When was the first opera written?
Opera in German
The world's first opera was "Dafne" by Jacopo Peri, which appeared in Florence in 1598. Three decades later Heinrich Schütz set the same libretto in a translation by the poet Martin Opitz, thus creating the first ever German-language opera. The music to Schütz's "Dafne" is now lost and details of the performance are sketchy, but it is known to have been written to celebrate the marriage of Landgrave Georg II of Hessen-Darmstadt to Princess Sophia Eleonora of Saxony in Torgau in 1627. As in Italy, the first patrons of opera in Germany and Austria were royalty and the nobility, and they tended to favour composers and singers from south of the Alps. Antonio Cesti was particularly successful, providing the huge operatic extravaganza "Il pomo d'oro" for the imperial court in Vienna in 1668. Opera in Italian would continue to exercise a considerable sway over German-speaking lands throughout the Baroque and Classical periods. Nevertheless, native forms were developing too. In Nuremberg in 1644, Sigmund Staden produced the "spiritual pastorale", "Seelewig", which foreshadows the "Singspiel", a genre of German-language opera in which arias alternate with spoken dialogue. "Seelewig" was a moral allegory inspired by the example of contemporary school dramas and is the first German opera whose music has survived.
Alexander Sumarokov
The first opera written in Russian was "Цефал и Прокрис" ("Tsefal i Prokris – Cephalus and Prokris", libretto by Alexander Sumarokov) by Italian composer Francesco Araja serving to the Russian Court. The opera was staged at St. Petersburg on March 7, [OS February 27], 1755.
Opera and Drama
Opera and Drama () is a book-length essay written by Richard Wagner in 1851 setting out his ideas on the ideal characteristics of opera as an art form. It belongs with other essays of the period in which Wagner attempted to explain and reconcile his political and artistic ideas, at a time when he was working on the libretti, and later the music, of his Ring cycle.
Il Paride
Il Paride is an opera in five acts composed by Giovanni Andrea Bontempi who also wrote the libretto. The first Italian-language opera to be given in Dresden, it was first performed on 3 November 1662 at the Dresden Castle to celebrate the marriage of Erdmuthe Sophie von Sachsen, the daughter of John George II, Elector of Saxony, and Christian Ernst, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth. The opera was revived on 21 June 2011 at the Potsdam Sanssouci Festival and on 24 August 2012 at the Tyrolean State Theatre as part of the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music.
The Lady of Lyons
It formed the basis for the operas "Leonora" (1845) with music by William Henry Fry, the first grand opera written in America; "Pauline" (1876) with music by Frederic H. Cowen; and for part of the plot of the operetta "Der Bettelstudent" (1882) with music by Carl Millöcker.
Opera
Opera was brought to Russia in the 1730s by the Italian operatic troupes and soon it became an important part of entertainment for the Russian Imperial Court and aristocracy. Many foreign composers such as Baldassare Galuppi, Giovanni Paisiello, Giuseppe Sarti, and Domenico Cimarosa (as well as various others) were invited to Russia to compose new operas, mostly in the Italian language. Simultaneously some domestic musicians like Maksym Berezovsky and Dmitry Bortniansky were sent abroad to learn to write operas. The first opera written in Russian was "Tsefal i Prokris" by the Italian composer Francesco Araja (1755). The development of Russian-language opera was supported by the Russian composers Vasily Pashkevich, Yevstigney Fomin and Alexey Verstovsky.
Origins of opera
Traditions of staged sung music and drama go back to both secular and religious forms from the Middle Ages, and at the time opera first appears the Italian intermedio had courtly equivalents in various countries.
Albanian opera
The opera began being performed as a musical genre in Albania in the second half of the 20th century. The first Albanian opera was Mrika by Prenkë Jakova, which was put on stage in 1958 at the Migjeni Theatre in Shkoder, Albania, and, a year later, at the venue of the Academy of Arts of Tirana. Other operas that followed were "The Spring" by Tish Daija, "The Flower of Memory" by Kristo Kono, and "The Heroines" by Vangjo Nova. Later operas include "Skënderbeu" () by Prenkë Jakova, "Bijtë e Skënderbeut" () by , "Komisari" () by Nikolla Zoraqi, "Zgjimi" () by Tonin Harapi, and "Toka e jonë" (), by .
French opera
In 1669, Pierre Perrin founded the Académie d'Opéra and, in collaboration with the composer Robert Cambert, tried his hand at composing operatic works in French. Their first effort, "Pomone", appeared on stage on 3 March 1671 and was followed a year later by "Les peines et plaisirs de l'amour". At this point King Louis XIV transferred the privilege of producing operas from Perrin to Jean-Baptiste Lully. Lully, a Florentine, was already the favourite musician of the king, who had assumed full royal powers in 1661 and was intent on refashioning French culture in his image. Lully had a sure instinct for knowing exactly what would satisfy the taste of his master and the French public in general. He had already composed music for extravagant court entertainments as well as for the theatre, most notably the "comédies-ballets" inserted into plays by Molière. Yet Molière and Lully had quarrelled bitterly and the composer found a new and more pliable collaborator in Philippe Quinault, who would write the libretti for all but two of Lully's operas. On 27 April 1673, Lully's "Cadmus et Hermione" – often regarded as the first French opera in the full sense of the term – appeared in Paris. It was a work in a new genre, which its creators Lully and Quinault baptised "tragédie en musique", a form of opera specially adapted for French taste. Lully went on to produce "tragédies en musique" at the rate of at least one a year until his death in 1687 and they formed the bedrock of the French national operatic tradition for almost a century. As the name suggests, "tragédie en musique" was modelled on the French Classical tragedy of Corneille and Racine. Lully and Quinault replaced the confusingly elaborate Baroque plots favoured by the Italians with a much clearer five-act structure. Each of the five acts generally followed a regular pattern. An aria in which one of the protagonists expresses their inner feelings is followed by recitative mixed with short arias ("petits airs") which move the action forward. Acts end with a "divertissement", the most striking feature of French Baroque opera, which allowed the composer to satisfy the public's love of dance, huge choruses and gorgeous visual spectacle. The recitative, too, was adapted and moulded to the unique rhythms of the French language and was often singled out for special praise by critics, a famous example occurring in Act Two of Lully's "Armide". The five acts of the main opera were preceded by an allegorical prologue, another feature Lully took from the Italians, which he generally used to sing the praises of Louis XIV. Indeed, the entire opera was often thinly disguised flattery of the French monarch, who was represented by the noble heroes drawn from Classical myth or Mediaeval romance. The "tragédie en musique" was a form in which all the arts, not just music, played a crucial role. Quinault's verse combined with the set designs of Carlo Vigarani or Jean Bérain and the choreography of Beauchamp and Olivet, as well as the elaborate stage effects known as the "machinery". As one of its detractors, Melchior Grimm, was forced to admit: "To judge of it, it is not enough to see it on paper and read the score; one must have seen the picture on the stage".
Demetrio (1773)
The opera was first performed at the Teatro Nuovo in Pavia on 24 May 1773. It was commissioned to serve as the first opera to be played in a newly constructed theater in the city, and it was considered to be a great honor for Mysliveček to compose the inaugural opera. The organizers were able to attract only one distinguished singer for the cast, however: the soprano Lucrezia Aguiari, whose name has been linked romantically to Mysliveček's erroneously in earlier musicological literature. Her aria "Agitata in tanti affanni" was widely disseminated in late eighteenth-century aria collections.
Act I, scene 1 - Aria of Olinto, "Di quell'ingiusto sdegno" 
Act I, scene 2 - Aria of Cleonice, "Fra tanti pensieri" 
Act I, scene 3 - Aria of Barsene, "Non ti lagnar del fato" 
Act I, scene 4 - Aria of Fenicio, "Ogni procella infida" 
Act I, scene 5 - Aria of Cleonice, "Se non posso su quel trono" [a non-Metastasian text] 
Act I, scene 6 - Aria of Fenicio, "Il ciel rispetta il soglio" 
Act I, scene 7 - Aria of Alceste, "Scherza il nocchier talora" 
Act I, scene 9 - Duet for Cleonice and Alceste, "D'un amoroso accento" [a non-Metastasian text]
Blodwen
Blodwen () is an opera in three acts composed in 1878 by Dr Joseph Parry to a Welsh libretto by Richard Davies. It was the first opera written in the Welsh language.
