Opera: Composers

As far as possible, the dates given here are the dates of first performance.

Note that the people named here are generally only responsible for the music. For questions about librettists, please refer to the Opera page.

Nixon in China (1987)		John C. Adams
Duke Bluebeard's Castle (1918)		Bartok
Fidelio (1805)		Beethoven
La Sonnambula (1831), Norma (1831), I Puritani (1835)		Vincenzo Bellini
Les Troyens (1858), Benvenuto Cellini (1838), Beatrice e Benedict (1862)		Hector Berlioz
Punch and Judy (1968)		Harrison Birtwistle
Carmen (1875), The Pearl Fishers (1863), The Fair Maid of Perth (1867)		Bizet
Prince Igor (1890)		Borodin
Peter Grimes (1945), Billy Budd (1951), Gloriana (1953 – written to mark the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II), The Turn of the Screw (1954), Noye's Fludde (1957), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1960), Owen Wingrave (1971 – commissioned by the BBC and written for television), Death in Venice (1973)		Benjamin Britten
Bitter Sweet (operetta, 1929)		Noel Coward
Taverner (1972), The Martyrdom of St Magnus (1976), The Lighthouse (1980), Resurrection (1987 – includes parts for a rock band), The Doctor of Myddfai (1996)		Peter Maxwell Davies
Lakme (1883)		Leo Delibes
Irmelin (1892), A Village Romeo and Juliet (1907), Fennimore and Gerda (1910)		Frederick Delius
L'Elisir d'Amore (1832), Lucia di Lammamoor (1835), La Favorite (1840), Linda di Chamounix (1842), Don Pasquale (1843)		Gaetano Donizetti
Russalka (1901)		Antonin Dvorak
La Vida Breve (1914)		Manuel de Falla
Porgy and Bess (1935)		George Gershwin
Einstein on the Beach (1971–2)		Philip Glass
Russlan and Ludmilla (1842)		Glinka
Alceste, Orpheus and Eurydice (1762)		Gluck
Sapho (1851), Faust (1859), Romeo and Juliet (1867)		Charles Gounod
Goyescas (1916)		Enrique Granados
Agrippina (1709), Rinaldo (1711), Il Pastor Fido (1712), Partenope (1730), Orlando (1733), Alcina (1735), Ariodante (1735), Serse (1738)		George Friedrich Handel
Hansel and Gretel (1893)		Engelbert Humperdinck
Jenufa (1904 – known in Czech as Her Stepdaughter), The Cunning Little Vixen (1924)		Leos Janacek
Die Lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow) (1905)		Franz Lehar
Pagliacci (1892)		Ruggiero Leoncavallo
Cavalleria Rusticana (1890)		Pietro Mascagni
The Medium (1946), The Telephone (1947), The Consul (1950), Amahl and the Night Visitors (1951), The Saint of Bleecker Street (1954)		Gian–Carlo Menotti
Robert le Diable (1831), Les Huguenots (1836), Le Prophète (1849), L'Africaine (1852 – later rewritten as Vasco de Gama (sic))		Giacomo Meyerbeer
L'Orfeo (1607 – "the earliest of the genre still widely performed" – Wikipedia)		Claudio Monteverdi
The Marriage of Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), Cosi Fan Tutte (1790), The Magic Flute (1791), La Clemenza di Tito (1791)		Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Boris Godunov (1874)		Modest Mussorgsky
Tales of Hoffman (1881), Orpheus in the Underworld (1858)		Jacques Offenbach
Manni (1910)		Ignacy Jan Paderewski
Les Mamelles de Tiresias (1947), Dialogues des Carmelites (1957)		Francois Poulenc
The Love for Three Oranges (1921), War and Peace (private, partial performance 1944; first complete performance 1957)		Sergei Prokofiev
Manon Lescaut (1893), La Boheme (1896), Tosca (1900), Madame Butterfly (1904), The Girl of the Golden West (1910), La Rondine (1917), Gianni Schicchi (1918), Turandot (1926 – completed after his death by Franco Alfano)		Giaccomo Puccini
Dido and Aeneas (1688), The Fairy–Queen (1692 – a masque, based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream)		Henry Purcell
Castor & Pollux (1737)		Jean–Philippe Rameau
The Golden Cockerel (1907), Mozart and Salieri (1899), The Snow Maiden (1882), The Maid of Pskov (1873)		Rimsky–Korsakov
Operettas: Blossom Time (1921 – an English adaptation of Schubert's Das Dreimäderlhaus, or The House of Three Maidens), The Student Prince (1924), The Desert Song (1926)		Sigmund Romberg
The Touchstone (1812), An Italian Girl in Algiers (1813), The Barber of Seville (1816), La Cenerentola (Cinderella – 1817), La Gazza Ladra (The Thieving Magpie – 1817), Moses in Egypt (1818), Semiramide (1823), William Tell (including the famous overture, 1829)		Gioacchino Rossini
Samson and Delilah (1877)		Camille Saint–Saens
Genoveva (1850) was (not least because of its poor reception) the only opera composed by		Robert Schumann
The Bartered Bride (1866)		Bedrich Smetana
Die Fledermaus (1874)		Johann Strauss II
Salome (1905), Elektra (1909), Der Rosenkavalier (1911), Ariadne on Naxos (1912)		Richard Strauss
The Rake's Progress (1951)		Igor Stravinsky
Light Cavalry (operetta, 1866)		Franz von Suppé suppe
Eugene Onegin (1879), The Queen of Spades (1890)		Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky
Hugh the Drover (1924), Sir John in Love (1929), The Poisoned Kiss (1936 – revived in New York 2012), Riders to the Sea (1937 – based on a play by J. M. Synge), The Pilgrim's Progress (1951), Thomas the Rhymer (incomplete at the time of his death in 1958)		Ralph Vaughan Williams
Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio (1839 – his first), Attila (1846), Rigoletto (1851), Nabucco (1842), Macbeth (1847), La Traviata (1853), Il Trovatore (1853), Simon Boccanegra (1857), Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball, 1859), La Forza del Destino (The Force of Destiny, 1862), Aida (1871), Otello (1887), Falstaff (1893)		Giuseppe Verdi
The Flying Dutchman (1843), Tannhauser (1845), Lohengrin (1850), Tristan und Isolde (1865), The Mastersingers of Nuremburg (1868), Parsifal (1882)		Richard Wagner
The Ring of the Nibelung(en): Das Rheingold (1869), Die Walkurie (The Valkyries – 1870), Siegfried (1876), Gotterdammerung (Twilight of the Gods – 1876)
Troilus and Cressida (1954)		William Walton
The Threepenny Opera (1928), Mahogany (1929), Happy End (1929)		Kurt Weill

© Haydn Thompson 2017–24