List of famous operas
Famous operas arranged by composer.This list, intended to reflect the Operatic Repertory, consists of the most famous and historically significant operas, arranged alphabetically by composer followed by city and date of first staged performance. Many splendid and under-appreciated masterpieces, aside from operatic curiosities, can be found in entries under the names of their individual composers.
In many opera houses this international repertory is supplemented by local standards. An American list, for example, would include George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess and Samuel Barber's Vanessa. A French list would not omit Delibes' Lakmé. Wagner's Rienzi and Berg's Lulu are missing. Skirmishing about any accepted canon tends to be most intense around the periphery. All the operas in this list are discussed in standard guidebooks, such as The Penguin Guide to Opera, ed. Amanda Holden, 1994.
Details of plot, anecdotes and history of composition and production, etc. are found in the operas' individual entries (linked). These lists are not complete: complete lists of composers' operas are to be found in the composers' individual entries (linked).
- Ludwig van Beethoven
- Fidelio (Vienna 1805)
- Vincenzo Bellini
- La Sonnambula (Milan 1831)
- I Puritani (Paris 1835)
- Norma (Milan 1831)
- Alban Berg
- Wozzeck (Berlin 1925)
- Hector Berlioz
- Les Troyens (Paris 1863)
- Georges Bizet
- Les Pecheurs de Perles (Paris 1863)
- Carmen (Paris 1875)
- Arrigo Boito
- Mefistofele (Milan 1868)
- Alexander Borodin
- Prince Igor (St. Petersburg 1890)
- Benjamin Britten
- Peter Grimes (London 1945)
- Billy Budd (London 1951)
- Luigi Cherubini
- Médée (Paris 1797)
- Francesco Cilea
- Adriana Lecouvreur (Milan 1902)
- Domenico Cimarosa
- Il Matrimonio Segreto (Vienna 1792)
- Claude Debussy
- Pelléas et Mélisande (Paris 1902)
- Gaetano Donizetti
- L'Elisir d'Amore (Milan 1832)
- Lucia di Lammermoor (Naples 1835)
- The Daughter of the Regiment (Paris 1840)
- Don Pasquale (Paris 1843)
- Philip Glass
- Mikhail Glinka
- A Life for the Tsar (performed as Ivan Susanin since 1939)
- ''Ruslan & Ludmila
- Christoph Willibald Gluck
- Orfeo ed Euridice (Paris 1774)
- Alceste (Paris 1776)
- Armide (Paris 1777)
- Iphigénie en Tauride (Paris 1779)
- Charles Gounod
- Faust (Paris 1859)
- George Frideric Handel
- Giulio Cesare (London 1724)
- Serse (London 1738)
- Semele (London 1744)
- Paul Hindemith
- Mathis der Maler (Zurich 1939)
- Engelbert Humperdinck
- Hansel und Gretel (Weimar 1893)
- Leos Janacek
- Jenufa (Brno 1904)
- The Cunning Little Vixen (Brno 1924)
- The Makropulos Case (Brno 1926)
- Ruggiero Leoncavallo
- Pagliacci (Milan 1892)
- Jean-Baptiste Lully
- Alceste (Paris 1674)
- Pietro Mascagni
- Cavalleria Rusticana (Rome 1890)
- Jules Massenet
- Gian Carlo Menotti
- ''The Medium
- ''The Saint of Bleeker Street
- Giacomo Meyerbeer
- Les Huguenots (Paris 1836)
- Claudio Monteverdi
- Orfeo (Mantua 1607)
- L'Incoronazione di poppea (Venice 1643)
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
- The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte) (Vienna 1791)
- The Abduction from the Seraglio (Die Entführung aus dem Serail) (Vienna 1782)
- Cosi Fan Tutte (Vienna 1790)
- Don Giovanni (Prague 1787)
- The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze di Figaro) (Vienna 1786)
- Modest Mussorgsky
- Boris Godunov (St. Petersburg 1874)
- Khovanshina (St.Petersburg, 1886)
- Jacques Offenbach
- Tales of Hoffmann (Les Contes d'Hoffmann) (Paris 1881)
- Giovanni Battista Pergolesi
- La Serva Padrona (Naples 1733)
- Jacopo Peri
- Euridice (Florence 1600)
- Amilcare Ponchielli
- La Gioconda (Milan 1876)
- Francois Poulenc
- Dialogues of the Carmelites (Dialogues des Carmelites) (Milan 1957)
- Sergei Prokofiev
- The Love for Three Oranges (Chicago 1921)
- War and Peace (Moscow 1944)
- Giacomo Puccini
- La Bohème (Turin 1896)
- Tosca (Rome 1900)
- Madame Butterfly (Milan 1904)
- Il Trittico (Il Tabarro, Suor Angelica, Gianni Schicchi) (New York 1918)
- Manon Lescaut (Turin 1893)
- Turandot (Milan 1926)
- Henry Purcell
- Dido and Aeneas (Chelsea, London, 1689)
- Jean-Philippe Rameau
- Les Indes Galantes (Paris 1735)
- Maurice Ravel
- L'Heure Espagnole (Paris 1911)
- L'Enfant et les Sortilèges (Monte Carlo 1926)
- Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
- The Golden Cockerel (Le Coq d'Or) (Moscow 1909)
- Gioacchino Rossini
- L'Italiana in Algeri (Venice 1813)
- The Barber of Seville (Il barbiere di Siviglia) (Rome 1816)
- La Cenerentola (Rome 1817)
- Semiramide (Venice 1823)
- William Tell (Paris 1829)
- Camille Saint-Saëns
- Samson et Dalila (Weimar 1877)
- Arnold Schoenberg
- Moses und Aron (Hamburg 1954)
- Dmitri Shostakovich
- The Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District
- Bedrich Smetana
- The Bartered Bride (Prague 1866)
- Gaspare Spontini
- La Vestale (Paris 1807)
- Johann Strauss
- Die Fledermaus (Vienna 1874)
- Richard Strauss
- Igor Stravinsky
- The Rake's Progress (Venice 1951)
- Pyotr Tchaikovsky
- Eugene Onegin (Moscow 1879)
- The Queen of Spades (Pikovaya Dama) (St. Petersburg 1890)
- Ambroise Thomas
- Mignon (Paris 1866)
- Giuseppe Verdi
- Nabucco (Milan 1842)
- Ernani (Venice 1844)
- Macbeth (Florence 1847)
- Rigoletto (Venice 1851)
- Il Trovatore (Rome 1853)
- La Traviata (Venice 1853)
- Un Ballo in Maschera (Rome 1859)
- La Forza del Destino (The Force of Destiny) (St. Petersburg 1862)
- Don Carlos (Paris 1867)
- Aida (Cairo 1871)
- Simon Boccanegra (revised) (Milan 1881)
- Otello (Milan 1887)
- Falstaff (Milan 1893)
- Richard Wagner
- The Flying Dutchman (Der Fliegende Holländer) (Dresden 1843)
- Tannhäuser (Dresden 1845 etc.)
- Lohengrin (Weimar 1850)
- Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Munich 1868)
- The Ring of the Nibelung (complete tetralogy: Bayreuth 1876)
- Das Rheingold (Munich 1869)
- Die Walküre (Munich 1870)
- Siegfried (Vienna 1863)
- Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods) (Bayreuth 1876)
- Tristan and Isolde (Munich 1865)
- Parsifal (Bayreuth 1882)
- Carl Maria von Weber
- Der Freischütz (Berlin 1824)
- Kurt Weill
- Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) (Berlin 1928)
