Editing Opera in German (section)

===Birth===
[[File:Schutz.jpg|thumb|left|upright|[[Heinrich Schütz]]]]
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 (Opitz-Schütz)|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 [[Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt|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 Theophil Staden|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.{{sfn|Parker|1994|pp=31–32}}{{sfn|Grout|2003|loc="Early German Opera", pp. 121–131}}{{sfn|Holden|1993|loc=Articles on Schütz and Staden.}}