Opera

Learn dramatic and musical forms first. Follow composers and operas through the periods, learning a work’s plot and roles together before studying individual arias, performers, and opera houses.

Operatic Form and Musical Drama

Learn how words, voices, orchestra, and staging create operatic drama.

Forms, Vocal Terms, and Dramatic Concepts

• Opera — Opera is a staged musical drama that combines singing with orchestra, recitative, and aria. The genre developed around 1600 in Italy, with early development tied to the Florentine Camerata and Monteverdi, and later reform works by Gluck. Named examples include Carmen, Tristan und Isolde, and L’amour de loin; later operas by Saariaho and Weir are also associated with the form. Early opera developed in late-sixteenth-century Florence; Verdi and Wagner are later central figures in this form of sung musical drama.

Major Operatic Forms

• Opera seria — Italian “serious opera”; the dominant form from the late 17th through mid-18th century; characterized by heroic or mythological subjects, da capo arias, and virtuosic singing; Handel and early Mozart are central composers. It is also associated with the librettist Metastasio, and it contrasts with the lighter comic style of opera buffa.

• Opera buffa — Italian comic opera; emerged early 18th century as a lighter counterweight to opera seria; typically features lower-class or comic characters and ensemble finales; exemplified by Pergolesi’s La serva padrona (1733) and Mozart’s late Italian comedies.

• Bel canto — Italian “beautiful singing”; style and repertoire emphasizing smooth legato, florid ornamentation, and vocal agility over dramatic weight; the dominant aesthetic of early 19th-century Italian opera (Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini).

• Grand opera — 19th-century French form at the Paris Opéra; large-scale works in four or five acts with historical subjects, elaborate spectacle, ballet interludes, and large choruses; Meyerbeer (Les Huguenots, Robert le diable) is the canonical practitioner; Rossini’s Guillaume Tell and early Verdi also qualify.

• Verismo — Italian “realism”; late 19th/early 20th-century style depicting raw lower-class life with intense, passionate vocal writing; Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci are the twin paradigm works (“Cav/Pag”). It is associated with Mascagni, Leoncavallo, and Giordano, and it is also the literary style of Giovanni Verga, whose work inspired Cavalleria rusticana.

• Singspiel — German form mixing spoken dialogue with sung numbers; precursor to German Romantic opera; Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail and Die Zauberflöte are the canonical examples.

• Operetta — light, comic, often satirical form with spoken dialogue and dance; Offenbach dominates the French tradition; Johann Strauss II (Die Fledermaus) the Viennese; developed into the Broadway musical.

• Music drama — Wagner’s preferred term for his mature works, emphasizing continuous dramatic-musical flow over discrete numbers; distinguished from conventional opera by the through-composed texture and the Gesamtkunstwerk ideal.

• Gesamtkunstwerk — Wagner’s concept of the “total artwork,” unifying music, poetry, drama, and visual spectacle into a single indissoluble whole; articulated in his 1849 essays. The concept brings together music, drama, dance, visual art, and architecture in a single aesthetic program.

• Number opera — opera organized around discrete, self-contained musical units (arias, duets, choruses, ensembles) separated by recitative; contrasted with Wagnerian through-composition.

• Comic song

  • Patter song
    • patter songs — Patter songs are rapid, tongue-twisting comic songs, especially associated with Gilbert and Sullivan operas. A famous example is “I am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General,” with other instances appearing in The Mikado and Ruddigore.

Vocal and Musical Terms

• Sung Forms and Dramatic Organization

  • Aria — a self-contained solo song within an opera, allowing lyrical expression and vocal display; the primary vehicle for a character’s emotional reflection. It is usually set apart from recitative and often appears in da capo form; it is also found in oratorio and cantata, with famous examples including “Nessun dorma” and “O mio babbino caro”.

  • Recitative — sung or half-spoken declamatory passages that advance the plot; secco recitative (“dry”) is accompanied only by harpsichord and cello continuo; accompagnato (or stromentato) recitative is fully orchestrated, used for heightened dramatic moments.

  • Da capo aria — Baroque/early Classical aria in ABA form; the singer returns to and ornaments the opening section; the vehicle for castrato virtuosity in opera seria.

  • Cabaletta — the fast, brilliant concluding section of a two-part Rossinian or Verdian aria (the slower opening section being the cavatina). In practice it often follows a cantabile and is used for emotional escalation before the aria’s close, often ending in a virtuosic flourish that invites applause.

  • Overture — orchestral introduction to an opera; a French overture (Lully) has a slow dotted-rhythm opening followed by a fast fugal section; an Italian sinfonia is fast-slow-fast; a pot-pourri overture (19th century) strings together the opera’s tunes.

  • Leitmotif — a recurring musical theme associated with a character, object, emotion, or idea; developed to its most systematic and famous form by Wagner in Der Ring des Nibelungen.

  • Libretto — the text of an opera; the librettist writes it. Famous librettists include Pietro Metastasio (Baroque opera seria), Lorenzo Da Ponte (Mozart’s Italian comedies), Arrigo Boito (late Verdi), and Hugo von Hofmannsthal (Richard Strauss).

  • mad scenes — A mad scene is an operatic passage in which a character descends into emotional or psychological collapse. Famous examples appear in Lucia di Lammermoor, I Puritani, and Peter Grimes, often featuring virtuosic singing after trauma.

  • Opera vocal forms
    • arioso — An arioso is a short vocal solo that lies between recitative and aria. It has an arialike melodic character without fully taking the form of an aria.
  • Opera librettos
    • libretti — Libretti are the texts sung in opera or oratorio, written to accompany operas. Notable librettists include Lorenzo da Ponte, Metastasio, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Francesco Maria Piave, Eugène Scribe, and Arrigo Boito.
  • Opera conventions
    • mad scene — The mad scene is the operatic stock scene in which a character sings or acts in a state of insanity. Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor supplies the famous example: the Act III soprano scene includes the aria “Il dolce suono,” notorious for extreme vocal difficulty and for cadenzas often added by later sopranos. Later operas invert or parody its conventions.
  • Opera production
    • surtitles — Surtitles are projected translations or transcriptions of opera lyrics and dialogue shown above the stage or on a screen. The Canadian Opera Company helped popularize the term for this kind of onstage translation system.
  • Operatic roles
    • trouser role — A trouser role is an operatic role in which a female performer plays a male character. The type is also called a breeches role or pants role, and examples include Prince Orlofsky, Orfeo, Cherubino, and Nicklausse.
• Voice Types, Technique, and Historical Roles
  • Voice types

    • contralto — The lowest standard female voice type, below mezzo-soprano and overlapping with the highest male range, countertenor. It is often shortened in casual use to alto. Opera roles for this voice type include Erda in Das Rheingold, and famous contraltos include Marian Anderson and Kathleen Ferrier.

    • countertenor — A countertenor is a high male voice that usually sings in falsetto and overlaps with the range of a contralto. The part is common in early music and modern operas, including roles associated with Alfred Deller and operas such as Akhnaten.

    • sopranos — Sopranos are the highest female singing voice, and the type includes coloratura, lyric, dramatic, and spinto varieties. The voice type appears in music from La clemenza di Tito to Lakmé, and male sopranos or sopranists can also sing it.

    • tenors — Tenors are the highest standard adult male vocal range in choral and operatic singing. The term also identifies the famous trio of José Carreras, Plácido Domingo, and Luciano Pavarotti.

  • Soprano voice types
    • soubrette — A soubrette is a light soprano voice type associated with coquettish, comic female roles. Characters such as Norina in Don Pasquale and Cousin Hebe in H.M.S. Pinafore are standard examples.

  • tenor — A tenor is the highest common male vocal range in classical singing, above the baritone and below the countertenor. Clues often mention operatic roles such as Canio, arias like “Ch’ella mi creda” and “Ah! mes amis,” or famous tenors like Pavarotti, Domingo, Caruso, and Carreras.

  • Vocal technique
    • tessitura — Tessitura is the part of a singer’s range where most notes lie and where the voice feels most comfortable. The term is Italian and is used in opera and vocal analysis to describe the effective working range of a piece or performer.

  • Coloratura — highly ornamented, agile vocal writing requiring rapid runs, trills, leaps, and cadenzas; associated with soprano roles such as the Queen of the Night and Lucia di Lammermoor; a coloratura soprano is one specializing in such passages. It is especially associated with demanding opera arias such as those sung by the Queen of the Night and the title role in Lakmé.

  • Spinto — a voice type (soprano or tenor) with enough weight and brightness to push through large orchestration; suited to Verdi and Puccini’s heavier roles.

  • Heldentenor — a powerful, weighty tenor voice suited to Wagner’s heroic male roles (Siegfried, Tristan, Tannhäuser).

  • Basso profondo — the deepest bass voice type; used for authoritative or sinister roles such as the Commendatore in Don Giovanni or King Philip II in Don Carlos.

  • Prima donna — literally “first lady”; the leading soprano of an opera company or the principal female role; colloquially used for temperamental star performers.

  • Castrato — a male singer castrated before puberty to preserve the high soprano or alto voice range; dominated leading roles in Baroque opera seria; the most celebrated was Farinelli (Carlo Broschi). The castrato voice type became obsolete after the early 19th century.

Related Works, People, and Context

• Opera performances
  • opera performance — An opera performance is a stage or fictional event centered on singing and arias, and it frequently appears in literature and games as a dramatic public spectacle. Clues in this set connect it to The Age of Innocence, Madame Bovary, and several video-game scenes built around a performance of Faust.

Baroque and Classical Opera

Follow Baroque and Classical opera through composers and major works.

Baroque Opera (c. 1600–1750)

• Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) — pioneer of opera as a dramatic form; his works transformed the early favola in musica into expressive music drama.

  • L’Orfeo — 1607, Mantua; one of the earliest operas still performed; retells the Orpheus myth; famous for its “Possente spirto” aria and rich orchestration. Monteverdi’s score uses an Alessandro Striggio libretto and includes Orpheus’s plea to Pluto, “Rendetemi il mio ben,” along with the prologue narrated by Music, Charon, and Apollo’s rescue of Eurydice.

  • L’incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea) — 1643, Venice; depicts Nero’s elevation of his mistress Poppea over his wife Ottavia; remarkable for moral ambiguity; closing duet “Pur ti miro” is iconic. It is Monteverdi’s last opera, set in ancient Rome, and includes a prologue in which Fortune, Virtue, and Love contend for supremacy. The work also features Seneca, Ottone, and Drusilla; the famous final duet “Pur ti miro” may not have been part of the original libretto.
    • Ottavia — Ottavia is the soprano role in Monteverdi’s The Coronation of Poppea who laments her betrayal in “Disprezzata Regina.” After discovering Poppea’s affair with her husband, she tries to have Ottone kill Poppea, but is instead sent away on a ship.

  • Arianna — Arianna is Monteverdi’s lost opera based on the myth of Ariadne, with only the lament “Lasciatemi morire” surviving. It was written for a princely wedding and later overshadowed by Orfeo.

  • L’Arianna — L’Arianna is Monteverdi’s lost opera based on the story of Ariadne. Its fame rests on the surviving Lamento, which begins with the plea ‘Lasciatemi morire’ or ‘Let me die.’

  • Monteverdi’s surviving operas — Monteverdi’s surviving operas include L’Orfeo, L’incoronazione di Poppea, and Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria. They are among the earliest major operas regularly encountered in the repertory.
• Henry Purcell (1659–1695) — greatest English Baroque composer.
  • Dido and Aeneas — c. 1688–1689; short through-composed opera; Dido’s lament “When I am laid in earth” (built on a descending ground bass) is one of the most famous arias in the repertoire. Henry Purcell’s opera about the queen of Carthage and the Trojan hero Aeneas. Its libretto is by Nahum Tate, and the cast includes Belinda, witches, and sailors; other notable numbers include “Remember me, but ah! forget my fate” and the “Triumphing Dance.” Aeneas is misled by a Mercury disguise.

    • Belinda — Belinda is a handmaiden of Dido in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and also the heroine of Pope’s mock-heroic poem The Rape of the Lock. She is associated both with Dido’s lament and with the lock of hair that is taken up to heaven as a star.

    • “Dido’s Lament” (“When I am laid in earth”) — Purcell, Dido and Aeneas; ground-bass aria; Dido prepares to die after Aeneas departs. It is also known by its opening line, “When I am laid in earth,” and is the final aria of the opera; Dido sings a farewell to Belinda, ending with the plea “Remember me, but ah! forget my fate.” The piece is noted for its chromatic descent.

  • King Arthur, or the British Worthy — King Arthur, or The British Worthy is Purcell and Dryden’s semi-opera about Arthur’s struggle against the Saxons led by Oswald. It is known for airs such as “What Power Art Thou” and “Fairest Isle,” both later reused in modern arrangements and broadcasts.

  • The Fairy Queen — The Fairy-Queen is Henry Purcell’s 1692 semi-opera, based on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Its title refers to Titania, the fairy queen from that play, not Edmund Spenser’s poem of the same name.
• George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) — dominated Italian opera seria in London; composed over 40 operas.

  • Rinaldo — 1711, London; first Italian opera Handel wrote for the English stage; features the aria “Lascia ch’io pianga.”

  • Giulio Cesare in Egitto (Julius Caesar in Egypt) — 1724, London; considered his finest opera; features the mezzo/alto role of Caesar (originally a castrato) and soprano Cleopatra. It stages Caesar and Cleopatra amid the conflict with Tolomeo, and is often treated as Handel’s most frequently performed opera. Its best-known numbers include Cleopatra’s “V’adoro, pupille,” Caesar’s “Va tacito,” and Sesto’s revenge aria “Svegliatevi nel core.” The cast also includes Cornelia and Sesto, with arias such as “Piangere la sorte mia” and “Ahi, sempre piangero.”

  • Rodelinda — 1725, London; Lombard queen faces tyrant; frequently revived in the modern Handel renaissance.

  • Xerxes (Serse) — 1738, London; famous for opening aria “Ombra mai fu,” an ironic hymn to a shady tree known today as “Handel’s Largo.” The opera features the Persian king Xerxes, his brother Arsamene, and a love plot involving Romilda and Romilda’s sister.
    • “Ombra mai fu” (“Handel’s Largo”) — Handel, Serse; a praising aria for a tree’s shade; often performed as an instrumental piece. It opens Handel’s Serse and is sung by the title king to a plane tree. The aria is one of Handel’s most familiar melodies and is often performed instrumentally.

  • Ottone — Ottone is the title role in Handel’s opera about the Byzantine princess Teofane. In the plot, Ottone is entangled in court intrigue and marriage politics, including his attachment to Teofane and his forced marriage to Drusilla.

  • Alcina — Alcina is the enchantress in Ariosto-inspired opera who seduces men, turns them into plants, and rules over a deceptive island world. She appears in works by Francesca Caccini and Handel, where her magical island is revealed as barren and her spell over Ruggiero collapses.

• Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–1687) — founded the French tragédie en musique at the court of Louis XIV; established the French overture form.

• Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764) — dominated French Baroque opera after Lully; works include Hippolyte et Aricie (1733) and Castor et Pollux (1737); his harmonic innovations provoked the Querelle des Bouffons.
  • Hippolyte et Aricie — Jean-Philippe Rameau’s first opera, based on Racine’s Phaedre and centered on the mythological lovers Hippolytus and Aricia. It is famous for striking choruses and bold dissonances, including the omitted and later restored “Trio des Parques,” and it helped trigger a controversy over Rameau’s style in French opera.
• Caccini family
  • Caccini — The Caccini were a prominent musical family tied to the Florentine Camerata and early opera. Giulio Caccini and his daughter Francesca were important composers, singers, and lutenists associated with the stile fiorentino and the concerto delle donne.
• William D’Avenant
  • The Siege of Rhodes — William D’Avenant’s The Siege of Rhodes is often called the first English opera. It concerns the Knights of St. John under pressure from Suleyman, with a warrior and his wife caught up in the conflict and the wife’s courage winning admiration.
• Giovanni Battista Pergolesi
  • La serva padrona — Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s La serva padrona is an opera buffa that began as an intermezzo to Il prigioniero superbo and became famous in Paris after helping spark the Querelle des Bouffons. Its comic plot centers on Serpina and the silent servant Vespone maneuvering the master Uberto into marriage. The work includes the duet ‘Lo conosco a quegli’occhietti’ and the later ‘Contento tu sarai,’ with Uberto realizing his feelings for Serpina. It also traveled widely in revised versions that replaced recitative with spoken dialogue.
• Jacopo Peri — Jacopo Peri was a late Renaissance Italian composer associated with the development of opera. His Euridice is the earliest surviving opera, and his lost Dafne is often treated as the first opera. He helped establish the early Florentine opera tradition alongside collaborators such as Jacopo Corsi.

  • Dafne — Dafne is the lost 1598 mythological music drama by Jacopo Peri, often treated as the first opera. It was written with a libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini and is associated with the early Florentine court experiments that led into the Baroque era.

  • Euridice — Jacopo Peri’s Euridice is usually treated as the first opera, and it premiered in Florence in 1600 with both its libretto and score surviving. The work was written for the wedding festivities of Henry IV of France and Marie de’ Medici, and one scene sends the title character to the Gates of Hades after she steps on a snake.

Classical Era (c. 1750–1820)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)

Mozart’s operas span Italian serious and comic forms as well as German Singspiel; all with librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte for the three Italian comedies.

• Idomeneo, re di Creta — 1781, Munich; opera seria; Cretan king vows to sacrifice his son; his most ambitious early opera.

• Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio) — 1782, Vienna; Singspiel; Belmonte rescues Konstanze from a Turkish pasha’s harem; noted for “Turkish” percussion effects; Emperor Joseph II reportedly said it had “too many notes.” The opera is one of Mozart’s best-known comic works and includes the aria “Martern aller Arten.” Its characters also include Osmin, Pedrillo, and Blonde, and it premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna.

  • Konstanze — Konstanze is the captive heroine of Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio, held in Pasha Selim’s Ottoman harem while Belmonte tries to rescue her. Her arias, especially “Martern aller Arten,” are among the opera’s signature displays of virtuosic Mozartian writing.

  • Osmin — Osmin is the bass role in Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio, where he gets the comic showpiece aria “O, wie will ich triumphieren.” He is the growling guardian of the harem and the character linked to the famous long low D in the aria.

  • Pasha Selim — Pasha Selim is the Ottoman ruler in Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio, the man who holds Konstanze captive in the harem and ultimately grants the lovers their freedom. The opera revolves around Belmonte and Pedrillo’s rescue attempt and its famous Turkish-style musical color.

• Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) — 1786, Vienna; libretto by Da Ponte after Beaumarchais; Count Almaviva’s valet Figaro outmaneuvers his philandering master; features “Non più andrai,” “Voi che sapete,” and the Countess’s “Dove sono.” Sequel to The Barber of Seville, it centers on the wedding of Figaro and Susanna and the Count’s attempts to exercise his privilege over the servant bride. Key characters and subplots include Cherubino, Marcellina and Bartolo, the room-measuring duet “Cinque, dieci, venti, trenta,” and the final reconciliation in which Count Almaviva asks Rosina’s forgiveness.

  • Barbarina — Barbarina is a character in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, the gardener Antonio’s daughter. She is the one who laments losing the pin she was supposed to deliver to Susanna in Act IV.

  • Cherubino — Cherubino is the flirtatious page in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. He sings “Non so più cosa son” and “Voi che sapete,” and he is the trouser-role character who is sent toward military service.

  • Voi che sapete che cosa e amor — “Voi che sapete che cosa e amor” is Cherubino’s aria from The Marriage of Figaro, usually sung by a mezzo-soprano in a trouser role. It appears before Cherubino is dressed in women’s clothing to hide from the Count.

• Don Giovanni — 1787, Prague; dramma giocoso; the libertine Don Giovanni seduces, kills the Commendatore, and is dragged to hell; features “Là ci darem la mano,” “Madamina il catalogo,” and the Stone Guest finale. The opera is in Italian and includes Leporello, Donna Anna, Donna Elvira, and Don Ottavio.

