Opera was born around 1600 in Florence, when the circle of the Camerata sought to revive ancient Greek tragedy. Its first masterpiece was Claudio Monteverdi's Orfeo (1607). Since then opera has passed through the Baroque, Mozart's Classicism, bel canto, Wagner's Romantic music drama, and verismo.
Its building blocks are the aria (a solo lyric utterance), the recitative (sung declamation that carries the plot), ensembles, choruses, and orchestral interludes. The founder of Ukrainian opera is Semen Hulak-Artemovsky (Zaporozhets za Dunayem, 1863), and its classic is Mykola Lysenko (Taras Bulba, Natalka Poltavka).
