Baroque Vocal Music:

Opera:

• opera invented in baroque
• drama that is sung
• combines all of the arts
• uses soloists, chorus, orchestra, dancers
• Commedia del Arte (Opera first developed in Italy)

Conventions in Baroque Opera:

• Overture
• Recitatives
• Arias
• Ensembles (duets, trios, etc.)
• Choruses (“big finish” of an act or opera)
• Baroque Opera is spectacle (“opera seria”, “opera comique”, flying machines, trap doors)

Orfeo, Monteverdi (Orpheus)

• Eurydice
• goes to underworld to try to save to her