Composer Heinrich Schütz | ||
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Die Dafne (1627) to a libretto by Martin Opitz (which survives), and music by Heinrich Schütz (which is lost), has traditionally been regarded as the first German opera, though it has also been proposed more recently that it was in fact a spoken drama with inserted song and ballet numbers.
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History of the work
Opitz was already a friend of Schütz and in all wrote twelve German madrigal texts for him. In 1625 and 1626 Opitz visited the Dresden court, to work with Schütz on a Sing-Comoedie based on the model of Jacopo Peri's Dafne. Opitz rewrote the libretto after Rinuccini, translating it into Alexandrine verse, and his libretto was so highly regarded that it was later adapted back into Italian by later Italian librettists. Opitz and Schütz' were probably attracted by religious content of the work, rather than the purely pagan mythology of Dafne or Euridice. The electoral secretary to the Saxon Court, Johann Seusse also exerted influence on the project.
Modern scholarly reevaluation
Although long unquestioned as "the first German opera" the performance started no notable tradition in Germany, and Wolfram Steude (1991) made the controversial proposal that Dafne was in fact a spoken drama with inserted song and ballet numbers. Consequently recent publications such as the latest edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Opera are more cautious in attribution of the "first German opera" claim.
Other dramatic works by Schütz
Two other large scale sung dramas by Schütz are also lost: