Unlike Mozart, the young Gioacchino Rossini seldom let his ambitions strain relations with employers.

Verdi’s only successful comic opera, Falstaff, is notably hard to produce.

Puccini’s evening of one-act operas Il Trittico seems to be riding a wave of popularity over the last few years, with a new production at the Met and several high-profile productions in America and Europe.

The most wonderful thing about opera on video is the vicarious thrill of seeing performances of important works in the most glamorous foreign theaters in gala presentations with musicians of great renown for a piddling fraction of the cost.

Manuel de Falla’s La Vida Breve makes its video debut with this release from C-Major which means there’s still plenty of opportunities for improvement.

Sometime in 1753, Frederick The Great of Prussia, following a tiff with his great friend Voltaire, began writing an opera libretto in French prose that was to elucidate his ideas about the role of an enlightened monarch.

As a child I had but a few criteria that were necessary to ensure a happy entertainment. These included mostly ball-gowns, fairy godmothers and Julie Andrews, though Sally Ann Howes was acceptable in a pinch.

This year, I attended one of Natalie Dessay‘s only fully-sung Traviatas at the Met.

The operas of Leos Janácek have been slowly gaining ground in the world’s theatres over the past fifty years.

L’incoronazione di Poppea nearly disappeared from the stage completely after its 1642 Venice premiere and a Naples revival in 1651.

Die Entführung aus dem Serail has been a bit of an unruly child recently, with productions by Neuenfels and Bieito dividing audiences and inspiring critics like Heather MacDonald to lengthy manifestos.

Jules Massenet’s Don Quichotte was one of a number of commissions from the Monte Carlo Opera that occupied the composer at the end of his life.

Francesco Cavalli’s 1649 opera Il Giasone (Jason) was virtually a model of the many conventions that had come to be expected in Venetian public opera in the seventeenth century.