  • Don Ottavio — Don Ottavio is the betrothed of Donna Anna in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. He is the noble suitor whom Don Giovanni tries to displace.

  • Dona Elvira — Dona Elvira is the woman promised marriage by Giovanni in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. After being abandoned, she follows him across Europe and is tied to Leporello’s famous catalog aria.

  • Donna Anna — Donna Anna is the virtuous daughter of the Commendatore and the betrothed of Don Ottavio in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. She is one of the opera’s central figures, and the plot turns on Giovanni’s attempted seduction of her and the consequences that follow.

  • Il dissoluto punito, ossia il Don Giovanni — Il dissoluto punito, ossia il Don Giovanni is Mozart’s opera about the seducer Don Giovanni, also known as Don Juan. Its key scenes include the Catalogue Aria, the duet with Zerlina, Donna Anna’s revenge, and the statue of the Commendatore dragging the title character to hell.

  • Leporello — Leporello is Don Giovanni’s servant in Mozart’s opera, where he opens with “Notte e giorno faticar” and later recites the famous Catalogue Aria. He is the comic attendant who catalogs his master’s conquests and appears in the climactic final ensemble.

  • Là ci darem la mano — “Là ci darem la mano” is the duet from Mozart’s Don Giovanni in which Don Giovanni seduces Zerlina. It is famous for Chopin’s variations on the tune and for the line in which Zerlina is tempted to join him.

  • The Catalogue Aria — This aria from Don Giovanni is sung by Leporello as he catalogs his master’s many conquests. It is the famous “Catalogue Aria,” which lists Don Giovanni’s lovers by country and type.

  • Zerlina — Zerlina is the peasant girl in Mozart’s Don Giovanni who is nearly seduced by Don Giovanni on her wedding day.

• Così fan tutte (Women Are Like That) — 1790, Vienna; two officers test their fiancées’ fidelity in disguise; features the ensembles “Soave sia il vento” and “Come scoglio.” The scheme is arranged by Don Alfonso, with Fiordiligi and Dorabella as the fiancées and Ferrando and Guglielmo as the disguised suitors, initially posing as Albanians. Despina aids the deception, and the opera’s title is commonly taken to mean “women are all like that” or “they all do the same,” referring to the wager on fidelity.

  • Come scoglio — This coloratura aria from Mozart’s Così fan tutte is sung by Fiordiligi and opens with a comparison to an unshakable rock. It is especially associated with the composer’s joke about Adriana Ferrarese’s neck movement as she performed it.

  • Don Alfonso — Così fan tutte is Mozart’s comic opera about a fidelity wager engineered by Don Alfonso. Ferrando and Guglielmo disguise themselves to test Fiordiligi and Dorabella, with Despina helping the ruse.

• Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) — 1791, Vienna; Singspiel with Masonic symbolism; prince Tamino pursues princess Pamina through trials set by Sarastro; the Queen of the Night’s vengeance aria (“Der Hölle Rache”) demands high F above the staff. Papageno serves as comic relief, and the opera also features Papagena, Monostatos, and the Three Ladies; the title refers to Tamino’s enchanted flute. The libretto was by Emanuel Schikaneder, and the work ends with Papageno and Papagena’s comic duet.

  • Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen — The Queen of the Night’s furious coloratura aria from Mozart’s The Magic Flute. In it, she orders Pamina to murder Sarastro and threatens to disown her; the piece is famous for its extreme high notes, including F6, and for its coloratura fireworks.

  • Magic chimes — The magic chimes are Papageno’s counterpart to Tamino’s magic flute in The Magic Flute. They belong to the bird-catcher Papageno in Mozart’s opera.

  • Papageno — Papageno is the comic birdcatcher in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, recognizable by his feathers, pan pipes, magic bells, and stuttering love duet. He serves as Tamino’s earthy foil and ends up paired with Papagena.

  • Tamino and Papageno — The characters Tamino and Papageno are from Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute. The work follows their quests and includes the Queen of the Night, Sarastro, and Masonic imagery.

  • “Queen of the Night aria” (the second: “Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen”) — Mozart, Die Zauberflöte; Act II; coloratura soprano; reaches the high F6; the Queen commands her daughter Pamina to murder Sarastro.

  • “Der Hölle Rache” — see Queen of the Night aria above.

• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  • Idomeneo — Mozart’s first serious opera, set in Crete, about the Cretan king Idomeneo who survives a shipwreck after vowing to sacrifice the first person he sees. The plot centers on his son Idamante, the Trojan princess Ilia, Elettra, and Neptune’s demand for a human sacrifice, including a sea serpent sent by Neptune. It ends with the title king yielding power to Idamante and Ilia. Best-known arias include “Fuor del mar” and “Torna la pace.”

  • Idomeneo, re di Creta — Mozart’s 1781 opera seria about Idomeneo, king of Crete, who vows to sacrifice the first person he sees after Neptune saves him from a storm. The doomed victim is his son Idamante. The opera also features Elettra and Ilia, and includes the aria “Fuor del mar.”

  • Idomeneo, re di Creta ossia Ilia e Idamante — Idomeneo, re di Creta ossia Ilia e Idamante is the Mozart opera in which Idomeneo promises Neptune to sacrifice the first person he meets after returning from the Trojan War. When that person turns out to be his son, the king must struggle to keep his vow from destroying his family.

  • Il sogno di Scipione — Il sogno di Scipione is a Mozart opera with a libretto by Pietro Metastasio. Its plot follows Scipio’s dream and draws on Cicero’s De re publica.

  • La clemenza di Tito — Mozart’s final opera seria, commissioned for the coronation celebrations of Leopold II and premiered in Prague in 1791. Based on a Metastasio libretto, it centers on the Roman emperor Titus and the plot against him by Vitellia and Sesto, and ends with Titus’s pardon of the conspirators. It includes the aria “Non piu di fiori” and is noted for its restrained style.

  • Lucio Silla — Lucio Silla is a Mozart opera from 1772 about the Roman dictator Sulla and his pursuit of Giunia, daughter of his rival Gaius Marius. It is one of Mozart’s early serious operas drawn from Roman history.

• Emanuel Schikaneder — Emanuel Schikaneder was the librettist and original Papageno in Mozart’s The Magic Flute. He also helped build the Theater an der Wien, making him a central figure in Viennese opera production and performance.

Related Works, People, and Context

• Médée — Médée is an opera by Luigi Cherubini, an Italian Classical composer who later worked in Paris. His other recurring clue works include Lodoiska, Les Deux Journées, and a C minor Requiem commemorating Louis XVI.

• Opera controversies

  • War of the Buffoons — The War of the Buffoons was the 1750s French controversy over whether French or Italian opera was superior. It was sparked by performances such as La serva padrona and drew in writers including Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Opera Reform and Other Eighteenth-Century Composers

Follow opera reform and eighteenth-century comic traditions into Mozart’s dramatic synthesis.

• Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–1787) — reformer who stripped opera of virtuosic excess to restore drama; articulated principles in the preface to Alceste (1769).

  • Orfeo ed Euridice — 1762, Vienna (revised 1774, Paris); the contralto/mezzo role of Orfeo sings “Che farò senza Euridice” at Euridice’s death; prototype of Gluck’s reform style. One of the best-known treatments of the Orpheus myth. Its best-known passages include the “Dance of the Blessed Spirits,” and it ends with Amor restoring Eurydice.

  • Alceste — 1767 (Vienna version); a queen offers to die in place of her husband; preface states the reform ideals of simplicity and dramatic truth. The title role is Queen Alceste, who pleads to die for her husband Admetus. It is one of Gluck’s best-known reform operas.

  • Iphigénie en Tauride — 1779, Paris; considered his masterpiece of the reform operas.

  • Amor
    • Amor or Love — Amor, or Love, is the only named role in the opera whose title does not include that character, and it is sung by a soprano. The title refers to the short comic opera often associated with Gluck and the figure of Cupid.
  • Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck — Christoph Willibald Gluck was the German composer of reform operas such as Orfeo ed Euridice and Iphigénie en Tauride. He helped reshape opera seria by simplifying recitative and aria conventions and by aiming for greater dramatic unity.

• Baldassare Galuppi — Baldassare Galuppi was an eighteenth-century Venetian composer associated with opera buffa and dramma giocoso. He worked with Carlo Goldoni on comic operas such as L’Arcadia in Brenta and Il filosofo di campagna, and Browning later wrote a poem about him.

• Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf — Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf was an Austrian composer best known for his comic opera The Doctor and the Apothecary. He also wrote symphonies based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, including one on the Fall of Phaeton.

• André Grétry — André Grétry was a Liégeois composer of opéras comiques, including Richard Cœur-de-lion, Zémire et Azor, and Lucile. His melodies were borrowed by later composers, including Henri Vieuxtemps, and he is linked to the aria quoted in Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades.

• Antonio Salieri — Antonio Salieri was an eighteenth-century Italian composer and Kapellmeister, later depicted in literature as Mozart’s jealous rival. He wrote successful operas including Armida, Tarare, Les Danaïdes, and Palmira, regina di Persia, and in the Amadeus legend he becomes obsessed with divine favoritism and Mozart’s genius. Related literary and musical versions of this story include works by Pushkin, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Peter Shaffer.
  • Tarare — Tarare is Salieri’s opera based on a Beaumarchais libretto, originally written to rival Don Giovanni and later reworked as Axur, re d’Ormus.

Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera

Connect Italian operas to composers, plots, characters, and vocal moments.

19th-Century Italian Opera

Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868)

• Tancredi — 1813, Venice; first major serious success; aria “Di tanti palpiti” became ubiquitous in early 19th-century Italy. Tancredi is Rossini’s early opera seria built around the title exiled general. Its plot involves Amenaide and Solamir, and there are competing Venetian and Ferrara endings.

• L’italiana in Algeri (The Italian Girl in Algiers) — 1813, Venice; buffa classic; heroine Isabella outsmarts the Bey. Rossini’s comic opera follows Isabella, Lindoro, and Taddeo in a rescue plot centered on the bey Mustafa. The title character outwits Mustafa by promising to initiate him into the order of the Pappataci. Its overture is famous for the sudden orchestral outburst after a quiet opening, and the plot includes the “Pappataci” scene and the aria “Pensa alla patria.”

• Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) — 1816, Rome; buffa masterpiece after Beaumarchais; Figaro’s “Largo al factotum” opens Act I; notoriously a fiasco on its opening night before becoming a triumph. It follows Figaro helping Count Almaviva win Rosina from Doctor Bartolo through disguises and other schemes, with Basilio also involved; Almaviva often uses the alias Lindoro. Other well-known numbers include Rosina’s “Una voce poco fa.”

  • Bartolo — Bartolo is the pompous doctor and guardian figure in The Barber of Seville who feuds with Figaro before learning that Figaro is his son. He also wishes to marry Rosina and is enraged by Figaro’s role in her engagement to the Count.

  • Count Almaviva — Count Almaviva is the nobleman in Rossini’s The Barber of Seville who disguises himself as Lindoro to court Rosina. He also appears in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, where he tries to exercise feudal privilege over Susanna and is thwarted by Figaro and the Countess. The character is a staple of comic opera and aristocratic intrigue.

  • Rosina — Rosina is the heroine of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, the young woman sought by Count Almaviva. She is under the guardianship of Dr. Bartolo, studied by Don Basilio, and ultimately marries Almaviva at the end of the opera.

  • “Largo al factotum” — Rossini, Il barbiere di Siviglia; Figaro’s rapid, patter-like baritone entrance aria listing his own indispensability; famous for the repeated “Figaro! Figaro!” passage. In the opera, Figaro helps Count Almaviva woo Rosina.

• La Cenerentola (Cinderella) — 1817, Rome; mezzo-soprano Cinderella role; replaces magic with moral virtue; rondo finale “Non più mesta” is a coloratura showpiece. Rossini’s comic opera retelling of the Cinderella story features Don Magnifico, the stepsisters Clorinda and Tisbe, the prince Ramiro, his valet Dandini impersonating him, and the tutor Alidoro; it also uses the bracelet motif and includes a celebrated sextet in the palace scene.

  • Don Magnifico — Don Magnifico is the pompous stepfather in Rossini’s La Cenerentola, where Angelina outwits his household. He is the comic figure who dreams of his family rising to royalty after interpreting an omen about being turned into a donkey.

  • La Cenerentola, ossia La bontà in trionfo — La Cenerentola, ossia La bontà in trionfo is Rossini’s opera version of the Cinderella story. It features Angelina, Prince Ramiro, Don Magnifico, and the bracelet that identifies the heroine after the ball.

• Guillaume Tell (William Tell) — 1829, Paris; grand opera; Rossini’s final opera (he retired from opera thereafter at age 37); overture’s final section (“March of the Swiss Soldiers”) is among the most recognized in concert repertoire. Rossini’s opera about the Swiss folk hero who shoots an apple from his son Jemmy’s head after defying the Austrian governor Gessler. Based on Schiller and set in fourteenth-century Switzerland, it includes Altdorf and the characters Mathilde and Arnold; the overture is also famous for its storm and pastoral sections.

• Gioachino Rossini — Gioachino Antonio Rossini was a leading Italian early nineteenth-century bel canto opera composer who retired from regular opera composition relatively young. He wrote The Barber of Seville, William Tell, La Cenerentola, The Thieving Magpie, Tancredi, Semiramide, The Italian Girl in Algiers, Otello, Il Signor Bruschino, and Cyrus in Babylon. His later works include Stabat Mater and Petite messe solennelle. He is associated with the Rossini crescendo, quick comic wit, and the overture to William Tell, including its famous “March of the Swiss Soldiers” and the famous tapping of bowed second violins in one overture.

  • Semiramide — Semiramide is a Rossini opera centered on the legendary Queen of Babylon. Its plot involves the queen falling in love with her son Arsace and dying to save his life.

  • The Thieving Magpie — Rossini’s opera The Thieving Magpie centers on Ninetta, who is falsely accused after a silver spoon goes missing, while the actual thief is a magpie that has taken the spoon and coin. It is especially remembered for its overture, which prominently features snare drums and imitates bird calls.

• Gioacchino Antonio Rossini — Gioachino Antonio Rossini was the Italian opera composer of The Barber of Seville, William Tell, Otello, and Semiramide. His fame extended from comic opera to later miniatures that were orchestrated into ballet suites.

Gaetano Donizetti (1797–1848)

• Anna Bolena — 1830, Milan; first major international success; depicts Anne Boleyn’s downfall. Gaetano Donizetti’s opera about Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII; it is one of the Tudor operas and ends with the title character’s execution.

• L’elisir d’amore (The Elixir of Love) — 1832, Milan; buffa; peasant Nemorino loves Adina; tenor aria “Una furtiva lagrima” is among the most beloved in the repertoire. The plot centers on Dr. Dulcamara’s supposed love potion, which is really cheap wine, and ends with Nemorino winning Adina; Sergeant Belcore is the rival suitor.
  • Una furtiva lagrima — “Una furtiva lagrima” is Nemorino’s famous tenor aria from Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love. He sings it after noticing a tear in Adina’s eye and realizing that she loves him.
• Lucia di Lammermoor — 1835, Naples; after Sir Walter Scott; Lucia is forced into a political marriage and goes mad; the mad scene (including the glass harmonica in the original orchestration) is the definitive showcase of 19th-century soprano coloratura. Donizetti’s bel canto opera based on Walter Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor. Its best-known scenes also include the sextet at the end of act two and the tragic resolution involving Edgardo and the doomed marriage to Arturo; Lucia kills Arturo before the Mad Scene.

  • Il dolce suono — “Il dolce suono” is Lucia’s mad-scene aria from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, sung after she stabs Arturo and imagines Edgardo. The aria is especially famous for its glass harmonica accompaniment and for embodying Lucia’s descent into madness.

  • Lucia di Lamermoor — Lucia di Lammermoor is Donizetti’s bel canto opera based on a Sir Walter Scott novel, centered on Lucia, Edgardo, and the hostile Lord Ashton. It is especially known for the sextet “Chi mi frena” and Lucia’s Act III mad scene after a marriage deception.

• Don Pasquale — 1843, Paris; buffa masterpiece; aging bachelor tricked into a fake marriage; Norina and Ernesto’s duet “Tornami a dir” is a classic.

• Roberto Devereux — 1837, Naples; Essex faces execution under Elizabeth I; part of his “Tudor queen” trilogy with Anna Bolena and Maria Stuarda.

• Borgia family
  • Lucrezia Borgia — Daughter of Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia) and sister of Cesare Borgia, Lucrezia Borgia married into the Sforza and d’Este families. Her reputation became entangled with accusations of political marriage manipulation and poisoning. She is the title figure of Donizetti’s opera Lucrezia Borgia and appears in Victor Hugo’s play about the notorious Borgia family.
• Gaetano Donizetti

  • (Domenico) Gaetano (Mario) Donizetti — Gaetano Donizetti was a bel canto composer whose operas include Lucia di Lammermoor and La fille du régiment. His style appears in famous arias such as “Ah! mes amis” and in the mad scene from Lucia, alongside the patriotic ending of La fille du régiment.

  • Maria Stuarda — Maria Stuarda is Gaetano Donizetti’s opera about Mary, Queen of Scots. It belongs to his group of operatic “Three Queens” and centers on the conflict surrounding Elizabeth I and the doomed meeting with Francesca-style court intrigue.

• La fille du régiment — Gaetano Donizetti’s opéra comique about Marie, a canteen-girl found by a French military unit and raised among soldiers during the Napoleonic wars. She is courted by Tonio, and the plot turns on a family revelation that resolves her arranged-marriage conflict. The work is especially known for Tonio’s aria “Ah! mes amis,” with its notorious nine high Cs, and for patriotic numbers such as “Salut à la France.”

Vincenzo Bellini (1801–1835)

• La Sonnambula (The Sleepwalker) — 1831, Milan; soprano Amina walks in her sleep and is falsely accused of infidelity; aria “Ah, non credea mirarti.” The libretto was written by Felice Romani. Its best-known music also includes “Ah! non giunge,” and the plot features Elvino, Lisa, and Count Rodolfo.

• Norma — 1831, Milan; Druid priestess Norma loves a Roman enemy; opening scena and aria “Casta diva” (a cavatina of sustained melodic beauty) is considered the supreme test of bel canto soprano singing. Major figures include Adalgisa, and the plot involves Norma’s attempt to have her children killed before the opera’s climax on a funeral pyre.

  • Adalgisa — Adalgisa is the young Druid priestess in Bellini’s Norma, the object of Pollione’s affair and his attempt to lure her to Rome. Her key airs include “Ah! Bello a me ritorna” and “Oh! di qual sei tu vittima.”

  • “Casta diva” — Bellini, Norma; the Druid priestess’s moonlit prayer in Act I; the supreme test of bel canto soprano technique and breath control. “Casta diva” is the famous Act I aria from Bellini’s Norma, sung by the title druid priestess as a prayer to the moon goddess. It is a celebrated bel canto showpiece known for its long, sustained opening phrase and coloratura writing.

• I Puritani (The Puritans) — 1835, Paris; set during the English Civil War; Bellini’s last opera; tenor role written for Giovanni Battista Rubini. It is centered on Elvira and Arturo, and is famous for the tenor’s high F in “Credeasi, misera” and for its conclusion after a general pardon from Oliver Cromwell.

Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901)

Verdi dominates Italian Romantic opera from the 1840s through the end of the century; known for dramatically intense melodic writing and nationalist resonance.

• Nabucco — 1842, Milan; his breakthrough work; Hebrew slaves’ chorus “Va, pensiero” became an anthem of Italian nationalism (Risorgimento); Abigaille is the lead soprano role. The opera is about the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar and the Jewish exiles in Babylon.
  • “Va, pensiero” (Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves) — Verdi, Nabucco; the Hebrew slaves long for their homeland; absorbed into Italian Risorgimento sentiment. Its opening line is “Va, pensiero, sull’ali dorate.” The chorus portrays exiled Hebrews on the banks of the Euphrates and draws on Psalm 137.

