History of Early Public and English Opera

Vocabulary flashcards covering the rise of public opera in Italy, seventeenth-century orchestral practices, and English opera featuring Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas.

Castroca Cacciano

The first public opera house, opened in 1637 in Venice, which marked opera's transition from private aristocratic courts to the paying public.

Prima donna

The leading female opera star or diva whose popularity turned opera into a commercial business.

Standard mid-seventeenth-century opera orchestra

A typical theatrical ensemble consisting of 12 to 14 string players, harpsichord, and one or two trumpets.

Castrati

Male singers castrated as young boys—a widespread practice in Naples—used to perform opera roles in Rome, where women were barred from stage performances.

Masque

A genre of opera-like theatrical entertainment in England that provided vocal music and was typically performed in the homes of nobility.

English theater prohibition (1649–1660)

A period between 1649 and 1660 when stage plays were banned in England because Puritans considered theater an invention of the devil, though musical concerts were still allowed.

Henry Purcell

A major English composer and organist at Westminster Abbey who died at age 36 and composed sacred choral works, keyboard pieces, instrumental music, and the opera Dido and Aeneas.

Dido and Aeneas

An English opera composed by Henry Purcell for a girls' boarding school, scored exclusively for strings and harpsichord without elaborate stage machinery.

Ground bass (in Dido's Lament)

A repeating five-measure chromatically descending ostinato baseline that loops 11 times beneath the vocal melody.

Chromaticism (in Dido and Aeneas)

A musical device featuring descending lines and sigh motifs employed in the score to represent grieving and tragedy.

Greek chorus function

The dramatic role fulfilled by the vocal chorus in Dido and Aeneas, standing aside to comment on the emotional and theatrical action.