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Prince Tamino sets out with the birdcatcher Papageno to find Pamina, guided by a magical flute and a promise from the Queen of the Night. Their journey reveals that appearances can deceive. Mozart’s opera mixes comedy, romance, and ceremonial trials as its characters seek love and wisdom.
In Seville, the soldier Don José is captivated by Carmen, who refuses to let anyone control her life. His attachment pulls him away from duty and towards jealousy as the bullfighter Escamillo enters her world. Georges Bizet’s opera follows a relationship shaped by desire, independence, and possession.
In Rome during political upheaval, singer Floria Tosca loves the painter Mario Cavaradossi, whose help for a fugitive puts him in danger. Police chief Scarpia uses her jealousy and devotion to pursue his own ends. Puccini’s opera unfolds as a tense struggle between love, power, and betrayal.
An allegory about online connection and isolation, with a young woman, Principal, communicating with others who never meet her in person. Gabriel, played by trumpet, interacts with her alongside two figures representing memories.
In New York City, the character M recalls encounters with extraterrestrial life forms. Their message urges M to forget the events, warning that no one will believe the account and that speaking of it will lead to exclusion. The staged work places M within a three-dimensional holographic set, with the monologue performed over music.
An opera concerning Christopher Columbus’s first voyage and the Americas in 1492.
Based on George Orwell’s dystopian novel, the opera includes roles for Winston, Julia, O’Brien, Syme, Parsons, and Charrington, as well as chorus sequences for the Two Minutes Hate rallies and Oceania’s national anthem.
Tailor Schimele Soroker and his family face a changed life after he wins the lottery and comes into great fortune. The entry gives no further plot details.
An opera about Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas and the artistic salons they hosted at 27 rue de Fleurus in Paris, with figures including Picasso, Fitzgerald, Man Ray, Matisse and Hemingway.
In a Creole village in the Mississippi Delta, Clothilde seeks revenge on Bazile for rejecting her love. When she discovers he communicates with Aurore, a spirit who says she was his lover in a distant era, Clothilde threatens him and arranges for a mob to lynch him. Bazile’s soul reunites with Aurore, while Clothilde lives out her life as a recluse.
In Egypt, Texas, 90-year-old Myrtle Bledsoe revisits painful memories as she seeks self-forgiveness. The opera is essentially a monodrama: Myrtle sings the substantial role, while the other characters mainly speak, with a gospel quartet underscoring moments.
The impoverished Earl and Countess of Dunmow host the wealthy Grand Duchess of Monteblanco and her son, hoping to arrange a marriage between the Prince and their daughter Susan. Despite mishaps with the meal, overdue bills, and their eccentric temporary housekeeper, the plan succeeds.
In London in 1665, a group of people feast during a plague. A Young Man asks them to remember a friend who has died. Walsingham instead calls for silence and asks Mary to sing; Louisa doubts Mary’s sincerity. After the sound of a dead-cart frightens Louisa, the Young Man asks Walsingham to sing a hymn. A priest enters and condemns the group for disrespecting the dead, but Walsingham sends him away, and the feasters return to their meal.
In two sections, “Arrivals” and “Departures,” twelve archetypal characters gather for a last supper and reflect on risk, life, and death. Most of them die before departing.
Kumudha can transform into a flowering tree, and her sisters sell its blossoms to support their impoverished mother. A prince sees her transformation and marries her, but later demands she perform it for him; his sister’s coercion leaves Kumudha trapped between human and tree form. Years later, the remorseful prince and Kumudha reunite, and his ritual restores her to human form.
A German-language operetta.
A lost two-act opera modeled on grand opera and based on events surrounding President Theodore Roosevelt’s 1901 White House dinner for Booker T. Washington.
Two unhappily married couples play bridge while each privately reflects on unfulfilled desires. Sally longs for a hat with peacock feathers; Bill thinks about his mistress; Geraldine wonders who loves her and recalls her mother; and David fantasizes about wealth and a life of sexual freedom.
Country girl Moll Hackabout arrives in the city and becomes the mistress of a wealthy older man. After he casts her out for taking younger lovers, she descends into disease and madness and dies in misery.
