OPERA HOUSE

An 'opera house' is a theater building where operas are performed. The venues are usually constructed specifically with opera in mind, although other performing arts may be performed there. An example of this is the Sydney Opera House, located on Sydney Harbour. At many opera houses, the opera season is followed by a ballet season.
The first public opera house was the Teatro San Cassiano in Venice, Italy, which opened in 1637. Italy, where opera has been popular through the centuries among ordinary people as well as wealthy patrons, still has a large number of opera houses.[1] When Henry Purcell was composing, there was no opera house in London. The first opera house in Germany was built in Hamburg 1678. Early U.S. opera houses served a variety of functions in towns and cities, hosting community dances, fairs, plays, and vaudeville shows as well as operas and other musical events.[2]

Contents

Features typical of opera houses

Finances

See also

References

Features typical of opera houses

Because many operas call for large-scale productions, opera houses are usually large – generally more than 1,000 seats and often several thousand seats. Many operas do not require large-scale productions and may be presented in smaller theaters.
In a traditional opera house, the auditorium is normally U-shaped, with the length of the sides deciding the audience capacity. Around this are tiers of balconies, and often, nearer the stage, are boxes (small partitioned sections of a balcony where a wealthy lady can sit comfortably in a wide-skirted ballgown). An opera house generally has a spacious orchestra pit, where a large number of orchestra players may be seated at a level below the audience, so that they can play without overwhelming the singing voices. The size of an opera orchestra varies, but for some operas, oratorios and other works, it may be very large — for some romantic period works, it can be well over 100 players. Similarly, an opera may have a large cast of characters, chorus, dancers and supernumeraries. Therefore, a major opera house will have extensive dressing room facilities. Opera houses often have on-premises set and costume building shops and facilities for storage of costumes, make-up, masks, and stage properties, and may also have rehearsal spaces.
Major opera houses throughout the world often have highly mechanized stages, with large stage elavators permitting heavy sets to be changed rapidly. At the Metropolitan Opera, for instance, sets are often changed during the action, as the audience watches, with singers rising or descending as they sing. This occurs, for example, in the Met's productions of ''Aida'' and ''Tales of Hoffman''. Although stage, lighting and other production aspects of opera houses often make use of the latest technology, traditional opera houses generally have not had elaborate sound systems, since the singers are normally expected to project unamplified voices. In many opera houses, however, sound systems are being introduced, as some operas or non-opera productions permit amplification.
Often, operas are presented in their original languages, which may be different from the first language of the audience. For example, an opera presented in London may be in the German language. Therefore, modern opera houses have begun to assist audience understanding of the text of the operas by providing supertitles projected over or near the stage and, more recently, a more complex electronic libretto system on individual screens attached to the backs of seats.

Finances

In the 17th and 18th centuries, opera houses were often financed by rulers, nobles, and very wealthy people who used patronage of the arts to endorse their political ambitions and social positions or prestige. With the rise of bourgeois and capitalist social forms in the 19th century, European culture moved away from its patronage system to the more publicly-supported system that is familiar today. Opera and theatre in general, were opened to mass audiences, and arts institutions, including opera houses, now must raise funds continuously from a combination of government and institutional grants, ticket sales and, to a smaller extent, private donations.

See also

★ List of opera houses

★ Theater

★ Opera

★ List of concert halls

★ List of buildings

References

★ Information about opera houses from BBC website

★ The history of opera houses and description of some of the great houses

★ History of opera

★ Hughes, Spike. ''Great Opera Houses; A Traveller's Guide to Their History and Traditions'', London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1956.

★ Kaldor, Andras. ''Great Opera Houses (Masterpieces of Architecture)'' Antique Collectors Club, 2002. ISBN 1851493638