Operas can be serious, comedic, or both

Opera seria and opera buffa differ in their tones and themes

Opera began in the late 1590s with "Dafne" and evolved into two styles by the 18th century. Opera seria catered to elites with heroic, mythological themes, while opera buffa brought humor and relatable stories to wider audiences. Today, modern opera often tackles contemporary social issues.

Operas first began at the end of the Italian Renaissance

Opera is a storytelling art form that has seen various eras including the Renaissance, Baroque period, Classical period, Romantic period, 20th Century, and Modern period. Each era has its own distinct style, reflecting the tastes of its people and prominent composers.

Operas rely more on music for storytelling than musicals

It’s easy to confuse operas and musicals since they both tell stories through singing and music—but a few key differences remain. While musicals rely on words as the primary tool for storytelling, opera relies more on music. Other key distinctions lie in vocal techniques.

Operatic singing involves a number of different vocal personalities

Opera singing ranges are typically categorized by gender and then further subdivided into specific voice types like bass, baritone, tenor, mezzo-soprano, countertenor, and soprano voices. From the lowest to highest range, experience the difficult and impressive singing styles.

Opera terminology heavily relies on Italian

Most commonly used Opera terms are not in English. This glossary provides definitions of keywords like “libretto,” the text of a piece, “tenor,” the highest natural adult male singing voice, and “diva,” a female opera star.

The most performed operas of the 21st century are largely from the 19th century

Opera's not dead, but it does seem stuck in the past: Five of the top 10 most performed operas in the 21st century are from the 1800s. Three are from the 1700s, while two are from the 1900s. None are from this century.

Pop music is often influenced by opera, but rarely embraces the full form

An example is pop singer Rosalía's album "Lux," where she borrows from opera, particularly in her more theatrical approach to singing, without fully embracing the form's theatrics and storytelling.

A step-by-step guide to attending the opera

Opera attendance has dwindled in recent decades, leaving some modern operagoers unaware of the traditional etiquette for attending. This how-to video instructs attendees on appreciating the music, dressing appropriately, and choosing the best seats.

Opera melodies from centuries ago still appear in TV and movies today

Even if you haven't witnessed an 18th century opera, you've likely heard melodies from one in modern media like “Apocalypse Now” and “Sesame Street.” Today, sports events, movies, and television feature operatic melodies even over a century after they were written.

Opera faces many economic problems today

Opera is a notably expensive art form, and therefore currently struggling to survive economically. Pandemic losses, reduced government funding, and dwindling ticket sales all pose a threat to its continuation. According to a recent survey, about half of the UK wouldn't feel impacted if all opera houses were shut down.

Music writer Paul Morley believes opera is an antidote to social media consumption

Music writer Paul Morley weighs in on the debate about the relevance of opera. While acknowledging criticisms that opera is snobbish and outdated, Morley argues the lengthy, emotive, and literary art form presents an important intellectual opposition to today’s world of fast-paced online consumption. Opera endures because it provides hope.

Mozart defined the Classical period with realism and social commentary

Dive into the Classical period, a time that emphasized a less extravagant approach to music and focused on societal issues. Defined by Mozart’s influence, find specifics about his career and why he’s remembered for his compositions and the wit and emotional depth of operas like "The Magic Flute."

Making an opera is expensive and requires many people to reach the stage

Bringing an opera to the stage is a detailed, demanding, and costly process. Following the lead ​​of Phillip Glass’s “Akhnaten” before its performance at the Metropolitan Opera House in Manhattan, this Vox video displays the rehearsals, vocal lessons, intricate costumes, and even juggling involved in putting on a show.

Soap operas are long-form, serialized melodramas

The genre was historically aimed at housewives, and its storylines often involve romantic entanglements and family dynamics that transpired over many years. Media scholar Robert J. Thompson called the soap opera “arguably the most unique contribution that broadcasting has made to the art of storytelling.”

Contemporary operas explore topics like gun violence

Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s 2021 opera "Innocence" explores the aftermath of a school shooting. Featuring traditional operatic singing in a modern setting, this story makes the classic art form particularly relevant to today's audience.

Performance art differs from other performances, like dance and theater

While performance art is a very flexible genre, it is defined by several core elements: time, space, the body, and the relationship between the artist and the audience. These elements may be manipulated in infinite ways to convey the artist’s message, such as how endurance performances challenge the limits of the body over long periods of time.

