The evolution of opera
Explore our opera timeline
1598
The first opera
Jacopo Peri’s Dafne, widely considered the very first opera, is performed in Florence.
1607
Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, the oldest opera still regularly performed at opera houses around the world, is staged at the Carnival in Mantua for the first time.
1637
Opera becomes accessible to a paying public as the Teatro San Cassiano, the first public opera house in Venice, opens.
1639
Le nozze di Teti e di Peleo premieres at the Teatro San Cassiano in Venice.
1735
Lully and Purcell help to establish the new art form in France and Great Britain, respectively, paving the way for Handel, whose first season of operas begins in London in 1735.
1762
German composer Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice premieres. Gluck, along with many, felt opera had become predictable and static and this, his first ‘reform opera’, aimed to free opera from its shackles of tradition.
1791
Mozart, in many ways influenced by Gluck, dies, having raised opera to a new level both dramatically and musically. His comic and tragic operas remain firm favourites to this day.
Early 1800s
Bel canto, the Italian school of ‘beautiful singing’ famous for its elaborate ornamentation and effortless shifts between high and low registers, defines the operas of Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini, which dominate European opera houses during the early 1800s.
1842
His breakthrough success Nabucco premieres in 1842, and by the end of the decade, Verdi has revolutionised Italian opera and paved the way for verismo (‘reality’) opera, which revolves around the plight of ordinary people and which is further developed and brought to perfection by Puccini.
1876
Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, totalling 15 hours, is staged for the first time. Wagner revolutionised opera by creating a ‘complete work of art’, in which music and words are equally important.
Late 1800s and 20th century
Wagner’s 1865 opera Tristan und Isolde, through its revolutionary absence of traditional tonality and its novel use of musical colour, changes people’s expectations and paves the way for modernist opera such as Alban Berg’s 1925 work Wozzeck.
21st century
Opera continues to be an important art form, dealing with current affairs and historical subjects alike, such as John Adam’s Doctor Atomic (2005), George Benjamin’s Written on Skin (2012) and Brett Dean’s new opera Hamlet.