L'Argia
L'Argia is an opera in a prologue and three acts composed by Antonio Cesti to a libretto by Giovanni Filippo Apolloni. It was first performed in the court theatre at Innsbruck on 4 November 1655 to celebrate the visit of Queen Christina of Sweden who was on her way to exile in Rome. Over the next 20 years it had multiple performances in Italian cities including Venice and Siena where it inaugurated Siena's new opera house in 1669. Its first performance in modern times took place at the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music in 1996. Set on the Island of Cyprus in ancient times the opera's convoluted plot, full of disguises and mistaken identities, revolves around the amorous misadventures of Selino who has been pursued to Salamis by his deserted wife Princess Argia.
List of operas set in the Crusades
The earliest work on this list, "Rinaldo innamorato" by Francesca Caccini, dates from 1623 when opera was still in its infancy and performed only in private palaces or court theatres. During this period operas co-existed with other forms of music drama which featured virtuoso singing – the "intermedio" (a short spectacle performed between the acts of a play with its own story-line) and the "madrigale concertato" (literally "concerted madrigal", a dramatic composition for voices and instruments, often performed semi-staged). Several works in those genres were also based on Tasso's "La Gerusalemme liberata", including:
Opera in German
German-language opera appeared remarkably quickly after the birth of opera itself in Italy. The first Italian opera was Jacopo Peri's "Dafne" of 1598. In 1627, Heinrich Schütz provided the music for a German translation of the same libretto. Yet during much of the 17th and 18th centuries German-language opera would struggle to emerge from the shadow of its Italian-language rival, with leading German-born composers such as Handel and Gluck opting to work in foreign traditions such as opera seria.
Kalevala
The first recorded example of a musician influenced by the "Kalevala" is Filip von Schantz. In 1860, he composed the Kullervo Overture. The piece premièred on the opening of a new theatre building in Helsinki on November of the same year. Von Schantz's work was followed by Robert Kajanus' "Kullervo's death" and the symphonic poem "Aino" in 1881 and 1885 respectively. "Aino" is credited with inspiring Jean Sibelius to investigate the richness of the "Kalevala". The first opera based (although freely) upon the "Kalevala", "Die Kalewainen in Pochjola", was composed by Karl Müller-Berghaus in 1890, but the work has never been performed.
Opera in English
The history of opera in the English language commences in the 17th century.
La Dafne
La Dafne ("Daphne") is an early Italian opera, written in 1608 by the Italian composer Marco da Gagliano from a libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini. It is described as a "favola in musica" (fable set to music) composed in one act and a prologue. The opera is based on the myth of Daphne and Apollo as related by Ovid in the first book of the "Metamorphoses". An earlier version of the libretto had been set to music in 1597–98 by Jacopo Peri, whose "Dafne" is generally considered to be the first opera.
Italian opera
In Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth a tradition of operatic production began in Warsaw in 1628, with a performance of "Galatea" (composer uncertain), the first Italian opera produced outside Italy. Shortly after this performance, the court produced Francesca Caccini's opera "La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d’Alcina", which she had written for Prince Władysław Vasa three years earlier when he was in Italy. Another first, this is the earliest surviving opera written by a woman. "Gli amori di Aci e Galatea" by Santi Orlandi was also performed in 1628. When Władysław was king (as Władysław IV) he oversaw the production of at least ten operas during the late 1630s and 1640s, making Warsaw a center of the art. The composers of these operas are not known: they may have been Poles working under Marco Scacchi in the royal chapel, or they may have been among the Italians imported by Władysław. A "dramma per musica" (as serious Italian opera was known at the time) entitled "Giuditta", based on the Biblical story of Judith, was performed in 1635. The composer was probably Virgilio Puccitelli.
Oscar (opera)
Oscar is an American opera in two acts, with music by composer Theodore Morrison and a libretto by Morrison and English opera director John Cox. The opera, Morrison's first, is based on the life of Oscar Wilde, focused on his trial and imprisonment in Reading Gaol. It was a co-commission and co-production between The Santa Fe Opera and Opera Philadelphia (formerly the Opera Company of Philadelphia). This work received its world premiere at The Santa Fe Opera on 27 July 2013. Opera Philadelphia first presented the revised version of the opera on 6 February 2015.
Opera house
The first public opera house was the Teatro San Cassiano in Venice, opened in 1637. Italy is a country where opera has been popular through the centuries among ordinary people as well as wealthy patrons and it continues to have a large number of working opera houses such as Teatro Massimo in Palermo (the biggest in Italy), Teatro di San Carlo in Naples (the world's oldest working opera house) and Teatro La Scala in Milan. In contrast, there was no opera house in London when Henry Purcell was composing and the first opera house in Germany was built in Hamburg in 1678.
L'amore innocente
Salieri, wrote "L'amore innocent" in Vienna in 1770. It received its first performance during Carnival that same year at the Imperial Burgtheater in Vienna. In 1772, the opera premiered in Dresden. This performance was witnessed by Charles Burney, and included Angiola Calori in the cast. Salieri later reused some of the music from this opera in various unnamed ballet scores, as well as one aria in the late opera "La cifra". Salieri seems to have continued to revise this opera late into his life; performances frequently occurred in German translation as "" under the direction of Gustav Friedrich Wilhelm Großmann in 1783 in Bonn and in Mainz, Dresden (this time in German), both in 1783, 1785 in Frankfurt, and Berlin in 1788; a performance as late as 1793 has been reported. The first modern production was in 1997 in Bolzano.
Gioachino Rossini
Born in Pesaro to parents who were both musicians by profession, (his father a trumpeter, his mother a singer) Rossini began to compose by the age of 12 and was educated at music school in Bologna. His first opera was performed in Venice in 1810 when he was 18 years old. In 1815 he was engaged to write operas and manage theatres in Naples. In the period 1810–1823 he wrote a total of 34 operas for the Italian stage which were performed in Venice, Milan, Ferrara, Naples and elsewhere; this productivity necessitated an almost formulaic approach for some components (such as overtures) and a certain amount of self-borrowing. During this period he produced his most popular works including the comic operas "L'italiana in Algeri", "The Barber of Seville" and "La Cenerentola", which brought to a peak the "opera buffa" tradition he inherited from masters such as Domenico Cimarosa, as well as "opera seria" works such as "Otello" and "Tancredi". All of these attracted admiration for their innovation in melody, harmonic and instrumental colour, and dramatic form. In 1824 he was contracted by the Opéra in Paris, for which he produced an opera to celebrate the coronation of Charles X of France, "Il viaggio a Reims" (later cannibalised for his first opera in French, "Le comte Ory"), revisions of two of his Italian operas, "Le siège de Corinthe" and "Moïse", and in 1829 his last opera, "Guillaume Tell".
Adelson e Salvini
Bellini's first opera was written as his final project at the Naples San Sebastiano Conservatory, when the composer was 23 years old. It was the custom at the Conservatory to introduce promising students to the public with a dramatic work. Bellini styled his project an "opera semi-seria", and it was first performed at the "Teatro del Conservatorio di San Sebastiano" in Naples sometime between mid-January and mid-March 1825, although David Kimbell states 12 February 1825. Weinstock attributes the uncertainty as to the exact date to a series of deaths of several prominent people (including Bourbon King Ferdinand I), which caused all public entertainment to stop during periods of mourning.
L'Orfeo
By the early 17th century the traditional intermedio—a musical sequence between the acts of a straight play—was evolving into the form of a complete musical drama or "opera". Monteverdi's "L'Orfeo" moved this process out of its experimental era and provided the first fully developed example of the new genre. After its initial performance the work was staged again in Mantua, and possibly in other Italian centres in the next few years. Its score was published by Monteverdi in 1609 and again in 1615. After the composer's death in 1643 the opera went unperformed for many years, and was largely forgotten until a revival of interest in the late 19th century led to a spate of modern editions and performances. At first these performances tended to be concert (unstaged) versions within institutes and music societies, but following the first modern dramatised performance in Paris, in 1911, the work began to be seen in theatres. After the Second World War many recordings were issued, and the opera was increasingly staged in opera houses, although some leading venues resisted it. In 2007, the quatercentenary of the premiere was celebrated by performances throughout the world.
List of operas by George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel's operas comprise 42 musical dramas that were written between 1705 and 1741 in various genres. He began composing operas in Germany and then for a brief time in Italy to modest success. It was not until he moved to England that he found great success in the genre. His first opera in England, "Rinaldo" (1711), was met with enthusiasm, and several more Italian operas soon followed. However, Handel's place as the central figure of opera in England during the eighteenth century was not solidified until, under the influence of Thomas Arne, he began composing large-scale works with English language texts. Though almost all his English language works are technically oratorios and not operas, several of them, such as "Semele" (1743), have become an important part of the opera repertoire. Handel's first opera (opera seria - serious Italian opera) was "Almira" (1705).
