What is the passive and active voice?

While there are various tenses to elaborate on the time frame in which an action takes place, there is also such a thing as a type of voice; active or passive. An active voice establishes the subject as participating in the verb, which is then received by the object.

i.e. Antonio eats the pizza.

Antonio is the subject, eating is the action, the pizza is the object.

However, with the passive voice the functions are reversed- so the object does the action and the subject receives it.

Therefore, the sentence would become: the pizza is eaten by Antonio.

Therefore, the active form [eats] becomes the passive [is eaten]. Note here that the tense does not change, but what changes is the focus of the sentence from Antonio to the pizza.

The passive voice is formed simply with the auxiliary "essere" + the past participle. The tense of "essere" matches the tense used in the active form.

So for this example, "Antonio mangia la pizza" becomes "la pizza è mangiata da Antonio".