During the Polish invasion of Russia in 1612–1613, peasant Ivan Susanin leads Polish soldiers into a remote, snowbound forest rather than reveal the location of the newly elected Tsar Michael Romanov. The soldiers kill Susanin, while the epilogue shows the tsar’s supporters celebrating and mourning the sacrifice.
In this one-act parody, a dream set on the night Mozart died and Salieri did not brings together Salieri, the mysterious writer Peter Schläfer, and Mozart. The short work includes solo arias, a duet, and a finale.
Set in the 1950s and 1960s, the opera portrays Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs clashing over Washington Square Park and Moses’s proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway. Moses’s plans would demolish Jacobs’s home and parts of the West Village. Jacobs leads an activist movement that culminates in a riot.
Britten’s opera adapts Shakespeare’s comedy of fairies, lovers, and rustic performers, retaining the play’s plot with alterations and giving greater prominence to the woods and fairy world.
A one-act children’s opera based on Thacher Hurd’s book Mama Don’t Allow, with roles for a muskrat, bird, spider, toad, and alligator gang.
During canal construction in thirteenth-century China, mapmaker Chao Lin’s workers perform a play about an orphan who avenges his parents. Chao Lin learns that his own father was betrayed, plans revenge, and is executed for conspiracy; the actors then finish their play, in which the orphan succeeds.
In a seventeenth-century Paris tavern, a group of torturers trade stories. The mistress recognizes one man as her former lover, who abandoned her while she was pregnant. She realizes the young man he boasts of torturing to death was their son. She keeps her former lover for another drink, secretly poisons him and reveals the truth as he dies. The tavern door bursts open, and the son’s ghost arrives to claim the torturer’s soul.
An account of four teenage refugees and immigrants from El Salvador, Iran, Cambodia, and Angola, based on interviews conducted by Edward Barnes.
A two-act Italian verismo opera set in Naples’s Borgo Santa Lucia district.
Set against the 1941 Cocking affair, Governor Eugene Talmadge fires Walter Cocking for supporting racial integration, then dismisses Marvin Pittman for defending him. The firings cost the teachers’ college its accreditation, prompting student protests. Pittman and Cocking are eventually rehired. The opera adds fictional dialogue and portrays Pittman as the moral center; student leader Jack Averitt is fictionalized as leading the reinstatement movement.
The opera centers on Blanche DuBois, Stanley Kowalski, Stella Kowalski and Mitch.
Mariam is forced to marry the abusive Rasheed after her mother’s death. Years later, Rasheed brings home Laila, whose parents have been killed; he lies that her fiancé Tariq is dead and marries her. The women grow close, but after Rasheed attempts to strangle Laila, Mariam kills him and remains behind to face execution so Laila can escape with Tariq and her children.
In a Swiss village, Sali and Vreneli fall in love despite a bitter feud between their families over a strip of land. Unable to find a life together, the young couple drown themselves.
A Chinese-language realistic opera produced by the NCPA.
At a suburban Chicago wedding joining two families, the groom’s grandmother Nettie dies, a secret affair begins between Jules and Tulip, and the bride’s sister Buffy reveals she is pregnant. The best man Breedley drives Dino’s car into a crash, leading the families to believe the newlyweds have died. Muffin and Dino then appear unharmed, and the families celebrate. A chamber-orchestra version was later created.
In 1958 Tangier, American reporter Lizzy Holmes investigates women’s status and encounters trafficking at her hotel. She witnesses Asilah’s sister Habiba being abducted and killed, then learns Asilah is also being trafficked. Lizzy becomes involved with married hotel employee Ahmed, who addicts her to drugs and helps Teddy, the hotel owner, abduct her. Teddy kills businessman Harry Hopkins and is jailed. Ahmed is left with Lizzy’s scarf and poetry book as her sister Clare continues searching for her.
A three-act opera based on Goffredo Cognetti’s play O voto and focused on the slums of Naples.
Leonor believes her husband Henrique died in battle and is preparing to marry Fernando. On the eve of the wedding, a mysterious knight in black armor appears and accuses Leonor of breaking her vow of eternal love. He recounts how a captured knight escaped and returned to find his fiancée with another man, then throws a blue ribbon at Leonor’s feet. She faints, and the guests drive the knight from the castle.