Notre Dame (opera)
The opera is best known for its orchestral "Intermezzo", which was first performed, along with the "Carnival Music", on 6 December 1903 in Vienna, as "Zwischenspiel aus einer unvollständigen romantischen Oper". These pieces were not composed with any opera in mind, but were later incorporated into "Notre Dame", which he started writing in August 1904. The composer and violinist Karl Goldmark described the "Intermezzo" as "the most beautiful of Gypsy music".
Opera
"Dafne" by Jacopo Peri was the earliest composition considered opera, as understood today. It was written around 1597, largely under the inspiration of an elite circle of literate Florentine humanists who gathered as the "Camerata de' Bardi". Significantly, "Dafne" was an attempt to revive the classical Greek drama, part of the wider revival of antiquity characteristic of the Renaissance. The members of the Camerata considered that the "chorus" parts of Greek dramas were originally sung, and possibly even the entire text of all roles; opera was thus conceived as a way of "restoring" this situation. "Dafne," however, is lost. A later work by Peri, "Euridice", dating from 1600, is the first opera score to have survived to the present day. The honour of being the first opera still to be regularly performed, however, goes to Claudio Monteverdi's "L'Orfeo", composed for the court of Mantua in 1607. The Mantua court of the Gonzagas, employers of Monteverdi, played a significant role in the origin of opera employing not only court singers of the concerto delle donne (till 1598), but also one of the first actual "opera singers"; Madama Europa.
List of opera topics
Operas have been written in a diversity of languages with many countries or regions developing their own operatic style, tradition and history.
Over the centuries, the original form of opera, as established by Claudio Monteverdi and his contemporaries, has diversified into distinct and recognisable genres, in addition to the national traditions listed above. These include, but are not limited to, the following.
Wenzhou
After the invention of Nan Opera in Wenzhou in the 12th century, Nan Opera soon after started to spread its influence all across China as the first-ever mature form of Chinese Opera. At the time in Ming Dynasty, the original form of Nan Opera sung in Wenzhounese lost its influence because of its universality and evolved into 4 different forms that were sung in 4 different tones(melodies). However, some scholars today argue that Nan Opera in Ming Dynasty were sung in 5 different tones(melodies).
Opera
Opera did not remain confined to court audiences for long. In 1637, the idea of a "season" (Carnival) of publicly attended operas supported by ticket sales emerged in Venice. Monteverdi had moved to the city from Mantua and composed his last operas, "Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria" and "L'incoronazione di Poppea", for the Venetian theatre in the 1640s. His most important follower Francesco Cavalli helped spread opera throughout Italy. In these early Baroque operas, broad comedy was blended with tragic elements in a mix that jarred some educated sensibilities, sparking the first of opera's many reform movements, sponsored by the Arcadian Academy, which came to be associated with the poet Metastasio, whose libretti helped crystallize the genre of opera seria, which became the leading form of Italian opera until the end of the 18th century. Once the Metastasian ideal had been firmly established, comedy in Baroque-era opera was reserved for what came to be called opera buffa.
Before such elements were forced out of opera seria, many libretti had featured a separately unfolding comic plot as sort of an "opera-within-an-opera." One reason for this was an attempt to attract members of the growing merchant class, newly wealthy, but still not as cultured as the nobility, to the public opera houses. These separate plots were almost immediately resurrected in a separately developing tradition that partly derived from the commedia dell'arte, a long-flourishing improvisatory stage tradition of Italy. Just as intermedi had once been performed in between the acts of stage plays, operas in the new comic genre of "intermezzi", which developed largely in Naples in the 1710s and '20s, were initially staged during the intermissions of opera seria. They became so popular, however, that they were soon being offered as separate productions.
Italian opera
Opera took an important new direction when it reached the republic of Venice. It was here that the first public opera house, the Teatro di San Cassiano, was opened in 1637 by Benedetto Ferrari and Francesco Manelli. Its success moved opera away from aristocratic patronage and into the commercial world. In Venice, musical drama was no longer aimed at an elite of aristocrats and intellectuals and acquired the character of entertainment. Soon many other opera houses had sprung up in the city, performing works for a paying public during the Carnival season. The opera houses employed a very small orchestra to save money. A large part of their budget was spent on attracting the star singers of the day; this was the beginning of the reign of the castrato and the prima donna (leading lady).
Italian opera
The music of "Dafne" is now lost. The first opera for which music has survived was performed in 1600 at the wedding of Henry IV of France and Marie de Medici at the Pitti Palace in Florence. The opera, "Euridice", with a libretto by Rinuccini, set to music by Peri and Giulio Caccini, recounted the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. The style of singing favored by Peri and Caccini was a heightened form of natural speech, dramatic recitative supported by instrumental string music. Recitative thus preceded the development of arias, though it soon became the custom to include separate songs and instrumental interludes during periods when voices were silent. Both "Dafne" and "Euridice" also included choruses commenting on the action at the end of each act in the manner of Greek tragedy. The theme of Orpheus, the demi-god of music, was understandably popular and attracted Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) who wrote his first opera, "La Favola d'Orfeo" (The Fable of Orpheus), in 1607 for the court of Mantua.
L'Olimpiade (Mysliveček)
L'Olimpiade is an 18th-century Italian opera in 3 acts by the Czech composer Josef Mysliveček. It was composed to a libretto by the Italian poet Metastasio that was first performed in 1733. For a performance in the 1770s, it would only be expected that a libretto of such age would be abbreviated and altered to suit contemporary operatic taste; some of the original aria texts would be omitted or substituted, and the remaining aria texts would be set more expansively. In this case, only 14 of the original 18 aria texts of Metastasio were newly set to music. The cuts and changes in the text made for the 1778 performance of Mysliveček's opera are not attributable.
Opera in Canada
As an old form of art in a new country, opera came to Canada relatively late. Although the first composition can be traced back to the seventeenth century it was not until 150 years later that Canadian opera caught up. Canadian opera became especially fashionable on Canada's 1967 Centennial year. These celebrations set off an interest in operas among Canadian composers that was never seen before. This interest in opera, among composers and audience alike, is noticeable until today. However, most Canadian works in the realm of opera are not known internationally since many of them specifically concern Canadian themes and are small in scale.
Canadian operas are typically influenced by the history of the country. Many deal with First Nations and immigration themes or concern specific historical events and figures. Canada's diversity is thus very much reflected by the operatic works of its composers.
The first opera written on Canadian soil was Joseph Quesnel's "Colas et Colinette". Written in 1788 and first performed in 1790 in Montreal, it was again produced in Quebec in 1805. The comedic opera in three acts is written in a manner that clearly shows the composer's French heritage. The characters are “stock characters” that were often found in French comedies such as Molière's and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's. The similarities between the characters but also the plots may be due to the fact, that the plays as well as operas show the morals of French society at the time.
L'Orione
L'Orione ("Orion") is an opera in three acts and a prologue by the Italian composer Francesco Cavalli with a libretto by . It was first performed at the Royal Theatre, Milan, in June 1653 to celebrate the election of Ferdinand IV as King of the Romans. The libretto had originally been written for the Teatro San Moisè, Venice, in 1642. "Orione" was revived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1983 by the conductor and musicologist Raymond Leppard.
Royal Swedish Opera
But the first opera house was not opened until 1782 and served for a century before being replaced at the end of the 19th century. Both houses are officially called the "Royal Opera", however the terms "The Gustavian Opera" and "The Oscarian Opera", or the "Old" and "New" Opera are used when distinction is needed.
Xerse
Xerse is an opera by Francesco Cavalli (specifically, a "dramma per musica") about Xerxes I. The libretto was written by Nicolò Minato, and was later set by both Giovanni Bononcini and George Frideric Handel. Minato's plot outline is loosely based on Book 7 of Herodotus's "Histories". The opera, consisting of a prologue and three acts, was first performed at Venice on the 12 January 1654, at the Teatro SS. Giovanni e Paolo.
Grand opera
Paris at the turn of the 19th century drew in many composers, both French and foreign, and especially those of opera. Several Italians working during this period including Luigi Cherubini demonstrated that the use of recitative was suited for the powerful dramas that were being written. Others, such as Gaspare Spontini, wrote works to glorify Napoleon. These operas were composed on a suitably grand scale for the Emperor. Other factors which led to Parisian supremacy at operatic spectacle was the ability of the large Paris Opéra to stage sizeable works and recruit leading stage-painters, designers and technicians, and the long tradition of French ballet and stagecraft. The first theatre performance ever lit by gas, for example, was "Aladin ou La lampe merveilleuse" at the Opéra in 1823; and the theatre had on its staff the innovative designers Duponchel, Cicéri and Daguerre.
