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This page lists important operas by date of first performance, together with brief notes on their importance. (Important in this context is used of works that are significant for historical or artistic reasons, or because of the position that they occupy in the repertory.)

1600 – 1699

• 1600 Euridice (Jacopo Peri) (Florence); the first opera that survives to the present day.

• 1607 Orfeo (Claudio Monteverdi) (Mantua); first operatic masterwork.

• 1625 La liberazione di Ruggiero (Francesca Caccini) (Florence); first opera by a woman.

• 1627 Dafne (Heinrich Schütz) (Torgau); first German opera. Music now lost.

• 1632 Sant'Alessio (Stefano Landi) (Rome); first opera on a historical rather than mythological subject, that breaks new dramatic and musical ground in a number of ways.

• 1640 Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (Monteverdi) (Venice); Monteverdi's second surviving opera, based on the Odyssey.

• 1642 L'incoronazione di Poppea (Monteverdi) (Venice); often regarded as Monteverdi's masterpiece.

• 1683 Venus and Adonis (John Blow) (London or Windsor); arguably the first English-language opera.

• 1686 Armide (Paris); Jean-Baptiste Lully's masterpiece in the form of a tragédie en musique, a genre he invented.

• 1689 Dido and Aeneas (Henry Purcell) (London); the earliest English-language opera still in regular performance. Considered a masterwork.

1700 – 1799

• 1711 Rinaldo (Paris); George Frideric Handel's first opera for the London stage, set during the Crusades, containing the aria Lascia ch'io pianga.

• 1724 Giulio Cesare (London); Handel’s opera seria on the subject of Julius Caesar was rediscovered in the 1920s and has become the most popular of his Italian operas with more than 200 modern performances in Europe and North America.

• 1733 Hippolyte et Aricie (Paris); the first and most controversial opera from Jean-Philippe Rameau, the leading French-born composer of the 18th century.

• 1735 Les Indes galantes (Paris); Rameau's globe-trotting first opera-ballet.

• 1738 Serse (London); one of Handel's last operatic masterpieces before he abandoned the genre for oratorio, containing perhaps his most famous aria, Ombra mai fu. Francesco Cavalli had written a major opera to the same libretto in 1654.

• 1762 Orfeo ed Euridice (Vienna; revised and enlarged French version, 1774, Paris); the first of Christoph Willibald Gluck's reform operas. A compact, moving work which has never been out of the repertory.

• 1767 Alceste (Vienna); Gluck's follow-up, today better known in the version he revised for Paris in 1776. The preface set out his project for reforming opera.

• 1779 Iphigénie en Tauride (Paris); the culmination of Gluck's reforms.

• 1781 Idomeneo (Munich); Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's first mature opera seria, set in Crete during the period following the Trojan War, demonstrates the composer's mastery of orchestral color and melodic line.

• 1782 Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Vienna); Mozart’s comic German Singspiel, with its Turkish music, characterful roles, memorable arias, and underlying Enlightenment values, remains one of his most-loved operas.

• 1786 The Marriage of Figaro (Vienna): an Italian opera buffa by Mozart. It was based on a popular French comedy of the same name by Pierre Beaumarchais, satirizing the aristocracy just prior to the French Revolution.

• 1787 Don Giovanni (Prague): a dramma giocoso by Mozart to an Italian libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte. Mozart’s treatment of the legend of the Spanish serial womanizer Don Juan is one of the most popular and frequently performed of all operas.

• 1790 Così fan tutte (Vienna): a dramma giocoso by Mozart. Lorenzo da Ponte‘s cynical Italian libretto about "fiancée swapping."

• 1791 La clemenza di Tito (Prague): a last, elegant look at opera seria by Mozart.

• 1791 The Magic Flute (Vienna): a German Singspiel by Mozart. Premiered less than three months before his death, the Freemasonry-influenced fairy tale for adults has become one of the composer's most enduring and best loved works. It was also a seminal work in the development of German opera.

1800 – 1849

• 1805 Fidelio (Ludwig van Beethoven) (Vienna): The story of Beethoven's only opera reflected the composer's passionate feelings about the struggle for political liberty that was sweeping Europe.

• 1816 The Barber of Seville (Gioacchino Rossini) (Rome): This comedy, based on part one of the Beaumarchais trilogy, is a prequel to The Marriage of Figaro.

• 1817 La Cenerentola (Gioacchino Rossini) (Rome)

• 1824 Der Freischütz (Carl Maria von Weber) (Berlin) This landmark in the history of German Romantic opera is a supernatural tale about a young marksman and his deal with the Devil. The Wolf's Glen scene is its most famous passage.

