Important 17th Century Opera Composers

Jacopo Peri (1561–1633).  A Florentine who composed both the first opera ever, Dafne (1598), and the first surviving opera, Euridice (1600).

Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) is generally regarded as the first major opera composer.  In L'Orfeo (1607) he blended Peri's experiments in opera with the lavish spectacle of the intermedi. Later, in Venice in the 1640s, he helped make opera a commercially viable form with Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (The Return of Ulysses to his Homeland) and L'incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppaea  -  1643), one of the earliest operas based on real, historical people.

Heinrich Schütz (1585 - 1672) wrote what is traditionally considered to be the first German opera, Dafne, performed at Torgau in 1627, the music of which has since been lost.

Luigi Rossi (1597 - 1653) Rossi wrote two operas.   The first, Il palazzo incantato, was written for Rome.  This aroused the interest of the French first minister, the Italian-born Cardinal Mazarin, who was eager to bring Italian culture to Paris and hired Rossi in 1646 to write an opera, L'Orfeo, for the Paris carnival the following year.   During his stay in France, Rossi learned that his wife, Costanza, had died and the grief he felt influenced the music he was writing.  The premiere was given a magnificent staging with the sets and stage machinery designed by Giacomo Torelli.  Over 200 men were employed to work on the scenery.  The choreography was by Giovan Battista Balbi.  The performance, which lasted six hours, was a triumph.  However, Rossi proved to be a victim of his own success.   The expense of the performance was just one of many reasons stoking popular discontent against Cardinal Mazarin which soon broke out into full-scale rebellion (the Fronde).  When Rossi returned to Paris in December, 1647, he found the court had fled Paris and his services were no longer required.

Virgilio Mazzocchi  (1597 - 1646)  Chi soffre, speri (1637, the first comic opera)

Stefano Landi  (1587 - 1639)  Il Sant'Alessio (1632) is not only the first opera to be written on a historical subject, but it carefully describes the inner life of the saint, and attempts psychological characterization of a type new to opera.  Most of the interspersed comic scenes, however, are anachronistically (and hilariously) drawn from contemporary life in 17th-century Rome.

Francesco Cavalli  (1602–1676).  Among the most important of Monteverdi's successors, Cavalli was a major force in spreading opera throughout Italy and also helped introduce it to France.  His Giasone (1649) was " the most popular opera of the 17th century."

Antonio Sartorio  (1630 - 1680)  was a leading composer of operas in his native Venice in the 1660s and 1670s and was also known for composing in other genres of vocal music.  Between 1665 and 1675 he spent most of his time in Hanover, where he held the post of Kapellmeister to Duke Johann Friedrich of Brunswick-Lüneburg – returning frequently to Venice to compose operas for the Carnival.  In 1676 he became vice maestro di capella at San Marco in Venice.   His two most important operas were L'Adelaide and L'Orfeo, both from 1672.

Giovanni Legrenzi  (1626 - 1690) was active in most of the genres current in northern Italy in the late 17th century, including sacred vocal music, opera, oratorio, and varieties of instrumental music. Though best known as a composer of instrumental sonatas, he was predominantly a composer of liturgical music with a distinctly dramatic character. Legrenzi composed nineteen operas from 1662-1685, of which the most successful were Achille in Sciro (1664), La divisione del mondo, I due cesari (1683), Il Giustino (1683), and Publio Elio Pertinace (1684). His operas were immensely popular (and extravagantly presented) in their day, though, like his oratorios, few have survived. His later dance music was connected with the operatic repertoire.

Antonio Cesti  (1623 - 1669)  is known principally as a composer of operas, although he was also a composer of chamber cantatas.  His operas are notable for the pure and delicate style of their airs, more suited to the chamber than to the stage.  His most celebrated operas were Orontea (Innsbruck, 1656), La Dori (Venice, 1663), and Il pomo d'oro (The Golden Apple - Vienna, 1668).   Il pomo d'oro was written for the wedding in Vienna of Emperor Leopold I in 1666, and first performed in 1668, in a famously lavish production.  It was far more elaborate than contemporary Venetian operas, including a large orchestra, numerous choruses, and various mechanical devices used to stage things like gods descending from heaven (deus ex machina), naval battles, and storms.   Orontea was revived seventeen times in the next thirty years, making it one of the most frequently performed operas on the continent in the mid-17th century.   It includes a well-known soprano aria "Intorno all'idol mio" (English: "Around my idol").

Jean-Baptiste Lully  (1632–1687).  In close collaboration with the librettist Philippe Quinault, Lully founded the tradition of tragédie en musique, combining singing, dance and visual spectacle, which would remain the most prestigious French operatic genre for almost a hundred years.  Cadmus et Hermione (1673) is often regarded as the first example of French opera.

More Lully - Quinault operas:

Alceste ou le Triomphe d'Alcide, tragedy by Quinault, at tennis court (jeu de paume) of Bel-Air, January 19, 1675
Thésée, tragedy by Quinault, at St-Germain-en-Laye, January 11, 1675
Atys, tragedy by Quinault, at St-Germain-en-Laye, January 10, 1676
Isis, tragedy by Quinault ornamented by ballet entrées, at St-Germain-en-Laye, January 5, 1677
Psyché, tragedy by Quinault, Thomas Corneille and Fontanelle, at Palais-Royal, April 19, 1678
Proserpine, tragedy by Quinault ornamented with ballet entrées, at St-Germain-en-Laye, February 3, 1680
Persée, tragedy by Quinault, at Palais-Royal, April 18, 1682
Phaëton, tragedy by Quinault, at Versailles, January 6, 1683
Amadis, tragedy by Quinault, at Palais-Royal, January 18, 1684
Roland, tragedy by Quinault, at Versailles (Grande Écurie), January 8, 1685
Armide, tragedy by Quinault, 1686


Henry Purcell  (1659–1695) was the first English operatic composer of significance.  His masterwork is Dido and Aeneas (1688?).