Ballad opera
It is generally accepted that the first ballad opera, and the one that was to prove the most successful, was "The Beggar's Opera" of 1728. It had a libretto by John Gay and music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch, both of whom probably experienced vaudeville theatre in Paris, and may have been motivated to reproduce it in an English form. They were also probably influenced by the burlesques and musical plays of Thomas D'Urfey (1653–1723) who had a reputation for fitting new words to existing songs; a popular anthology of these settings was published in 1700 and frequently re-issued. A number of the tunes from this anthology were recycled in "The Beggar's Opera".
Grand opera
The first American grand opera, "Leonora", was written by the American composer William Fry for Anne Childe Seguin to take the title role in the 1840s.
Albion and Albanius
When "Albion and Albanius" came to be printed, Dryden's "Preface" was the first explication of opera in the English language. "An opera is a poetical tale, or fiction, represented by vocal and instrumental music, adorned with scenes, machines and dancing," Dryden informed his readers. The "machines" were required to effect the dramatic changes of scenery the action required. Pointing out that the persons were supernatural or heroic, Dryden linked his work with the genre we would call Romance: "The subject, therefore, being extended beyond the limits of human nature, admits of that sort of marvelous and surprising conduct, which is rejected in other plays... it would follow of necessity, that the expressions should be lofty, figurative, and majestical." In this way, at the very birth of opera in London, Dryden gives the character that "opera seria" retained for a century, as long as the librettos of Metastasio were being set, into the age of Mozart.
List of major opera composers
This list provides a guide to opera composers, as determined by their presence on a majority of compiled lists of significant opera composers. (See the "Lists Consulted" section for full details.) The composers run from Jacopo Peri, who wrote the first ever opera in late 16th century Italy, to John Adams, one of the leading figures in the contemporary operatic world. The brief accompanying notes offer an explanation as to why each composer has been considered major. Also included is a section about major women opera composers, compiled from the same lists. For an introduction to operatic history, see opera. The organisation of the list is by birthdate.A number of reasons, including the high cost of production and high status of opera, have been suggested to explain the relatively few women who have been composers of opera, and no woman composer met the criteria for inclusion above. However, some experts in our sample disagreed, and named either or both of the women below as comparable to those already listed:Notes
Liceu
The first operas by non Italian composers which were put on in the Liceu were Ferdinand Hérold's "Zampa" (1848), Carl Maria von Weber's "Der Freischütz" (1849), Giacomo Meyerbeer's "Robert le diable", Auber's "La muette de Portici" (1852) and "Fra Diavolo" (1853). All of these were sung in Italian as was the custom of the time.
La púrpura de la rosa
It is the first known opera to be composed and performed in the Americas and is Torrejón y Velasco's only surviving opera. "La púrpura de la rosa" was first performed in Lima in 1701 to celebrate the 18th birthday of Philip V and the first anniversary of his succession to the Spanish throne. The libretto, in polymetric verse and filled with lush mythological imagery, is a re-telling of the Ovidian tale of the loves of Venus and Adonis. Torrejón y Velasco was not the first to use Calderón's libretto. The text had previously been set for a theatrical pageant in honor of the marriage of Louis XIV and Maria Teresa of Spain in 1660, with music possibly written by Juan Hidalgo de Polanco, composer and master of music at the court of Madrid. With its erotic poetry and music, this setting was very popular at the Spanish court and had several revivals.
Orontea
Orontea is an opera in a prologue and three acts by the Italian composer Antonio Cesti with a libretto by Giacinto Andrea Cicognini (revised by Giovanni Filippo Apolloni). The first performance took place in Innsbruck on 19 February 1656. "Orontea" was one of the most popular Italian operas of the 17th century. It includes well-known soprano arias such as ""Intorno all'idol mio"" (English: ""Around my idol""), ""Addio Corindo"" and ""Il mio ben dice ch'io speri"".
Philosophy and Love argue which of them has more power over mankind.
Historical fiction
Historical subjects for operas also developed during the 19th century. Usually with 4 or 5 acts, they are large-scale casts and orchestras, and spectacular staging. Several operas by Gaspare Spontini, Luigi Cherubini, and Gioachino Rossini can be regarded as precursors to French grand opera. These include Spontini's "La vestale" (1807) and "Fernand Cortez" (1809, revised 1817), Cherubini's "Les Abencérages" (1813), and Rossini's "Le siège de Corinthe" (1827) and "Moïse et Pharaon" (1828). All of these have some of the characteristics of size and spectacle that are normally associated with French grand opera. Another important forerunner was "Il crociato in Egitto" by Meyerbeer, who eventually became the acknowledged king of the grand opera genre. Amongst the most important opera composers on historical topics are Giuseppe Verdi, and Richard Wagner.
Mala vita
"Mala vita" was Giordano's first full-length opera but owes its existence to his earlier "Marina", a one-act opera which he had composed while still a student at the Conservatory of San Pietro a Majella in Naples. In July 1888 the Milanese music publisher Edoardo Sonzogno had announced a competition open to all young Italian composers who had not yet had an opera performed on stage. They were invited to submit a one-act opera which would be judged by a jury of five prominent Italian critics and composers. The best three would be staged in Rome at Sonzogno's expense. Giordano submitted "Marina". When the winners were announced in March 1890, the three chosen from the 72 entires were Niccola Spinelli's "Labilia", Vincenzo Ferroni's "Rudello", and Mascagni's "Cavalleria rusticana", with "Cavalleria" awarded the First Prize. However, "Marina" received one of the 13 "honourable mentions" and impressed. Amintore Galli, Sonzogno's music advisor, who convinced the publisher to offer a commission to the young Giordano for a full-length opera.
Orion (mythology)
Italian composer Francesco Cavalli wrote the opera, "L'Orione" in 1653. The story is set on the Greek island of Delos and focuses on Diana's love for Orion as well as on her rival, Aurora. Diana shoots Orion only after being tricked by Apollo into thinking him a sea monster—she then laments his death and searches for Orion in the underworld until he is elevated to the heavens. Johann Christian Bach ('the English Bach') wrote an opera, "Orion, or Diana Reveng'd", first presented at London's Haymarket Theatre in 1763. Orion, sung by a castrato, is in love with Candiope, the daughter of Oenopion, King of Arcadia but his arrogance has offended Diana. Diana's oracle forbids him to marry Candiope and foretells his glory and death. He bids a touching farewell to Candiope and marches off to his destiny. Diana allows him his victory and then kills him, offstage, with her arrow. In another aria, his mother Retrea (Queen of Thebes), laments his death but ultimately sees his elevation to the heavens. The 2002 opera "Galileo Galilei" by American composer Philip Glass includes an opera within an opera piece between Orion and Merope. The sunlight, which heals Orion's blindness, is an allegory of modern science. Philip Glass has also written a shorter work on Orion, as have Tōru Takemitsu, Kaija Saariaho, and John Casken. David Bedford's late-twentieth-century works are about the constellation rather than the mythical figure; he is an amateur astronomer.
Culture of Italy
During the Renaissance, Giovanni Palestrina composed masterpieces of choral music for use in church services. The first operas were composed in Florence in the 1590s. Opera emerged as an art form during the Baroque period. Claudio Monteverdi was the first great composer of Baroque opera in the early 17th century. Important composers of the late 17th century and early 18th century included Alessandro Scarlatti, his son Domenico, and Antonio Vivaldi. Alessandro became best known for his operas, Domenico for his keyboard compositions, and Vivaldi for his works for violin. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, popular operas were composed by Gioachino Rossini, Vincenzo Bellini, Gaetano Donizetti, Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini.
Opera
Opera originated in Italy at the end of the 16th century (with Jacopo Peri's mostly lost "Dafne", produced in Florence in 1598) and soon spread through the rest of Europe: Heinrich Schütz in Germany, Jean-Baptiste Lully in France, and Henry Purcell in England all helped to establish their national traditions in the 17th century. In the 18th century, Italian opera continued to dominate most of Europe (except France), attracting foreign composers such as George Frideric Handel. Opera seria was the most prestigious form of Italian opera, until Christoph Willibald Gluck reacted against its artificiality with his "reform" operas in the 1760s. The most renowned figure of late 18th-century opera is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who began with opera seria but is most famous for his Italian comic operas, especially "The Marriage of Figaro" ("Le nozze di Figaro"), "Don Giovanni", and "Così fan tutte", as well as "Die Entführung aus dem Serail" ("The Abduction from the Seraglio"), and "The Magic Flute" ("Die Zauberflöte"), landmarks in the German tradition.
Oronthée
Oronthée (or "Orontée") is a French-language opera by the composer Paolo Lorenzani, first performed by the singers and musicians of the Académie Royale de Musique (the Paris Opera) at Chantilly on 23 August 1688 as part of the celebrations the Prince of Condé gave for the Dauphin. It takes the form of a "tragédie en musique" in a prologue and five acts. Almost all of the score is lost.
Farnace
Farnace (Italian spelling for Pharnaces), is the title of several 18th-century operas set to various librettos. The earliest version was written by Lorenzo Morari with music by Antonio Caldara, first performed at the Teatro Sant'Angelo in Venice in 1703. The best known libretto on this subject, however, was written by Antonio Maria Lucchini and initially set by Leonardo Vinci during 1724.
Radio opera
The earliest radio operas were broadcast in the 1920s and followed earlier broadcasts of plays with incidental music. The first radio opera seems to have been "The Red Pen", composed by Geoffrey Toye to a libretto by A. P. Herbert. It was originally aired by the British Broadcasting Corporation on March 24, 1925. Germany followed with Gustav Kneip's Christmas opera for children, "Christkinds Erdenreise" (The Christ-child's journey on Earth), 24 December 1929, and Walter Goehr's "Malpopita" in May 1931.
Opernhaus am Zwinger
The three-tier hall seated up to 2000 people and was at the time one of the largest opera houses in Europe. The first performance was on 3 September 1719 Antonio Lotti's "Giovi in Argo", followed on 13 September by the premiere of Lotti's "Teofane" on the occasion of the wedding of prince Friedrich August II, later the elector and as August III king of Poland, and Maria Josepha of Austria. The house flourished when he, an opera enthusiast, reigned as elector, and Johann Adolph Hasse was musical director. Due to the Seven Years' War, the last opera, Hasse's "Olimpiade", was performed in 1756. The building was used for balls and concerts. It burned down during the May Uprising in Dresden in 1849. The next opera house, the Semperoper, was built at a different location.
Development of musical theatre
The musical sections of masques developed into sung plays that are recognizable as English operas, the first usually being thought of as William Davenant's "The Siege of Rhodes" (1656), originally given in a private performance. In France, meanwhile, Molière turned several of his farcical comedies into musical entertainments with songs (music provided by Jean Baptiste Lully) and dance in the late 17th century. His "Psyche" was the model for an English opera by Thomas Shadwell, "The Miser" produced in 1672. Davenant produced "The Tempest" in 1667, which was the first Shakespeare plot set to music, and was then adapted by Shadwell into an opera in 1674 (composed by Matthew Locke and others). About 1683, John Blow composed "Venus and Adonis", often considered the first true English-language opera. Blow was followed by Henry Purcell and a brief period of English opera. After the death of Charles II in 1685, English opera began to fall out of fashion.
Stradella (Franck)
"Stradella", CFF 229, Op.033 is an 1841 opera by César Franck to a libretto by Émile Deschamps and Émilien Pacini. It is the first of Franck's four operas. Written when he was only 19, it was never orchestrated. Its first performance took place in the late 20th century.
Regina (Lortzing)
Regina is an opera in three acts by Albert Lortzing who also wrote the libretto. It was composed in 1848, the year of the revolutions in the German states and during Europe's "Springtime of the Peoples" (), but it was not premiered until 21 March 1899 when it was performed at the Berlin State Opera. It is a "" (liberation opera) and the first opera which takes place in a factory with workers who strike and chant freedom songs. The first production of the original opera was in 1998 at the Musiktheater im Revier in Gelsenkirchen.
Opera management
Publicly performed operas first appeared in Venice during the Carnival season of 1637. This was facilitated by the large number of public theatres already present in the city which originally served for the production of plays. They were built by noble families such as the Grimani, Tron, and Vendramin. The rebuilt Teatro San Cassiano, sponsored by the Tron family, was the first in the world specifically devoted to opera. Performances of "L'Andromeda" in 1637 by librettist Benedetto Ferrari and composer Francesco Manelli marked the theatre's first commercially produced opera. In the majority of cases the patrician Venetian owners profited from their theatres by renting them out to others who produced and managed the opera performances. The key figure in the actual production of the operas was the impresario, who assembled the singers, musicians and creative team and made the business and artistic decisions. Sometimes the impresarios were hired by the theatre renters and their backers. On other occasions the impresario was also one of the investors and the renter of the theatre. The "cassier" (cashier) was in charge the financial side of the production, including handling the payments and receipts. While the "cassier" was sometimes a separate member of the management team, in many instances the impresario also acted as the "cassier". One of the most famous impresarios of the day was Marco Faustini who managed several Venetian opera houses in the course of his career.
Tsefal i Prokris
Cephalus and Prokris ( – "Tsefal i Prokris"), is an opera seria in three acts by the Italian composer Francesco Araja. Dating to 1755, it was the first opera written in the Russian language.
Achilles on Skyros
One of the earliest and best studied Renaissance versions of the story was Tirso de Molina's 1612 play "El Aquiles". It was followed by a number of other Spanish plays on the same topic. One of its foci was the change in Achilles from fleeing war to being a war hero. This was emphasized by the many changes and transformations used in the play. But the more typical themes of gender confusion and homosexual love are also apparent, and strengthened by the indication that the role of Achilles should be played by a woman.
It has often been used as the theme for an opera or ballet, with the libretto by Metastasio as the most popular. The first opera based on this story seems to have been "La finta pazza" by Francesco Sacrati, with a libretto by Giulio Strozzi. It was the first and probably the most popular opera of the seventeenth century. It was first performed at the inauguration in 1641 of the Teatro Novissimo in Venice, the first time ever a building was created specifically to perform operas. Anna Renzi was the main singer. The production then was performed many times all over Italy and abroad, including a 1645 performance in Paris, which was the second time ever that an opera was staged in France.
Pomone (opera)
Pomone ("Pomona") is a pastoral opera in a prologue and five acts by Robert Cambert with a libretto by Pierre Perrin. It has been described as "effectively the first French opera." It was first performed in Paris at the Jeu de Paume de la Bouteille theatre belonging to Cambert and Perrin's Académie d'Opéra on 3 March 1671. The production had ballets choreographed by Des Brosses and sets and machinery designed by Alexandre de Rieux, marquis de Sourdéac. The novelty of the work drew large audiences and the opera enjoyed 146 performances over the eight months of its run. The score of "Pomone" has only partially survived.
List of important operas
The operas listed cover all important genres, and include all operas regularly performed today, from seventeenth-century works by Monteverdi, Cavalli, and Purcell to late twentieth-century operas by Messiaen, Berio, Glass, Adams, Birtwistle, and Weir. The brief accompanying notes offer an explanation as to why each opera has been considered important. For an introduction to operatic history, see Opera. The organisation of the list is by year of first performance, or, if this was long after the composer's death, approximate date of composition.
Origins of opera
Schütz's Dafne (1627) was the first lost German opera, though Staden's Seelewig (1644) is the first surviving German opera.
Vincenzo Bellini
In the summer or early autumn of 1825 Bellini began work on what was to become his first professionally produced opera. A contract between the Conservatory and the royal theatres obliged the Conservatory—when it nominated a sufficiently talented student—to require that student to write a cantata or one-act opera to be presented on a gala evening in one of the theatres. After Zingarelli used his influence to secure this honour for his promising student, Bellini was able to obtain agreement that he could write a full-length opera and, furthermore, that the libretto did not have to be written by Tottola, the theatres' official dramatic poet. However, as Intendant of the San Carlo, "Barbaja was the chief beneficiary: 'With a small investment he found among those young men the one who would lead him to large profits'" notes Florimo.
Rinaldo (opera)
Rinaldo (HWV 7) is an opera by George Frideric Handel, composed in 1711, and was the first Italian language opera written specifically for the London stage. The libretto was prepared by Giacomo Rossi from a scenario provided by Aaron Hill, and the work was first performed at the Queen's Theatre in London's Haymarket on 24 February 1711. The story of love, war and redemption, set at the time of the First Crusade, is loosely based on Torquato Tasso's epic poem "Gerusalemme liberata" ("Jerusalem Delivered"), and its staging involved many original and vivid effects. It was a great success with the public, despite negative reactions from literary critics hostile to the contemporary trend towards Italian entertainment in English theatres.
