February 8: Opera Day

February 8 is Opera Day. For the music buffs, here are ten things you might not know about opera:

1. The word opera comes from the Latin word "opus" meaning work. The words of an opera are known as the libretto, which literally means "small book".
2. Dramas set to music, the precursors of opera, were ancient Greek and Egyptian dramas and later religious plays performed at Christmas and Easter. The first work to be described as an opera as we know it was produced in Italy in 1598 by Jacopo Peri, and was titled Dafne. Most of this opera has been lost, but a couple of years later he teamed up with Ottavio Rinuccini to produce Euridice, considered to be the earliest surviving opera.
3. The longest opera ever is Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung). It's so long that it is rarely performed in one go, but when it is, it is about 16 hours long (18 hours with intermissions). It took Wagner about 30 years to write it. By contrast, the shortest opera is Darius Milhaud’s The Deliverance of Theseus, which lasts a mere seven minutes.
4. The saying, "It ain't over till the fat lady sings" originates with opera - the aforementioned Wagner epic, to be exact, which ends with a 10 minute aria by Brunhilde. We don't know for sure who it was who first said it. Basketball coach Dick Motta often gets the credit, but he claims it was sportswriter and broadcaster Dan Cook. Cook claims he overheard someone else saying it.
5. There's a scientific reason why opera singers are so often large. Singing a lot causes the lungs to release leptin, a protein made by the body’s fat cells which is involved in the regulation of appetite.
6. Opera singers are classified according to their vocal range. Male singers can be classified by vocal range as bass, bass-baritone, baritone, tenor and countertenor, and female singers as contralto, mezzo-soprano and soprano. In the early days of opera, women weren't allowed to perform at all, so female parts would often be played by men who had been castrated. In the 18th century Italy, 4000 boys were castrated to preserve their pre-pubescent voice ranges for opera singing. Some of them even asked to be castrated. This might make more sense when you know that the first of the great castrati, Baldassare Ferri (1610-1680) achieved as much fame and adulation as a rock star does today. Once, people met him three miles outside the city where he was going to perform and filled his carriage with flowers.
7. As well as having to have parts of their body cut off, opera singers in the 18th century also had to endure standing in one position all the time they were singing. They had to stand with their heels together and legs bent, one ankle in front of the other (third ballet position).
8. It is customary to yell "bravo!" at the opera to show appreciation for a good performance. Although strictly speaking, "bravo" is for male singers. The correct form for female singers is "brava". The form for the chorus, or a group of singers would be "bravi", unless they are all women, in which case it would be "brave" (pronounced "bra-vay").
9. The first opera to be composed for television was Amahl and the Night Visitors, written by Gian Carlo Menotti in 1952.
10. Opera can attract some extremely appreciative audiences, who break world records in terms of their applause. In 1991, Plácido Domingo received a record breaking one hour and 20 minutes of applause and 101 curtain calls after performing the title role of Verdi’s Otello. However, he didn't beat the curtain call record, which remained with Luciano Pavarotti, who'd received 165 curtain calls in 1988 after singing in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore in Berlin.

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