Italian-Style Opera Houses: A Historical Review

Abstract

<jats:p>Attending an opera involves a multi-sensory evaluation (acoustical, visual, and more), cultural background and other emotional parameters. The present work aims to investigate the historical development of Italian-style opera houses, from the 16th century until today. Called “Italian” due to their origin, they developed thanks to the mutual influence of the genre and the building characteristics. Furthermore, the acoustics of historical opera houses is now considered as intangible cultural heritage, so it should be known and preserved. The paper addressed the state-of-the-art literature—most of which was proposed in Italian—which can be driven easily by the sharing of historical and contemporary knowledge.</jats:p>

Measurements of Acoustical Parameters in the Ancient Open-Air Theatre of Tyndaris (Sicily, Italy)

“…This reflects a general trend observable in the broader field of archaeoacoustics [15]. There is indeed a renewed attention to the "acoustics of past" [16][17][18], which is driven by both a pure scholarly interest and a more practical need to adapt historical facilities to contemporary use [9,[19][20][21] and historical relevance, which could help to better understand the design and evolution of other performance spaces [22,23]. However, performing acoustical measurements poses a number of challenges because room acoustics parameters and standards are conceived for enclosed spaces and might not be straightforwardly applicable in outdoor contexts [24,25].…”

Special Issue: Advances in Architectural Acoustics

“…In his work [1], D'Orazio investigated the historical development of Italian-style opera houses from the 16th century to the present day. Called "Italian" due to their origin, operas developed thanks to the mutual influence of the genre and the building characteristics.…”

Early Italian Opera Within the Labyrinths of Postmodernity

“…And even then, it consisted for the most part of the usual clichés about "concerts in costumes" in opera seria and the willfulness of the singers, sometimes containing annoying factual mistakes. Until the 1970s, scholars from outside of Russia, even when they did resort to writing about the 300-to-400-year-old art of the opera, did that rarely, turning their attention almost exclusively to individual composers: Alessandro Scarlatti, 1 Niccolò Jommelli, 2 Giovanni Paisiello, 3 Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, 4 Domenico Cimarosa, 5 Alessandro Stradella. 6 Performances and recordings of early operas were just as rare -in fact, presenting a sporadic occurrence.…”

“…A Reappraisal (2018), where, in particular, the documents and materials related to the history of this operatic composition are examined, and an article written by John Rice highlights the context in which it was created -the musical and theatrical culture at the court of Emperor Leopold II. 16 Equally important for the reconstruction of early opera is the knowledge of how the theatrical business was arranged: what were the premises, the theatrical buildings intended for the performance of operas in the 17th and 18th centuries, [1] how opera troupes were formed, and what were the singers in their professional and ordinary lives. [2] Finally, the stage that we are going through today is directly related to the challenges of interpretation -in terms of both scholarship and performance.…”