• Macbeth — 1847, Florence; first Shakespeare opera; later substantially revised (1865, Paris).

• Rigoletto — 1851, Venice; hunchback court jester Rigoletto’s daughter Gilda is seduced and killed by the Duke of Mantua; Duke’s aria “La donna è mobile,” Rigoletto’s “Cortigiani, vil razza,” and the quartet “Bella figlia dell’amore” are anchors of the tenor/baritone repertoire. It is a Giuseppe Verdi opera based on Victor Hugo’s Le roi s’amuse.

  • Bella figlia dell’amore / La donna è mobile — The aria pair “Bella figlia dell’amore” and “La donna è mobile” point to Verdi’s opera Rigoletto. Its famous characters and contrasting arias make it a standard identification piece for Italian opera.

  • Caro nome — “Caro nome” is Gilda’s first-act aria in Verdi’s Rigoletto, where she idealizes the student she thinks she loves. The aria is famous for delicate coloratura writing and for its association with Gualtier Maldé, the Duke of Mantua in disguise.

  • Sparafucile — Sparafucile is the assassin in Verdi’s Rigoletto who is hired to kill the Duke of Mantua. His bargain with Rigoletto and his sister Maddalena leads to Gilda’s death instead of the Duke’s.

  • The Duke of Mantua — The Duke of Mantua is the libertine tenor role in Verdi’s Rigoletto, the disguised ruler who seduces Gilda and sings “Questa o quella” and “La donna è mobile.” He is cursed by Monterone and ultimately survives the assassin Sparafucile’s plot when Gilda dies in his place.

  • “La donna è mobile” — Verdi, Rigoletto; the Duke of Mantua’s cynical tenor aria about women’s fickleness; deliberately kept secret until opening night to prevent it becoming street-level earworm before the premiere. It is one of the opera’s best-known tunes, and it returns near the end after Gilda’s death is revealed.

• Il Trovatore (The Troubadour) — 1853, Rome; convoluted plot involving a gypsy woman Azucena, a troubadour Manrico, and a stolen baby; Leonora’s “Tacea la notte,” the Anvil Chorus, and Manrico’s “Di quella pira” are famous numbers. It is a four-act opera set in fifteenth-century Spain and based on a drama by Antonio García Gutiérrez. The tangled plot centers on Manrico, Leonora, Count di Luna, and the gypsy Azucena, with the revelation that Manrico and the count are brothers separated by Azucena’s vengeance. Other well-known numbers include “Stride la vampa” and the Act IV “Miserere.”

  • Anvil Chorus — The Anvil Chorus is the famous work-song from Verdi’s Il trovatore, officially titled “Vedi! le fosche notturne spoglie.” It is sung by Spanish gypsies in Act II and is one of the opera’s best-known choral numbers. The chorus begins “Vedi! le fosche notturne” and has the singers praise wine, women, and the sound of hammering anvils.

  • Azucena — Azucena is the gypsy woman in Verdi’s Il trovatore who sings of her mother’s burning in “Stride la vampa.” She is haunted by the death of her own child and is tied to the conflict between Manrico and Count di Luna.

  • Stride la vampa — “Stride la vampa” is the incendiary mezzo-soprano aria from Verdi’s Il trovatore, sung by Azucena as she recalls the execution by fire of her mother. Its title is often translated as “The flames are roaring.”

  • “Di quella pira” — “Di quella pira” is a tenor aria from Verdi’s Il trovatore, sung by Manrico. It is famous for its martial outburst and the optional high Cs often attached to performances.

• La Traviata (The Fallen Woman) — 1853, Venice; after Dumas fils (La Dame aux camélias); courtesan Violetta sacrifices her love for Alfredo at his father Germont’s insistence and dies of tuberculosis; “Libiamo ne’ lieti calici” (the Brindisi) and “Addio del passato” are central arias. It is one of Verdi’s best-known operas.

  • Libiamo ne’ lieti calici — “Libiamo ne’ lieti calici” is the famous brindisi from Verdi’s La traviata. Alfredo and Violetta sing it at the opera’s opening party, where it introduces the mood of wine, song, and celebration.

  • Sempre Libera — “Sempre libera” is Violetta’s exuberant Act I aria in Verdi’s La Traviata. In it, she insists on freedom from Alfredo’s love and resolves to remain independent.

  • Violetta Valéry — Title heroine of Verdi’s La traviata, a Parisian courtesan whose illness and sacrifice drive the opera’s tragedy. She sings “Sempre libera” and appears in the drinking-song “Libiamo ne’ lieti calici”; after Giorgio Germont pressures her to leave Alfredo, she renounces him and later dies of consumption/tuberculosis, ending in Alfredo’s arms after a final reunion, set during Mardi Gras in one version of the account.

• Un ballo in maschera (A Masked Ball) — 1859, Rome; fictionalized assassination of King Gustavo III of Sweden; tenor Gustavo loves his friend’s wife Amelia. Its libretto was adapted from a story by Eugène Scribe, and censorship later shifted the action away from Sweden, with some versions placing it in Boston. The cast includes Ulrica the fortuneteller, and the plot is commonly centered on Riccardo, Amelia, and Renato.

• La forza del destino (The Force of Destiny) — 1862, St. Petersburg; sprawling melodrama of honor, revenge, and fate; famous overture. The opera features the doomed lovers Leonora and Don Alvaro, along with Don Carlo, Preziosilla, and the Marquis of Calatrava. Its plot turns on an accidental shooting, mistaken vengeance, and Leonora’s death, and includes the aria “Pace, pace, mio dio.”

• Don Carlos — 1867, Paris (French; Italian revision Don Carlo); the Infante Don Carlos loves his father Philip II’s queen Elisabeth; considered his most ambitious work; bass aria “Ella giammai m’amò” and duet “Au fond du temple saint” (in the French version) are highlights. Based on Schiller, and notable for the confrontation with the Grand Inquisitor and the famous friendship duet early in the work. The opera exists in both French and Italian versions and ends with the intervention of Charles V.

• Aida — 1871, Cairo (world premiere) and Milan (European premiere); Ethiopian princess Aida is enslaved in Egypt; “Celeste Aida” (tenor), “O patria mia” (soprano), and the Triumphal March define the grand-opera tradition. It centers on Radames, Amneris, and Amonasro, and was associated with the opening of the Suez Canal.

  • Amneris — Amneris is the daughter of the Pharaoh in Verdi’s Aida. She loves Radamès and is jealous of his love for the Ethiopian slave Aida.

  • Amonasro — Amonasro is the captured King of Ethiopia in Verdi’s Aida and the father of the title character. He encourages Aida to learn Egypt’s battle plans while they are both held prisoner.

  • being buried alive in the temple vault — In Aida, Radames and Aida are condemned to die by being buried alive in the temple vault. This punishment follows Radames’s treason and gives the opera its final scene of tragic reunion.

  • Radamès — The tenor hero and Egyptian commander in Verdi’s Aida, lover of Aida and desired by Amneris. He learns of war from Ramfis, wins the Triumphal March, and sings “Celeste Aida,” whose aria ends with a famous high B-flat. After their affair is exposed, he is condemned and sealed in a vault with Aida.

• Otello — 1887, Milan; after Shakespeare; libretto by Arrigo Boito; Iago’s scheming destroys Otello’s trust in Desdemona; Otello’s “Esultate!” and “Niun mi tema,” Desdemona’s “Willow Song” and “Ave Maria.” Iago’s “Credo in un dio crudel” is another signature aria.

• Falstaff — 1893, Milan; comic opera after Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor; libretto by Boito; Verdi’s last opera, composed at age 79; ends with the fugue “Tutto nel mondo è burla.” The title character, Sir John Falstaff, is repeatedly humiliated by Alice Ford and her household.
  • Falstaff, or the Three Jokes — Falstaff, or the Three Jokes is a comic opera based on Shakespeare’s Falstaff and credited to Antonio Salieri. It includes the aria “Or degli affanni i palpiti” and inspired Beethoven’s piano variations on the duet “La stessa, la stessissima.”
• Giuseppe Verdi

  • Ernani — Ernani is a Verdi opera based on Victor Hugo’s play about a bandit and the lover Elvira. Its action includes the tomb of Charlemagne and the conflict with Silva that ends in the title character’s death. The work is known for Act Three’s visit to Charlemagne’s tomb and for arias such as “O de’ verd’anni miei.” It also became the first opera to be fully recorded in 1904.

  • I Vespri Siciliani — Verdi’s opera is set in Palermo during the French occupation of Sicily and culminates in the rebellion of the title. It centers on Elena and Arrigo, with Guido di Monteforte/Monforte among the principal characters; Elena loves Arrigo, who is revealed to be Monforte’s son, placing private loyalties inside the larger nationalist conflict.

  • Luisa Miller — Luisa Miller is Verdi’s opera set in the Tyrol in the eighteenth century, based on Schiller’s Cabal and Love. It follows the doomed love of Luisa and Rodolfo and ends in poison, murder, and double suicide.

  • Macbeth and Falstaff — The pair are the Verdi operas Macbeth and Falstaff. Falstaff was inspired by Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor.

  • Simon Boccanegra — Simon Boccanegra is Giuseppe Verdi’s opera about the Doge of Genoa, a work later revised after an initially disappointing premiere. Its plot centers on Simon’s political role, his daughter Amelia, and the noble Fiesco, with the famous Council Chamber scene in the revised version.

Related Works, People, and Context

• Alfredo Catalani
  • La Wally — La Wally is Alfredo Catalani’s opera remembered for the aria ‘Ebben? Ne Andro Lontana.’ Its Alpine plot follows the title heroine, her love for Hagenbach, and the avalanche that brings the opera to its tragic close.
• Amilcare Ponchielli — Amilcare Ponchielli was an Italian opera composer whose best-known work is La Gioconda, famous for the “Dance of the Hours.” He also wrote I Lituani and other operas that keep him in quizbowl as a non-Verdi Italian Romantic composer.
  • La Gioconda — An 1883 opera by Amilcare Ponchielli with a libretto by Arrigo Boito based on Hugo’s Angelo, Tyrant of Padua. Familiar numbers include “Cielo e mar,” “Dance of the Hours,” and “Suicidio!”
    • Dance of the Hours — “Dance of the Hours” is the ballet interlude from Ponchielli’s opera La Gioconda, famous for its sequence of dawn through night and for its Disney Fantasia parody with dancing animals. It is also known through later popular arrangements such as Allan Sherman’s “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh.”
• Italian opera
  • bel canto era — The bel canto era was the period of Italian opera associated with beautiful singing, ornamentation, and extensive vocal technique. It includes the works of Bellini and Donizetti and was famously revived in the twentieth century by Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland.

German, French, and Russian Opera

Distinguish German, French, and Russian traditions through representative operas.

Wagner and German Opera

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)

• Fidelio — 1805, Vienna (definitively revised 1814); Beethoven’s only opera; a two-act “rescue opera” with spoken dialogue, set in a Spanish political prison; the noblewoman Leonore disguises herself as a male prison guard under the name Fidelio (literally “the faithful one”) to free her husband Florestan, who has been secretly imprisoned by the tyrannical governor Don Pizarro; the jailer Rocco and his daughter Marzelline (engaged to the porter Jaquino but smitten with the disguised Leonore) are central, and the minister Don Fernando arrives to free the prisoners at the end; famous numbers include the Act I “Canon Quartet” “Mir ist so wunderbar” (“A wondrous feeling fills me”), Pizarro’s vengeance aria “Ha! Welch ein Augenblick!”, Leonore’s “Abscheulicher!”, and the Prisoners’ Chorus “O welche Lust”; Beethoven wrote four overtures for it, the three Leonore overtures and the lighter Fidelio overture.

  • Leonore — Leonore is the heroine of Beethoven’s Fidelio, where she disguises herself as a man to rescue her imprisoned husband Florestan. Her alias in the opera is Fidelio, and she becomes one of Beethoven’s most famous rescue-opera characters.

  • Leonore and Florestan — In Beethoven’s Fidelio, Leonore disguises herself as the title character to rescue her husband Florestan. The opera centers on her successful attempt to free him from prison.

Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826)

• Der Freischütz — 1821, Berlin; German Romantic opera par excellence; hunter Max makes a pact with the demon Samiel for magic bullets; the Wolf’s Glen scene is a landmark of Romantic horror. Also known as The Free-Shooter or The Marksman, it is a singspiel often treated as the first German Romantic opera. Other principal characters include Agathe and Caspar; its best-known musical numbers include the overture and the Huntsmen’s Chorus, and in the plot the seventh bullet is deflected by Agathe’s bridal wreath.

  • magic bullets — Magic bullets are the enchanted projectiles central to Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz, especially the seven bullets forged in the Wolf’s Glen. Quiz clues often mention silver bullets, the Devil, and the lethal shot that kills Caspar.

  • The Wolf’s Glen — The Wolf’s Glen is the eerie setting in Weber’s Der Freischütz where Caspar and Max meet Samiel to obtain the magic bullets. It is one of the opera’s most famous supernatural scenes, associated with visions, ghostly warnings, and ominous orchestral writing.

• Karl Maria von Weber — Karl Maria von Weber was a German Romantic composer best known for the opera Der Freischütz. He also wrote Oberon and other operas after training under Abbé Vogler and shifting from singing to composition.

  • Abu Hassan — Abu Hassan is a one-act singspiel by Carl Maria von Weber about a debtor and his wife Fatime trying to outwit the Caliph. It is based on Antoine Galland’s tale “The Sleeper Awakened” and includes the comic song “Geld! Geld! Geld!”.

  • Euryanthe — Euryanthe is Carl Maria von Weber’s opera based on a libretto by Helmine von Chézy. It centers on Euryanthe, Adolar, and Eglantine and is noted for continuous music without spoken dialogue and an early use of leitmotif.

Richard Wagner (1813–1883)

Wagner transformed opera into music drama; his mature works use the leitmotif system, unending melody, and chromatic harmony to create an unprecedented dramatic-musical unity.

• Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman) — 1843, Dresden; a cursed captain can only be redeemed by a faithful woman’s love; Senta’s Ballad is the dramatic center. Richard Wagner’s opera also features Senta, Daland, and Erik, with the Spinning Chorus and the stormy D minor overture as memorable musical set pieces. The Dutchman is traditionally condemned to roam the sea for seven years at a time, and the work draws on legends and literary sources about the cursed sailor.

• Tannhäuser — 1845, Dresden; minstrel knight torn between sacred love (Elisabeth) and the sensual goddess Venus; later substantially revised for Paris (1861). Overture and “Pilgrim’s Chorus” are concert staples. The work is a German opera about the title minnesinger, also involving the song contest at the Wartburg, Elisabeth, the Landgrave Hermann, and Tannhäuser’s quest for forgiveness after his stay in Venusberg; it ends with the famous image of the Pope’s staff blooming.
  • Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg — Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg is Wagner’s opera combining the legend of a singing contest at Wartburg with the story of the knight Tannhäuser. It was notorious in Paris, where boos from the Jockey Club helped derail its early performances.
• Lohengrin — 1850, Weimar; knight of the Holy Grail defends Elsa but requires she never ask his name; “Elsa’s Dream,” the Bridal Chorus (“Here Comes the Bride”), and Lohengrin’s “In fernem Land” are famous passages. It is a romantic opera in three acts by Richard Wagner, with text by the composer.

  • bridal chorus — The Bridal Chorus is the wedding-march excerpt from Wagner’s Lohengrin, often played at weddings on organ or paired with Mendelssohn’s wedding march. Related operatic versions include Glinka’s use of a bridal chorus in A Life for the Tsar.

  • Duke Gottfried of Brabant — Duke Gottfried of Brabant is the brother of Elsa in Lohengrin. He is transformed into the Swan that draws Lohengrin’s boat to Henry’s kingdom.

• Tristan und Isolde — 1865, Munich; the opera of yearning and death; the Tristan chord (opening of the Prelude) is one of the most analyzed harmonies in Western music; the long love duet of Act II and Isolde’s Liebestod (“Love-Death”) closing the opera are its summits. Richard Wagner’s opera, based on the doomed lovers from Irish legend and centered on a love potion that binds Tristan and Isolde. It is often noted for the Prelude’s Tristan chord, Act II’s long love duet, and the closing Liebestod.

  • Brangäne — Brangäne is Isolde’s maid in Tristan and Isolde, best known for giving the lovers the love potion. She appears as a loyal attendant whose intervention sets the opera’s tragic romance in motion.

  • Isolde — Isolde is the beloved of Tristan in medieval Arthurian romance and the heroine of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. In the romance tradition she appears as the Irish princess married to Mark of Cornwall and as the Breton “white-handed” princess who lies about the sails on a ship. Wagner’s work is especially associated with the Liebestod, her love-potion-fueled affair with Tristan, and the opera’s chromatic prelude.

  • Liebestod (“Mild und leise”) — Wagner, Tristan und Isolde; Isolde’s closing soprano aria over Tristan’s corpse; the harmonic resolution of the opera’s long chromatic yearning.

• Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg — 1868, Munich; his only mature comic opera; cobbler-poet Hans Sachs mentors young Walther in a guild song contest; the Prize Song and the Act III monologue “Wahn! Wahn!” are central; the work is also a meditation on artistic tradition and German identity. It is set in Nuremberg and also features Eva Pogner and the comic rival Beckmesser; its English title is The Mastersingers of Nuremberg.
  • Sixtus Beckmesser — Sixtus Beckmesser is the comic town clerk in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. He is mocked for his disastrous singing and for marking Walther’s errors during the contest.
• Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) — a four-opera cycle premiered in full at Bayreuth in 1876; based on Norse and Germanic mythology; the Nibelung dwarf Alberich forges a ring from the Rhine gold, triggering a cosmic struggle. The cycle consists of Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung, and its story follows the cursed ring through Wotan, Siegfried, and Brünnhilde to the destruction of the gods’ world. Brünnhilde’s self-sacrifice and the fire music mark its ending.

  • Das Rheingold — 1869, Munich (preliminary evening); the gods acquire the ring and the curse begins; the “Entry of the Gods into Valhalla” closes the opera. It is the first opera in Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen and is also known as The Rhinegold or The Rhine Gold. The plot centers on Alberich’s theft of the Rhine gold and the forging of the ring, and the score opens with a famous E-flat major prelude.

  • Die Walküre (The Valkyrie) — 1870, Munich; twins Siegmund and Sieglinde; Brünnhilde defies Wotan and is punished by being put to sleep; “The Ride of the Valkyries” opens Act III; Wotan’s “Farewell” and the Magic Fire Music close it. It is Wagner’s second opera in Der Ring des Nibelungen and premiered in Munich in 1870.

    • Sieglinde — Sieglinde is the twin sister of Siegmund in Wagner’s Die Walküre and the mother of Siegfried. She shelters Siegmund, receives the fragments of Nothung, and is central to the family tragedy surrounding Hunding and Wotan.

    • “Ride of the Valkyries” — Wagner, Die Walküre, Act III, Scene 1; orchestral/choral prelude as the warrior maidens gallop across the sky; one of the most recognized passages in the concert repertoire. It is Richard Wagner’s famous orchestral piece from Die Walküre, Act III, and is widely recognized for its use in Apocalypse Now and in cartoons such as What’s Opera, Doc?, where Elmer Fudd sings “Kill the wabbit!”

  • Siegfried — 1876, Bayreuth; the hero forges the sword Nothung, kills the dragon Fafner, and awakens Brünnhilde; the Forest Murmurs and Siegfried’s forging songs are notable.

  • Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods) — 1876, Bayreuth; Siegfried is betrayed and slain; Brünnhilde immolates herself on his funeral pyre, dissolving Valhalla; Siegfried’s Funeral March is one of the most powerful passages in the cycle. It is the final opera in Wagner’s Ring cycle; its title means “Twilight of the Gods” and is also associated with Ragnarök, the mythic catastrophe at the end of the cycle. The ending also brings about the return of the ring and the Rhinemaidens recovering their gold.