Horror is an artistic genre aimed at scaring its audiences

Whether it's a movie, novel, comic book or any of the genre's other terrifying incarnations, horror's primary purpose is to scare its audiences. Throughout its history, the style has evolved and splintered, and now includes many subgenres, like the slasher flick, the found footage film, and even the horror comedy.

There are three main types of satire: Horatian, Juvenalian, and Menippean

These classifications are based on the Roman poets who popularized them. Horatian is good-natured and lighthearted, Juvenalian is bitter and more caustic, and Menippean contains many layers.

10 books that get the theatre world right

The theatre world is filled with drama—both on and offstage—thanks to big egos, imagined slights, and tense interpersonal dynamics. Despite that reality, it's not easy to portray what goes on behind the scenes on the page. This list breaks down some of the exceptions, featuring 10 novels that accurately capture the insular world and fascinating personalities who populate it.

Fantasy and science fiction are distinct genres, though they sometimes overlap

Fantasy stories take place in universes where magic exists; science fiction stories take place in universes that are still grounded in the physics of our world. In science fiction, supernatural powers have scientific explanations. Think of “Spiderman”: Peter Parker gains his powers after being bitten by a radioactive spider.

The first Grammys acknowledged only 4 genres

At the first Grammys, there were six awards presented in four genres: classical, jazz, country, and R&B. But over time, it became clear that plenty of music didn't fit neatly into those categories. Now there are more than a dozen genres recognized, spanning multiple cultures and continents.

Shakespeare’s use of verse and prose signifies important characteristics

Structured verse signals formality, often used by high-ranking characters; in contrast, unstructured prose is typically used in informal, more witty situations by lower-status characters.

How we learn: comparing classical and operant conditioning

Psychology helps us see how we learn, whether through positive reinforcement or by conditioning a response to a stimulus. Learn about these two key theories in this brief video.

A taxonomy of restaurant types

What's the difference between "fast food" and "fast casual"? Is there any real difference between a "diner" and a "family style restaurant"? This guide from DoorDash explores the industry's fine distinctions, along with some deeper dives into specific enterprises that found success.

Securities is a term used to describe different types of investments

Not every type of investment qualifies as a security (like property or gold). Securities fall under four main categories (equity, debt, derivative, and hybrid) that serve different functions in the market.

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, but became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings are often assumed to be sexual, though the artist claimed she was simply interested in highlighting the beauty of flowers that most people neglect

Learn how to read a prospectus, the juicy document that any company must file with the SEC before going public.

Most of the observable universe's volume consists of voids and supervoids—enormous regions of space with little to no galaxies, stars, or light.

See how fireworks are made and learn how metals like magnesium and copper are responsible for different colors.

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

Chaos theory—informally known as the butterfly effect—is the reason why weather forecasts are presented with probabilities rather than certainties.

Comedy legend Catherine O'Hara, star of 'Schitt's Creek' and 'Home Alone,' quit 'Saturday Night Live' after just one week to return to her old job.

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

Quincy Jones' 'Big Band Bossa Nova' helped introduce bossa nova—a jazz-influenced Brazilian genre—to the US

Three Ebola species are responsible for most large outbreaks of the disease, yet the only approved Ebola vaccine is known to work against just one of them.

The hormonal disorder PCOS was renamed PMOS in 2026, a move designed to improve care and research by shifting the focus to the hormonal causes of this condition that affects 1 in 8 women.

See photos of Meteora, a mountainous site in central Greece, home to 14th-century monasteries perched atop soaring outcroppings.

The price of gas is a composite made up of several different factors, with the federal gas tax making up less than 20% of what drivers pay at the pump.

The rivalry between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson centered on federalism—the question of how much power the federal government should hold relative to the states.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

The term 'algorithm' originated from the Latinized name of al-Khwārizmī, a 9th-century mathematician whose works introduced Arabic numerals and the decimal-based numeral system to Europe and whose treatise 'Al-Jabr' gave algebra its name.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps is independent of Iran's regular army and is one of the most powerful and influential military-political organizations in the Middle East.

Some renewable energy sources may weaken the resiliency of electric grids by removing outage buffers provided by coal- and natural gas-fired plants, which provide the system with more time to find a new power source if a plant goes down.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

Explore the history, structure, and species of Australia's Great Barrier Reef with this interactive journey narrated by Sir David Attenborough.

Hotels in Cannes, the glamorous city on the French Riviera, hire hawks to ward off seagulls during the city's famous film festival.