Romantic opera was opera written during the Romantic time period. The Romantic Time period in music began in 1820 and ended in 1910. The term opera is defined as an extended dramatic composition, in which all parts are sung to instrumental accompaniment that usually includes arias, choruses, and recitatives, and that sometimes includes ballet. Opera is also an Italian word meaning work and is the plural of the Latin word opus meaning a musical composition. Opus originally meant a service, work, or labor.
Romantic opera put an emphasis on emotion, imagination, and individualism. Fantasy and the supernatural, mostly popular with the Germans, the Middle Ages and the concept of chivalry and romance, mostly popular with the Italians, and nature were popular artistic
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Der Freischiitz, The Magic Marksman by Carl Maria von Weber, showed the Germans’ Romantic writers’ lover for the echoes of hunter’s horns the threatening of supernatural forces, lover for dark forests, and the frustrations of pure young love. However, the root of German Romantic opera can be found within the singspiel; it’s an operatic style associated with spoken dialogue that is alternated with songs, ballads, ensembles, and arias that were often folk-like in nature. Singspiel integrated the genre’s national features with Romantic elements with French opera; all of this peaked with the operas of Richard Wagner.
French Romantic opera was divided into two distinct genres, French grand opera and opéra comique. French grand opera was very different compared to the Italians and the Germans. It was seen as an art form of excess and was based greatly on historical subjects. The librettos were usually very long, the sets were extravagant, and the casts were enormous. Ballet and the chorus were used extensively in early French grand