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.
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]