• 1829 Guillaume Tell (Paris): Gioacchino Rossini's final opera, and the first of the Grand Operas to remain in the repertory, although its length, together with the difficulty of the tenor role (Arnold), mean that revivals are infrequent. The overture and the summoning of the men of the three cantons are its most famous passages.

• 1831 Norma (Vincenzo Bellini) (Milan)

• 1832 L'elisir d'amore (Gaetano Donizetti) (Milan)

• 1835 Lucia di Lammermoor (Gaetano Donizetti) (Naples): Dismissed until the 1950s as a "singer's opera", this work found favor with audiences through the interpretations of Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland.

• 1836 Les Huguenots (Giacomo Meyerbeer) (Paris); the most famous French Grand Opera, an enormous extravaganza set during the French wars of religion.

• 1840 La fille du régiment (Gaetano Donizetti) (Paris)

• 1842 Nabucco (Milan): Giuseppe Verdi's third opera, and the one which established his reputation, featuring the (now) famous Hebrews' Chorus, Va' pensiero, sull'ali dorate (Fly, thought, on golden wings).

• 1842 Ruslan and Lyudmila (Mikhail Glinka) (Saint Petersburg); Glinka founded the Russian operatic tradition with this work based on a Pushkin fairy tale, and his patriotic A Life for the Tsar.

• 1843 The Flying Dutchman (Richard Wagner) (Dresden): With the premiere of this work, Wagner started to move away from more conventional models of opera towards his own musico-dramatic form of symphonic commentary interlinked by leitmotifs.

• 1843 Don Pasquale (Gaetano Donizetti) (Paris): One of the prolific composer's last operas, this engaging comedy contains some lovely, lilting melodies.

• 1845 Tannhäuser (Dresden): Richard Wagner’s opera on the theme of sacred and profane love combined the legend of Tannhäuser and the Venusberg with the 13th-century song contest at the Wartburg in Eisenach. Never completely satisfied with the work, Wagner revised it in 1861.

• 1847 Macbeth (Florence): In Giuseppe Verdi’s powerful version of Shakespeare's Macbeth the three witches are transformed into a female chorus, but the principal roles for baritone and dramatic soprano are among the most intense and demanding in the Italian repertory.

1850 – 1899

• 1850 Lohengrin (Richard Wagner) (Weimar) One of Wagner's most popular operas, Lohengrin also marks the beginning his move toward through-composed operas.

• 1851 Rigoletto (Giuseppe Verdi) (Venice): The censors almost succeeded in preventing its premiere, and the libretto had to be remodeled to accommodate them. It contains a few of Verdi's most famous pieces, such as "La donna è mobile" and the quartet.

• 1853 Il trovatore (Giuseppe Verdi) (Rome); containing the famous "Anvil Chorus", in which the Gypsies' song is accompanied by the clanging of their anvils, Arturo Toscanini is attributed as saying that all the opera needs is "the four best singers in the world".

• 1853 La traviata (Giuseppe Verdi) (Venice)

• 1859 Un ballo in maschera (Giuseppe Verdi) (Rome)

• 1859 Faust (Charles Gounod) (Paris)

• 1862 La forza del destino (Giuseppe Verdi) (Saint Petersburg)

• 1863 Les Troyens (Hector Berlioz) (Paris)

• 1865 Tristan und Isolde (Richard Wagner) (Munich): In this opera, Wagner took chromatic harmony to its limit with the Tristan chord, heavily influencing 20th century composers.

• 1866 The Bartered Bride (Bedřich Smetana) (Prague)

• 1867 Don Carlos (Giuseppe Verdi) (Paris)

• 1868 Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Munich): Richard Wagner’s monumental comedy of the burgher mastersingers of 16th century Nuremberg was used by the Nazis to glorify German nationalism, but today the universal humanity of the work is emphasized in productions that have reinforced its continuing great popularity.

• 1871 Aida (Giuseppe Verdi) (Cairo).

• 1874 Boris Godunov (Modest Mussorgsky) (Saint Petersburg): The opera draws on Russian folk music, rejecting the influence of German and Italian opera. It begins with a brutal murder, continues with a clever lie and a great invasion, and ends in guilt-stricken madness and death.

• 1874 Die Fledermaus (Johann Strauss II) (Vienna):

• 1875 Carmen (Georges Bizet) (Paris): This Spanish story of a gypsy seductress and her doomed lover is one of the most popular operas of all time. Its enduring popularity is due to it being dramatic and psychologically believable, and not without touches of humour.

• 1876 La Gioconda (Milan): Famous for its convoluted, melodramatic, Victor Hugo derived plot, this Italian grand opera by Amilcare Ponchielli prefigures later verismo operas in its raw emotion and the accessibility of its music, notably the ballet, the 'Dance of the Hours’.

