Compare Musical and Opera Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Compare Musical and Opera - Essay Example In comparing Musical and Opera, one can base the argument relating to their source, historical background, development and their evolution. However, this paper shall discuss the key features that compare Musicals from the Operas. In the present time, people fail to provide a clear distinction between the two, and instead define any form of entertainment performance with music as musicals, and some famous music singers confuse their musicals with Opera (http://www.aria-database.com/). Musical theaters currently referred, as ‘Musicals’ is a style used in theater, whereby the songs, dances, and oral dialogue integrate to narrate a story. In the contemporary world, a musical takes various forms as long as it aims at narrating a story. For that reason, musical could be a stage performance, a film/television presentation and it combines the modern and the known music styles and discourse in narrating the entire story (http://www.aria-database.com/). Opera is classified under a certain form of theater, in which a musical group and singers incorporates sheet music and â€Å"libretto† also known as the text in contemporary language to narrate a story. On the other hand, performance of musicals takes place in theatres. Presentation of musicals could be staged or televised. ... Another key difference between Musicals and operas is in terms of language used. While performing musicals, the audience understands the performance language. For instance, Musicals developed in England and America is performed in English regardless of whether the developer comes from non- English-speaking nations. Together with that, the singing, dancing, and dialogue follow the rules of the popular music, popular dance styles, and the modern dialogues. Musicals have three major characteristic; the brain, the heart and courage (Kagen, 1968). The Brain – in order to perform musicals, the developer should have required intelligence and necessary writing style. On the other hand, the heart calls for the genuine feeling while developing the story, and lastly, courage calls for one to have the ability, creativity, and boldness in presenting something. This is very different from an Opera, in that, there is comprehensive training of the singers, classical singers in this context, a nd they are required to memorize and present the song without making any translations (http://opera.stanford.edu/main.html). In addition, there are numerous well-known opera styles in different languages, for instance, the Italian Opera, the German Opera, Russian opera, French opera, and lastly English–language opera. The performance of each Opera takes a different style (http://opera.stanford.edu/main.html). Based on their production, musicals and Operas portray many differences. First, Opera upholds music as the livelihood of production, whilst musical depends on text written and the story narrated. In the modern time, the Operas are established on classical music. It relates the way one would visualize the Mozart’s classical music