Opera Music of Italy

The opera originated in Italy in  the late 16^th century during the period of the FlorentineCamerata, through the centuries that followed, the opera culture established in Venice and Naples; the operas of Claude Monteverdi, Alessandro Scarlatti and later, of Gioacchino Rossini, Vincenzo Bellini and Gaetano Donizetti flourished. Opera has remained the musical way most connected with the Italian music and Italian identity. This was most obvious in the 19^th century through the works of Giuseppe Verdi, and icon of Italian tradition and pan-Italian unity, Italy retained a Romantic operatic musical tradition in the early 20^th century, exemplified by composers known as Giovane Scuola, whose music was anchored in the past century, which include Leoncavallo Ruggiero, Pietro Mascagni, Arrigo Boito, and Francesco Cilea. Giacomo Puccini, who was a realist composer, has been described by Encyclopedia Britannica Online as the man who virtually brought the history of Italian opera to an end.

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After the end of the word war I, though, opera failed in comparison to the famous heights of the 19^th century and the early 20^th century, causes included the general cultural shift away from Romantic and the rise of the cinema, which became a major source of entertainment. A third cause is the fact that internationalism had brought the current Italian opera to a state where it was no longer Italian. It was the opinion of at least one prominent Italian musicologist and critic, Fausto Terrefranca who, in a 1912 leaflet entitled Giaccomo Puccini and international opera, accused Puccini of commercialism and of having abandoned Italian cultures. Traditional Romantic opera reamined famous; indeed, the lead opera publisher in the early 20^th century was Casa Ricordi, which focused almost exclusively on the well-known operas until in the 1930s, when the company allowed more unusual composers with less normal appeal. The rise of relatively new publishers like Carisch and Suvini Zerboni also helped to fuel the expansion of Italian opera. Opera remains a main part of Italian culture; renewed interest in opera all over the sectors of Italian society started in the 1980s. Respected composers from this period include the popular Aldo Clementi and the younger peers like Lorenzo Ferrero and Marco Tutino.