There are some that confuse the medieval morality play, or, if you prefer, liturgical drama with opera. While morality plays are essentially dramas with music and some even feature specific characters, they are not organized in the forms of arias, duets, choruses, recitative, and so forth that characterize opera. German abbess, poet, and composer Hildegard von Bingen's Ordo Virtutum, written circa 1151, is just about the oldest morality play there is, unless the Anonymous French play Le jeu d'Adam is older and it appears to ...
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There are some that confuse the medieval morality play, or, if you prefer, liturgical drama with opera. While morality plays are essentially dramas with music and some even feature specific characters, they are not organized in the forms of arias, duets, choruses, recitative, and so forth that characterize opera. German abbess, poet, and composer Hildegard von Bingen's Ordo Virtutum, written circa 1151, is just about the oldest morality play there is, unless the Anonymous French play Le jeu d'Adam is older and it appears to be almost exactly contemporary to Hildegard's work. That has led some people to refer to Ordo Virtutum as the "first opera" and it is not so; however, the group Hildegurls -- along with contemporary composers Lisa Bielawa, Kitty Brazelton, Eve Beglarian, Elaine Kaplinsky, and Grethe Barrett Holby -- have re-rendered it into something that is nearly an opera, represented in recorded form by the album Electric Ordo Virtutum on Innova. The Hildegurls take Hildegard into the twenty...
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