Read the extract given below and answer the following questions.
Opera is a total art form which joins music, singing, drama, poetry, plastic arts and sometimes dance. In each work, all the components of opera combine their expressiveness and their beauty. This complex alchemy makes an opera performance an extraordinary show, monopolising the sight, hearing, imagination and sensibility of the audience, where all human passions are at work.
The libretto is the 'script' of an opera. It can be an original creation, sometimes written by famous poets or novelists, but often it is an adaptation of plays, tales or novels. The subjects developed in libretto are various: forbidden love, infidelity, revenge, craving for power, war, ancient myths or historic events. Love, Tragedy and Death are often at the heart of the plot. The characters, sometimes torn between their feelings and their duty, are confronted with extraordinary situations and are carried away by heightened feelings. This excess burns them, leading them to commit acts of violence and sometimes to death. Love at first sight, sacrifice, enchantment, courage, suicide and murder appear together in the libretto. Some characters are punished for their crimes, other find redemption or are stricken with remorse and sometimes there is a happy ending!
Unlike most theatre, the text is sung by the artists in operas. The emotion and the intensity of singing have an impact on the weight and the meaning words. There are different voices classified in six principal categories, from the more high-pitched to the lower: soprano, mezzo-soprano, contralto for women; and tenor, baritone and bass for men. Moreover, voices are characterized according to their power and agility: they can be light, lyric or dramatic. A light voice is not very powerful but can easily reach the high notes and vocalises, unlike a dramatic voice which is powerful but less agile.
Music expresses in another way the emotions and the action taking place on stage. Actually music does not only serve the libretto and the singing: it completes and exalts them by highlighting the intensity of situations and the characters' passions and feelings. By playing with rhythms, tones, melodies, nuances, the composers exploit the extraordinary suggestive power of the music in order to create particular atmospheres that lyrics or staging can not create. The opera begins with a unique triad which slowly emerges from silence and resonates in infinite depths: the Rhine comes out of original chaos. Little by little motifs add to this triad until creating a melody: first brass instruments, majestic, then strings, more ethereal, like sparkling waves on the river's surface. The more the orchestra becomes animated and enriches the prelude, the faster the motifs become as the more the Rhine swells and stirs, until foaming.
Before the 20th century, the theatrical dimension was marginalized: in the 17th century, opera productions were quite static and looked like a costumed concert. The staging became important when the programming of opera houses became more focused on an existing repertory than on new creation. Moreover, during the 20th century, the importance of singing and dramatic gifts began to be considered as equal. But opera stages have always be an extraordinary place, with spectacular visual effects and big machinery. The possibilities of staging have benefited from technical progress, and now special effects, digital technology and image projections are used in many productions.
1. Name the components of the Opera mentioned in the passage
2. What are some of the subjects developed in libretto and how do they influence the characters?
3. How are different voices classified and categorized?
4. How does a composers exploit the extraordinary suggestive power of music in an opera?
5. From the passage pick out a word which means 'harmony'
6. Pick the antonym of 'gloomy' from the passage.
7. What is The Opera? summarize using ideas from the passage above.
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