Chamber opera

Opera House is composed of operas composed to be performed by a chamber orchestra instead of a full orchestra, characterized by the inclusion of few characters, sober stage apparatus, limited number of instruments and actions limited to allow their presentation before few spectators in a scope of small dimensions.

The term chamber opera is sometimes used to describe small Baroque operatic works, such as Pergolesi's serva serronta and Les Arts florissants de Charpentier, which use reduced instrumental and vocal ensembles. The term was disseminated in the twentieth century, to the form invented by Benjamin Britten in the 1940s, when the English Opera Group required works that could be rotated quickly and represented in various small spaces. Lucrecia's rape was the first example of this genre. Other composers such as Thomas Adès and Philip Glass have since adopted this denomination for their own works. Various groups, such as the Chamber Made Opera of Australia, have excelled in the production of this type of work.

The instrumentation of a chamber opera is variable, but Britten defined his for an orchestra of fourteen musicians, which includes the full instrumental range of a symphony orchestra but performed by soloists instead of sections.

Britten-Pears Bibioteca , archives, related bibliography

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