• 1876 Der Ring des Nibelungen (complete tetralogy: Bayreuth): A monumental tetraology, based on ancient Norse and Germanic myths, in which Wagner created a new model of opera based on leitmotifs. Also famous for being extremely long.

• 1877 Samson et Dalila (Camille Saint-Saëns) (Weimar)

• 1878 HMS Pinafore (London): This was Gilbert and Sullivan's first great success, and contains examples of their affectionate parodies of nineteenth-century Italian opera.

• 1879 Eugene Onegin (Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky) (Moscow)

• 1881 Les contes d'Hoffmann (Jacques Offenbach) (Paris): Offenbach wrote almost 100 operettas, but this last work was his only grand opera. Posthumously produced, it tells three colourful stories about how the devil spoiled his chances for true love.

• 1881 Simon Boccanegra (Giuseppe Verdi) (revised version, Milan)

• 1882 Parsifal (Richard Wagner) (Bayreuth) Wagner's final stage work was intended not as opera but as a "festival play for the consecration of the stage". He and his descendants prohibited its staging outside Bayreuth until 1903.

• 1884 Manon (Jules Massenet) (Paris)

• 1887 Otello (Giuseppe Verdi) (Milan): Shakespeare's tragic Moor is given a dramatic musical setting to match the famous story of jealousy and treachery. Iago's "Credo" and many other chilling and touching moments add to the impact of the opera.

• 1890 Cavalleria Rusticana (Pietro Mascagni) (Rome): The first opera composed in the verismo style.

• 1890 Prince Igor (Saint Petersburg): Alexander Borodin’s tuneful epic of Russian history contrasts with the darker mood of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, both of which were left unfinished for Rimsky-Korsakov to orchestrate. Better known for its parts than the whole, Prince Igor remains an essential part of the Russian repertory.

• 1890 The Queen of Spades (Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky) (Saint Petersburg)

• 1892 Werther (Jules Massenet) (Paris)

• 1892 Pagliacci (Ruggiero Leoncavallo) (Milan): This beloved story of the tragic clown involves a play within a play. But fiction turns to reality as the jealous husband kills his wife and her lover onstage and declares "The comedy is over".

• 1893 Manon Lescaut (Giacomo Puccini) (Turin): This opera brought Puccini to the international stage and prominence in the opera community, especially since it preceded his previous opera, Edgar, which was considered a fiasco at the time.
• 1893 Falstaff (Giuseppe Verdi) (Milan): Verdi's last opera, and his only frequently performed comedy.

• 1893 Hänsel und Gretel (Engelbert Humperdinck) (Weimar) Humperdinck wrote this opera specifically for children. It is especially popular at Christmas time.

• 1896 La bohème (Giacomo Puccini) (Turin): Perhaps the opera with most popular appeal, La bohème masterfully mixes comedy with tragedy and romance, containing a few of Puccini's most popular melodies.

• 1896 Andrea Chénier (Milan): Umberto Giordano’s highly-charged verismo love story, set during the French Revolution and based on real events, contains one of the main roles of the Italian tenor spinto repertory for which Franco Corelli, in particular, was famous.

1900 – 1944

• 1900 Tosca (Giacomo Puccini) (Rome): one of the composer's most beloved operas, based on a Sardou play, "this shabby little shocker" is now more famous than the original. It's the tragic tale of a trio of protagonists: Tosca the opera diva; Cavaradossi, her lover, a painter caught up in political intrigue; and the wicked police chief, Baron Scarpia, who desires Tosca and is determined to have her.

• 1902 Pelléas et Mélisande (Claude Debussy) (Paris)

• 1902 Adriana Lecouvreur (Francesco Cilea) (Milan)

• 1904 Jenůfa (Leoš Janáček) (Brno)

• 1904 Madame Butterfly (Giacomo Puccini) (Milan): one of the composer's most popular operas, along with La Boheme and Tosca. It's the tragedy of a Japanese geisha (Cio-Cio-San) who marries an American navy lieutenant, Pinkerton. Pinkerton is called back to America, and despite Cio-Cio-San's faith, he returns to Japan with an American wife.

• 1905 Salome (Richard Strauss) (Dresden): This operatic version of Oscar Wilde's infamous play mixes the outrageous and the sensual, culminating in a grotesquely beautiful and shocking ending.

• 1909 Elektra (Richard Strauss) (Dresden)

• 1910 La fanciulla del West (New York): Giacomo Puccini’s cowboy opera version of David Belasco’s The Girl of the Golden West. Tightly integrated musically, it has fewer extractable highlights than the earlier operas, but is one of Puccini’s best works in the theatre.