    • Gunther, Hagen, Gutrune — Gunther, Hagen, and Gutrune are the three named solo roles in Götterdämmerung that appear nowhere else in Wagner’s Ring cycle. They belong to the final opera of The Ring of the Nibelung and are often asked as a grouped identification.

    • Gutrune — Gutrune is the sister of Gunther in Wagner’s Götterdämmerung. A love potion causes Siegfried to fall in love with her in Act I.

  • Brunnhilde — Brunnhilde is Wagner’s Valkyrie who defies Wotan, sleeps under a magic curse, and later rides onto Siegfried’s funeral pyre in Götterdämmerung.

  • Farewell, you bold, wonderful child! You, my heart’s holiest pride! — This line is a quoted lyric from Wagner’s Ring cycle, used to identify a character by an aria or dramatic utterance. It belongs to the operatic world of Der Ring des Nibelungen, where character identification often hinges on famous sung farewells.

  • Nothung — Nothung is the sword in Wagner’s Ring cycle that Siegmund wields before it is broken by Wotan and later reforged by Siegfried. It is closely associated with the hero who passes through fire to awaken Brünnhilde.

  • Erda — Erda is the earth goddess in Wagner’s Ring cycle and the mother of the Valkyries by Odin, including Thor. In Das Rheingold, she rises to warn Wotan about the ring’s curse and the gods’ coming downfall.

• Parsifal — 1882, Bayreuth; a sacred stage festival play (Bühnenweihfestspiel); “pure fool” Parsifal redeems the ailing Grail king Amfortas; Wagner’s final opera; Bayreuth held it exclusively until 1913. It is a self-described stage-consecrating festival play and follows the pure fool Parsifal as he resists Kundry’s temptations, recovers the Holy Spear, and heals Amfortas in the Grail community at Monsalvat.

• Richard Wagner

  • Rienzi — Richard Wagner’s early opera about the Roman tribune Cola di Rienzi, the “Last of the Tribunes.” It ends with the Capitol in flames and includes characters such as Adriano and Irene. Its overture features stormy music later used for the television series Captain Video.

  • Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen — An early Wagner grand opera based on Bulwer-Lytton’s novel about the Roman tribune Cola di Rienzi. Its prelude and political spectacle build to the burning of the Capitol, after which Rienzi dies as his revolt collapses; Irene also dies in the ending given in one version of the work.

  • Siegfried — Siegfried is the heroic title character of Wagner’s third Ring opera, the dragon-slayer who forges Nothung and awakens Brünnhilde. He is associated with Mime, Fafner, the Tarnhelm, and the leitmotif that opens with a famous horn call. The character eventually dies in Götterdämmerung.

  • The Fairies or Die Feen — Die Feen, or The Fairies, was Richard Wagner’s first opera. Based on a Carlo Gozzi fantasy, it tells of the mortal Ada, who marries Arindal and then vanishes after revealing her nature.

Richard Strauss (1864–1949)

• Salome — 1905, Dresden; one-act shocker after Wilde’s play; Salome dances the Dance of the Seven Veils for her stepfather Herod in exchange for John the Baptist’s head; the “final scene” (Salome addressing the severed head) caused scandal across Europe. Richard Strauss’s opera, based on Oscar Wilde’s play and centered on the princess who demands the head of Jochanaan; the premiere scandalized audiences, and soprano Marie Wittich refused to perform the Dance of the Seven Veils.

  • Dance of the Seven Veils — The Dance of the Seven Veils is Salome’s notorious seductive dance for King Herod in Oscar Wilde’s play and Richard Strauss’s opera Salome. Its lurid reputation comes from performances that culminate in Salome’s demand for Jochanaan’s head.

  • Salome (by Richard Strauss) — Richard Strauss’s Salome is the one-act opera famous for the Dance of the Seven Veils. Its title role ends the drama in a shocking climax, and the score includes the notorious dissonant chord often described as the most sickening in opera.

• Elektra — 1909, Dresden; one-act Greek tragedy with dissonant, expressionistic score; libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal; Elektra and Chrysothemis await Orestes’s return to avenge their father. Elektra is Richard Strauss’s intense one-act opera with a dissonant score and a title character obsessed with avenging her father. It culminates in the deaths of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus and Elektra’s frenzied dance to death.

• Der Rosenkavalier — 1911, Dresden; libretto by Hofmannsthal; the Marschallin yields her young lover Octavian to Sophie; the waltz-suffused score, the Act I monologue, and the closing Trio are beloved; the title role (Octavian) is a trouser role for mezzo-soprano. It is a comic opera by Richard Strauss set in the 1740s and also centers on Baron Ochs, with the plot built around a ceremonial silver rose delivered by Octavian.
  • Der Rosenkavalier or The Rose Bearer — Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, or The Rose Bearer, is a comic opera centered on the Marschallin, Octavian, Sophie, and Baron Ochs. Its best-known scenes include the presentation of the silver rose and the trio that concludes the opera’s romantic misunderstandings.
• Ariadne auf Naxos — 1912/1916, Stuttgart/Vienna; a meta-theatrical work in which a serious opera and a commedia troupe must perform simultaneously; the soprano title role and the Composer (mezzo trouser role) are central. The work is Richard Strauss’s opera about Ariadne’s abandonment on Naxos, framed by a prologue in which an opera and a commedia dell’arte troupe are forced to perform together. Notable characters include Zerbinetta, Harlekin, the Music Master, and Bacchus, and the piece is especially known for Zerbinetta’s virtuoso aria and the Composer’s self-conscious reflections on art and compromise.

  • Ariadne of Naxos — Ariadne auf Naxos is Richard Strauss’s opera within an opera, created with Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Its blend of commedia dell’arte and serious opera features Zerbinetta, Harlequin, and a story centered on Ariadne and Bacchus.

  • Zerbinetta — Zerbinetta is the dazzling coloratura soubrette in Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos. She sings “Grossmächtige Prinzessin” to urge Ariadne toward a new lover and helps persuade the Composer to mix her comic troupe into the opera seria.

• Richard Strauss
  • Die Frau ohne Schatten — The Woman Without a Shadow is a 1919 Richard Strauss opera about the Empress, the Nurse, and Barak’s wife. Its plot hinges on the Empress trying to obtain a shadow, a sign of fertility, before Keikobad turns the Emperor to stone.

Related Works, People, and Context

• Hänsel und Gretel — Engelbert Humperdinck’s fairy-tale opera based on the Brothers Grimm story of the two siblings abandoned in the forest, who find a house made of bread, cake, and sugar and outwit a witch in a gingerbread house. It is associated with the Evening Prayer, the Sandman, the Dew Fairy, the Witch’s Ride, the Dream Pantomime, and the witch’s death in the oven, and it became a Christmas-season staple after its premiere.

French and Russian Opera

French

• Hector Berlioz (1803–1869) — Les Troyens (The Trojans, composed 1856–1858, not performed in full until 1890); epic work in five acts after Virgil; rarely staged complete.

  • Beatrice et Benedict — Beatrice et Benedict is Hector Berlioz’s comic opera based on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. Its title pair are the witty lovers Beatrice and Benedick, and the work was written late in Berlioz’s life.

  • Les Troyens — Hector Berlioz’s grand opera based on Virgil’s Aeneid. It is a large-scale work often performed over two nights, centering on the fall of Troy and Aeneas’s fate after the city’s destruction. Its best-known sections include the Royal Hunt and Storm, and it ends with Didon’s suicide after the Trojans sail onward toward Italy.

• Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791–1864) — king of French grand opera; Robert le diable (1831) and Les Huguenots (1836) dominated the Paris Opéra for decades.

  • Les Huguenots — Giacomo Meyerbeer’s grand opera about French Protestants during the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, centered on Raoul de Nangis and Valentine. Its overture quotes Luther’s hymn Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott (“A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”), and famous moments include Marcel’s “Piff, paff” song and the “Benediction of the Daggers.”

  • L’Africaine — L’Africaine is Meyerbeer’s final opera, centered on Vasco da Gama and the doomed queen Sélika. It is remembered for “O Paradis,” for Nélusko and Adamastor, and for the tragic ending involving the poisonous manchineel tree.

  • Robert le diable — Giacomo Meyerbeer’s five-act grand opera about the title character, a cursed Norman nobleman and son of the demonic Bertram. Set in Palermo, it features the famous “Dance of the Nuns”/Ballet of the Nuns, the aria “Nonnes qui reposez,” the Valse infernale, and a climax in which dead nuns rise from their graves to aid the hero. Its lush staging, ghostly convent scene, and hellish ending made it a landmark of French grand opera and influential on later nineteenth-century opera.

• Charles Gounod (1818–1893)

  • Faust — 1859, Paris; after Goethe Part I; Faust sells his soul for youth; the Jewel Song (“Je veux vivre dans ce rêve”), the Soldiers’ Chorus, and the closing prison trio are the main set pieces.

  • Roméo et Juliette — 1867, Paris; after Shakespeare; Juliette’s waltz aria “Je veux vivre” is a coloratura showcase.

  • Mireille — Mireille is Gounod’s opera based on Frédéric Mistral’s Provençal poem, centered on the title heroine’s pursuit of Vincent. The work includes characters such as Ourrias, Taven, and Ramon, and Mireille dies after making her way through the Provençal sun.

  • ROMEO ET JULIETTE — Romeo et Juliette is an operatic adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. It is associated with the handling of supporting characters such as Friar Laurence and Baltasar in a musical setting.

• Jacques Offenbach (1819–1880)

  • Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld) — 1858, Paris; operetta satirizing both classical myth and Second Empire society; the infernal Can-Can (Galop infernal) is its most famous number. Jacques Offenbach’s comic operetta centers on Orpheus, Eurydice, Jupiter, Public Opinion, and John Styx in a parody of classical myth and grand opera.

  • Les contes d’Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffmann) — 1881, Paris (posthumous premiere); the poet Hoffmann recounts loves for an automaton, a courtesan, and a consumptive singer; “Belle nuit, ô nuit d’amour” (Barcarolle) is the most recognized number; the opera’s editions and completions remain contested.
    • The Doll Song — ‘The Doll Song’ is Olympia’s aria from Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann, where the automaton sings while being wound up by Spalanzani. The piece is famous for its coloratura fireworks and for the uncanny illusion that Olympia is a living woman.
  • La belle Helene — La belle Helene is an Offenbach opera bouffe that satirizes the Trojan War myth through the abduction of Helen by Paris. It lampoons classical heroics and even parodies other music and contemporary French society.
• Jules Massenet (1842–1912)

  • Manon — 1884, Paris; after Prévost; Manon abandons the Chevalier des Grieux for wealth, then repents; “Adieu, notre petite table” and “En fermant les yeux” (the Dream aria) are highlights. Jules Massenet’s 1884 opera based on Abbé Prévost’s novel about the coquettish title heroine and the Chevalier des Grieux. It ends with Manon dying in des Grieux’s arms.

  • Werther — 1892, Vienna (world premiere); after Goethe; young Werther loves the already-promised Charlotte and shoots himself; “Pourquoi me réveiller” is the famous tenor aria. Other details include “Du gai soleil,” Albert’s pistols, and the Christmas Eve reading from Ossian.

  • Esclarmonde — Esclarmonde is Jules Massenet’s lavish opera about a Byzantine sorceress or princess who keeps her face veiled and wins Roland through a tournament. The title role is a notorious soprano part associated with Sibyl Sanderson. The opera centers on romance, enchantment, and heroic contest in a Byzantine setting. Roland’s victory and Esclarmonde’s supernatural identity are the key identifying clues.

  • Thais — Thais is a Massenet opera about the courtesan Thais and the monk Athanael, adapted from Anatole France. It is especially known for the violin interlude “Meditation,” one of the opera’s most performed excerpts.

    • Thaïs (character) — Thaïs is the title character of Massenet’s opera, a courtesan whose story is tied to the monk Athanaël and the famous “Méditation.” The name also belongs to a legendary Alexandrian courtesan-saint, and the opera follows her conversion and death after a struggle between asceticism and desire.
• Georges Bizet (1838–1875)
  • Carmen — 1875, Paris; after Mérimée; cigarette factory worker Carmen seduces soldier Don José; he kills her when she leaves him for the bullfighter Escamillo; the Habanera (“L’amour est un oiseau rebelle”) and the Seguidilla are Carmen’s defining arias; Bizet died three months after the premiere, not knowing it would become one of the most performed operas ever written. She reads tarot cards with Frasquita and Mercédès, and the opera’s realistic portrait of working-class life caused a scandal at its Paris premiere. Other clues include Micaëla, the Toreador Aria, and Seville.

    • “Habanera” (“L’amour est un oiseau rebelle”) — Bizet, Carmen; Carmen’s mezzo-soprano self-introduction in Act I; the melody is derived from a song by Sebastián Iradier. Carmen sings it to Don José in Seville’s cigarette factory.

    • Carmen by Georges Bizet — Carmen by Georges Bizet is the opera whose music was reused for figure-skating programs in the 1988 Winter Olympics. It is one of the best-known French operas of the 19th century.

    • Don José — Don José is the soldier in Bizet’s Carmen who is seduced by the title heroine and falls for her, abandoning his military life for her and the smugglers. He begins as a dutiful corporal, frees Carmen from arrest, is driven to jealousy by her love for Escamillo, and ultimately kills her by stabbing her after she leaves him.

    • Escamillo — Escamillo is the bullfighter in Bizet’s Carmen, famous for the Toreador Song, “Votre toast, je peux vous le rendre.” He is the rival whom Carmen eventually loves before Don José kills her. He appears in the opera’s dramatic final scenes and is identified with bullfighting bravado rather than the title character’s doomed romance. His aria is one of the opera’s best-known numbers.

    • Micaela — Micaela is the innocent village maiden in Carmen who loves Don José and serves as a foil to the title character. She is absent from Prosper Mérimée’s original novella but appears in the opera, including the aria ‘Je dis que rien ne m’épouvante.’

    • The Toreador Song — The Toreador Song is Escamillo’s famous aria from Bizet’s opera Carmen. It celebrates the glamour and danger of the bullring and is often identified by its French opening line, “Votre toast, je peux vous le rendre.” The aria is sometimes asked for from its French lyrics rather than its common English title.

    • Toreador Song — The Toreador Song is Escamillo’s famous aria from Bizet’s Carmen. Its French title is “Votre toast, je peux vous le rendre,” and the song warns the bullfighter to keep on guard while love awaits him.

  • Djamileh — Djamileh is Bizet’s one-act comic opera about a title slave girl whose lover Haroun ultimately reveals his feelings for her. The work is an early exoticist opera by Bizet and is often mentioned as a precursor to the success of Carmen.

  • Les pêcheurs de perles — Georges Bizet’s opera set in ancient Ceylon, centered on the friendship and rivalry of Nadir and Zurga, who are torn by love for Leila. The priest Nourabad adds to the conflict. Its best-known music includes the duet “Au fond du temple saint” and the tenor aria “Je crois entendre encore,” and it is also associated with the storm, necklace, and execution scene.

    • Au fond du temple saint — “Au fond du temple saint” is the celebrated duet from Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers in which Nadir and Zurga pledge friendship after recognizing their shared love for Leïla. It is a standard opera clue tied to Ceylon, brotherhood, and the famous “friendship duet.”

    • The Pearl Fishers (Les Pecheurs de Perles) — The Pearl Fishers is a Bizet opera set in Ceylon, best known for the duet “Au fond du temple saint.” Its plot involves Leila, Zurga, and Nourabad, with sacrifice and friendship driving the ending.

• Leo Delibes (1836–1891) — Lakmé (1883, Paris); Indian Brahmin’s daughter Lakmé sings the Bell Song (“Où va la jeune hindoue?”); frequently cited as an answerline for its soprano coloratura. French Romantic composer best known for the ballets Coppélia and Sylvia. His music also includes the famous Flower Duet and the often excerpted pizzicato movement from Sylvia.
  • Lakmé — Léo Delibes’s opera about an Indian priest’s daughter and a British officer, Gerald. Major set pieces include the Flower Duet with Mallika and the Bell Song, which Lakmé sings under her father Nilakantha’s pressure. The title character eats a poisonous datura leaf and, fearing Gerald will abandon her, dies after sharing sacred water with him. The opera is notable for its exotic Indian setting.
• Claude Debussy (1862–1918)

  • Pelléas et Mélisande — 1902, Paris; after Maeterlinck’s Symbolist play; Mélisande’s mysterious past is never explained; half-brother Pelléas and husband Golaud; the score’s impressionistic, muted recitative style is unique in the repertoire. It is Claude Debussy’s only completed opera, set in the fictional kingdom of Allemonde and centered on the doomed triangle of Mélisande, Pelléas, and Golaud under King Arkel. Notable scenes include Mélisande’s long hair and the cave episode.

  • Pelléas et Mélisande — Maurice Maeterlinck’s Symbolist play, centered on the doomed love triangle of Mélisande, Golaud, and Pelléas and ending with Golaud killing Pelléas in jealousy. It became the basis for Claude Debussy’s only opera and also inspired musical settings by composers such as Fauré, Sibelius, and Schoenberg.

• Adolphe Charles Adam — Adolphe Charles Adam was a French composer best known for the ballets Giselle and Le Corsaire. He also wrote the opera Si j’étais roi and the Christmas carol often translated as “O Holy Night.”

• Ambroise Thomas — Ambroise Thomas was a French composer known especially for the operas Mignon and Hamlet. His Hamlet is notable for an extended fourth act centered on Ophelia’s mad scene.
  • Mignon — Mignon is the title character of Ambroise Thomas’s opera based on Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. She is associated with the song “Kennst du das Land” and with the revelation that she is of noble birth.
• Daniel Auber — Daniel Auber was a French opera composer best known for The Mute Girl of Portici. His other operas include Fra Diavolo, Gustave III, and The Black Domino, and he collaborated with Eugène Scribe.
  • The Mute Girl of Portici — The Mute Girl of Portici is Daniel Auber’s grand opera about Fenella, a voiceless sister whose seduction triggers revolt in Naples. It is especially associated with the Belgian Revolution and ends with Masaniello’s death and Fenella’s leap into Mount Vesuvius.

• Fromental Halévy — Fromental Halévy was a French composer best known for the opera La Juive. That work, set during the Council of Constance, centers on Rachel and Prince Léopold.

• Opéra Comique — The Opéra-Comique is the Parisian opera company and house at the Salle Favart that premiered works such as Carmen, Lakmé, Pelléas et Mélisande, and The Tales of Hoffmann. Its name also refers to a French operatic genre that uses spoken dialogue instead of recitative.

• Samson and Delilah — Camille Saint-Saëns’s three-act opera, with a libretto by Ferdinand Lemaire, is based on the biblical story of Samson and Delilah from the Book of Judges. Originally planned as an oratorio, it was pushed into full opera form by Franz Liszt. It was first staged in Weimar in 1877 and was initially delayed in Paris because French authorities objected to biblical figures onstage. Its best-known excerpts include the Bacchanale and the aria “Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix,” and the final act ends with the destruction of the Temple of Dagon.

• Maurice Ravel
  • L’heure espagnole — A one-act comic opera by Maurice Ravel, set in a clockmaker’s shop around Concepción’s attempts to juggle her lovers and her husband Torquemada. The farcical action includes men hidden in clocks, along with Ravel’s Spanish-tinged orchestral writing and mechanical clock imagery.
• Francis Poulenc

  • Dialogues of the Carmelites — Dialogues of the Carmelites is Francis Poulenc’s opera about Carmelite nuns who refuse to abandon their vows during the French Revolution. It ends with the nuns singing the Salve Regina as they march to the guillotine, with Blanche de la Force joining them at the end.

