Ludwig van BEETHOVEN Charles GOUNOD Amilcare PONCHIELLI
Vincenzo BELLINI Fromental HALÉVY Giacomo PUCCINI
Georges BIZET Leos JANÁCEK Henry PURCELL
Arrigo BOÏTO Ruggero LEONCAVALLO Nikolai RIMSKY-KORSAKOV
Benjamin BRITTEN Luigi MANCINELLI Gioachino ROSSINI
Gustave CHARPENTIER Heinrich MARSCHNER Carlo SOLIVA
Francesco CILEA Pietro MASCAGNI Richard STRAUSS
Gaetano DONIZETTI Jules MASSENET Giuseppe VERDI
Clemens von FRANCKENSTEIN Saverio MERCADANTE Richard WAGNER
Umberto GIORDANO Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART Carl Maria von WEBER
The word opera means "work" in Italian (it is the plural of Latin opus meaning "work" or "labour") suggesting that it combines the arts of solo and choral singing, declamation, acting and dancing in a staged spectacle. Dafne by Jacopo Peri was the earliest composition considered opera, as understood today. It was written around 1597, largely under the inspiration of an elite circle of literate Florentine humanists who gathered as the "Camerata de' Bardi". 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. Dafne is unfortunately lost. A later work by Peri, Euridice, dating from 1600, is the first opera score to have survived to the present day. The honour of being the first opera still to be regularly performed, however, goes to Claudio Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, composed for the court of Mantua in 1607.[4]
