Editing Opera (section)

===English-language opera===
{{Main|Opera in English}}
[[File:Henry Purcell.jpg|thumb|upright|left|[[Henry Purcell]]]]
{{Listen|type=music|filename=Stay, Prince and hear.ogg|title=Stay, Prince and hear|description=Scene from Purcell's ''[[Dido and Aeneas]]''. The witches' messenger, in the form of Mercury himself, attempts to convince Aeneas to leave Carthage.}}
In England, opera's antecedent was the 17th-century ''jig''. This was an afterpiece that came at the end of a play. It was frequently [[libel]]lous and scandalous and consisted in the main of dialogue set to music arranged from popular tunes. In this respect, jigs anticipate the ballad operas of the 18th century. At the same time, the French [[masque]] was gaining a firm hold at the English Court, with even more lavish splendour and highly realistic scenery than had been seen before. [[Inigo Jones]] became the quintessential designer of these productions, and this style was to dominate the English stage for three centuries. These masques contained songs and dances. In [[Ben Jonson]]'s ''Lovers Made Men'' (1617), "the whole masque was sung after the Italian manner, stilo recitativo".<ref name=IvanhoeSite>[http://www.webrarian.co.uk/ivanhoe/ivan01.html From Webrarian.com's] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927062651/http://www.webrarian.co.uk/ivanhoe/ivan01.html |date=27 September 2007 }} ''[[Ivanhoe (opera)|Ivanhoe]]'' site.</ref> The approach of the [[English Commonwealth]] closed theatres and halted any developments that may have led to the establishment of English opera. However, in 1656, the [[dramatist]] Sir [[William Davenant]] produced ''[[The Siege of Rhodes]]''. Since his theatre was not licensed to produce drama, he asked several of the leading composers ([[Henry Lawes|Lawes]], [[Henry Cooke (composer)|Cooke]], [[Matthew Locke (composer)|Locke]], [[Charles Coleman (composer)|Coleman]] and [[George Hudson (composer)|Hudson]]) to set sections of it to music. This success was followed by ''[[The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru]]'' (1658) and ''[[The History of Sir Francis Drake]]'' (1659). These pieces were encouraged by [[Oliver Cromwell]] because they were critical of Spain. With the [[English Restoration]], foreign (especially French) musicians were welcomed back. In 1673, [[Thomas Shadwell]]'s ''[[Psyche (Locke)|Psyche]]'', patterned on the 1671 'comédie-ballet' of the same name produced by [[Molière]] and [[Jean-Baptiste Lully]]. [[William Davenant]] produced ''The Tempest'' in the same year, which was the first musical adaption of a [[Shakespeare]] play (composed by Locke and Johnson).<ref name=IvanhoeSite /> About 1683, [[John Blow]] composed ''[[Venus and Adonis (opera)|Venus and Adonis]]'', often thought of as the first true English-language opera.

Blow's immediate successor was the better known [[Henry Purcell]]. Despite the success of his masterwork ''[[Dido and Aeneas]]'' (1689), in which the action is furthered by the use of Italian-style recitative, much of Purcell's best work was not involved in the composing of typical opera, but instead, he usually worked within the constraints of the [[semi-opera]] format, where isolated scenes and masques are contained within the structure of a spoken play, such as [[Shakespeare]] in Purcell's ''[[The Fairy-Queen]]'' (1692) and Beaumont and Fletcher in ''The Prophetess'' (1690) and ''Bonduca'' (1696). The main characters of the play tend not to be involved in the musical scenes, which means that Purcell was rarely able to develop his characters through song. Despite these hindrances, his aim (and that of his collaborator [[John Dryden]]) was to establish serious opera in England, but these hopes ended with Purcell's early death at the age of 36.

[[File:Thomas Augustine Arne.png|thumb|upright|left|[[Thomas Arne]]]]
Following Purcell, the popularity of opera in England dwindled for several decades. A revived interest<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.abelson.ie/how-to-cultivate-an-appreciation-for-opera |title=How to Cultivate an Appreciation for Opera  |author=Abelson.ie |access-date=27 August 2024}}</ref> in opera occurred in the 1730s which is largely attributed to [[Thomas Arne]], both for his own compositions and for alerting Handel to the commercial possibilities of large-scale works in English. Arne was the first English composer to experiment with Italian-style all-sung comic opera, with his greatest success being ''[[Thomas and Sally]]'' in 1760. His opera ''[[Artaxerxes (opera)|Artaxerxes]]'' (1762) was the first attempt to set a full-blown [[opera seria]] in English and was a huge success, holding the stage until the 1830s. Although Arne imitated many elements of Italian opera, he was perhaps the only English composer at that time who was able to move beyond the Italian influences and create his own unique and distinctly English voice. His modernized ballad opera, ''Love in a Village'' (1762), began a vogue for pastiche opera that lasted well into the 19th century. [[Charles Burney]] wrote that Arne introduced "a light, airy, original, and pleasing melody, wholly different from that of Purcell or Handel, whom all English composers had either pillaged or imitated".
[[File:Mikado 02 - Weir Collection.jpg|thumb|upright|''[[The Mikado]]'' (Lithograph)]]
Besides Arne, the other dominating force in English opera at this time was [[George Frideric Handel]], whose ''opera serias'' filled the London operatic stages for decades and influenced most home-grown composers, like [[John Frederick Lampe]], who wrote using Italian models. This situation continued throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, including in the work of [[Michael William Balfe]], and the operas of the great Italian composers, as well as those of Mozart, Beethoven, and Meyerbeer, continued to dominate the musical stage in England.