  • The Breasts of Tiresias (Les Mamelles de Tiresias) — The Breasts of Tiresias, or Les Mamelles de Tiresias, is a surreal opera bouffe by Francis Poulenc based on a play by Guillaume Apollinaire. Its absurd plot includes a wife who transforms, floating breasts that become balloons, and a flood of babies in wartime Zanzibar.

  • The Dialogues of the Carmelites — The Dialogues of the Carmelites is Francis Poulenc’s opera about Carmelite nuns facing execution during the French Revolution. Its ending features the nuns singing as they are guillotined, with Blanche and Sister Constance among the central figures.

Russian

• Russian Futurism
  • Victory over the Sun — Victory over the Sun is the 1913 Russian Futurist opera with a libretto in zaum by Aleksei Kruchenykh and designs by Kazimir Malevich. It is known for its avant-garde absurdity, including the early appearance of the Black Square imagery and the title object being trapped in a box.
• Modest Mussorgsky (1839–1881)

  • Boris Godunov — 1874, St. Petersburg (revised from 1869 premiere); Russia’s greatest historical opera; Boris, haunted by guilt for the murdered Tsarevich Dmitry, is challenged by the Pretender Dmitry; the Coronation Scene and Boris’s “I have attained the highest power” monologue anchor the bass-baritone title role; Rimsky-Korsakov’s orchestral revision was long standard. Mussorgsky based it on Pushkin’s historical drama about the tsar who ruled Russia from 1598 to 1605; the opera also features the Holy Fool and the aria “Flow, flow, bitter tears.”

  • Khovanshchina — Khovanshchina is Mussorgsky’s unfinished opera about the political and religious turmoil of Peter the Great’s Russia. It ends with the Old Believers entering a mass immolation, and Rimsky-Korsakov completed the opera after Mussorgsky’s death.

• Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893)

  • Yevgeny Onegin (Eugene Onegin) — 1879, Moscow; after Pushkin; Tatyana’s “Letter Scene” in Act I is one of the most extended soprano scenas in the repertoire; Onegin rejects Tatyana, then regrets it too late. It is based on Pushkin’s verse novel and centers on the aristocratic antihero Onegin, with Tatyana, Lensky’s duel, Prince Gremin, and Monsieur Triquet’s French couplets.

  • Pikovaya Dama (The Queen of Spades) — 1890, St. Petersburg; after Pushkin; Herman gambles his soul for the Countess’s card secret; a dark, obsessive work. Based on Pushkin’s story; the Countess’s ghost and Hermann’s final breakdown culminate in his seeing her as the queen of spades.

    • Queen of Spades — The Queen of Spades is the title of a Tchaikovsky opera about Hermann, Lisa, and the Countess’s fatal secret. The phrase also names the playing card that is especially unlucky in some games, including Hearts.

    • The Queen of Spades or Pique Dame or Pikovaya Dama — The Queen of Spades, or Pique Dame, is Tchaikovsky’s opera about Hermann’s obsession with a winning card and the Countess’s secret. Its memorable scenes include the masked ball, the borrowed French song, and Hermann’s disastrous pursuit of the title card.

• Alexander Borodin (1833–1887)
  • Knyaz Igor (Prince Igor) — premiered posthumously 1890, St. Petersburg (completed by Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov); famous for the Polovtsian Dances (Act II), a staple of the orchestral concert repertoire. Borodin’s unfinished opera tells of Prince Igor’s campaign against the Polovtsians, his capture by Khan Konchak, and his eventual return to Putivl. It also includes the chorus associated with Yaroslavna and the eclipse prologue.
• Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908)

  • Zolotoy petushok (The Golden Cockerel) — 1909, Moscow (posthumous premiere); satirical fairy tale targeting royal incompetence; the Queen of Shemakha’s “Hymn to the Sun” is the soprano showcase. It is Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera based on Pushkin’s tale of King Dodon, the Queen of Shemakha, and the prophetic Golden Cockerel; authorities censored it in his lifetime for its satirical parallels, and the title bird ultimately kills Dodon after warning him of danger. Notable features include the Astrologer and indirect criticism of Russia’s military disasters.

  • Sadko — 1898, Moscow; sea-merchant opera with the “Song of the Indian Guest.” Based on Rimsky-Korsakov’s gusli-playing hero from Novgorod, who first appeared in an earlier symphonic poem before being expanded into the opera. The work includes the sea-king episode and colorful guest arias that helped popularize exotic scale effects.

  • The Maid of Pskov — Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Maid of Pskov is an opera set during Ivan the Terrible’s campaign against Pskov. Its plot centers on Princess Olga, who is revealed to be Ivan’s daughter.

  • The Snow Maiden — Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snow Maiden, or Snegurochka, is an opera whose title character is the daughter of Frost and Spring. She falls in love with Mizgir and melts when the sun god Yarilo appears, and the score includes the Dance of the Tumblers.
    • The Snow Maiden: A Spring Fairy Tale — The Snow Maiden: A Spring Fairy Tale is Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera about the title character, who is courted by Lel and Mizgir before melting after she falls in love. It is the opera whose title character dies at the end after ending the long winter, and its music later inspired a jazz trombone showpiece by Tommy Dorsey.
  • The Tale of Tsar Saltan — Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera based on Pushkin’s Russian fairy tale. It includes the orchestral interlude “Flight of the Bumblebee” and episodes such as the tsar’s departure, the tsarina in a barrel at sea, and the three wonders. The story follows Tsar Saltan, his wife, and their son Gvidon, who is cast into the sea and later transformed into a bumblebee.
• Sergei Prokofiev
  • The Love for Three Oranges — Sergei Prokofiev’s satirical comic opera, based on Carlo Gozzi’s play and commedia dell’arte elements. It premiered in Chicago in 1921 and centers on a melancholy prince cursed to love the title fruit; the cast includes Truffaldino, Fata Morgana, Tchelio, Smeraldina, and the giant cook who guards the oranges. It ends with the Prince marrying Ninette and is also known for its orchestral suite and famous March, often heard in orchestral arrangements.
    • Fata Morgana — Fata Morgana is the witch in Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges who curses the prince and sets the plot in motion. Her magic and comic trickery help drive the opera’s absurd, satirical frame story.
• Sergei Rachmaninoff
  • Aleko — Aleko is Rachmaninoff’s first opera, written as a Moscow Conservatory graduation work and based on Pushkin. It tells of a nobleman who runs away with gypsies and helped establish the composer’s early reputation.
• Dmitri Shostakovich
  • Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District — Dmitri Shostakovich’s second and final opera, based on Nikolai Leskov’s novella, about Katerina Ismailova/Katerina Izmaylova and her violent affair with Sergei. Her crimes include the murders of her husband and father-in-law and, in some versions of the plot summary, Sergei’s new partner; the story ends bleakly with her suicide. The opera was denounced in Soviet Russia after a 1936 performance and Pravda review, later revised as Katerina Ismailova, and became notorious for its scandalous sexual and violent scenes and the slogan “Muddle Instead of Music.”
• Mikhail Glinka

  • A Life for the Tsar — Mikhail Glinka’s patriotic opera about the peasant Ivan Susanin, who sacrifices himself by misleading invading Polish troops so that Mikhail Romanov can safely gain the crown. It is often treated as an early landmark of Russian-language opera and is remembered for its folk-inflected choruses and dances. The work was later renamed for its hero, Ivan Susanin; in the Soviet version, the hero saves a patriotic official rather than the Romanov heir.

  • Ruslan and Ludmila — Mikhail Glinka’s best-known opera, and a follow-up to A Life for the Tsar. It is adapted from Pushkin and opens with a famously rushed overture written in a single night. The plot centers on Ruslan’s quest to rescue Ludmila from the sorcerer Chernomor, with King Vladimir promising her hand to the rescuer. It is especially remembered for its popular overture and literary source.
    • Ruslan and Ludmilla — Ruslan and Ludmilla is Mikhail Glinka’s opera based on Alexander Pushkin’s poem. It follows the lovers Ruslan and Ludmilla through encounters with Chernomor, Naina, and other fairy-tale figures.
  • Ruslan and Lyudmila
    • Ruslan and Lyudmila or Ruslan i Lyudmila — Ruslan and Lyudmila is Mikhail Glinka’s opera based on Pushkin’s poem. Its fantasy plot centers on Ruslan rescuing Lyudmila from the dwarf sorcerer Chernomor, with memorable roles for Bayan, Farlaf, and the witch Naina.

• Mlada — Mlada is the unfinished Russian operatic ballet project associated with members of the Mighty Five and Leon Minkus. It was planned as a joint work but was never completed, though parts were adapted or repurposed by its composers.

• César Antonovich Cui — César Cui was a Russian nationalist composer and music critic, one of the members of The Five and the least famous member of that circle. His operatic works include William Ratcliff, The Prisoner of the Caucasus, The Captain’s Daughter, Feast in the Time of Plague, and The Mandarin’s Son, with several works drawing on French or literary subjects.

Operetta and Comic Opera

Recognize the dramatic and musical conventions of comic opera and operetta.

• Michael William Balfe
  • The Bohemian Girl — The Bohemian Girl is Michael William Balfe’s 1843 opera best known for the aria “I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls.” Its plot centers on Arline, Thaddeus, and a jealous gypsy queen.
• Franz von Suppé
  • Light Cavalry — Light Cavalry is Franz von Suppé’s operetta best known today for its overture. Its plot involves political intrigue, Hungarian pandures, and Countess Ilonka Csikos’s ballet troupe.
• Gilbert and Sullivan
  • H.M.S. Pinafore

    • H.M.S. Pinafore, or the Lass That Loved a Sailor — H.M.S. Pinafore is the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera set aboard the title ship, where Sir Joseph Porter visits Captain Corcoran and the plot turns on mistaken social rank. Its best-known numbers include “When I Was a Lad,” “I’m Called Little Buttercup,” and “A British Tar,” and it ends with Josephine and Ralph Rackstraw together.

    • HMS Pinafore — Gilbert and Sullivan’s 1878 comic opera, set aboard a Royal Navy ship and subtitled H.M.S. Pinafore, or The Lass that Loved a Sailor, satirizes class, romance, and naval bureaucracy. Its characters include Josephine, Ralph Rackstraw, Captain Corcoran, Sir Joseph Porter, and Little Buttercup, who reveals she switched two infants at birth. Notable numbers include “We Sail the Ocean Blue,” “Never Mind the Why and Wherefore,” “I am the Captain of the Pinafore,” “He is an Englishman,” and “I polished up that handle so carefullee.”

  • Iolanthe — Iolanthe is a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, also described as a comic opera, about a fairy who enters Parliament and brings the House of Lords into its comic world. The plot involves the fairy Strephon and his love for Phyllis, turns on the Lord Chancellor’s approval, and contrasts fairy magic with British politics. A cut song from the work is “Fold Your Flapping Wings.”
    • Iolanthe, or The Peer and the Peri — Iolanthe, or The Peer and the Peri is a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta about a fairy who married a mortal and their son Strephon. Its plot involves the fairies helping him win Phyllis, and it includes the famous “Nightmare Song.”

  • Patience — Patience is Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera satirizing the aesthetic movement, with Bunthorne, Grosvenor, and the title dairy maid at its center. Its famous songs include “True love must single-hearted be” and “Silvered is the Raven’s Hair.”

  • Ruddigore, or The Witch’s Curse — A Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera that spoofs Gothic fiction. It concerns the cursed Murgatroyd baronets and centers on Robin Oakapple and Rose Maybud; the plot requires the title line to commit a crime each day to avoid supernatural punishment. It includes the patter trio “My eyes are fully open.”

  • Savoy opera — Savoy opera is the comic-operatic genre associated with Gilbert and Sullivan and the Savoy Theatre. Works in this style include Trial by Jury, H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, and The Mikado.
    • W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan — William Schwenck Gilbert and Arthur Seymour Sullivan were the Victorian comic-opera duo behind H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, Patience, Iolanthe, and The Mikado. Their works were staged at the Savoy Theatre and helped define Savoy Opera and English-language light opera; famous songs associated with them include “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General” and “Tit-Willow.”
      • The Mikado, or The Town of Titipu — The Mikado, or The Town of Titipu is Gilbert and Sullivan’s satirical operetta set in Japan. It features Ko-Ko’s “little list,” Pooh-Bah, and the romantic plot involving Yum-Yum and Nanki-Poo, the disguised son of the title ruler.

  • Sir William Schwenck Gilbert and Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan — Gilbert and Sullivan were the famous Victorian librettist-composer duo behind comic operas such as The Mikado, Princess Ida, and The Pirates of Penzance. Their collaborations helped define English operetta and were produced by Richard D’Oyly Carte.

  • The Gondoliers — The Gondoliers is the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta set around the kingdom of Barataria and two Venetian gondoliers who are mistaken for royalty. Its comic plot follows the title characters after the Grand Inquisitor and the Duke of Plaza-Toro become involved in the succession.

  • The Gondoliers, or the King of Barataria — Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Gondoliers, or the King of Barataria, is an operetta about two gondoliers who are told that one of them has become king of Barataria. Its comic plot turns on mistaken identity, a substitute infant, and a finale associated with dances such as the cachuca, fandango, and bolero.

  • The Grand Duke — The final Gilbert and Sullivan opera, first performed in 1896. It is a late operetta subtitled Statutory Duel, and its antecedent collaboration Thespis supplied much of the material cannibalized for it. It centers on Ludwig, an actor who survives a series of card duels and ends with a complicated set of marriages.

  • The Mikado — Gilbert and Sullivan’s 1885 comic opera set in Japan. Its title comes from an old European term for the Japanese emperor. Set in Titipu, it features Ko-Ko as Lord High Executioner, Nanki-Poo courting Yum-Yum, and characters including Pooh-Bah. It is known for “I’ve Got a Little List” and the Mikado’s comic creed of making “the punishment fit the crime.”

    • Ko-Ko — Ko-Ko is the Lord High Executioner in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, where he is the tailor reprieved from execution and sings about his list of people who would not be missed. The name also appears as a Charlie Parker bebop tune built on the changes of “Cherokee.”

    • Nanki-Poo — Nanki-Poo is the Mikado’s son in Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera set in Titipu. He disguises himself as a poor musician and falls in love with Yum-Yum.

    • POOH-BAH — Pooh-Bah is the self-important official in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado who serves as Lord High Everything Else. He is the comic figure who accumulates offices after the other town officials resign, making him one of the opera’s best-known satirical characters.

  • The Pirates of Penzance — Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operetta about the pirate apprentice Frederic, Major-General Stanley, and Mabel. It is best known for the “Major-General’s Song” (“I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General”), “When the Foeman Bares His Steel,” the leap-year premise, and the policemen’s chorus with its “tarantara” refrain. Its title refers to the Cornish town of Penzance, associated with Sir Humphrey Davy’s birthplace.

    • Frederic — Frederic is the young man in Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera The Pirates of Penzance, where his apprenticeship is tangled up with a leap-day birth and the pirate band’s absurd code of honor. The opera also features Ruth’s mistaken “pilot” lyric, the Major General’s patter song, and the pirates’ comic entrance marked by “tarantara” and “with cat-like tread.”

    • I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General — “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General” is the patter song from The Pirates of Penzance in which the title character boasts of his wide-ranging knowledge. It is famous for rapid-fire lists of historical, scientific, and literary facts, and for the line about being “information vegetable, animal, and mineral.”

    • Major-General — The Major-General in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance is the boastful officer who sings the famous “I am the very model” patter song. He is remembered for comic claims of broad knowledge ranging from the vegetable to the mineral.

    • Modern Major-General — The Modern Major-General is the comic officer in The Pirates of Penzance who boasts that he is the very model of the title role. His patter song lists his “information vegetable, animal and mineral” and his knowledge of the square of the hypotenuse.

    • The Pirates of Penzance or Slave to Duty — The Pirates of Penzance, or Slave to Duty, is a Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera about a band of sentimental pirates and the complications of Frederick’s apprenticeship. Its best-known number is “I am the very model of a modern Major-General.”

    • The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty — The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty is Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera about the pirate apprentice Frederic, who is bound by a service contract because of a leap-day birth. It features the Major-General, Mabel, and the famous patter-song style that builds to the chorus of absurdly melodramatic policemen and pirates.

  • The Sorcerer — The Sorcerer is Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operetta about a love potion that makes everyone fall for the first person they see. It includes the song “My Name is John Wellington Wells” and the comic execution list sung by Ko-Ko.

  • The Yeomen of the Guard, or The Merryman and His Maid — The Yeomen of the Guard, or The Merryman and His Maid, is a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta set among the Tower Warders of London. It includes “I Have a Song to Sing, O,” Jack Point, Elsie Maynard, and the comic subplot involving Phoebe Meryll and Wilfred Shadbolt.

  • Thespis, or The Gods Grown Old — Thespis, or The Gods Grown Old is the first collaboration between W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. In the opera, the gods go away on vacation and a troupe of traveling actors temporarily takes their place on Olympus.

  • William Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan — William S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan were the famous comic-opera partnership behind works such as The Mikado, The Pirates of Penzance, and The Gondoliers. Their first collaboration was Thespis, and Trial by Jury was one of their early hits.
• Johann Strauss II
  • Die Fledermaus — Johann Strauss II’s comic operetta centers on Gabriel von Eisenstein, Rosalinde, Adele, and Dr. Falke’s revenge after a drunken prank and masked ball leave Falke dressed as the title bat. Its most famous setting is Prince Orlofsky’s party, where disguises, mistaken identities, a prison disguise, the czardas, the waltz “You and You,” and a champagne-fueled finale drive the farce.
• John Philip Sousa
  • El Capitan — El Capitan is also the title of a Sousa operetta about the Peruvian viceroy Don Enrico Medigua, who kills the title rebel and then impersonates him. The operetta’s title inspired Sousa’s march of the same name, distinct from the famous granite monolith in Yosemite.

• The Yeomen of the Guard — The Yeomen of the Guard is a Gilbert and Sullivan opera set in the Tower of London. Its title refers to the ceremonial royal bodyguard, recognizable by its distinctive red and gold dress.

• W. S. Gilbert
  • Sir William Schwenck Gilbert — W. S. Gilbert was the librettist of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, including H.M.S. Pinafore, The Mikado, Iolanthe, and The Gondoliers. He also wrote the Bab Ballads and earlier comic works such as Pygmalion and Galatea.
• Franz Lehár — Franz Lehár was the Hungarian-Austrian operetta composer best known for The Merry Widow, The Count of Luxembourg, and The Land of Smiles. He also wrote popular waltzes such as Gold and Silver, helped shape the Viennese operetta tradition, and his work influenced Puccini’s La Rondine.
  • The Merry Widow — Franz Lehár’s operetta is set in the fictional Balkan state of Pontevedro, amid the Pontevedrian embassy and Parisian nightlife, where Hanna Glawari’s fortune becomes the subject of romantic maneuvering. It centers on her relationship with Count Danilo and includes best-known numbers such as the Vilja Song and “You’ll Find Me at Maxim’s.” It became one of the most popular and famous comic operettas of the early twentieth century.
• Arthur Seymour Sullivan — Arthur Sullivan was the English composer who partnered with W. S. Gilbert on comic operas such as The Mikado, The Pirates of Penzance, and H.M.S. Pinafore. He also wrote more serious works including Ivanhoe and The Golden Legend, and set Kipling’s “The Absent-Minded Beggar” for a Boer War fundraiser.

Verismo and Twentieth-Century Opera

Follow later operatic developments through their composers and dramatic choices.

Verismo, Czech, and Early 20th-Century Opera

Italian Verismo

• Pietro Mascagni (1863–1945)
  • Cavalleria rusticana (Rustic Chivalry) — 1890, Rome; one act; Sicilian peasant Turiddu’s affair leads to his death in a duel; the Intermezzo is a concert staple; almost always paired with Pagliacci (“Cav/Pag”). Pietro Mascagni’s verismo opera, based on a Giovanni Verga story and set in a Sicilian village on Easter morning. It centers on Santuzza, Lola, and Alfio as well as Turiddu, and includes Santuzza’s aria “Voi lo sapete” and the drinking song “Viva il vino spumeggiante”; libretto by Guido Menasci.

