Opera Vocabulary

An opera, naturally, could follow the route set by its story.

I sat in the back row and looked on the stage.

“I think Shakespeare said it best in act two, scene two of his play The Merry Wives of Windsor: ‘Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.’”

It is written in five "acts," with entr'actes that often bring in briefly-mentioned side characters and expand upon them.
Salon

“We deal with all the topics that out in the real world make people uncomfortable,” Courtney Meyer, a member of the Good Boys cast, tells me one day.

Linton became good, earning first chair in a jazz ensemble in junior high school and then high school, and winning scholarship opportunities to play music in college.

Boghetti had been working with her on expanding her repertoire of art songs, and now he encouraged her to prepare an ambitious program of works by Italian, German, and English composers.

While her voice had the rich, dark timbre of contralto, the lowest female voice, she had no trouble with the ringing tones of soprano, the highest.

I just assumed the war would end and, in a seamless path, I'd go to conservatory and become a famous diva, like her.

The earthy mezzo-soprano Michaela Martens was overwhelming in this scene when the Metropolitan Opera’s production of “Klinghoffer,” a company premiere, opened on Monday night.
– The New York Times

“But it is not too much to say that she has one of the most superb contralto voices that has been heard in Philadelphia for a very long time.”

His voice changed suddenly from tenor to bass on the high note in “song.”

Mr. Lucas could dip his voice low to sing baritone and make us laugh.

It was easier for Chester to play the ones written for tenors than the ones for sopranos, contraltos, and basses, but he did them all beautifully.

A good falsetto produces a clear, clean “boy’s choir” type of sound, and is where children should try to sing in order to maintain a healthy voice.

“Captain Johnson reporting as directed, sir,” the captain said, his voice as high pitched as a castrato’s.

I recognized the words sung by the chorus.

She sang an aria from Verdi’s opera Don Carlo along with four spirituals.

He’s always asking me if one day we can play a duet, him on air guitar, me on air cello.

They went to plays and operas and concerts in the parks, listened to string quartets and piano recitals in office-building lobbies, attended movie screenings, and visited museums.

Coloratura Soprano — This is not really a different range from the soprano, but a coloratura soprano has a voice that is unusually high, light, and agile, even for a soprano.

Since the music is not organized by the familiar rules of Western music, many people have trouble appreciating atonal music without some help or study.

His voice rings clear and steady, filling the church with lyrical notes and giving me goose bumps.

They sing arias, recitatives, choruses supported by an orchestra.

Most figures and motifs are shorter than phrases, but some of the leitmotifs of Wagner's operas are long enough to be considered phrases.

Ulrich Lenz, dramaturge of Mostly Mozart's bold new adaptation of 'The Magic Flute,' explains why they gave the opera a silent film-style update.
– Observer

"I always thought that the play was really an opera but with the music missing," said Previn, who worked with librettist Philip Littell to adapt the Tennessee Williams play for the operatic stage.
Los Angeles Times

He certainly has the skill to render a Mozart opera libretto into singable English, as his version of “The Magic Flute” at the Met proves.
– The New York Times

The second stage was accompanied by an acknowledgement that any young composer hoping to make a splash on the opera world would need to be daring and - if possible - a little shocking.

At first, I walk around the room, waving my arms as if I’m carrying a baton—like the conductor I saw at the New York Philharmonic concert with my mom.

Bernard Herrmann, the Mercury Theatre’s orchestra leader, composed and conducted the musical score.

The houselights start to dim, and the first notes of the overture rise up from the pit.

The prelude — and whole episodes of the opera proper — invite the listener into a spiritual realm where, as one character puts it, “time becomes space.”
– The New York Times

Cadenzas sprang up in the early eighteenth century, when composers began indicating brief episodes where the performer should play freely, delaying a final cadence. They appeared not only in opera but also in instrumental pieces, especially in the closing sections of concerto movements.
– The New Yorker

It closed with a theatrical pendant to the introduction: a spoken coda over the tableau of José collapsed across Carmen’s dead body.
– The Washington Post

By comparing this to the longest-lasting written notes of the period, researchers have painstakingly teased out what composers might have expected from slower directions such as largo and adagio.

For musicians the sheet music provides the counts and note measure for measure, with directives on tempo and sound — allegro, adagio, and crescendo.
Forbes

The overture begins andante with a bold theme for basses, and the whole of the opening is composed in a much more simple manner than one is accustomed to expect from Berlioz.

Still, I practice chords and arpeggios, scales and phrases, until finally, she takes me deeply into the lesson for the day—a Mozart concerto this time.

For musicians the sheet music provides the counts and note measure for measure, with directives on tempo and sound — allegro, adagio, and crescendo.
Forbes

Then Ms. Parker signals with her hands for us to get louder, and all the fifth graders on all the instruments play forte so loudly, my ears hurt.

For example, most ballads are sung legato, and most marches are played fairly staccato or marcato, whether they are marked that way or not.

Dynamics indicate the loudness of music. In Western musical notation, we often use italicized Italian words, which can be abbreviated, to describe dynamics. The dynamic marking forte means loud, while piano means quiet.
Virtual Library of Virginia

"Presto" is an Italian musical term that translates to "very fast" in English. It is a tempo marking used to indicate that the music should be performed at a very rapid and brisk pace, conveying a sense of speed, excitement, and urgency.
M5 Music

A note or group of notes is played staccato by separating them from each other and should be played very short and completely detached from the note before and after.
Hello Music Theory