Greek cultural life primarily developed outside the borders of the newly-founded Greek state: the Ionian Islands, the cosmopolitan centres of Asia Minor, Greek communities in the Balkans and western Europe. This dispersal marked the development of Greek Romantic opera, which is itself a more many-sided and complex phenomenon than the standard music-historical definition (all works of music theatre between classicism and modernism). Greek melodrama in many cases shows, alongside the basic characteristics of Romanticism, elements of neoclassicism, Realism, Impressionism and early Verismo – witness the creative development of composers such as Pavlos Karrer or Dionysios Rodotheatos, who were in touch with modern European music.

Of the four generations of Greek composers of the long 19th century, those active from the 1840s to the 1880s represent various aspects of Greek musical Romanticism with their operatic works, and contributed to the diffusion of Romantic ideas in lyrical theatre and vocal music. Pavlos Karrer of Zakynthos (1829–1896) was the foremost among them. His contemporaries from the Ionian Islands include, besides Rodotheatos, Edouardos Lambelet, Frangiskos Domeneginīs, Iōssīf Liveralīs, Spyridōn Xyndas and others. Alexandros Katakouzīnos from Odessa worked in Athens.

Most work from this period belongs to the Italian school, moving between late bel canto, Verdian opera of the intermediate period and French grand opera – the symphonic works by Rodotheatos being an exception. The libretti borrow elements from the Romantic novel and Romantic historical drama, adapting French and Italian authors and playwrights as well as Ionian authors such as Markoras and Lagouidaras.

The Romantic vogue that surges in the Greek 19th century and the wide spread of novels leads to ambitious melodramatic projects, such as Karrer’s attempt to fit the epic dimensions of Eugène Sue’s sprawling Les mystères de Paris into the four-act opera Fior di Maria (1868). The structure of lyrical works like Karrer’s Isabella d’Aspeno (1853-54) gestures towards the chapter divisions of Romantic novels and visualizes the dramatic actions or acts with cryptic titles in the manner of Victor Hugo.

The most characteristic development occurs around the mid-century and concerns the first systematic attempt to create an independent Greek opera. Inspired by modern Greek history, composers take their themes from popular culture (e.g. Xyndas, O ypopsīfios voulevtīs, 1867, “The candidate deputy”) and from the later years of the Ottoman period and the Greek Revolution: Karrer’s Markos Botsarīs (1858-60; the favourite Greek opera of the 19th century, which in political incidents was associated with riotous demonstrations of patriotism); Domeneginīs, Markos Botsarīs (1849) and Despō (1850); Liveralīs, Rīgas Feraios (1850) and Markos Botsarīs (1857); Karrer, Markos Botsarīs (1858-60), Ī Kyra Frosynī (1868, “Lady Phrosyne”), Despō (1875); and Tzanīs-Metaxas, Markos Botsarīs (1873).

Within this thematic framework, the Ionian composers strive to incorporate melodies, rhythms, motifs and dances from folk music and from fashionable middle-class song repertoire. In some instances, demotic poetry is set to music, such as Frosynī by Valaoritīs, in others original libretti are written in traditional style (e.g. Manousos’s libretto for Karrer’s Despō). For lack of Greek singers, some authors provide bilingual Italian-and-Greek libretti, allowing for a future performance in Greek. In contrast to the developments that characterize national opera-writing elsewhere in Europe, these national melodramas preserve the traditional pattern of Italian opera, which, in the case of the Ionian composers, was completely interwoven with the cultural climate in which they were raised. The aria Egerasa mōres paidia (“I have grown old, foolish children”) from Karrer’s popular Markos Botsarīs is a case in point; nowadays it enjoys the status of an authentic, demotic folk song.

Politics were never absent from the concerns of Romantic opera, and centred around the idea of freedom and social justice, occurring mostly in historicist disguise in order to avoid censorship. This places the choice and treatment of historical and political topics in an interesting light: Karrer’s Dante e Bice (1852), Isavella d’Aspeno (1853), La rediviva (1855); Katakouzīnos’s Antonio Foscarini (1860). Political tales intertwine with love triangles in the twin theme of “passion and death” which presides over the Romantic operas of this century. Both dramatically and musically the effect is one of gushing sentimentality, erotic psychopathology, passionate personal conflicts. Invariably, fatal romantic love is prominent, even if this stands at odds with historical accuracy (Karrer, Maria Antoinetta, 1874).

Similarly Romantic is the technique of mixing comic relief-points into the tragedy of the doomed passions (Isabella d’Aspeno, Fior di Maria). In some instances, this extends into the register of the grotesque (masked balls, misshapen malefactors, Shakespearian furies, wrathful phantoms). Supernatural elements, so strongly present in German opera, are scarce in the Ionian school, but not quite absent: Karrer’s I Kyra Frosynī (“Lady Phrosyne”) is set in a sensual-superstitious oriental milieu.

Medievalism is also drawn upon: the gloomy forests and Gothic castles of the North are the settings of many Ionian-school operas (Karrer, Isabella d’Aspeno; Xyndas, Il conte Giuliano, 1856; Padovanīs, Il castello maledetto, 1862; Rodotheatos, Oitona, 1876). The Byzantine Middle Ages, for all that they were considered the unifying link between the Hellenic past and the Greek present, were not thematized operatically until the early 20th century.

Fin-de-siècle composers, such as the internationally acclaimed Spyridon Samaras, strove to blend national, cosmopolitan and modernist elements in their operatic compositions. At the same time, they were evidently influenced by Wagner, both in their choice of themes and in their composing technique (Samaras, Flora mirabilis, 1886). Finally, the circle of the “National School of Music” founded in the early 20th century and successfully promoted by the towering figure of Manōlīs Kalomoirīs, still perpetuated Romantic attitudes, seeking authentic Greekness in the demotic musical tradition and in Byzantine ecclesiastical songs. This school no longer incorporated such traditional elements into Italian opera but into Wagner-style musical drama.