What is probably the first German-language opera, “Dafne” by Heinrich Schütz, has now been performed in a reconstruction in Dresden. More of that, please.
The setting is rather modest, but the thing is nonetheless spectacular. In the covered courtyard of Dresden’s residential palace you can hear a reconstruction of what is probably the first German-language opera. Roland Wilson, himself a virtuoso on the zinc, wooden trumpet, conducts the instrumental ensemble “Musica Fiata” and the vocal group “La Capella Ducale” in the version of Heinrich Schütz’s “Tragicomedia von der Dafne” that he has reconstructed. The only performance of the opera probably took place on April 13, 1627 in Torgau, for the wedding of the Saxon Duchess Sophie Eleonore and the Hessian Landgrave George II. It is a lively pastoral play about the love-crazed Apollo and the shy nymph Dafne, who flees the god and turns into a laurel tree.