Opera in German such as opera seria. Some Baroque composers, such as Reinhard Keiser, did try to challenge Italian dominance, and the theatre principal Abel Seyler became an eager promoter of German opera in the 1770s, but it was only with the appearance of Mozart that a lasting tradition of serious German-language opera was established. Mozart took the simple, popular genre of "Singspiel" and turned it into something far more sophisticated. Beethoven followed his example with the idealistic "Fidelio"; and with "Der Freischütz" of 1821, Weber established a uniquely German form of opera under the influence of Romanticism. Weber's innovations were eclipsed by
Opera in Azerbaijan a yearly basis (except 1901 and 1913), featuring prominent singers of the time such as Natalia Ermolenko-Yuzhina and Antonina Nezhdanova. The Opera Theater in Baku was built in 1911. The first opera by an Azerbaijani composer premiered three years earlier, in 1908. "Leyli and Majnun" (1908) by Uzeyir Hajibeyov was the first creation in the opera genre not only in Azerbaijan, but also in the whole Muslim world. It was followed by the operas "Sheikh Sanan" (1909), "Rustam and Zohrab" (1910), "Shah Abbas and Khurshid Banu" (1912), "Asli and Karam" (1912) and "Harun and Leyla" (1915) which were written, but