Eteri, a peasant fleeing her stepmother, meets Prince Abesalom and his courtier Murman. Abesalom loves her, but Murman secretly desires her. At their wedding Murman gives Eteri an enchanted necklace that makes her ill and can be cured only by him. Abesalom lets her go; Murman takes her to his tower, where she recovers. Abesalom grows ill with longing and visits her. Eteri initially refuses to see him but is persuaded by Marekh. Abesalom dies in her arms, and Eteri kills herself with the knife he had given her.
Abraham and Sarah travel to Gerar, where Abraham presents Sarah as his sister. King Abimelech seeks to marry her. God warns Abimelech in a dream that Sarah is married, and the king returns her to Abraham while reproaching him for lying. The oratorio focuses on Abraham’s jealousy and the conflict between the people of Gerar and the worship of the true God.
Heavily in debt, Abu Hassan persuades his wife Fatime to tell the Caliph’s wife that he has died so she can collect money and gifts. Hassan then tries to obtain money from the Caliph using a similar story about Fatime. After both separately feign death, the Caliph offers a reward to learn who died first. Hassan and Fatime revive, ask pardon, and are forgiven; the creditor Omar is sent away.
The genie Oroès desires Céphise, who loves Acante. The fairy Zirphile binds the lovers through a magic ring so each feels the other’s suffering, forcing Oroès to keep Acante alive. The couple seek the oracle’s help and try to restore harmony among other lovers, but Oroès turns against them again. Zirphile arrives as they are about to die and brings news of a royal birth, which prompts general celebration.
A tragédie en musique based on the Greek legend of Achilles and Deidamia.
After Patroclus is killed, Achilles returns to the Greek war against Troy to avenge him. He falls in love with the Trojan princess Polyxena and agrees to peace; they marry, despite Briseis’s anger. Achilles is killed, and the grieving Polyxena takes her own life.
An opera seria based on the story of Achilles on Skyros, using Pietro Metastasio’s libretto.
In the pastoral setting, Acis and Galatea fall in love. The giant Polyphemus, jealous of Galatea, kills Acis; Galatea uses her divine power to transform Acis into a fountain, and the chorus celebrates his immortality.
In a love triangle with Galatea, Acis is murdered by the jealous Polyphemus. Neptune revives Acis and transforms him into a river.
Zarzuela based on Ovid’s Acis and Galatea myth in Metamorphoses.
Hunter Actéon discovers the goddess Diane bathing. She turns him into a stag, and his own hounds pursue and tear him apart.
Set in 951, the opera concerns Adelaide of Italy after the death of her husband Lothair II. She is forced by Berengar II to marry his son Adalbert.
After Berengario usurps the Italian crown and tries to force Adelaide to marry his son, she takes refuge in Canossa and asks Otto for help, offering to marry him if he restores her royal rights. Otto crosses the Alps, frees her, marries her, and takes her to Germany.
In Brittany during the Hundred Years' War, Carlo, Duke of Vendôme, and his brother Ernesto, Duke of Nemours, support opposing sides. Ernesto and the Breton noblewoman Adelaide love one another, but Carlo is also in love with her and, in jealous anger, orders Ernesto's death. Overcome by remorse, Carlo learns to his relief that the order was not carried out.
After Duke Carlo returns from battle, rumors accuse Count Oliviero of seducing Adelia, daughter of the duke’s archer Arnoldo. Carlo sentences Oliviero to death, but the others prevent the execution; the opera ends with general agreement to Adelia and Oliviero’s marriage.
After returning to her home near Zürich, Adelina fears telling her father that she has had a child outside marriage. Her neighbor Simone advises her to send an anonymous letter, and the child’s father, Erneville, arrives and is reunited with her. Varner considers leaving town to avoid disgrace, but Simone helps reconcile the family; Adelina and Erneville marry.
In seventeenth-century Ireland, Salvini, an Italian painter staying at Lord Adelson’s castle, loves Adelson’s fiancée Nelly, while Fanny secretly loves Salvini. Salvini withholds and misrepresents a letter from Adelson, and an outlaw named Struley exploits Salvini’s jealousy in a plot to kidnap Nelly. In one ending, Nelly is saved and Salvini leaves for Rome before returning to marry Fanny; an earlier ending has Salvini believe he has killed Nelly before learning she is unharmed.
A one-act Italian farsa on the theme of an abduction from a seraglio.
