Opera vs symphony

Opera

Opera is a form of theatre in which music has a leading role and the parts are taken by singers, but is distinct from music theatre. Opera is also a musical form that combines an orchestra, vocalists and drama. An orchestra plays the music while the vocalists sing and act on stage.

 

Opera house

Orchestra

Opera is a key part of the Western classical music tradition. Originally understood as an entirely sung piece, in contrast to a play with songs, opera has come to include numerous genres, including some that include spoken dialogue such as musical theatre, Singspiel and Opéra comique. In traditional number opera, singers employ two styles of singing: recitative, a speech-inflected style, and self-contained arias. The 19th century saw the rise of the continuous music drama.

Opera

Opera originated in Italy at the end of the 16th century especially from works by Claudion Montervedi, notably L'Orfeo, and soon spread through the rest of Europe: Heinrich Schütz in Germany, Jean-Baptiste Lully in France, and Henry Purchell in England all helped to establish their national traditions in the 17th century. In the 18th century, Italian opera continued to dominate most of Europe (except France), attracting foreign composers such as George Frideric Handel. Opera seria was the most prestigious form of Italian opera, until Christoph Willibald Gluck reacted against its artificiality with his "reform" operas in the 1760s. The most renowned figure of late 18th-century opera is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozard, who began with opera seria but is most famous for his Italian comic operas, especially The Marriage of Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro), Don Giovanni, and The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte), landmarks in the German tradition.

                                        Opera seria

Comic opera

Symphony

A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, most often written by composers for orchestra. Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in the ancient Greek era, by the late 18th century the word had taken on the meaning common today: a work usually consisting of multiple distinct sections or movements, often four, with the first movement in sonata form. 

Symphony

Symphonies are almost always scored for an orchestra consisting of a string section (violin, viola, cello, and double bass), brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments which altogether number about 30 to 100 musicians. Symphonies are notated in a musical core, which contains all the instrument parts. Orchestral musicians play from parts which contain just the notated music for their own instrument. Some symphonies also contain vocal parts. Symphony is also a major musical composition traditionally with four movements (separate pieces that fit together).

The arrangement  of musical instruments of the symphony orchestra

                                                               

Thank you.

Bibliography

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony