Origins of opera
"Dafne" by Jacopo Peri was the earliest composition considered opera, as understood today, although with only five instrumental parts it was much more like a chamber opera than either the preceding intermedi or the operas of Claudio Monteverdi a few years later. It was written around 1597, largely under the inspiration of an elite circle of literate Florentine humanists who gathered as the "Camerata". 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. The libretto was by Ottavio Rinuccini, who had written some of the 1587 Medici intermedi, in which Peri had also been involved; Rinuccini appears to have recycled some of the material, at least from the scene illustrated at right. Most of the music for "Dafne" is lost (the libretto was printed and survives), but one of Peri's many later operas, "Euridice", dating from 1600, is the first opera score to have survived to the present day.
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 .