Euphrosine
"Euphrosine" was not the first opera that Méhul had written. The Académie Royale de Musique (the Paris Opéra) had accepted his work "Cora" in 1789, but rehearsals had been abandoned on 8 August of that year, probably because of the Académie's financial difficulties. Méhul turned instead to the Opéra-Comique, offering the theatre a new opera, "Euphrosine", with a libretto by François-Benoît Hoffman, who would collaborate with the composer on many more works in the 1790s.
L'Orfeo
L'Orfeo (SV 318) (), sometimes called La favola d'Orfeo , is a late Renaissance/early Baroque "favola in musica", or opera, by Claudio Monteverdi, with a libretto by Alessandro Striggio. It is based on the Greek legend of Orpheus, and tells the story of his descent to Hades and his fruitless attempt to bring his dead bride Eurydice back to the living world. It was written in 1607 for a court performance during the annual Carnival at Mantua. While Jacopo Peri's "Dafne" is generally recognised as the first work in the opera genre, and the earliest surviving opera is Peri's "Euridice", "L'Orfeo" is the earliest that is still regularly performed.
Wozzeck
Wozzeck () is the first opera by the Austrian composer Alban Berg. It was composed between 1914 and 1922 and first performed in 1925. The opera is based on the drama "Woyzeck", which was left incomplete by the German playwright Georg Büchner at his death. Berg attended the first production in Vienna of Büchner's play on 5 May 1914, and knew at once that he wanted to base an opera on it. From the fragments of unordered scenes left by Büchner, Berg selected fifteen to form a compact structure of three acts with five scenes each. He adapted the libretto himself, retaining "the essential character of the play, with its many short scenes, its abrupt and sometimes brutal language, and its stark, if haunted, realism..."
Giacomo Meyerbeer
The name Giacomo Meyerbeer first became known internationally with his opera "Il crociato in Egitto"—premiered in Venice in 1824 and produced in London and Paris in 1825; incidentally, it was the last opera ever written to feature a castrato, and the last to require keyboard accompaniment for recitatives. This 'breakthrough' in Paris was exactly what Meyerbeer had been aiming for over the past ten years; he had been carefully preparing for it, developing contacts, and fully reaped his reward.
Origins of opera
The Italian word "opera" means "work", both in the sense of the labor done and the result produced. The Italian word in turn derives from the Latin "opera". "Opera" is also the Latin plural of "opus", with the same root, but the word "opera" was a singular Latin noun in its own right, and according to Lewis and Short, in Latin "opus is used mostly of the mechanical activity of work, as that of animals, slaves, and soldiers; opera supposes a free will and desire to serve". According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the Italian word was first used in the sense "composition in which poetry, dance, and music are combined" in 1639; the first recorded English usage in this sense dates to 1648.
Poles
In addition, a tradition of operatic production began in Warsaw in 1628, with a performance of "Galatea" (composer uncertain), the first Italian opera produced outside Italy. Shortly after this performance, the court produced Francesca Caccini's opera "La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d’Alcina", which she had written for Prince Władysław three years earlier when he was in Italy. Another first, this is the earliest surviving opera written by a woman. When Władysław became king (as Władysław IV) he oversaw the production of at least ten operas during the late 1630s and 1640s, making Warsaw a center of the art. The composers of these operas are not known: they may have been Poles working under Marco Scacchi in the royal chapel, or they may have been among the Italians imported by Władysław.
Origins of opera
Peri's works, however, did not arise out of a creative vacuum in the area of sung drama. An underlying prerequisite for the creation of opera proper was the practice of monody. Monody is the solo singing/setting of a dramatically conceived melody, designed to express the emotional content of the text it carries, which is accompanied by a relatively simple sequence of chords rather than other polyphonic parts. Italian composers began composing in this style late in the 16th century, and it grew in part from the long-standing practise of performing polyphonic madrigals with one singer accompanied by an instrumental rendition of the other parts, as well as the rising popularity of more popular, more homophonic vocal genres such as the frottola and the villanella. In these latter two genres, the increasing tendency was toward a more homophonic texture, with the top part featuring an elaborate, active melody, and the lower ones (usually these were three-part compositions, as opposed to the four-or-more-part madrigal) a less active supporting structure. From this, it was only a small step to fully-fledged monody. All such works tended to set humanist poetry of a type that attempted to imitate Petrarch and his Trecento followers, another element of the period's tendency toward a desire for restoration of principles it associated with a mixed-up notion of antiquity.
The solo madrigal, frottola, villanella and their kin featured prominently in the intermedio or intermezzo, theatrical spectacles with music that were funded in the last seventy years of the 16th century by the opulent and increasingly secular courts of Italy's city-states. Such spectacles, were usually staged to commemorate significant state events: weddings, military victories, and the like, and alternated in performance with the acts of plays. Like the later opera, an intermedi featured the aforementioned solo singing, but also madrigals performed in their typical multi-voice texture, and dancing accompanied by the present instrumentalists. They were lavishly staged, and led the scenography of the second half of the 16th century. The intermedi tended not to tell a story as such, although they occasionally did, but nearly always focused on some particular element of human emotion or experience, expressed through mythological allegory.
The Sapphire Necklace
The Sapphire Necklace, or the False Heiress (completed by 1867, and at least mostly completed by 1864), was the first opera composed by Arthur Sullivan. It was never performed, and most of the music and libretto are now lost.
John Christopher Smith
Smith's first opera was the Italian-style "Teraminta" on a libretto by Henry Carey and first performed on 20 November 1732 at Lincoln's Inn Fields in London, closely followed by "Ulysses" on a libretto by Samuel Humphreys, on 17 April 1733 at the same venue. "Ulysses" turned out to be a resounding failure, after which he resolved not to perform any further operas. In 1740, encouraged by Handel, he decided to organize his own series of subscription concerts. In the course of nine years, he had six operas performed in Italian: "Rosalinda" on a text by John Lockman (first performed on 4 January 1740 at the Hickford's Rooms in London), "Issipile" in 1743, "Il Ciro riconosciuto" in 1744, and three other operas now lost: "Dario" in 1746, "Demofoonte" in 1747 and "Artaserse" in 1749 (all five operas on Metastasio's libretti). Later ones included three written by David Garrick and based on Shakespeare - "The Fairies" (3 February 1755 at the Drury Lane, London), after "A Midsummer Night's Dream", and "The Tempest" (11 February 1756, Drury Lane, London) - and a successful afterpiece, "The Enchanter" (13 December 1760, Drury Lane, London). His successful collaboration with Benjamin Stillingfleet produced his last opera "Medea" in 1763.
Thomas Clayton (composer)
In association with Nicola Haym and Charles Dieupart, Clayton entered upon a series of opera performances at Drury Lane Theatre — the first venture of the kind in the annals of the English stage. 
The first season began on Tuesday, 16 Jan. 1705, with "Arsinoe, Queen of Cyprus", the work which Clayton had vamped up from his Italian gleanings. 
It was announced as 'a new opera, after the Italian manner, all sung,' with recitatives instead of spoken dialogue. 
It seems to have attained some success, though a contemporary writer (supposed to be Galliard) says 'there is nothing in it but a few sketches of antiquated Italian airs, so mangled and sophisticated, that instead of Arsinoe, it ought to be called the Hospital of the old Decrepid Italian Operas,' and Burney was inclined to acquit Clayton of plagiarism in its composition, for 'nothing so mean in melody and incorrect in counterpoint was likely to have been produced by any of the reigning composers of that time.' 
It was sung by Richard Leveridge, Hughes, Ramondon, Good, Mrs. Lindsay, Mrs. Cross, and Mrs. Tofts, the last of whom made in it her first appearance on the stage. 
On 6 February 1705, it was played at St. James's Palace before Queen Anne, at the celebration of her birthday ; according to Genest it was performed fifteen, or according to Burney twenty-four times in 1705, and thirteen times in 1706. The opera has been described as the first English opera in the Italian style.
Introduction and Variations on a Theme by Mozart (Sor)
The work is based on a melody from Mozart's opera "The Magic Flute". The opera was first performed in Vienna, 1791, and in German, while the first performances in Italian took place in 1794, so Sor could have feasibly written the piece any time since then. However, it is more likely that he was inspired to write the piece when the first major production was premiered in England in May 1819, when Sor was in the area.
