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.
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.