The only exceptions were [[ballad opera]]s, such as [[John Gay]]'s ''[[The Beggar's Opera]]'' (1728), musical [[Victorian burlesque|burlesques]], European [[operetta]]s, and late [[Victorian era]] [[light opera]]s, notably the [[Savoy opera]]s of [[W. S. Gilbert]] and [[Arthur Sullivan]], all of which types of musical entertainments frequently spoofed operatic conventions; these genres contributed significantly to the emergence of the separate but closely related art of [[musical theatre]] in the late 19th century. Sullivan wrote only one grand opera, ''[[Ivanhoe (opera)|Ivanhoe]]'' (following the efforts of a number of young English composers beginning about 1876),<ref name=IvanhoeSite /> but he claimed that even his light operas constituted part of a school of "English" opera, intended to supplant the French operettas (usually performed in bad translations) that had dominated the London stage from the mid-19th century into the 1870s. London's ''[[Daily Telegraph]]'' agreed, describing ''[[The Yeomen of the Guard]]'' as "a genuine English opera, forerunner of many others, let us hope, and possibly significant of an advance towards a national lyric stage".<ref>The ''Daily Telegraph''{{'}}s review of ''Yeomen'' stated, "The accompaniments... are delightful to hear, and especially does the treatment of the woodwind compel admiring attention. Schubert himself could hardly have handled those instruments more deftly. ...we have a genuine English opera, forerunner of many others, let us hope, and possibly significant of an advance towards a national lyric stage." (quoted at p. 312 in Allen, Reginald (1975). ''The First Night Gilbert and Sullivan''. London: Chappell & Co. Ltd.).</ref> Sullivan produced a few light operas in the 1890s that were of a more serious nature than those in the G&S series, including ''[[Haddon Hall (opera)|Haddon Hall]]'' and ''[[The Beauty Stone]]'', but ''[[Ivanhoe (opera)|Ivanhoe]]'' (which ran for 155 consecutive performances, using alternating casts—a record until Broadway's ''[[La bohème]]'') survives as his only [[grand opera]].

In the 20th century, English opera began to assert more independence, with works of [[Ralph Vaughan Williams]] and in particular [[Benjamin Britten]], who in a series of works that remain in standard repertory today, revealed an excellent flair for the dramatic and superb musicality. More recently [[Harrison Birtwistle|Sir Harrison Birtwistle]] has emerged as one of Britain's most significant contemporary composers from his first opera ''[[Punch and Judy (opera)|Punch and Judy]]'' to his most recent critical success in [[The Minotaur (opera)|The Minotaur]]. In the first decade of the 21st century, the librettist of an early Birtwistle opera, [[Michael Nyman]], has been focusing on composing operas, including ''[[Facing Goya]]'', ''[[Man and Boy: Dada]]'', and ''[[Love Counts]]''. Today composers such as [[Thomas Adès]] continue to export English opera abroad.<ref>{{harvnb|Parker|1994|loc=ch. 1, 3, 9}}. ''The Viking Opera Guide'' articles on Blow, Purcell and Britten.</ref>

Also in the 20th century, American composers like [[George Gershwin]] (''[[Porgy and Bess]]''), [[Scott Joplin]] (''[[Treemonisha]]''), [[Leonard Bernstein]] (''[[Candide (operetta)|Candide]]''), [[Gian Carlo Menotti]], [[Douglas Moore]], and [[Carlisle Floyd]] began to contribute English-language operas infused with touches of popular musical styles. They were followed by composers such as [[Philip Glass]] (''[[Einstein on the Beach]]''), [[Mark Adamo]], [[John Corigliano]] (''[[The Ghosts of Versailles]]''), [[Robert Moran (composer)|Robert Moran]], [[John Adams (composer)|John Adams]] (''[[Nixon in China]]''), [[André Previn]] and [[Jake Heggie]]. Many contemporary 21st century opera composers have emerged such as [[Missy Mazzoli]], [[Kevin Puts]], [[Tom Cipullo]], [[Huang Ruo]], [[David T. Little]], [[Terence Blanchard]], [[Jennifer Higdon]], [[Tobias Picker]], [[Michael Ching]], [[Anthony Davis (composer)|Anthony Davis]], and [[Ricky Ian Gordon]].