Operas are most commonly staged at an opera house or theatre, such as the London Coliseum, home to ENO.

Opera houses have been designed specifically for performances on a grand scale. The large stage, where the singers perform, sits in front of the backstage area, which is used to house the set. Below the stage, you’ll find the ‘pit’, designed for the orchestra.

Orchestra

The orchestra, led by a conductor, is made up of different musical instrument sections: strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion. The number of musicians needed in an orchestra is different for different operas; Handel’s operas most commonly use a smaller orchestra (made up of around 50 musicians) compared with those of Wagner whose operas can require an ensemble of up to 120 players.

Before the 19^th century, conductors weren’t needed in the staging of an opera. Back then, the orchestra was significantly smaller and weren’t housed in a pit. It wasn’t until Beethoven’s time, in the early 1800s, that the orchestra grew by 50 percent as the musical score had become so complex that a single musician could no longer keep the ensemble together, thus the introduction of a conductor.

How is an opera made?

Operas are often based on pre-existing work. For example, Paul Ruder’s The Handmaid’s Tale is based on Margaret Atwood’s seminal novel of the same name.

Carmen by Georges Bizet is based on a novella by Prosper Merimee. And Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer adapted the genre-defining Frank Capra film, It’s a Wonderful Life into an opera.

Purcell, Rossini, and Britten are just a few examples of composers who wrote operas based on the works of Shakespeare.

Once the opera’s subject matter has been decided on, the librettist (the person who writes the text for the opera) will transform the text into poetic verse, suitable for singing. The composer then creates music for that libretto. Here at ENO, we perform in English, so we work with translators, if the libretto is in another language.

Interested in knowing the differences between an opera and the piece of work it is based on? Take a look at this Libretto vs Script comparison between Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Benjamin Britten‘s opera based on it.

Famous composers

Out of all the people who work on an opera, it is most often the composer who we know best. Thanks to his operas, and contributions to classical music, Mozart is possibly the best known composer of all time. Don’t think you’re too familiar with Mozart’s works? Have a listen to six of his most famous compositions.

Another famous composer whose music you’ve probably heard before is that of Richard Wagner. The famous ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ from his epic Ring cycle is used in this well-known scene in the film Apocalypse Now.

You might also be familiar with the music of Sir Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame), whose operettas were all the rage in Victorian England, and are much-loved to this day. Opera such as Iolanthe, The Yeomen of the Guard, Pirates of Penzance, The Mikado and HMS Pinafore.

Read our beginner’s guide to operetta

Once the opera has been written and composed, the Director, and everyone else involved in the decision-making process will decide how they want to stage the production.

Find out how we stage an opera here at ENO with this video…