Music of Poland
In addition, a tradition of operatic production began in Warsaw in 1628, with a performance of "Galatea" (composer uncertain), the first Italian opera produced outside Italy. Shortly after this performance, the court produced Francesca Caccini's opera "La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d’Alcina", which she had written for Prince Władysław three years earlier when he was in Italy. Another first, this is the earliest surviving opera written by a woman. When Władysław was king (as Władysław IV) he oversaw the production of at least ten operas during the late 1630s and 1640s, making Warsaw a center of the art. The composers of these operas are not known: they may have been Poles working under Marco Scacchi in the royal chapel, or they may have been among the Italians imported by Władysław.
Opera
The Italian word "opera" means "work", both in the sense of the labour done and the result produced. The Italian word derives from the Latin "opera", a singular noun meaning "work" and also the plural of the noun "opus". According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the Italian word was first used in the sense "composition in which poetry, dance, and music are combined" in 1639; the first recorded English usage in this sense dates to 1648.
L'Africaine
The opera was premiered on 28 April 1865 by the Opéra at the Salle Lepeletier in Paris under the title "L'Africaine" in the performing edition undertaken by Fétis. Because of the long-running and unprecedented advance publicity, including countless reports in the domestic and international press, the production was a social and artistic sensation. The first night, attended by Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie, "provided Second Empire society with its most exalted self-presentation in terms of an opera premiere." Hourly reports on the progress of the event and its reception were relayed by telegraph to other European capitals. A bust of the composer, newly executed by Jean-Pierre Dantan, was revealed on the stage at the conclusion of the performance, and with only a few exceptions critics declared the production brilliant and the opera, Meyerbeer's masterpiece.
Finnish opera
The first opera to be composed in Finland was Kung Karls jakt with music by Fredrik Pacius and a libretto by Zacharias Topelius. It was first performed in Helsinki on 24 March 1852.
Il pomo d'oro
Il pomo d'oro ("The Golden Apple") is an opera in a prologue and five acts by the Italian composer Antonio Cesti with a libretto by Francesco Sbarra (1611-1668). It was first performed before the imperial court in a specially constructed open-air theatre Vienna in 1668. The work was so long it had to be staged over the course of two days: the Prologue, Acts One and Two were given on July 12; Acts Three, Four and Five on July 14. Originally planned to mark the wedding of the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I and Margaret Theresa of Spain in 1666, the production was rescheduled to mark the Empress's 17th birthday in 1668. The staging was unprecedented for its magnificence (and expense). The designer Ludovico Ottavio Burnacini provided no fewer than 24 sets and there were plenty of opportunities for spectacular stage machinery, including shipwrecks and collapsing towers.
Farnace (opera)
Farnace is an 18th-century Italian opera in 3 acts by the Czech composer Josef Mysliveček. It was composed to a libretto by the Italian poet Antonio Maria Lucchini that is best known from a setting by Antonio Vivaldi first produced at the Teatro Sant'Angelo in Venice for the carnival operatic season of 1727. For a performance in the 1760s, it would only be expected that a libretto of such age would be abbreviated and altered to suit contemporary operatic taste; this libretto was unusually old, even older than all but one of the librettos by Metastasio that continued by be set in the 1760s. The cuts and changes in the text made for the 1767 performance of Mysliveček's opera are not attributable. Indeed, they are quite extensive; not a single one of Lucchini's original aria texts was re-set by Mysliveček. However, it is the same cut libretto of Farnace, with small variants, used by the Neapolitan Davide Perez in his opera for the Regio Teatro of Turin in the 1751 Carnival, and repeated in Rome at the Torre Argentina Theatre the following year, and in Messina (Regio Teatro della Munizione) and Neaples (Regal Teatro di San Carlo) in 1753 and again in 1757.
Music of Cuba
The first documented operatic event in Havana took place in 1776. That presentation was mentioned in a note published in the newspaper "Diario de La Habana" on December 19, 1815: "…Today, Wednesday 19th of the current, if the weather allows, the new tragic opera of merit in three acts that contains 17 pieces of music, titled "Dido Abandoned" will be performed […] This is one of the premiere dramas from the French theater. In Italy, the one composed by renowned Metastasio deserved a singular applause, and was sung in this city on October 12, 1776."
Cristóbal Martínez Corrés was the first Cuban opera composer, but his Works, such as "El diablo contrabandista" and "Don papanero" were never premiered and haven't been preserved until the present time. Born in Havana, in 1822, composer and pianist Martínez Corrés established his residence together with his family in France when he was just nine years old; and at a later tame they went to Italy. Due to his premature death, a third opera named "Safo", never surpassed an early creative stage. Martínez Corrés died in Genoa, in 1842.
Polish opera
Operas were first performed in Poland during the Baroque era in the reign of Sigismund III Vasa (1587-1632). The king himself had no interest in the arts, but his son Władysław IV (reigned 1632-1648) was an enthusiast and patron of opera while he was still a prince. In 1625 Francesca Caccini wrote an opera for Władysław when she visited Italy. This opera, "La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d'Alcina", was also performed in Warsaw in 1628; this is the earliest verified performance of an Italian opera outside of Italy.
Russian opera
The first opera shown in Russia was Calandro by Giovanni Alberto Ristori (1692–1753). It was given in Moscow in 1731 under his and his father Tommaso Ristori’s direction, with 13 actors and nine singers including Ludovica Seyfried, Margherita Ermini and Rosalia Fantasia.
After that Italian opera troupes were welcomed to Russia for the entertaining of the Empress and her Court.In 1735 a big Italian opera troupe led by a composer Francesco Araja was invited for the first time to work in Saint Petersburg. The first opera given by them was Araja’s "La forza dell'amore e dell'odio", with a text by Francesco Prata, staged on February 8 [OS January 29], 1736 as "Sila lyubvi i nenavisti" ("The Power of Love and Hatred").
Araja’s next two productions were the operas seria "Il finto Nino, overo La Semiramide riconosciuta" to the text by Francesco Silvani given on February 9, 1737 [OS January 28], Saint Petersburg and "Artaserse" to the text by Pietro Metastasio, performed on February 9, 1738 [OS January 28] in Saint Petersburg. Araja spent around 25 year in Russia and wrote at least 14 operas for the Russian Court.
Sant'Alessio
"Sant'Alessio" was the first opera to be written on a historical subject. It describes the inner life of fifth-century Saint Alexis. The work broke new ground with a psychological characterization of a type that was new to opera. It also contains interspersed comic scenes that are anachronistically drawn from the contemporary life of Rome in the 17th century.
Louisa Melvin Delos Mars
Melvin Delos Mars was the first African-American woman to have an opera she composed produced: "Leoni, the Gypsy Queen" in Providence, Rhode Island in 1889. She went on to compose and star in four more full length operettas which were staged in either Boston, Massachusetts or Providence, Rhode Island between 1880–1896, including "Fun At A Boarding School", and "Love In Disguise; or, Things Are Not What They Seem". None of her works survive.
List of Christmas operas
The first Christmas operas, dating from the early 17th century, had librettos based on the Nativity of Jesus and were privately performed. At various times well into the 19th century, public theatres in Italy and other Catholic countries were closed during the season of Advent, the four weeks up to and including Christmas Eve. The opera season customarily recommenced on St. Stephen's Day, 26 December. Numerous world premieres have taken place in Italy on that day, although all were on secular subjects and unrelated to Christmas. The prohibition of secular theatrical performances during Advent was to some extent circumvented by the performance of "azioni sacre", operas on religious themes, often with elaborate staging. One of the earliest Christmas operas of this type was Giovanni Battista da Gagliano and Jacopo Peri's "Il gran natale di Christo salvator nostro" (The Great Nativity of Christ, Our Saviour), first performed on Christmas Day 1622.
Alessandro Curmi
As a composer Curmi was primarily focused on writing operas. His first opera, "Gustavo d'Orxa", was received enthusiastically at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples in 1827. His greatest success, "Elodia di Herstall", came at the Teatro di San Carlo in 1842. According to Curmi's personal friend and fellow composer Paolino Vassallo, Curmi was invited to London to compose three operas for the Royal Opera, London while on a brief visit to Paris (where he wrote the cantata "Sancte Paule") in 1843. The three operas, "La rosièr", "La reine des fates", and "Lodoïska" were all performed there in 1844.
Russian culture
The first known opera made in Russia was "A Life for the Tsar" by Mikhail Glinka in 1836. This was followed by several operas such as "Ruslan and Lyudmila" in 1842. Russian opera was originally a combination of Russian folk music and Italian opera. After the October revolution many opera composers left Russia. Russia's most popular operas include "Boris Godunov", "Eugene Onegin", "The Golden Cockerel", "Prince Igor", and "The Queen of Spades".
