Giovanni to the nobility of Wotan in Wagner's Ring Cycle. In between the bass and the tenor is the baritone.

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Source: https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/o/Opera.htm