    • Mascagni — Pietro Mascagni composed Cavalleria rusticana, the one-act opera often associated with the Intermezzo. The work is one of the best-known examples of Italian verismo opera.

    • Turiddu — Turiddu is the male lead of Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana and the son of Lucia. He is involved with Santuzza and is killed in a duel with Alfio after a jealous confrontation.

  • Pietro Antonio Stefano Mascagni — Pietro Mascagni was an Italian composer associated with verismo opera. He is best known for Cavalleria rusticana, and also wrote L’amico Fritz, Iris, and Guglielmo Ratcliff.
• Ruggero Leoncavallo (1857–1919)
  • Pagliacci (Clowns) — 1892, Milan; one act; jealous clown Canio kills his unfaithful wife during a commedia dell’arte performance; Vesti la giubba (“Put on the costume,” Canio’s aria as he weeps and prepares to perform) is one of the most famous tenor arias ever written. Ruggero Leoncavallo’s verismo opera centers on a traveling commedia dell’arte troupe, with Canio, Nedda, and Tonio among the main characters. It also includes Nedda’s aria “Stridono lassù” and ends with Tonio’s proclamation “La commedia finita.”

    • Recitar!… Vesti la giubba — “Recitar!… Vesti la giubba” is the famous aria from Pagliacci sung by Canio as he prepares to go on stage despite his anguish. The scene is associated with his discovery of his wife Nedda’s infidelity and often ends with a tear on the clown’s painted face.

    • Tonio — Tonio is the clown and tenor in I Pagliacci who opens the opera by addressing the audience in the prologue aria “Si può?”. He also falls in love with Nedda, but she rejects him.

    • “Vesti la giubba” — Leoncavallo, Pagliacci; Canio’s weeping tenor aria; “Put on the costume and the face-paint”; ends with the famous “Ridi, Pagliaccio” (“Laugh, clown”). Enrico Caruso’s 1902 recording helped make it the first record to sell over a million copies.

  • Ruggiero Leoncavallo — Ruggiero Leoncavallo was an Italian verismo composer best known for Pagliacci. He also wrote a version of La Bohème, but that opera was overshadowed by Puccini’s more famous treatment of the same subject.
• Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924) — the dominant figure in Italian opera after Verdi; known for long lyric melodic arches, sophisticated orchestration, and affecting soprano heroines.

  • Manon Lescaut — 1893, Turin; after Prévost; his first major international success. Puccini’s opera centers on the title character, a French woman whose doomed romance with Des Grieux ends with her death of exhaustion in a desert outside New Orleans after a life divided between luxury and love.

  • La Bohème — 1896, Turin; after Murger; bohemian artists in Paris; Mimi is dying of tuberculosis; “Che gelida manina,” “Mi chiamano Mimì,” “Musetta’s Waltz” (Quando m’en vo), and the Act III quartet are central. It follows Rodolfo and Mimì, along with Marcello, Musetta, and Schaunard; the famous Act II scene is set at Café Momus, and the Christmas Eve episode includes the roommates burning a play for warmth instead of a painting. Other arias include “O soave fanciulla” and “Donde lieta uscì.”

    • “Che gelida manina” — Puccini, La Bohème; Rodolfo’s tenor aria introducing himself to Mimi (“What a cold little hand!”).

    • Colline — Colline is the philosopher in La bohème who sings the farewell to his overcoat before selling it for Mimì’s medicine. He is one of Rodolfo’s bohemian friends, and his sacrifice comes at the end of Puccini’s opera.

    • Marcello — Marcello is the painter and roommate of Rodolfo in La Bohème, and he is closely associated with Musetta. He appears as one of the bohemian friends in the Rent/La Bohème character parallels and is especially prominent in later versions of the story.

    • Mimi — Mimi is the fragile seamstress and Rodolfo’s beloved in Puccini’s La bohème, where she introduces herself in the aria “Sì, mi chiamano Mimì.” She dies of consumption after her friends try to buy her medicine. She is also the basis for Mimi Marquez in Rent, who sings “Light My Candle” and survives in that musical.

    • Musetta — Musetta is the flirtatious woman in Puccini’s La bohème whose showpiece is the waltz “Quando m’en vo.” She is a former lover of Marcello and appears in scenes of public performance and romantic mischief.

    • Musetta’s Waltz — “Musetta’s Waltz,” or “Quando me’n vo’,” is the famous aria from Puccini’s La Bohème sung by Musetta in the café scene. The aria is best known for Musetta’s boast that everyone stares at her beauty when she walks by.

    • Rodolfo — Rodolfo is the poet in Puccini’s La Bohème who falls in love with Mimì. He is one of the bohemians in the opera, and the source material identifies him as the author-narrator associated with some of the work’s best-known love lyrics.

  • Tosca — 1900, Rome; political thriller set in Rome in 1800; Tosca kills the police chief Scarpia to save her painter lover Cavaradossi; “Vissi d’arte” (Tosca), “E lucevan le stelle” (Cavaradossi), and “Recondita armonia” are the major arias. It is Giacomo Puccini’s opera featuring Floria Tosca, Mario Cavaradossi, and Baron Scarpia; it concludes with Tosca’s suicide after Cavaradossi’s execution, when she leaps from Castel Sant’Angelo.

    • Baron Scarpia — Baron Scarpia is the chief of police in Puccini’s Tosca and the opera’s chief villain. He menaces Tosca and Cavaradossi, hears the Te Deum, and is tied to the recurring B-flat, A-flat, and E chord motif. He is killed at the end of Act II, after which Tosca tries to use a safe-conduct pass to save her lover.

    • E lucevan le stelle — “E lucevan le stelle” is Cavaradossi’s lament in Puccini’s Tosca, sung as he awaits execution in Castel Sant’Angelo. The aria looks back on love and lost life before the opera’s tragic ending.

    • Floria Tosca — Floria Tosca is the title soprano of Puccini’s Tosca. She is central to clues involving “Vissi d’arte,” Scarpia, Cavaradossi, and her suicide at the Castel Sant’Angelo.

    • La Tosca — La Tosca is the heroine of Puccini’s opera Tosca, set in Napoleonic Rome. She is driven to kill Scarpia after Cavaradossi is threatened, and the opera ends with her suicide.

    • Mario Cavaradossi — Mario Cavaradossi is the painter-hero of Puccini’s Tosca. He sings “Recondita armonia” and later “E lucevan le stelle” before being executed under Scarpia’s orders.

    • “Vissi d’arte” — Puccini, Tosca; Tosca’s soprano aria questioning why God afflicts her; sung in the villain Scarpia’s presence. It is Tosca’s second-act aria, sung while she pleads with God over her suffering and Scarpia’s coercion. The title means “I lived for art,” and the aria reflects on a life devoted to art and love; it is one of the opera’s best-known soprano arias.

    • Cavaradossi — the tenor lead in Puccini’s Tosca (1900); a Roman painter and republican activist, lover of the opera singer Tosca; his two major arias are “Recondita armonia” (Act I, comparing his painting’s model to Tosca) and “E lucevan le stelle” (Act III, written as he awaits execution, one of the most celebrated tenor laments in the repertoire).

  • Madama Butterfly — 1904, Milan (disastrous premiere); revised 1904, Brescia; Japanese geisha Cio-Cio-San waits faithfully for American naval officer Pinkerton, who has married an American woman; “Un bel dì vedremo” (“One fine day”) is the opera’s defining soprano aria. Set in Nagasaki and also known as Madame Butterfly; notable characters include Suzuki and Sharpless, and the ending features Cio-Cio-San’s suicide after she learns Pinkerton has married Kate.

    • B. F. Pinkerton — The U.S. naval lieutenant in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly who marries Cio-Cio-San and later abandons her, returning with his American wife, Kate. He is associated with the aria “Addio, fiorito asil” and the opera’s imperialist symbolism in its treatment of Japan.

    • Cio-Cio-San — Cio-Cio-San is the tragic heroine of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, a young Japanese woman who waits in vain for Pinkerton’s return. She sings “Un bel di, vedremo,” names her child and then chooses death rather than dishonor.

    • Lieutenant Pinkerton — Lieutenant Pinkerton is the American naval officer in Puccini’s Madame Butterfly who abandons Cio-Cio-san in Japan. He is introduced with patriotic fanfare and is central to the opera’s tragic contrast between American opportunism and Japanese devotion.

    • Prince Yamadori — Prince Yamadori is the wealthy suitor introduced in Madame Butterfly who seeks to marry Cio-Cio-san. She rejects him, and the marriage broker Goro presents him as a match in Act II.

    • Sharpless — Sharpless is the American consul in Madama Butterfly who accompanies Pinkerton to Butterfly’s house. He warns Pinkerton that the marriage is a mistake and appears again when the Americans come to reclaim the child.

    • “Un bel dì vedremo” — Puccini, Madama Butterfly; Cio-Cio-San imagines Pinkerton’s return; the opera’s emotional peak. The title is often given in English as “One Fine Day.”

  • La fanciulla del West (The Girl of the Golden West) — 1910, Metropolitan Opera, New York; first world premiere at the Met; set in a California Gold Rush mining camp. It centers on Minnie, Dick Johnson, and Sheriff Jack Rance; Dick Johnson is the outlaw Ramirez in disguise, and the plot includes the poker game and the aria “Ch’ella mi creda.” It was based on David Belasco’s play, and Puccini incorporated material partly drawn from Zuni music collected by Carlos Troyer.
    • Dick Johnson — Dick Johnson is the outlaw identity of Ramerrez in The Girl of the Golden West. He appears in the love triangle involving Minnie and Sheriff Jack Rance in Puccini’s opera.

  • Il trittico (The Triptych) — 1918, Metropolitan Opera, New York; three one-act operas: Il tabarro (verismo thriller), Suor Angelica (convent tragedy), Gianni Schicchi (buffa comedy); from the triptych, “O mio babbino caro” (Lauretta’s plea in Gianni Schicchi) is the most famous excerpt.

  • Turandot — 1926, Milan (posthumous, completed by Alfano); Chinese princess Turandot executes all suitors who fail her three riddles; Prince Calaf solves them; his Act III aria “Nessun dorma” (“None shall sleep”) became globally famous through Pavarotti’s 1990 World Cup performance. It also features the tenor cry “Vincerò!” and Liu’s aria “Tu che di gel sei cinta,” along with the characters Ping, Pang, and Pong.

    • Turandot (princess) — Turandot is the princess at the center of Puccini’s opera set in Peking, where suitors must solve three riddles or die. Her story involves Calaf, the ministers Ping, Pang, and Pong, and the famous final transformation of her hatred into love.

    • In questa reggia — In this aria from Turandot, the princess recalls the suffering of her ancestor Lo-u-Ling and explains why she rejects marriage.

    • “Nessun dorma” — Puccini, Turandot; Prince Calaf’s tenor aria in Act III; “None shall sleep”; ends with the high B on “Vincerò!” (“I will win”). As Calaf sings it, he resolves that no one shall sleep while Princess Turandot tries to discover his name before their wedding.

    • Calaf — In Puccini’s Turandot, this mysterious prince wins the princess’s riddles and asks her to discover his name before dawn. He sings “Nessun dorma” and is eventually spared when Turandot falls in love with him.

    • Liù — Liù is the faithful slave girl in Turandot who loves Calaf and refuses to betray him. After being tortured, she sings “Tu che di gel sei cinta” and dies by suicide.

    • Nessun Dorma or None Shall Sleep — “Nessun dorma” is Calaf’s famous tenor aria from Puccini’s Turandot, ending with the triumphant cry “Vincerò.” It is one of opera’s best-known arias and is especially associated with Luciano Pavarotti’s performances.

    • Prince Calaf — Prince Calaf is the suitor in Puccini’s Turandot who solves the princess’s riddles. He is best known for singing the aria “Nessun dorma” as he pursues her love.

  • Giacomo Antonio Michele Secondo Maria Puccini — Giacomo Puccini was the Italian composer of Turandot and Suor Angelica, one of the three operas in Il trittico. His unfinished final opera Turandot was completed after his death by Franco Alfano.

  • Gianni Schicchi — A one-act opera by Giacomo Puccini from Il trittico, based on a story from Dante’s Divine Comedy, specifically the Inferno. It centers on the inheritance of Buoso Donati: Schicchi disguises himself as Buoso to alter the will, while greedy relatives scheme over the estate. The opera also features Lauretta’s aria “O mio babbino caro” and the romance and planned marriage of Lauretta and Rinuccio.
    • “O mio babbino caro” — Puccini, Gianni Schicchi; Lauretta’s soprano aria pleading with her father; among Puccini’s most widely recognized melodies. Lauretta begs her father, Gianni Schicchi, to let her marry Rinuccio; it later became famous outside opera as the piece Mr. Bean performs in a French town to earn money for a bus ride.

  • La Rondine — La Rondine, or The Swallow, is Puccini’s unfinished opera about Magda, a former courtesan. Its clues include the aria “Chi bel suono di Doretta,” the poet Prunier, and Magda’s decision to leave Ruggero because she fears her past will damage his family.

  • Le Villi — Le Villi is Giacomo Puccini’s first stage work, and its title refers to the spirits of the dead who punish Roberto. It includes the tenor aria “Torna ai felici dì” and centers on Anna’s grief and betrayal.
• Umberto Giordano (1867–1948) — Andrea Chénier (1896, Milan); French Revolutionary-era opera; tenor title role; “Un dì all’azzurro spazio” is the famous aria. Umberto Giordano was an Italian verismo composer best known for Andrea Chénier. His other operas include Fedora, with the aria “Amor ti vieta,” and Madame Sans-Gêne, while Andrea Chénier includes the famous “La mamma morta.” He is also identified with the verismo tradition.
  • Andrea Chénier — Umberto Giordano’s verismo opera about the French Revolutionary poet Andrea Chénier, who is guillotined with his lover Maddalena. It features Maddalena, Gérard, the aria “La mamma morta,” and the celebrated duet “Vicino a te s’acqueta,” and ends with Maddalena saving the title character.
    • La mamma morta — “La mamma morta” is a soprano aria from Umberto Giordano’s 1896 opera Andrea Chénier. It is sung by Maddalena di Coigny, who recalls her mother’s death and her own sacrifice during the French Revolution, and Maria Callas’s recording was used in Philadelphia.
• Francesco Cilea (1866–1950) — Adriana Lecouvreur (1902, Milan); soprano role of the actress; “Io son l’umile ancella” and “Poveri fiori” are the key arias.
  • Adriana Lecouvreur — Adriana Lecouvreur is Francesco Cilea’s verismo opera about the actress Adriana, who is caught in a love triangle with Maurizio and the Princess of Bouillon. The title character dies after kissing poisoned violets sent by her rival, making the opera a favorite clue for its melodramatic final scene.
• Arrigo Boito (1842–1918) — composer (Mefistofele, 1868) and librettist; his libretti for Verdi’s Otello and Falstaff are considered the finest operatic adaptations of Shakespeare. He was associated with the Scapigliatura movement.
  • Mefistofele — Mefistofele is an opera by Arrigo Boito based on the Faust legend. It failed at its Milan premiere in 1868 but later succeeded in a revised Bologna version in 1875.

• Franco Alfano — Franco Alfano was an Italian composer best known for completing Puccini’s Turandot after Puccini’s death. His own operas include Resurrezione and Sakùntala, and he also wrote Cyrano de Bergerac.

• Ottorino Respighi
  • The Sunken Bell — Respighi’s The Sunken Bell is an opera based on Gerhart Hauptmann’s play of the same name. It follows Heinrich, who is lured by a fairy-like spirit into a supernatural conflict.

Czech and Central European

• Leoš Janáček (1854–1928)

  • Její pastorkyňa (Jenůfa) — 1904, Brno; a young Moravian woman’s illegitimate child is killed by her stepmother the Kostelnička; his breakthrough work; known in Czech as Jenůfa in German-speaking countries.

  • Příhody lišky Bystroušky (The Cunning Little Vixen) — 1924, Brno; a forester captures a wild vixen; the opera cycles through life, death, and regeneration; the final scene is one of opera’s most moving endings. Based on a newspaper comic strip by Rudolf Těsnohlídek and Stanislav Lolek, it includes a comic, animal-filled world around the title fox, then follows her through captivity, romance, and eventual death at the hands of a poacher.
    • Vixen — Vixen is the title character of Janáček’s opera The Cunning Little Vixen, adapted from a serialized novella about a fox. The character’s story follows a cycle of life, death, and renewal in the woods.

  • Věc Makropulos (The Makropulos Affair) — 1926, Brno; a 337-year-old woman seeks a life-extension formula and ultimately chooses death. It is based on Karel Čapek’s play The Makropoulos Case.

  • Z mrtvého domu (From the House of the Dead) — 1930, Brno (posthumous); after Dostoevsky; Siberian prison camp; almost no plot, only testimonies.

  • Jenufa — Jenufa is Leoš Janáček’s opera about a Moravian peasant girl whose face is scarred by Laca after Steva abandons her. The title character’s child is drowned by Kostelnička, and the opera is based on a play by Gabriela Preissová.

  • Káťa Kabanová
    • Katerina Kabanova — Katerina Kabanova is the title character of Janáček’s opera based on Ostrovsky’s The Storm. The opera ends with her suicide after her adultery with Boris is exposed, and her son Tichon mourns over her body.
  • The Makropulos Case — This Janáček opera is set in Prague and revolves around a property dispute involving the singer Emilia Marty. Emilia Marty is revealed to have lived for centuries after receiving an elixir of life from her father.
• Béla Bartók (1881–1945) — A kékszakállú herceg vára (Duke Bluebeard’s Castle) — 1918, Budapest; one act, two characters; Judith opens seven doors in Bluebeard’s castle; a psychological drama built on a single arc of growing dread.

  • Bluebeard’s Castle — Béla Bartók’s only opera, with a libretto by Béla Balázs. It follows Judith as she opens the castle’s seven locked doors, uncovering a lake of tears and, at the final door, Bluebeard’s three former wives.

  • Duke Bluebeard’s Castle — Béla Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle is the one-act opera in which Judith opens seven forbidden doors in her husband’s fortress. Its eerie highlights include the blood motif, the spoken prologue, and the reveal of the title duke’s former wives behind the final door.

• Antonín Dvořák
  • Rusalka — Rusalka is Dvořák’s opera about a water nymph who trades her voice to the witch Ježibaba for the chance to win a human prince. Questions may also reference the Russian and Slavic folkloric rusalka, a seductive water spirit associated with drowning and death.
    • Song to the Moon — “Song to the Moon” is the famous aria from Dvořák’s Rusalka in which the title water nymph addresses the moon. In the song, Rusalka asks the moon to carry her love to the human prince.
• Bedřich Smetana

  • Dalibor — Dalibor is a Czech opera by Bedřich Smetana about a imprisoned folk hero who is rescued too late by Milada. The title character is killed after taking revenge for his friend Zdeněk’s death.

  • The Bartered Bride — Bedřich Smetana’s best-known comic opera, centered on Mařenka and Jeník’s thwarted arranged marriage and eventual reunion. The plot features the marriage broker Kecal, disguises and mistaken identity, and the Dance of the Comedians; it is a landmark of Czech national music and is also associated with the polka, furiant, and a circus bear.

  • The Brandenburgers in Bohemia — The Brandenburgers in Bohemia is an opera by Bedřich Smetana set during a historical interregnum in Bohemia. It follows the conflict between local forces and Brandenburg invaders led by Jan Tausendmark.

20th-Century Opera

German and Austrian Expressionism

• Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) — Moses und Aron — composed 1930–1932, never completed; first staged 1954, Hamburg; Moses (speaking role, Sprechstimme) and Aaron (tenor) debate how God can be communicated to the people; the twelve-tone serialist opera par excellence.