Dido and Aeneas
Dido and Aeneas (Z. 626) is an opera in a prologue and three acts, written by the English Baroque composer Henry Purcell with a libretto by Nahum Tate. The dates of the composition and first performance of the opera are uncertain. It was composed no later than July 1688, and had been performed at Josias Priest's girls' school in London by the end of 1689. Some scholars argue for a date of composition as early as 1683. The story is based on Book IV of Virgil's "Aeneid". It recounts the love of Dido, Queen of Carthage, for the Trojan hero Aeneas, and her despair when he abandons her. A monumental work in Baroque opera, "Dido and Aeneas" is remembered as one of Purcell's foremost theatrical works. It was also Purcell's only true opera, as well as his only all-sung dramatic work. One of the earliest known English operas, it owes much to John Blow's "Venus and Adonis", both in structure and in overall effect. The influence of Cavalli's opera "Didone" is also apparent.
Libretto
The opera libretto from its inception (ca. 1600) was written in verse, and this continued well into the 19th century, although genres of musical theatre with spoken dialogue have typically alternated verse in the musical numbers with spoken prose. Since the late 19th century some opera composers have written music to prose or free verse libretti. Much of the recitatives of George Gershwin's opera "Porgy and Bess", for instance, are merely DuBose and Dorothy Heyward's play "Porgy" set to music as written – in prose – with the lyrics of the arias, duets, trios and choruses written in verse.
Russian opera
The first opera written in Russian was Araja’s Tsefal i Prokris ("Cephalus and Prokris", libretto by Alexander Sumarokov) that was staged at Saint Petersburg on March 7, [OS February 27], 1755.
Jephtas Gelübde
Jephtas Gelübde ("The vow of Jephtha") was the first opera composed by Giacomo Meyerbeer. The libretto, which is elaborated from the biblical story of Jephtha, was by Aloys Schreiber. The first performance was at the Hoftheater (Cuvilliés Theatre) in Munich on 23 December 1812. Two manuscripts of the score survive, one in the British Library, London, the other in Brussels.
Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen
Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen ("Murderer, Hope of Women") is an opera in one act by Paul Hindemith, written in 1919 on a German libretto by Oskar Kokoschka which he based on his play of 1907. The opera was the first in a triptych of expressionist one-act operas, the others being "Das Nusch-Nuschi", and "Sancta Susanna". They were the first operas written by Hindemith. The first two were premiered together in Stuttgart on 4 June 1921, all three were performed at the Frankfurt Opera in 1922.
History of music in Paris
The efforts to create a French opera continued. The poet Pierre Perrin persuaded the new Controller General of Finances, Colbert, to establish an Academy of Opera, and in 1669 Perrin was given a commission by the king to create works "in music and in French verse comparable to that of Italy." The first opera by Perrin, "Pomone", with music by Robert Cambert, was performed on March 3, 1671, inside a converted "Jeu de Paume", or tennis court, between the "rue des Fossés de Nesles" (now "rue Mazarine") and the "rue de Seine". It was an enormous success, running for one hundred forty-six performances. Seeing the success of Perrin's work, the official court composer, Lully, moved quickly; he persuaded the royal government to issue a decree banning any theatrical performances with more than two songs or two instruments without Lully's written permission. In 1671 alone, Lully wrote and presented five new operas. On November 15, 1672, he opened his own opera house in the "jeu de paume du Bel-Air" (also known as "jeu de paume de Bécquet"). He also demanded and received from the king the exclusive rights to use the theater of the "Palais-Royal", until then used by the theater company of Molière, giving him control over any and all musical performances in Paris. He presented a new opera each year, entirely funded by the royal treasury. In April 1673, he premiered "Cadmus et Hermione", the first French opera in the lyric-tragedy form. This form, which dominated French opera for the next two centuries, but was rarely exported, featured stories based on mythology and ancient heroes. The performances made maximum use of machinery, allowing the creation on stage of storms, monsters, and characters descending or ascending into the heavens. The texts involved recitation of verse in a classical half-spoken, half-sung style, borrowed from Racine and Corneille, with a vocal range of an octave, words mingled with sighs, exclamations and vibrato. The works included not only singing, but also dance. The operas were all dedicated to the glory of the Sun King: in the dedication of "Armide", Lully wrote: "All of the praises of Paris are not enough for me; it is only to you, Sire, that I want to consecrate all the productions of my genius."
The Siege of Rhodes
The Siege of Rhodes is an opera written to a text by the impresario William Davenant. The score is by five composers, the vocal music by Henry Lawes, Matthew Locke, and Captain Henry Cooke, and the instrumental music by Charles Coleman and George Hudson. It is considered to be the first English opera.
Lost operas by Claudio Monteverdi
The first work now generally considered as an opera is Jacopo Peri's "Dafne" of 1597, closely followed by "Euridice" (1600), for which Peri and Giulio Caccini wrote separate musical settings. Ottavio Rinuccini was the librettist for both "Dafne" and "Euridice". In the new genre a complete story was told through characters, and in addition to choruses and ensembles, the vocal parts included recitative, aria and arioso. This was a development from various older forms of musical theatre that had existed since the earliest years of the Italian Renaissance; such forms included the "maschera" ("masque"), the "ballo" (a dance entertainment, often with sung passages), and particularly the "intermedio" or "intermezzo", a short dramatic musical episode inserted as a prologue or "entr'acte" between the acts of straight plays. Another format in the later renaissance period was the "torneo", or "tournament", a stylised dramatic spectacle in which the main singing was performed by a narrator. Sub-operatic forms of dramatic music continued to thrive as opera itself developed; the blurred boundaries that existed for many years between these forms and "opera" has led to debate about how to categorise some works. For example, the precise genre of Monteverdi's "Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda" (1624) has proved particularly difficult to define.
Italian opera
Monteverdi insisted on a strong relationship between the words and music. When "Orfeo" was performed in Mantua, an orchestra of 38 instruments, numerous choruses and recitatives were used to make a lively drama. It was a far more ambitious version than those previously performed — more opulent, more varied in recitatives, more exotic in scenery — with stronger musical climaxes which allowed the full scope for the virtuosity of the singers. Opera had revealed its first stage of maturity in the hands of Monteverdi. "L'Orfeo" also has the distinction of being the earliest surviving opera that is still regularly performed today.
Opera in Cuba
The first documented operatic event in Havana took place in 1776. That presentation was mentioned in a note published in the newspaper "Diario de La Habana" on December 19, 1815: "…Today, Wednesday 19th of the current, if the weather allows, the new tragic opera of merit in three acts that contains 17 pieces of music, titled "Dido Abandoned" will be performed […] This is one of the premiere dramas from the French theater. In Italy, the one composed by renowned Metastasio deserved a singular applause, and was sung in this city on October 12, 1776." 
On August 9, 1807 another note was published in a Havanese newspaper that announced: "There is a Lyric-heroic drama in this printing shop titled "America and Apolo" which will be presented at this theater…", and on the following September 8 the premiere of the announced piece took place at the former "Coliseo" Theater, that had already changed its name to "Principal". That was the first lyric piece composed in Cuba that we have information about, and its composer was Manuel de Sequeyra y Arango, Captain of the Havana Infantry Regiment. The piece was really a "dramatic action" in the Metastasian style; a brief composition in which the choir participated occasionally.
Opera in Latin America
The history of opera in Latin America dates back to at least the early 18th century. Opera arrived in Latin America as a consequence of European colonization. On October 19, 1701, "La púrpura de la rosa" premiered in Lima in the Viceroyalty of Peru, the first opera known to be composed and performed in the Americas. It is an opera in one act by Spanish composer Tomás de Torrejón y Velasco with a libretto by Pedro Calderón de la Barca, and is the only surviving opera by Torrejón y Velasco. It tells the myth of the love of Venus and Adonis, which provoked Mars's jealousy and his desire for vengeance.
Opera performances were performed also in the country of Mexico. It is within that nation that the first indigenous opera composers of Latin America emerged, with Manuel de Zumaya (c. 1678–1755) being considered the first and most important early opera composer. Outsider of Perú and Mexico, opera was slower to gain a foothold, and it wasn't until the early to mid-19th century that other nations in Latin America began producing their own opera composers. Many of these 19th-century operas focus on the historical conflict between Europeans and indigenous peoples and were influenced by zarzuela, a form of Spanish opera .