While Zumaya’s “Partenope” is recognized by music historians as the first opera created by a New World-born composer, Tomas de Torrejon y Velasco’s “La purpura de la rosa” (in English, “The Blood of the Rose”) was the first opera both composed and performed in the western hemisphere. Velasco’s work premiered in Lima, Peru on December 1701. It is the composer’s {…}