Chamber opera

Chamber opera is a designation for operas written to be performed with a chamber ensemble rather than a full orchestra. Early 20th-century operas of this type include Gustav Holst's Savitri (1916) and Paul Hindemith's Cardillac (1926). Earlier small-scale operas such as Pergolesi's La serva padrona (1733) are sometimes known as chamber operas. Benjamin Britten wrote works in this category in the 1940s when the English Opera Group needed works that could easily be taken on tour and performed in a variety of small performance spaces.