  • Erwartung — Arnold Schoenberg’s one-act monodrama for soprano and orchestra, an Expressionist work that follows a woman searching a forest for her lover and finding his corpse. Its freely unfolding score avoids regular repetition and formal structure, intensifying the psychological monologue at the center of the piece.

  • Moses und Aron — Arnold Schoenberg’s unfinished twelve-tone opera based on Exodus and the biblical brothers Moses and Aaron. It is built on a single row and is one of his most explicit statements of Jewish identity. Its unfinished third act includes Moses’ arrest and release, ending with a proclamation about humanity’s future unity with God.

• Alban Berg (1885–1935)

  • Wozzeck — 1925, Berlin; after Büchner’s play; soldier Wozzeck is exploited and humiliated; he murders his common-law wife Marie and drowns; the score uses closed classical forms (suite, sonata, rondo) within a through-composed atonal language; one of the 20th century’s most powerful operas. Alban Berg’s opera is based on Georg Büchner’s unfinished play about a mistreated soldier driven to jealousy and hallucination. Its plot centers on Marie, the Drum Major, murder near a pond, and Wozzeck’s drowning, and it has a five-movement second act, the “Wir arme Leut!” motif, and the child riding an imaginary hobbyhorse at the end.

  • Lulu — 1937, Zurich (two acts, incomplete; completed by Friedrich Cerha, performed 1979, Paris); after Wedekind; amoral “earth spirit” Lulu rises and falls through a series of men; twelve-tone score. Wedekind’s source plays are Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box. Lulu is killed by Jack the Ripper; Alwa and Countess Geschwitz are major characters, and a silent-film interlude divides the action.

• Kurt Weill (1900–1950)
  • Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera) — 1928, Berlin; after Gay’s Beggar’s Opera; libretto by Brecht; Macheath “Mack the Knife” (“Die Moritat von Mackie Messer”); a satirical hybrid of opera and cabaret. Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s version became famous for songs such as “Pirate Jenny,” and for its gangster-inflected mock-epic portrayal of the Peachum family in London, with figures including Polly Peachum, Lucy Brown, and Tiger Brown. It is often cited as a classic example of Brechtian epic theater and a critique of respectability and poverty.

    • Pirate Jenny — Pirate Jenny is the ominous song in The Threepenny Opera in which a downtrodden servant imagines revenge by a mysterious ship. It is one of the play’s best-known numbers alongside “Mack the Knife” and “Cannon Song.”

    • Three Penny Opera — The Threepenny Opera is Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s satirical stage work, adapted from John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera and aimed at exposing the brutality of capitalist society.

• Erich Wolfgang Korngold
  • Die Tote Stadt — Die tote Stadt is Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s 1920 opera based on Georges Rodenbach’s Bruges-la-Morte. Its most famous number is the duet “Glück, das mir verblieb,” sung by Paul and Marietta after Paul mistakes her for his dead wife Marie.
• Paul Hindemith
  • Mathis der Maler — Mathis der Maler is Paul Hindemith’s opera and symphony about the painter Matthias Grünewald, the artist of the Isenheim Altarpiece. Set amid the Peasants’ War and artistic repression, the work centers on his inner conflict, struggle between art, conscience, and politics, and his involvement in peasant unrest. The symphony’s movements include “Angelic Concert,” “Entombment,” and “Temptation of St. Anthony.”
    • Mathis der Mahler — Mathis der Mahler is Paul Hindemith’s opera about the painter Matthias Grünewald, creator of the Isenheim Altarpiece. It is set against the Peasants’ War and is closely linked to Hindemith’s later symphony of the same title.
• The Bassarids — Hans Werner Henze’s opera The Bassarids, also called Die Bassariden, is based on Euripides’ The Bacchae. Its score includes unusual percussion such as cowbells, and W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman wrote the libretto.

English and American

• Benjamin Britten (1913–1976) — the dominant figure in 20th-century English opera.

  • Peter Grimes — 1945, London (Sadler’s Wells); the opera that re-established English opera; lonely, misunderstood fisherman Grimes is hounded by his community; the Sea Interludes are orchestral showpieces; “Now the Great Bear and Pleiades” is his famous aria. It is set in the coastal community of The Borough and is based on George Crabbe’s The Borough. The work includes the Four Sea Interludes, titled “Dawn,” “Sunday Morning,” “Moonlight,” and “Storm,” and recurring associated details include Ellen Orford, Balstrode, the Boar Inn, and the Embroidery Aria.

  • The Rape of Lucretia — 1946, Glyndebourne; chamber opera; the chaste Lucretia is violated by Tarquinius.

  • Albert Herring — 1947, Glyndebourne; comic opera; a sheltered young man is made King of the May. Benjamin Britten’s comic opera. After his flower crown is ruined, Albert goes out drinking and debauchery instead of remaining the model town innocent.

  • Billy Budd — 1951, London; after Melville; all-male cast; master-at-arms Claggart falsely accuses the innocent sailor Billy Budd; Billy strikes and accidentally kills Claggart; Billy hangs. Benjamin Britten’s opera based on Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor.

  • The Turn of the Screw — 1954, Venice; chamber opera after Henry James; a governess believes two children are possessed by the ghosts of Quint and Miss Jessel; the twelve-note theme generates the score’s harmonic language.

  • A Midsummer Night’s Dream — 1960, Aldeburgh; after Shakespeare; countertenor Oberon and mezzo Titania; the mechanicals provide comic relief. Benjamin Britten’s 1960 opera, premiered at Aldeburgh, adapts Shakespeare’s comedy. It features countertenor Oberon and mezzo-soprano Titania, and the mechanicals provide comic relief.

  • Death in Venice — 1973, Snape Maltings; after Mann; the composer’s last opera; aging writer Aschenbach becomes obsessed with the boy Tadzio; the writer/Apollo-Dionysus duality is embodied in a single baritone and the silent role of Tadzio.

• George Gershwin (1898–1937) American composer who fused jazz and concert music in works like Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris, and the Concerto in F. He also wrote the opera Porgy and Bess and standards such as “I Got Rhythm,” often identified by its famous clarinet opening and orchestral color. His music bridges jazz and classical idioms and his catalog also includes Strike Up the Band and Girl Crazy; his works are often associated with his brother Ira.
  • Porgy and Bess — 1935, Boston/New York; “folk opera” set in Catfish Row, Charleston; disabled beggar Porgy loves Bess; “Summertime,” “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’,” “Bess, You Is My Woman Now,” and “It Ain’t Necessarily So” are the central numbers; the opera’s racial politics and genre classification have been continuously debated. Its cast includes the title couple, Sportin’ Life, Crown, Clara, and Robbins, and it opens with the lullaby “Summertime.”

    • Catfish Row — Catfish Row is the fictional Charleston neighborhood that serves as the setting for Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. It is the place where characters like Serena and Sportin’ Life appear, and where songs such as “My Man’s Gone Now” and “It Ain’t Necessarily So” are sung.

    • It Ain’t Necessarily So — This song from Porgy and Bess is sung by Sportin’ Life and questions stories such as David and Goliath and Jonah and the whale. Its title line insists that gospel-style certainty is not always justified, even when the tune is delivered with jazz inflection.

    • Porgy — Porgy is the title character of George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess, adapted from DuBose Heyward’s novel and play. He is a disabled resident of Catfish Row whose best-known arias include “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’” and “I Got Plenty o’ Nothing,” and the story ends with his decision to head to New York after losing Bess to Sportin’ Life.

    • Sporting Life — Sporting Life is the slick gambler and dope peddler in Porgy and Bess. He tries to lure Bess to New York and manipulates her by implying that Porgy is headed to jail.

    • Sportin’ Life — Sportin’ Life is the slick-talking drug dealer in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, famous for singing “It Ain’t Necessarily So.” He carries Bess away to New York while Porgy is in jail and is associated with the song “happy dust.”

    • “Summertime” — Gershwin, Porgy and Bess; Clara’s lullaby in Act I; perhaps the most covered aria from any American opera. The lyrics evoke easy living, high cotton, and jumping fish.

• Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990)

  • Candide — 1956, Boston/New York; operetta after Voltaire; “Glitter and Be Gay” (soprano showpiece) and the finale “Make Our Garden Grow”; the work has undergone multiple revisions and is sometimes classified as a musical.

  • Trouble in Tahiti — Trouble in Tahiti is a short Leonard Bernstein opera about the unhappy marriage of Sam and Dinah. It was first performed in 1952 and is set in a suburban American world that satirizes domestic life and consumer culture.

• Samuel Barber (1910–1981) — Vanessa — 1958, Metropolitan Opera; won the Pulitzer Prize; libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti.
  • Vanessa — Vanessa is Samuel Barber’s opera about a woman waiting for her former lover Anatol, with a libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti. It is especially known for the aria “Must the Winter Come So Soon?” and for its ending, in which mirrors are covered in the haunted house.
• Gustav Holst
  • Savitri — Savitri is Gustav Holst’s English-language chamber opera based on a Mahabharata story. It centers on Savitri bargaining with Death to recover her husband Satyavan.
• Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson
  • Four Saints in Three Acts — Four Saints in Three Acts is the Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson opera with an all-black cast, originally staged by the Friends and Enemies of Modern Music. Its surreal scenes and characters such as Teresa and Chavez make it one of the best-known modernist operas of the early twentieth century.
• Gian Carlo Menotti
  • Amahl and the Night Visitors — Amahl and the Night Visitors is Gian Carlo Menotti’s Christmas opera, first broadcast on NBC in 1951. It tells of a disabled boy who offers his crutch to the Magi and is miraculously healed, with King Melchior and the shepherd chorus as common clues.

    • All that Gold! — “All That Gold!” is Amahl’s mother’s aria in Amahl and the Night Visitors. She sings it when she sees the Magi’s gifts and realizes the temptation and misery surrounding poverty.

    • Amahl — Amahl is the young crippled shepherd boy in Gian Carlo Menotti’s holiday opera Amahl and the Night Visitors. He encounters the Magi and is healed after giving them his crutches in a story centered on the Christmas journey to the Christ child.

    • his crutch — In Amahl and the Night Visitors, the title boy offers his crutch to the Three Kings to give to the Christ child. His act of generosity leads to healing and is the opera’s central gesture of sacrifice and faith.

  • Amelia Goes to the Ball — Amelia Goes to the Ball is a one-act comic opera by Gian Carlo Menotti about a woman determined to attend the title social event. Its plot turns on her smashing a vase over her husband’s head, framing her lover, and being escorted away by the chief of police. The opera is a 1937 Menotti work and is often paired with his later one-act opera The Old Maid and the Thief.

  • Help, Help, the Globolinks! — Help, Help, the Globolinks! is Gian Carlo Menotti’s 1968 opera about alien invaders from space. The creatures are repelled by music, and the plot centers on schoolchildren and teachers who confront them on Earth.

  • The Consul — The Consul is Gian Carlo Menotti’s opera about John and Magda, who wait in vain for visas while trying to flee an unnamed fascist state. Its title official never appears onstage, and the work won the Pulitzer Prize in 1950.

  • The Medium — The Medium is Gian Carlo Menotti’s opera about Madame Flora, a fake spiritualist whose séance business collapses after eerie voices and Toby’s death. Recurring clues include Monica’s Waltz, the black swan song, and Madame Flora’s final shooting of Toby.

  • The Saint of Bleecker Street — The Saint of Bleecker Street is a Gian Carlo Menotti opera set in New York’s Little Italy. It centers on Annina, a girl believed to have stigmata, and her community’s response to her claimed holiness.

  • The Telephone — Giancarlo Menotti’s one-act opera The Telephone is a comic work in which Ben struggles to propose to Lucy while competing with the title device for her attention. The telephone also appears as the 1876 Bell and Watson invention that Western Union dismissed as a novelty.

• Jake Heggie — Jake Heggie is a contemporary American composer known for operas such as Dead Man Walking and Moby-Dick. His work includes collaborations with Terrence McNally and a strong place in modern American opera.

• John Corigliano
  • The Ghosts of Versailles — John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles is a grand-opera buffa set around Marie Antoinette’s spectral longing after the French Revolution. It centers on Beaumarchais, Figaro, and Begearss, and includes an opera-within-an-opera based on The Guilty Mother.
• Kevin Puts
  • Silent Night — Silent Night is Kevin Puts’s first opera, with a libretto by Mark Campbell, set during the Christmas truce of 1914 as Scottish, French, and German soldiers momentarily halt the fighting. The title comes from Franz Xaver Gruber’s famous Christmas carol.

• Mark-Anthony Turnage — Mark-Anthony Turnage is a Scottish composer known for operas that mix contemporary settings with literary and musical allusions. His operas include Greek, which relocates Oedipus Rex to London’s East End, and Anna Nicole, about the rise of Anna Nicole Smith.

• A Guest of Honor — A Guest of Honor is Scott Joplin’s lost opera about Theodore Roosevelt’s meeting with Booker T. Washington. It also reworks the Don Juan legend, and the score disappeared after its premiere tour.

• Aaron Copland
  • The Tender Land — The Tender Land is Aaron Copland’s only full-length opera, set among farm life in the American Midwest during the Depression. It centers on Laurie Moss growing up in rural America. The work was inspired by Walker Evans photographs and by James Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.
• Astor Piazzolla
  • Maria de Buenos Aires — Maria de Buenos Aires is Astor Piazzolla’s tango operita, with poetry by Horacio Ferrer. The work centers on a young woman who embodies the nightlife and cultural history of Argentina’s capital.
• Ralph Vaughan Williams
  • Sir John in Love — Sir John in Love is Ralph Vaughan Williams’s opera adaptation of The Merry Wives of Windsor. It centers on the comic misadventures of Falstaff, including his trickery with antlers and the Herne the Hunter disguise.
• Scott Joplin
  • Treemonisha — Treemonisha is Scott Joplin’s only opera, a ragtime-era work set in post-Civil War Arkansas. Its title heroine leads her community away from conjurers and superstition by promoting literacy and education.
• Terence Blanchard

  • Fire Shut Up in My Bones — Fire Shut Up in My Bones is Terence Blanchard’s opera based on Charles M. Blow’s memoir. It follows Charles through trauma, family conflict, and a return to Louisiana, and it became the first opera by a Black composer staged at the Metropolitan Opera.

  • Terence Oliver Blanchard — Terence Blanchard is a jazz trumpeter and composer known for contemporary operas such as Champion. His operatic works include stories centered on Emile Griffith and a young Charles confronting abuse in Fire Shut Up in My Bones.

• Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein
  • The Mother of Us All — The Mother of Us All is Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein’s opera about Susan B. Anthony and women’s suffrage. Its cast includes historical figures such as Daniel Webster and Ulysses S. Grant, and it culminates in Anthony’s statue-like final scene.
• Carlisle Floyd — Carlisle Floyd was an American opera composer best known for Susannah, the most frequently staged American opera in history. He also wrote operas such as Willie Stark, Of Mice and Men, Cold Sassy Tree, and Markheim.
  • Susannah — Susannah is the title character of the Floyd opera of the same name, a young woman ostracized by her rural community. The name is also tied to the song “Oh! Susanna,” which helped make the first-name clue especially recognizable.

• Louis Gruenberg — Louis Gruenberg was a composer associated with the opera The Emperor Jones. His name appears in connection with early 20th-century American opera and stage music.

• Robert Ward — Robert Ward was an American composer who studied at Eastman and Juilliard and won a Pulitzer Prize for The Crucible. He also wrote the operas Abelard and Heloise and Minutes ’til Midnight.

• Frederick Delius

  • A Village Romeo and Juliet — Frederick Delius’s A Village Romeo and Juliet is a tragic opera adapted from a Gottfried Keller story and centered on the lovers Sali and Vreli. Its best-known orchestral interlude is “The Walk to the Paradise Garden,” and the opera ends with the pair drowning together after their doomed romance.

  • Koanga — Koanga is a Delius opera about an enslaved African prince or chieftain in Mississippi who loves Palmyra. The work draws on voodoo imagery and ends tragically with the title character’s death.

  • The Magic Fountain — The Magic Fountain is Delius’s opera set in Florida, where the explorer Solano and the Native American heroine Watawa search for the Fountain of Youth.

• Thomas Adès
  • Powder Her Face — Powder Her Face is Thomas Adès’s chamber opera about the Duchess of Argyll, with a libretto by Philip Hensher. Its most notorious scenes satirize aristocratic scandal, and the opera ends with the hotel-room setting being destroyed.

Minimalism and Contemporary Opera

• Philip Glass (born 1937)
  • Einstein on the Beach — 1976, Avignon (world premiere); five-hour opera with no conventional narrative; with director Robert Wilson; uses spoken texts and solfège syllables; a landmark of the minimalist/theatrical avant-garde. It centers on the physicist Albert Einstein and is divided into sections such as Train, Trial, and Spaceship, with recurring “knee plays” and repeated numbers.
    • knee plays — Knee plays are the short interludes or connective sections in Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach. They function as transitions between larger parts of the opera and often include chorus counting or spoken text.

  • Satyagraha — 1980, Rotterdam; depicts Gandhi’s years in South Africa; Sanskrit libretto drawn from the Bhagavad Gita; the middle part of Glass’s “Portrait Trilogy.”

  • Akhnaten — 1984, Stuttgart; the Egyptian pharaoh who imposed monotheism; completes the Portrait Trilogy (the others being Einstein and Satyagraha). Philip Glass’s opera about the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten. Its libretto draws on ancient texts, and its minimalist style uses repeated choruses, trumpet doubling, and a famous coronation hymn.

  • Portrait Trilogy — Philip Glass’s Portrait Trilogy is the group of operas made up of Einstein on the Beach, Satyagraha, and Akhnaten. The set emphasizes historical figures and repetitive minimalist texture, with the first opera famous for its knee plays.

  • The Voyage — The Voyage is Philip Glass’s opera commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera for the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the Americas. It links Columbus’s final days with a science-fiction frame involving a spaceship crash on Earth during the Ice Age. The title also belongs to a short story about Fenella and her grandmother, Mrs. Crane, traveling to Picton after Fenella’s mother dies.
• John Adams (born 1947)
  • Nixon in China — 1987, Houston; after Nixon’s 1972 China visit; libretto by Alice Goodman; Pat Nixon’s aria “This is prophetic!” and Madame Mao’s coloratura showpiece “I am the wife of Mao Tse-tung” (Act II, Scene 1) are anchors.

    • Nixon — Nixon is the family name of the president whose 1972 visit to China inspired John Adams’s opera Nixon in China. The surname also appears in later pop-culture and historical-clue contexts, including Pat Nixon and Richard Nixon himself. Opera and film clues often hinge on that China visit and the family name alone.

    • Pat Nixon — Pat Nixon was the wife of Richard Nixon and the title character in John Adams’s opera Nixon in China. The role visits China, sings “This is prophetic,” and is associated with the Nixon administration’s diplomatic trips and relief work in Peru.

  • The Death of Klinghoffer — 1991, Brussels; the Achille Lauro hijacking; controversial for its perceived moral equivalence. The opera is by John Adams and centers on Leon Klinghoffer’s murder; its choruses contrast Palestinian and Jewish perspectives.

  • Doctor Atomic — 2005, San Francisco; J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Trinity test; baritone Oppenheimer sings Donne’s “Batter My Heart.” John Adams’s two-act opera centers on the Manhattan Project and J. Robert Oppenheimer, and the title character sings John Donne’s “Batter My Heart, Three-Person’d God.”
• Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)

  • The Rake’s Progress — 1951, Venice; libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman after Hogarth; Tom Rakewell sells his soul; a neoclassical work in a number-opera format drawing on Mozart and Handel; Baba the Turk and Nick Shadow are memorable supporting roles.

  • Oedipus Rex — Oedipus Rex is Igor Stravinsky’s 1927 one-act opera, with a Latin libretto and French narration. It retells the Greek myth of Oedipus and was later parodied by P. D. Q. Bach.

