Although early eighteenth-century operas were unashamedly designed to exploit the virtuosity of expensive singers, they were also regarded as an opportunity to fuse all the arts, in which the librettist’s poetry and the composer’s music were complemented by sumptuous costumes and scenery painted by master craftsmen. The mechanical wings in Baroque theatre allowed swift scene changes that could surprise and entertain an audience visually, and inventive designers produced astonishing mechanical stage effects such as moving clouds, shipwrecks and even chariots that allowed a godlike character to descend and instigate the reconciliation of opposing parties at the end of an opera. New costumes and scenery were major attractions of a new opera, although materials were frequently recycled so the environments of a medieval crusader could look suspiciously identical to Alexander the Great in Persia.

Introduction | Late Baroque | Opera
Stage & Scene | Doctrine of the Affections | Classical Era | Opera