• 1911 Der Rosenkavalier (Dresden): after Elektra, Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal turned away from modernist psychological drama to write a comedy inspired by Mozart and Molière. The resulting work has no rival as the best loved of all 20th-century German operas.

• 1912 Ariadne auf Naxos (Richard Strauss) (Stuttgart; revised version with prologue, 1916, Vienna)

• 1918 Bluebeard's Castle (Béla Bartók) (Budapest)

• 1918 Gianni Schicchi (New York); The last of Giacomo Puccini’s three one-act operas (Il trittico) is a comedic farce based on Dante. Almost as perfectly constructed as Verdi’s Falstaff, it contains one of the best-loved arias in all opera: Lauretta’s ‘O mio babbino caro’.

• 1919 Die Frau ohne Schatten (Richard Strauss) (Vienna)

• 1921 Káťa Kabanová (Leoš Janáček) (Brno)

• 1921 The Love for Three Oranges (Sergei Prokofiev) (Chicago)

• 1925 Wozzeck (Alban Berg) (Berlin)

• 1926 Turandot (Giacomo Puccini) (Milan); Unfinished at his death, with the finale completed from sketches for the premiere by Franco Alfano; a later version was prepared by Luciano Berio. Famous for tenor Luciano Pavarotti's aria, "Nessun Dorma" ("None Shall Sleep"), which became the "theme song" of the 1990 FIFA World Cup soccer finals.

• 1934 Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (Dmitri Shostakovich) (Leningrad)

• 1935 Porgy and Bess (George Gershwin) (New York); The music is strongly influenced by jazz styles. The opera's treatment of race relations is controversial, but it is still performed regularly.

• 1937 Lulu (Alban Berg) (Zurich)

• 1939 The Old Maid and the Thief (Gian Carlo Menotti) (NBC Radio); first opera composed for radio.

From 1945

• 1945 War and Peace (Moscow); Prokofiev's synthesis of the lyrical scenes of Eugene Onegin and the historical tableaux of Boris Godunov into a massive opera which sets love and personal tragedy against the background of the Russian people's defiance in the face of the invader.

• 1945 Peter Grimes (London): the opera which raised Benjamin Britten to fame. An outsider is ground down by small-town narrow-mindedness and his own recklessness; especially notable for the important part played by the chorus.

• 1951 The Rake's Progress (Igor Stravinsky) (Venice)

• 1951 Billy Budd (Benjamin Britten) (London)

• 1951 Amahl and the Night Visitors (Gian Carlo Menotti) (New York); first opera composed for television. The one-act opera contains both drama and humour, and the music is tuneful. These qualities make it a good first opera for children. It is frequently presented by small opera companies with a modest budget.

• 1954 Moses und Aron (Arnold Schoenberg) (Hamburg)

• 1957 Dialogues des Carmelites (Francis Poulenc) (Milan)

• 1960 A Midsummer Night's Dream (Aldeburgh); the most recently composed opera with a foothold in the standard repertory. Text almost entirely by William Shakespeare, music by Benjamin Britten.

• 1976 Einstein on the Beach (Avignon); Philip Glass's opera was the first opera to be composed using minimalism.

• 1983 Saint-François d'Assise (Olivier Messiaen) (Paris)

• 1987 Nixon in China (Houston): in the words of composer John Adams, "part epic, part satire, part a parody of political posturing, and part serious examination of historical, philosophical, and even gender issues", also an interplay of "six extraordinary personalities".

• 2000 Dead Man Walking (San Francisco), American composer Jake Heggie's first opera with a libretto by Terrence McNally (based on the book by Sister Helen Prejean). The book was previously made into a major film.

Useful lists are either complete lists or selective lists. This page is a selective list.

Principal reference

• The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, edited by Stanley Sadie (1992), 5,448 pages. ISBN 0-333-73432-7 and ISBN 1-56159-228-5

Other sources

• The Viking Opera Guide (1994), 1,328 pages, ISBN 0-670-81292-7

• The Oxford Dictionary of Opera, by John Warrack and Ewan West (1992), 782 pages, ISBN 0-19-869164-5

• Opera, the Rough Guide, by Matthew Boyden et al. (1997), 672 pages, ISBN 1-85828-138-5

1. Howard Goodall, Big Bangs

See also

• The Opera Corpus – A list of more than 1,250 operas by more than 400 individual opera composers, arranged by composer, giving a general idea of the present depth and consistency of coverage of opera on Misplaced Pages.
• List of operas – A list of operas with entries in Misplaced Pages sorted alphabetically by title.

External links

• Opera Guide Synopsis - Libretti - Highlights
• The Standard Operas by George P. Upton (Project Gutenberg); a look at the standard repertory from 1897.

• Operas
• Opera-related lists