Recitative is a sung-spoken style of vocal writing that carries dialogue and narrative between arias in opera and oratorio.
Recitative emerged in Florence around 1600 with the Camerata, a circle of intellectuals who hoped to revive ancient Greek drama by setting text to a flexible vocal line that followed natural speech rhythms. It became the connective tissue of opera. 'Recitativo secco' (dry recitative), accompanied only by harpsichord and continuo, advances dialogue rapidly; 'recitativo accompagnato' uses the full orchestra for moments of higher emotional stakes. Mozart's letter scene in 'Don Giovanni' (1787) and Bach's recitatives in the 'St Matthew Passion' (1727) show the form's range from comic propulsion to tragic gravity. Wagner eventually dissolved the boundary between recitative and aria into continuous melodic dialogue, but the form survived in Italian opera through Verdi and Puccini and lives on whenever a sung text needs to behave like speech.