  • The Nightingale — The Nightingale is Stravinsky’s three-act opera based on a Hans Christian Andersen tale. The work relocates the story to China and is named after the bird at its center.

• György Ligeti
  • Le Grand Macabre — Le Grand Macabre is György Ligeti’s absurdist opera, often described as an anti-anti-opera. Its opening is famous for twelve blaring car horns and for the comic chaos surrounding Nekrotzar in Breughelland.

Chinese Opera

Learn Chinese opera within its own performance traditions.

• Chinese model operas
  • The Red Detachment of Women — The Red Detachment of Women is a Chinese model opera and ballet about Wu Qinghua joining a revolutionary women’s unit. It became famous as one of the Cultural Revolution’s model works and appears in Nixon in China.
• Beijing opera — Beijing opera, also called Peking opera or jingju, is a major traditional Chinese theatrical form known for stylized singing, elaborate makeup, acrobatic movement, and stock role types such as sheng, dan, jing, and chou. It uses distinctive water sleeves and musical styles such as xipi and erhuang; its ensemble commonly features the jinghu. Famous pieces include The Drunken Concubine and Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy.
  • Mei Lanfang — Mei Lanfang was a celebrated Peking opera performer and one of the most famous Dan actors of the twentieth century. His performance style influenced Brecht’s theory of alienation and inspired later film and stage portrayals.
• Red Detachment of Women — The Red Detachment of Women is a Chinese revolutionary ballet and opera about a peasant girl who joins a women’s Red Army unit. It became especially famous through its Cultural Revolution-era performances and its use in Nixon in China.

Arias, Performers, and Institutions

Attach arias and performers to the operas and roles that give them context.

Key Figures: Conductors, Singers, and Impresarios

• Singers and Vocal Traditions
  • Opera singers — Opera singers are vocal performers trained to sing in the operatic tradition, with famous examples including Luciano Pavarotti, José Carreras, and Plácido Domingo. The category also evokes nineteenth-century stars like Jenny Lind, the “Swedish Nightingale.”

    • Adelina Patti — Adelina Patti was a celebrated nineteenth-century soprano, born in Madrid to a family connected to the opera world and widely hailed for her vocal brilliance. She famously sang at the White House for the Lincolns and was one of the most famous women of her era.

    • Cecilia Bartoli — Cecilia Bartoli is the Italian mezzo-soprano famous for brilliant coloratura singing and for starring as Rosina in The Barber of Seville. She made her early stage debut in Rome, later revived interest in bel canto and baroque repertoire, and recorded arias associated with Maria Malibran and Vivaldi.

    • Charlotte Church — Charlotte Church is the Welsh soprano who broke out as a child performer with Voice of an Angel and later recorded pop and Christmas albums. Her early success made her an international star before she shifted from classical repertoire toward mainstream releases.

    • Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau — Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau was a renowned German lyric baritone celebrated for Schubert and Schumann lieder as well as opera. He performed in War Requiem, recorded Winterreise with Gerald Moore, and also briefly conducted orchestral music.

    • José Carreras — José Carreras is a Spanish opera singer and one of the Three Tenors, alongside Luciano Pavarotti and Plácido Domingo. He nearly died of leukemia in the 1980s before returning to international performance. He was born in Barcelona, made his operatic debut as a child, and was diagnosed with leukemia in 1987.

    • Kathleen Battle — Kathleen Battle is an American soprano known for major Met Opera performances and for a notorious feud with management. She was fired in 1994 after widely publicized backstage conflict during rehearsals for The Daughter of the Regiment.

    • Kiri Te Kanawa — Kiri Te Kanawa is a New Zealand operatic soprano of Maori descent. She became famous for roles such as the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro, the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, and the title role in Arabella. She also sang in West Side Story with Leonard Bernstein and became globally famous for performing at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana. She was made a Dame Commander in 1982.

    • opera singer — An opera singer is a standard literary and artistic profession clue, especially for characters like Christine Daaé in The Phantom of the Opera or Luba Luft in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. The category also appears in real-world clues about famous sopranos, tenors, and castrati.

  • Enrico Caruso (1873–1921) — Italian tenor; defined the heroic tenor voice for the 20th century; closely associated with the early Metropolitan Opera and with the recording industry’s earliest years. He was especially famous for his early recordings, notably “Vesti la giubba” from Pagliacci, and became one of the first recording superstars, with sales exceeding a million copies.

  • Maria Callas (1923–1977) — Greek-American soprano; redefined the dramatic coloratura repertoire (Norma, Violetta, Lucia); celebrated as much for her interpretive intensity and acting as for her voice; her rivalry with Renata Tebaldi and her relationship with Aristotle Onassis made her an international celebrity. Born Maria Kalogeropoulos; she studied under Elvira de Hidalgo in Greece and later with Tullio Serafin. She became closely associated with La Scala and title roles in Tosca, Norma, and Lucia di Lammermoor, and her career was also marked by scandal, weight loss, and a famous dismissal from the Metropolitan Opera.

  • Feodor Chaliapin (1873–1938) — Russian bass; legendary interpreter of Boris Godunov; the first singer-actor in the modern sense of the term.

  • Birgit Nilsson (1918–2005) — Swedish soprano; defining Isolde and Brünnhilde of the postwar era; renowned for her power in Wagner and Richard Strauss. Her birth name was Märta Birgit Svensson. She was a Swedish dramatic soprano famed for the size and endurance of her voice, and the Birgit Nilsson Prize was founded in her honor.

  • Luciano Pavarotti (1935–2007) — Italian tenor; the most commercially recognized opera singer of the late 20th century; his 1990 “Nessun dorma” at the Football World Cup brought opera to mass global audiences. He was one of the Three Tenors and was nicknamed the “King of the High C’s.” He became especially famous for roles and arias such as “Nessun Dorma,” “O sole mio,” and “Funiculì, Funiculà.”

  • Farinelli — Farinelli was the stage name of Carlo Broschi, the celebrated 18th-century Italian castrato and opera singer. He was famous for his extraordinary range and for serving as a court musician in Spain.

  • Nellie Melba — Nellie Melba was an internationally famous Australian soprano who sang Nedda in the London premiere of Pagliacci. Her name survives in food as Melba toast and peach Melba, both named in her honor. Melba was the stage name of Helen Porter Mitchell, an Australian soprano prominent at Covent Garden; peach Melba was named for her.

  • Jessye Norman — Jessye Norman was the celebrated African-American dramatic soprano associated with Strauss’s Four Last Songs and major Wagner and Strauss roles such as Ariadne and Jocasta. She became especially famous for her rich, powerful voice and her recordings made after beginning her career in Europe.

  • Leontyne Price — Leontyne Price was the first African-American prima donna at the Metropolitan Opera and one of the defining American sopranos of the twentieth century. She premiered the title role in Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra and is also closely associated with Aida and major Verdi recordings.

  • Lotte Lenya — Lotte Lenya was an Austrian-born singer and actress associated with the songs of her husband Kurt Weill. She later appeared in The Threepenny Opera and The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, and she is also remembered for playing Rosa Klebb in From Russia With Love.

  • Maria Ewing — Maria Ewing was an American soprano from Detroit noted for her expressive acting and comic flair. She performed often at Glyndebourne and is remembered for a distinctive stage presence as much as her voice.

  • Marian Anderson — Marian Anderson was the acclaimed African-American contralto barred from Constitution Hall, prompting Eleanor Roosevelt to help arrange her Lincoln Memorial concert. Her performance there became a landmark in civil-rights history. She later became the first African-American to sing at the Metropolitan Opera, appearing as Ulrica in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera. Her career is often remembered for both her operatic voice and her symbolic outdoor recital in Washington, D.C.

  • Natalie Dessay — Natalie Dessay is a French coloratura soprano known for her bright stage presence and high soprano roles. She performed Maria in a well-known Met production of La fille du régiment and retired from opera in 2013.

  • Renata Tebaldi — Renata Tebaldi was an Italian lyric soprano often compared with Maria Callas. She made her debut as Elena in Mefistofele and was closely associated with classic Decca recordings of Puccini and Verdi opposite Mario del Monaco.

  • Plácido Domingo — Plácido Domingo is a Spanish operatic tenor and baritone, known as one of the Three Tenors. He grew up in Mexico, sang internationally in leading tenor roles, and was associated with the Washington Opera. He became famous for major Verdi and Wagner roles, later broadened into baritone repertoire, and also worked as an opera administrator.

  • Renée Fleming — An American lyric soprano with a lush, dramatic voice. She debuted at the Metropolitan Opera as the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro; other signature roles include the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, the title character in Rusalka, and Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire. Her signature repertoire includes Dvořák’s “Song to the Moon,” and she created the role of Marie Antoinette in John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles. She released the album Bel Canto and wrote in The Inner Voice about recording “Twilight and Shadow” and “The End of All Things” for the Lord of the Rings soundtrack. Her collaborations with Kevin Puts include The Brightness of Light and The Hours.

  • The Three Tenors — The Three Tenors were Luciano Pavarotti, José Carreras, and Plácido Domingo, a celebrated operatic trio of high male voices. Their huge Rome concert on the eve of the 1990 World Cup made them internationally famous.

  • Andrea Bocelli — Andrea Bocelli is the blind Italian tenor known for popular crossover performances and opera arias. He is especially associated with the duet “Con te partirò,” also known as “Time to Say Goodbye.”

  • Anna Netrebko — Anna Netrebko is the Russian soprano whose breakthrough came as Violetta in Salzburg’s La traviata. She was discovered and mentored by Valery Gergiev and has been associated with controversial performances at the Met.

  • Peter Pears — Peter Pears was an English tenor closely associated with Benjamin Britten. He was Britten’s life partner, co-founded the Aldeburgh Festival, and helped debut roles in operas such as Peter Grimes.

  • Senesino — Senesino, the stage name of Francesco Bernardi, was an alto castrato celebrated for Handel roles such as Giulio Cesare and Orlando. He was one of the great eighteenth-century opera singers whose fame drew extravagant praise in London.
• Conducting and Stage Production

  • Arturo Toscanini (1867–1957) — conducted the world premieres of La Bohème (1896) and Turandot (1926, stopping the premiere at the point where Puccini’s manuscript ended); long associated with La Scala and the Metropolitan Opera; a defining figure of the 20th-century conducting tradition. He was also closely associated with the NBC Symphony Orchestra and was known for strict tempos and forceful control; he led performances of works such as Barber’s Adagio for Strings.

  • Peter Sellars — Peter Sellars is the contemporary American opera director known for politically charged stagings and collaborations with composers such as John Adams. His productions of works like Nixon in China, Doctor Atomic, and Don Giovanni often relocate the action to modern settings.

• Richard Brinsley Sheridan
  • The Duenna — The Duenna is a comic opera first performed in 1775, with a libretto by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Its plot involves Louisa, Don Jerome, and Don Ferdinand, and was inspired by Sheridan’s relationship with Elizabeth Linley.

Great Opera Houses and Festivals

• La Scala (Teatro alla Scala) — Milan; opened 1778; Italy’s premier opera house and one of the world’s most prestigious; the opening night of each season (December 7, feast of St. Ambrose) is a major cultural and social event; closely associated with Verdi, Puccini, and Arturo Toscanini. It premiered works such as Verdi’s Falstaff, Bellini’s Norma, and Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, and it opened under Austrian rule in the late eighteenth century.

• Metropolitan Opera (the Met) — New York City (Lincoln Center since 1966; original Met on Broadway opened 1883); the largest opera house in North America; world premieres include Puccini’s La fanciulla del West (1910) and Barber’s Vanessa (1958); associated with singers from Caruso to Pavarotti to Renée Fleming. The major New York opera company based at Lincoln Center. It has been associated with singers such as Lauritz Melchior and Kirsten Flagstad, and with the leadership or productions of Rudolf Bing, Peter Gelb, and James Levine.

• Royal Opera House, Covent Garden — London; current building opened 1858; home of the Royal Opera and the Royal Ballet; closely associated with Britten premieres and international star tenors and sopranos.

• Bayreuth Festspielhaus — Bayreuth, Bavaria; designed by Wagner himself; opened 1876 with the first complete Ring cycle; dedicated exclusively to Wagner’s works; the pit is covered, giving the orchestra a unique “veiled” sound; tickets notoriously require years-long waiting lists; overseen by the Wagner family for generations.

• Vienna Staatsoper (Vienna State Opera) — opened 1869; one of the world’s leading opera companies; Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler each served as music director; burned in World War II and rebuilt; the New Year’s Eve Gala is broadcast internationally.

• Paris Opéra — the institution operates from two houses: the Palais Garnier (opened 1875; architect Charles Garnier; famous for its ornate grand staircase and the chandelier inspiring Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera) and the Opéra Bastille (opened 1989). The Académie Royale de Musique, the institution’s predecessor, was established in 1669 under Lully.

• Bolshoi Theatre — Moscow; opened in its current form 1856; home to the Bolshoi Opera and Ballet; closely associated with Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov premieres; the building and its gilded auditorium are among Russia’s most recognized cultural symbols. The Bolshoi Theatre is Moscow’s major opera and ballet house, named from the Russian word for grand or large. It has hosted famous premieres including Swan Lake, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, and the original planned premiere of Romeo and Juliet.

• Glyndebourne Festival Opera — East Sussex, England; founded 1934 by John Christie and his wife, soprano Audrey Mildmay; set on the Christie estate; famous for intimate staging and long traditions in Mozart and Britten; the interval picnic on the lawn is a celebrated social ritual.

• Salzburg Festival — Salzburg, Austria; founded 1920; primarily a summer festival combining opera, orchestral concerts, and drama; the Felsenreitschule (rock-face open-air stage) and the Grosses Festspielhaus are its main venues; Herbert von Karajan shaped its postwar identity; closely associated with Mozart, Richard Strauss, and Verdi.

• Sydney Opera House — Sydney, Australia; designed by Jørn Utzon; opened 1973; the building’s distinctive shell vaulted roofs make it one of the most recognized structures in the world; houses the Sydney Opera (Opera Australia) among other companies; designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007.

• Arena di Verona — Verona, Italy; a 1st-century Roman amphitheatre; summer opera festival since 1913; famous for large-scale outdoor productions of Aida and other grand-opera spectaculars with thousands in attendance.

• Opera companies
  • Paris Opera — The Paris Opera is the major opera company of Paris and the institution associated with the Palais Garnier and the Opéra Bastille. It premiered works by composers such as Meyerbeer, Rossini, Verdi, Donizetti, and Spontini, and helped define French grand opera.
• Opera houses

  • La Fenice — La Fenice is the Venice opera house whose name means “the Phoenix.” It was built at Campo San Fantin, opened in 1792, and became famous for premieres of operas such as Rigoletto, La Traviata, The Turn of the Screw, and Einstein on the Beach.

  • Mariinsky Theater — The Mariinsky Theater is the major St. Petersburg opera and ballet house associated with Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Petipa. It was long known as the Kirov and is a standard clue for Russian imperial performing arts.

  • Teatro La Fenice — Teatro La Fenice is the famous Venetian opera house whose name means “the phoenix,” reflecting its repeated rebirth after fires. It hosted the premieres of major operas and remains one of Italy’s most storied theaters.

  • Metropolitan Opera House — New York City’s famed opera venue at Lincoln Center. The original house opened in 1883, and the current building opened in 1966 after the company outgrew its Broadway home. It is the Lincoln Center venue where the American Ballet Theatre performs, and it is named in contrast to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

• Opera festivals
  • Bayreuth Music Festival — The Bayreuth Music Festival is the annual Bavarian festival founded by Richard Wagner in 1876. It is especially associated with Wagner operas and a small standard repertoire centered on his works.

Dramatic Situations and Recurring Roles

• Opera characters
  • Leonora — Leonora is a soprano heroine’s name used in Verdi’s Il trovatore and in La forza del destino. It is also the true name behind Beethoven’s opera Fidelio, which inspired several Leonore overtures.
• Opera roles
  • narrator — A narrator is the spoken solo role heard in works such as Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw. The part may be described more generally as a reciter or speaker, especially when the text is delivered over orchestral accompaniment.
• Suicide by stabbing — In these opera examples, the characters die by stabbing themselves, including Otello’s final suicide. The clue points to the dramatic stage convention of self-inflicted death in works by Donizetti, Puccini, Gounod, and Verdi.

Librettists and Dramatic Collaboration

Connect the writer of a libretto to its composer and dramatic sources. Keep librettists separate from the singer and conductor roster.

• Lorenzo Da Ponte (1749–1838) — Italian librettist; wrote the texts for Mozart’s three Italian comedies (Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte); later emigrated to New York and helped establish opera in America. He later taught at Columbia and helped bring Italian opera to New York. He was born Emanuele Conegliano.

• Pietro Metastasio (1698–1782) — the dominant librettist of Baroque opera seria; his texts were set by dozens of composers, often multiple times; established the conventions of the form. His texts were set repeatedly by composers such as Handel, Hasse, Porpora, and Haydn, and they helped define the genre’s conventions.

• Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874–1929) — Austrian poet and librettist; wrote the libretti for all of Richard Strauss’s major operas (Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos, Die Frau ohne Schatten, Arabella). He was also a dramatist associated with the Young Vienna circle, and wrote Jedermann and The Letter of Lord Chandos; he helped found the Salzburg Festival.

• Ludovic Halevy — Ludovic Halévy was a French librettist and writer who collaborated extensively with Jacques Offenbach and also worked with Henri Meilhac on Bizet’s Carmen. He wrote the libretto for Orpheus in the Underworld and came from a literary family that included his uncle Fromental Halévy.

• Alice Goodman — Alice Goodman is a poet and librettist best known for writing the texts of Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer. She is also associated with religious poetry and with a career as an Anglican priest.

• Giuseppe Giacosa — Giuseppe Giacosa was an Italian playwright and poet who collaborated with Luigi Illica on the librettos for Puccini’s La Bohème, Tosca, and Madama Butterfly. Before turning to literature, he studied law and wrote plays such as Tristi amori and Come le foglie.

• Eugene Scribe — Eugène Scribe was the prolific French dramatist who helped pioneer the well-made play and wrote numerous opera librettos for Meyerbeer and others. His credits include Adrienne Lecouvreur, Les Huguenots, Robert le diable, and the French libretto behind The Elixir of Love.

• Philippe Quinault — Philippe Quinault was a French dramatist and librettist, best known as Lully’s chief collaborator. He wrote the texts for operas such as Isis, Le Triomphe de l’amour, and Armide.

• Opera personnel

  • Librettists
    • librettist — A librettist writes the text of an opera, working alongside the composer to supply the words sung on stage. Wagner wrote his own opera librettos, and Pietro Metastasio was one of the Baroque era’s most famous librettists.

Opera in Musical Theater and Popular Fiction

Compare operatic allusions in fiction and musical theater with the opera repertoire itself.

• Andrew Lloyd Webber
  • The Phantom of the Opera
    • Music of the Night — “Music of the Night” is a major song from The Phantom of the Opera. The Phantom sings it to Christine after drawing her into his lair, urging her to abandon the bright world above.
• Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice
  • Jesus Christ Superstar — Jesus Christ Superstar is the Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice rock opera about the final days of Jesus, including the Last Supper, Gethsemane, and Judas’s opening lament. It is famous for the song “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” and for ending with “John Nineteen: Forty-One.”
• The Phantom of the Opera

  • Christine Daaé — Christine Daaé is the soprano heroine of The Phantom of the Opera, engaged to Raoul, the Vicomte de Chagny. She is identified by songs such as “Think of Me” and “All I Ask of You,” and by the phantom’s insistence that she sing for him.

  • Don Juan Triumphant — Don Juan Triumphant is the opera written by the Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera. It adapts Mozart’s Don Giovanni and appears in the show’s final-act climax around ‘The Point of No Return.’

  • Raoul — Raoul is the Protestant nobleman at the center of Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots, doomed in the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre. The same first name also belongs to Christine’s suitor in The Phantom of the Opera, who rivals the Phantom for her attention.