Bel canto and Italian opera

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Genre

Bel canto and Italian opera · Bel canto means beautiful singing: in the Italian opera of the early nineteenth century everything revolved around the voice. With Tancredi (1813) Gioachino Rossini fixed the set form of the aria and in 1816 he had a success with Il barbiere di Siviglia. For La Scala in Milan Vincenzo Bellini wrote Norma (1831), full of long, floating melodies. Giuseppe Verdi made opera more dramatic; La donna è mobile from Rigoletto was being sung in the street the morning after the premiere.

Listening

• 
  Norma: Casta diva (Maria Callas) · Vincenzo Bellini, 1831
• 
  Il barbiere di Siviglia: Largo al factotum (Dmitri Hvorostovsky) · Gioachino Rossini, 1816
• 
  Rigoletto: La donna è mobile (Luciano Pavarotti) · Giuseppe Verdi, 1851

See also

• Viennese Classicism
• Early opera
• Operetta and the waltz
• Wagner and music drama
• Italian neorealism