When Admeto is dying, his wife Alceste sacrifices herself to save him; Hercules descends to Hades and brings her back. Meanwhile, the abandoned Trojan princess Antigona returns in disguise, while jealousy and rival claims to Admeto complicate the household until Antigona reunites him with Alceste.
The actress Adriana Lecouvreur loves Maurizio, Count of Saxony, who is also pursued by the Princess de Bouillon. The Princess becomes Adriana’s rival and sends her poisoned violets. Adriana kisses the flowers and dies in Maurizio’s arms.
In an unnamed country caught in civil war, Adriana, her son Yonas and her sister Refka face the consequences of a rape years earlier by Tsargo, a soldier from their village. As Yonas grows up, Adriana fears he may inherit his father’s violence rather than his mother’s gentleness.
In Antioch during Hadrian’s early reign, the emperor loves Parthian princess Emirena, who loves Farnaspe. Hadrian’s feelings test his virtue before his marriage to Sabina, to whom he was already engaged. Emirena’s father Osroa attempts to kill Hadrian by setting a fire. Osroa is ultimately spared, Farnaspe marries Emirena, and Hadrian renews his engagement to Sabina.
In ancient Antioch, Emperor Adriano falls in love with the captured Parthian princess Emirena, who is betrothed to Farnaspe, while Adriano is engaged to Sabina. After plots, attempted escapes, and imprisonment, Adriano restores Osroa’s kingdom, allows Farnaspe and Emirena to marry, and chooses Sabina.
A three-act opera seria featuring the Roman emperor Adriano, his beloved Emirena, her betrothed Farnaspe, and Sabina, who is betrothed to Adriano.
Adrien defeats the Parthians and falls in love with captive princess Émirène, though he is engaged to Sabine. He ultimately frees Émirène’s father and allows her to marry Prince Pharnaspe; after becoming emperor, Adrien asks Sabine to become his empress and makes peace with the Parthians.
The original version of Méhul and Hoffmann’s opera retained Hadrian’s imperial title and included a triumphal scene. Authorities banned its planned 1792 performance amid political tensions; Méhul later revised the work, removed “emperor” from the title, and cut the triumphal march.
A three-act tragédie lyrique based on Pierre-Antoine de La Place’s 1757 tragedy, featuring Adèle, daughter of the Count of Ponthieu, and her confidante Alise.
A three-act tragédie lyrique featuring Adèle, daughter of the Count of Ponthieu, and Guillaume III, the Count.
Selworthy returns from the Americas hoping to reunite with Perdita, only to learn that she married his old friend Pennyfather. Once he hears how Perdita has changed, Selworthy decides he escaped an unhappy match and forgives his friend.
Werder's opera is based on Aeschylus's Oresteia through Gilbert Murray's English translation. Its listed characters are King Agamemnon, Aegisthus, Clytemnestra, and Cassandra.
À Beckett's English-language operatic farce is loosely based on the life of Agnès Sorel, mistress of Charles VII of France. It was the first production at John Braham's St James's Theatre in London.
Agnes, cousin of Emperor Henry VI, is engaged to Henry Palatinus, son of the Welf leader Henry the Lion. War and the emperor’s decision to marry her to the French king threaten their union. Henry arrives in disguise, is condemned and imprisoned, but escapes to marry Agnes. Captured again, he mortally wounds the French ambassador in a duel, revealing him to be King Philip Augustus. Henry the Lion arrives and submits to the emperor, who blesses the couple and calls for unity.
A semi-serious Italian opera originally composed for private and amateur performance near Parma.
In a legendary world where humans suffer in darkness and cold, the gods refuse to share fire. Ginipathi, a god who sympathizes with humanity, sends his sister, the fire goddess, to give fire to people. Soma, a young hunter and community leader, sets out to find her. Fire brings warmth, seasonal change, harvests, and tools, but the gods punish Ginipathi. When a boy reports his torture, Soma urges the people to help; they refuse, and Soma and the fire goddess go to the mountains alone. The finale questions the people’s indifference to their heroes.
After believing Emperor Claudius has died, Agrippina plots to place her son Nero on the throne. When Claudius returns alive and promises the succession to Otho, Agrippina and Poppaea manipulate the emperor and their rivals through successive deceptions. The plots are exposed and redirected; Claudius ultimately gives Poppaea to Otho and the throne to Nero.
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