One of the deficiencies of the city’s leading opera company, Washington National Opera, is that lately they think of Mozart as early opera. The last time the WNO staged an opera from before 1775 or so was Handel’s Julius Caesar in 2000 and the same composer’s Agrippina in 1992 before that. Baroque opera is one of my major interests, and Handel is great, but there is a century of Baroque opera before Handel, too. We are lucky, however, to have some of the smaller companies in the area to fill the gap: Opera Lafayette has recently brought us Rameau and Lully, for example. Even better, two companies are mounting actual staged performances of Baroque operas this summer. If you want to see what opera was like in its infancy, check it out.

IGNOTI DEI:
>> An exciting, young opera company from Baltimore, Ignoti Dei Opera, is coming to Washington for its first production, as part of the Washington Early Music Festival. This weekend (June 16 and 17, 8 p.m.; June 18, 2:30 p.m.) they will present fully staged performances, with Baroque orchestra, of Cavalli’s opera La Didone (1641), for the first time ever on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. The venue is the Harold and Sylvia Greenberg Theatre (4200 Wisconsin Ave. NW), on the campus of American University. Tickets: $35 or $45. If you want to learn something about this opera, there will be a roundtable discussion this Monday (June 12, 6:30 p.m.), with a press conference preceding at 5 p.m., at the Italian Cultural Institute (2025 M St. NW). To attend the roundtable, you have to RSVP at (202) 223-9800 ext. 1.

WOLF TRAP:
>> Starting the same weekend, the Wolf Trap Opera Company is performing Telemann’s Orpheus (1726) in the Filene Center at Wolf Trap, in Fairfax. Performances are scheduled for Friday (June 16, 8 p.m.) and Sunday (June 18, 2 p.m.) and the following weekend (June 23, 8 p.m., and June 25, 2 p.m.). Tickets: $58. One hour before each performance, there is a free Inside the Opera discussion.