Topic summary
German opera
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Opera in German.
Opera seria, Singspiel, melodrama, early serious German opera
The other leading German composers of the time tended to follow Handel's example. This was because the courts of the various German states favoured opera in Italian. In 1730 the chief proponent of opera seria, the Italian librettist Metastasio, took up residence as the imperial poet in Vienna. Johann Adolph Hasse wrote operas in Italian for the court of the Elector of Saxony in Dresden. Hasse also wrote operas for the court of Frederick the Great in Berlin, as did Carl Heinrich Graun. The king himself supplied the libretto for Graun's Montezuma, first performed in 1755.