Scores for Orchestra

La Cenerentola (Cinderella) is based on the fairy tale Cendrillon by Charles Perrault. Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868) composed La Cenerentola at age 25 following the success of his opera The Barber of...

LA TRAVIATA (THE FALLEN WOMAN) is based on La Dame aux camélias (1852), a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas fils. The opera was originally titled Violetta, after the main character. Piave...

Perhaps the best-known music from Giuseppe Verdi's (1813-1901) 4 Act opera Il Trovatore, the Coro di Zingari (Chorus of the Gypsies), or "Anvil Chorus," from the beginning of the Act 2 depicts Spanish...

EUGENE ONEGIN, based on a verse-novel by Alexander Pushkin, is Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky's (1840-1893) best-known opera. The story depicts the life of the titular Onegin, a Russian dandy who does not...

Performed in the first act of Giuseppe Verdi's (1813-1901) opera, LA TRAVIATA, this famous duet is sung by the characters Violetta and Alfredo Germont, the young man who loves her, at a late-night par...

Marking the onset of his middle period, LUISA MILLER gave Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) a great deal of trouble with the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. When the management rejected his initial proposal for...

Charles Gounod (1818-1893) completed the five-act opera Roméo et Juliette (Romeo and Juliet) in 1867. With a libretto by Jules Barbier and Michael Carré, the opera tells the tragic story of Shakespear...

Charles Gounod (1818-1893) completed the five-act opera ROMÉO ET JULIETTE (ROMEO AND JULIET) in 1867. With a libretto by Jules Barbier and Michael Carré, the opera tells the tragic story of Shakespear...

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's (1756-1791) singspiel Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), K. 620, was written in 1791 and premiered on September 30th of that same year at the Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden,...

La Clemenza di Tito (The Clemency of Titus), K. 621 was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) in 1791 after he had almost finished Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute). Commissioned to celebrate...

TANNHÄUSER, an 1845 opera in three acts by Richard Wagner (1813-1883), combines two German legends: the mythologized medieval German Minnesänger and poet, and the tale of the Wartburg Song Contest. Li...

Finished in 1848 and premiered in 1950 in Weimar, Germany, Richard Wagner's (1813-1883) LOHENGRIN tells a story of a tragic medieval German romance in the Knight of the Swan tradition. Elsa, a princes...

Finished in 1848 and premiered in 1950 in Weimar, Germany, Richard Wagner's (1813-1883) LOHENGRIN tells a story of a tragic medieval German romance in the Knight of the Swan tradition. Elsa, a princes...

Based on Norse heroic legends, the sprawling operatic drama DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN took Richard Wagner (1813-1883) over twenty-five years to complete. Through a vast web of leitmotifs, melodic fragme...

In 1890, Engelbert Humperdinck (1854-1921) wrote an assortment of songs for a play written by Adelheid Wette, his sister, as a gift to her children. Spurred by his friend Richard Strauss, he took some...

Norma is a two-act lyric tragedy by Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835). A leading example of the bel canto genre, the opera premiered at La Scala in Milan on December 26th, 1831. The story tells of a love t...

MADAMA BUTTERFLY, one of the most popular operas of Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924), is the story of the conflicting expectations of Lieutenant Pinkerton, an American naval officer, and Madame Butterfly (...

IL MATRIMONIO SEGRETO (THE SECRET MARRIAGE) by Domenico Cimarosa (1749-1801) is his only work still to be regularly performed today and arguably among the greatest 18th century opera buffa. The dramma...

Italian composer Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945) wrote L'amico Fritz in 1891 only one year after his masterpiece Cavalleria rusticana began the Versimo movement. A charming light opera in three acts, L'am...

Composed by Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835) in 1830, the two-act opera I CAPULETTI E I MONTECCHI (THE CAPULETS AND THE MONTAGUES) stands as one of only two successful opera adaptations of Shakespeare's R...

Gioacchino Rossini's (1792-1868) last comic opera LE COMTE ORY, set in rural France at the time of the Crusades, tells the story of Count Ory, who attempts to seduce a Countess Adèle as she awaits the...

Hoping to repeat the success of his first opera LE VILLI, the publisher Ricordi commissioned Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) to write EDGAR, SC 62, based on a libretto by Ferdinando Fontana after Alfred d...

MADAMA BUTTERFLY, one of the most popular operas of Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924), is the story of the conflicting expectations of Lieutenant Pinkerton, an American naval officer, and Madame Butterfly (...

The fourth and final opera of Richard Wagner's (1813-1883) DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN (THE RING OF THE NIBELUNG, or THE RING CYCLE for short), the three-act drama GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG (TWILIGHT OF THE GODS) p...

Carl Nielsen's (1865-1931) three-act opera buffa MASKARADE (MASQUERADE) was written between 1904 and 1906, though Nielsen had first begun to consider an opera based on Ludvig Holberg's play of the sam...