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.
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.