83 articles
George Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood
George Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood (1923–2011), British arts administrator and cousin of Elizabeth II; ran Edinburgh Festival, ENO, founded Opera North, president of Leeds United.
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet (Alexandre-César-Léopold Bizet, 1838–1875), French composer of Carmen, Les pêcheurs de perles, L'Arlésienne, and the Symphony in C; Prix de Rome 1857, died at Bougival three months after Carmen's premiere.
Gianni Schicchi
Gianni Schicchi: Puccini's only comic opera, one act with libretto by Giovacchino Forzano after Dante's Inferno Canto XXX; premiered 14 December 1918 at the Metropolitan Opera as the third panel of Il Trittico.
Grethe Barrett Holby
Grethe Barrett Holby (born 1948) is an American opera director, choreographer, and founder of American Opera Projects, Family Opera Initiative, and Ardea Arts, an original Einstein on the Beach cast member.
H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass that Loved a Sailor is an 1878 two-act comic opera by Gilbert and Sullivan, premiered at London's Opera Comique. Its 571-performance run, satire of the Admiralty, and American Pinafore-mania made the pair international celebrities.
Habanera (aria)
Habanera, formally "L'amour est un oiseau rebelle", is Carmen's Act I entrance aria in Bizet's opera Carmen, a mezzo-soprano showpiece whose melody Bizet borrowed from Yradier's "El Arreglito" and rewrote 13 times for Galli-Marié.
It ain't over till the fat lady sings
It ain't over till the fat lady sings: American proverb meaning an outcome cannot be assumed until it concludes. First printed 1976 (Ralph Carpenter), popularized 1978 by Dan Cook and Dick Motta; often misattributed to Yogi Berra.
Italian opera
Italian opera is the musical-drama tradition born in Florence around 1600, spanning opera seria and buffa, bel canto, Verdi, and verismo; UNESCO inscribed its singing practice as intangible heritage in 2023.
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach (Jacob Offenbach, 1819-1880), German-born French composer and cellist, creator of French operetta. Founded the Bouffes-Parisiens (1855); wrote Orphée aux Enfers, La Belle Hélène, and the unfinished Les Contes d'Hoffmann.
Jörn Weisbrodt
Jörn Weisbrodt is a German-born arts administrator and opera stage director, artistic director of Toronto's Luminato Festival from 2011, former executive director of Robert Wilson's RW Work, and husband of Rufus Wainwright since 2012.
Jules Massenet
Jules Massenet (1842-1912), French composer of about 25 operas including Manon, Werther, and Thais; Paris Conservatoire professor 1878-1896 whose melodious operas dominated fin-de-siecle French opera.
Kathryn Grayson
Kathryn Grayson (Zelma Kathryn Elisabeth Hedrick, 1922–2010), American coloratura soprano and MGM musical film star of Anchors Aweigh, Show Boat, and Kiss Me Kate; later stage and opera performer.
Kurt Weill
Kurt Weill (1900–1950), German-born American composer of The Threepenny Opera with Bertolt Brecht and Broadway works Lady in the Dark and Street Scene; exiled 1933, died in New York.
L'elisir d'amore
L'elisir d'amore (The Elixir of Love), Donizetti's two-act melodramma giocoso on Felice Romani's libretto after Scribe's Le philtre, premiered Milan 12 May 1832; Nemorino's fake love potion and "Una furtiva lagrima".
L'Orfeo
L'Orfeo is an opera by Claudio Monteverdi, with a libretto by Alessandro Striggio, premiered in Mantua on 24 February 1607 and regarded as one of the founding works of opera.
La donna è mobile
"La donna è mobile" ("Woman is fickle") is the Duke of Mantua's tenor canzone from Act III of Verdi's 1851 opera Rigoletto, in B major and 3/8 time, kept secret before the premiere and famous worldwide since.
Lakmé
Lakmé is Léo Delibes's three-act French opera, premiered 14 April 1883 at the Opéra-Comique, set in British India; famous for the Flower Duet and Bell Song, distinct from the Lakmé cosmetics brand and fashion week.
Li Kui Visits His Mother
Li Kui Visits His Mother (李逵探母) is a Peking opera in which the outlaw Li Kui returns for his blind mother, adapted in 1956 by Weng Ouhong and Yuan Shihai.
Libretto
Libretto (Italian, "little book") is the text of an opera, operetta, or oratorio, the words as opposed to the music. Covers its origins with Rinuccini and Peri, Metastasio, the 19th-century shift toward composer dominance, and printed and translated forms.
Maria Ewing
Maria Ewing (1950–2022), American mezzo-soprano and soprano from Detroit, famed for dramatically intense roles such as Carmen, Salome, Dorabella, and Rosine; Met debut 1976 as Cherubino, retired from opera 1997.
Mezzo-soprano
Mezzo-soprano: the middle female classical voice type between soprano and contralto (mezzo = Italian for middle), typical range A3–A5, defined by tessitura and timbre rather than extremes; subtypes coloratura, lyric, dramatic; roles include Carmen, Cherubino, Rosina.
Nabucco
Nabucco (Nabucodonosor) is Giuseppe Verdi's four-act 1841 opera to Temistocle Solera's libretto, premiered at La Scala, Milan, 9 March 1842; his third opera and first triumph, famous for the Act III chorus Va, pensiero.
Norma (opera)
Norma is a two-act tragedia lirica by Vincenzo Bellini to a libretto by Felice Romani, premiered at La Scala, Milan, on 26 December 1831 for Giuditta Pasta. Based on Soumet's Norma, ou l'Infanticide, it features the aria Casta diva and a famously demanding Druid priestess title role.
O mio babbino caro
O mio babbino caro is a soprano aria from Puccini's one-act comic opera Gianni Schicchi (1918), third of Il trittico, premiered at the Metropolitan Opera on 14 December 1918. Lauretta sings it begging her father to let her marry Rinuccio.
Opera company
An opera company is an organization that stages opera, requiring a large specialized workforce: director, conductor, designers, orchestra, chorus, and principal singers. Companies like Opera Australia rank among the largest performing arts employers.
Opera festival
An opera festival is a concentrated summer season of opera staged at a distinctive venue or town, from Glyndebourne's country house and Savonlinna's medieval castle to Salzburg's city-wide festival.
Operetta
Operetta is a light musical theater that emerged in Paris and Vienna in the mid-nineteenth century. The French school was comic, while the Viennese school was sentimental and dance-oriented.
Orfeo ed Euridice
Orfeo ed Euridice (Orphée et Eurydice) is Gluck's 1762 reform opera to a Calzabigi libretto, premiered in Vienna with castrato Gaetano Guadagni; revised for Parma 1769 and Paris 1774, and reworked by Berlioz in 1859.
Orpheus in the Underworld
Orpheus in the Underworld (Orphée aux enfers) is Jacques Offenbach's satirical operetta, premiered Paris 1858, libretto by Crémieux and Halévy, famous for the can-can galop infernal and parodying the Orpheus myth and Napoleon III's Second Empire.
Otello
Otello is Giuseppe Verdi's four-act Italian opera (1887) on Arrigo Boito's libretto after Shakespeare's Othello, premiered February 5, 1887 at La Scala, Milan, his penultimate opera, before Falstaff (1893).