Opera: the Living Sculpture

The theatrical art form that would be known as Opera finds its origins in Europe. In opera a story is expressed through the voice and musical instruments, and most often punctuated by dramatic costumes and sets. From the beginning of Opera, there has been a disagreement as to whether it is the music or words which are most crucial in the genre.

Opera may have it's origins in the 15^th and 16^th centuries but it's rise in popularity and it's sheer spectacle in the Baroque Era of the 17^th century shaped it into a fluid living sculpture of sound and movement. Baroque Opera was still experimental, and it required a musician of greater talents, to give opera an artistic and dramatic life. That musician was Claudio Monteverdi. The first great opera was Monteverdi's Orfeo, commissioned by the Mantuan court of Vincenco Gonzaga. The opera of Monteverdi's time was modeled on Greek drama, both in subject matter and in the use of theatrical devices. The device of deus ex machina - the god in the machine -where a god is lowered on a cloud or triumphal car to resolve the complexities of the plot was a standard feature of intermedi, and was adopted in much of early opera.

In Orfeo Apollo descends from the clouds to remove his son Orpheus to Heaven to be re-united with his beloved Eurydice. The emotional reunion would have been over acted and one can clearly in vision dynamic responses that would be appropriate if Gianlorenzo Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Teresa were to become animated. Bernini was a sculptor, painter and architect and a formative influence as an outstanding exponent of the Italian Baroque. Bernini originally worked in the Late Mannerist tradition but rejected the contrived tendencies of his style. By 1624 he had adopted an expression that was passionate and full of emotional and psychological energy. His figures are caught in a transient emotional moment from a single point of view as if one were watching opera and paused it. In Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Teresa he captures the vision of a Spanish nun swooning in heavenly rapture at the point of an angel's arrow.

It is the same emotional release that Orpheus must show in Orfeo when his father, Apollo, comes for him and then again when he is reunited with his love. What Monteverdi seem's to have captured with music and drama Bernini captured with marble and chisel. One can see by comparing Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Teresa with Monteverdi's Orfeo that Opera really is living sculpture