A national school of opera in Ukraine first emerged during the last third of the 19th century, and was based on the traditions of European theatre and Ukrainian folk music. The first opera by a Ukrainian composer was Maxim Berezovsky's Demofont, based on an Italian libretto, which premiered in 1773. The oldest opera in the Ukrainian musical repertoire, A Zaporozhye Cossack on the Danube by Semen Hulak-Artemovsky, was written in 1863. The composer Mykola Lysenko, the founder of Ukrainian opera, composed a number of works, including Natalka Poltavka, Taras Bulba, Nocturne, and two operas for children, Koza-dereza and Mr Kotsky.

Ukrainian opera flourished and developed after the creation of the first professional opera houses in the 1920s, with Borys Lyatoshynsky's The Golden Ring (1929) being one of the most notable works produced there during the first half of the 20th century. From 1930 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s, operatic performances and the creation of new works occurred under the dominance of Soviet socialist realism. During this period, Ukrainian opera was modelled on such works as The Young Guard by Yuliy Meitus, premiered in 1947. Ukrainian opera was able to develop once more during the Khrushchev Thaw from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. Works by Vitaly Kyreiko (Forest Song (1957)), Vitaliy Hubarenko (Love Letters (1971)), or Yevhen Stankovych's folk opera When the Fern Blooms (1979) adopted more modern themes and musical expressions that were used during the Stalinist period. Of works written during the 21st century, Moses by Myroslav Skoryk is alone in retaining its place in the local repertoire.

Ukraine has seven opera houses, which include the Taras Shevchenko National Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre of Ukraine in Kyiv, the Odesa Opera House, and the Lviv Opera House. In Ukraine, operas are staged in opera studios in the country's music conservatories and largest theatres.

The first operas to be performed in what is now independent Ukraine were Italian and French operas staged during the 18th century in the estates of the wealthy nobility. The first known opera known to be written by a composer from Ukraine, Demofont by Maxim Berezovsky, an Italian-style opera with a libretto by Pietro Metastasio, was premiered in 1773 in Livorno. Between 1776 and 1787, Dmytro Bortnyansky wrote three operas in Italian and three operas in French.

The earliest opera house in the present territory of Ukraine was the Lemberger Oper, opened in Lemberg (now Lviv) in 1772. German operas were staged in Lemberg from 1774 to 1872, and Polish operas were performed there from 1780 to 1939. The Polish composer Henryk Jarecki worked there as the assistant and then the principal conductor from 1873 to 1900.

In Kharkiv, the first opera house was opened in 1780, and a similar establishment was opened in Kyiv by 1803. The Odesa Opera House, built by the Russian Opera Society, was established in 1802. Odesa became an important centre of Italian and French opera due to its international importance as a trade centre. At first, opera houses in Ukraine did not employ their own artists, but instead hosted touring artists from abroad, the majority belonging to Italian opera companies. Local composers wrote operas in Italian, which until the beginning of the 20th century was the language used for all operatic performances in this part of the Russian Empire. In 1877, a German-language professional theatre opened in Chernivtsi, at that time Czernowitz and part of the Austor-Hungarian Empire. The heyday of opera (and musical life in general) in Czernowitz is associated with the violinist and composer Vojtěch Hřímalý (1842-1908), who staged his own operas in Czech.

Until the emancipation reform of 1861, only the nobility in the Russian Empire parts of Ukraine could afford to keep orchestral players and actors, who were generally serfs. After the abolition of serfdom, the released musicians were able to work elsewhere. Alexey Verstovsky's opera Askold's Grave was staged on 27 October 1867, with musicians hired from the disbanded slave orchestra of Peter Lopukhin [uk] and others brought from Saint Petersburg. Russian opera was staged in Kharkiv from 1874 until 1886, when the Kharkiv Theatre fell into disrepair; it was rebuilt in 1890. The Czech-born Russian composer Václav Suk conducted his opera Lesův pán (The Lord's Forest) in Kharkiv in 1892. In Odesa, Russian operas were first staged in 1873. Following its destruction in a fire in 1883, the theatre there was rebuilt in 1887.

Russian composers influenced by Ukrainian culture include Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (in Christmas Eve and May Night), Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (with his opera Mazepa) and Alexander Borodin (Prince Igor). Within Ukraine, these operas were perceived by nationalists as possessing little of Ukrainian's culture.