List of Important Operas

From 1945

1945 Peter Grimes (Benjamin Britten). A landmark in the history of British opera, this work marked Britten's arrival on the international music scene.
1945 War and Peace (Sergei Prokofiev). Prokofiev returned to the tradition of Russian historical opera for this epic work based on Leo Tolstoy's novel.
1946 Betrothal in a Monastery (Prokofiev). A romantic comedy with music drawing on the opera buffa style of Rossini.
1946 The Medium (Gian Carlo Menotti). Considered by many to be Menotti's finest work.
1946 The Rape of Lucretia (Britten). Britten's first chamber opera.
1947 Albert Herring (Britten). Britten's comic opera is heavily based upon use of the ensemble.
1947 Dantons Tod (Gottfried von Einem). Einem's opera is a compressed setting of Georg Büchner's play about the "Reign of Terror" during the French Revolution.
1947 Les mamelles de Tirésias (Francis Poulenc). Poulenc's first opera is a short surrealist comedy based on the play by Guillaume Apollinaire.
1947 The Telephone, or L'Amour à trois (Menotti). An opera buffa just 22 minutes in length.
1949 Il prigioniero (Luigi Dallapiccola). Much of the music for this opera is based on three 12-note tone rows, which represent the themes of prayer, hope and freedom that dominate the opera.
1950 The Consul (Menotti). This opera contains some of Menotti's most dissonant music.
1951 Amahl and the Night Visitors (Menotti). This Christmas story was the first opera specifically written for television.
1951 Billy Budd (Britten). The plot for Britten's large-scale opera was based on a story by Herman Melville.
1951 The Pilgrim's Progress (Ralph Vaughan Williams). Set to his own libretto, Vaughan Williams's work was inspired by John Bunyan's famous allegory of the same name.
1951 The Rake's Progress (Igor Stravinsky). Stravinsky's most important operatic work looks back to Mozart musically and has a libretto by W. H. Auden inspired by the engravings of William Hogarth.
1952 Boulevard Solitude (Hans Werner Henze). Henze's first full-length opera is an updating of the story of Manon Lescaut, also the source for important operas by Massenet and Puccini.
1953 Gloriana (Britten). Composed for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, this opera looks back to the relationship between her namesake Elizabeth I and the Earl of Essex.
1954 The Fiery Angel (Prokofiev). Prokofiev never saw what is often regarded as his most avant-garde composition performed on the operatic stage.
1954 The Turn of the Screw (Britten). A chamber opera based on the ghost story by Henry James. It is remarkable for its tightly laid out key scheme and active orchestral role.
1954 Troilus and Cressida (William Walton). Walton's opera about the Trojan War was initially a failure.
1955 The Midsummer Marriage (Michael Tippett). Tippett's first full-scale opera was set to his own libretto.
1956 Candide (Leonard Bernstein). Based on Voltaire, the soprano aria "Glitter and Be Gay" is a parody of Romantic-era jewel songs.
1957 Dialogues of the Carmelites (Poulenc). Poulenc's major opera is set in a convent during the French Revolution.
1958 Vanessa (Samuel Barber). Vanessa won its composer a Pulitzer Prize in 1958.
1959 La voix humaine (Poulenc). A short opera with a single character: a despairing woman on the telephone to her lover.
1960 A Midsummer Night's Dream (Britten). Set to a libretto adapted from the Shakespeare play by himself and his partner Peter Pears, Britten's work is rare in operatic history in that it features a countertenor in the male lead role.
1961 Elegy for Young Lovers (Henze). Henze asked his librettists, W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, for a scenario that would inspire him to compose "tender, beautiful noises".
1962 King Priam (Tippett). Tippett's second opera, set to another of his own "recondite" libretti, was inspired by Homer's Iliad.
1964 Curlew River (Britten). A modern liturgical "church opera" intended for performance in an ecclesiastical setting.
1965 Der junge Lord (Henze). The last composition produced during Henze's dwelling in Italy is considered to be the most Italianate of his dramatic works.
1965 Die Soldaten (Bernd Alois Zimmermann). The first version of the opera was rejected by Cologne Opera as impossible for them to stage: Zimmermann was required to reduce the orchestral forces required and to cut some of the technical demands previously required.
1966 Antony and Cleopatra (Barber). The first version of the opera was set to a libretto consisting entirely of the words of Shakespeare and deemed a failure. Later it was revised by Menotti and became a success.
1966 The Bassarids (Henze). Henze's opera is set to a libretto by Auden and Kallman, who required that the composer listen to Götterdämmerung before starting to compose the music.
1967 The Bear (Walton). The libretto for Walton's extravaganza was based on Chekov.
1968 Punch and Judy (Harrison Birtwistle). Birtwistle's first opera was commissioned by the English Opera Group.
1968 The Prodigal Son (Britten). The third of Britten's parables for church performance.
1969 The Devils of Loudun (Krzysztof Penderecki). Penderecki's first opera is also his most popular.
1970 The Knot Garden (Tippett). Tippett created his own modern scenario for the libretto of this work, his third opera.
1971 Owen Wingrave (Britten). Britten's anti-war opera was written especially for BBC television.
1972 Taverner (Peter Maxwell Davies). Davies was one of the most significant figures to emerge in British music the 1960s. This opera is based on a legend about the 16th century composer John Taverner.
1973 Death in Venice (Britten). Britten's last opera was first performed three years before his death.
1977-2003 Licht (Stockhausen). Karlheinz Stockhausen's magnum opus, an ambitious cycle of 7 operas, 1 for each day of the week containing ca. 29 hours of music in total.
1978 Le Grand Macabre (György Ligeti). First performed at Stockholm in 1978, Ligeti heavily revised the opera in 1996.
1978 Lear (Aribert Reimann). An Expressionist opera based on Shakespeare's tragedy. The title role was specifically written for the famous baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.
1980 The Lighthouse (Davies). Davies's second chamber opera was set to his own libretto.
1983 Saint François d'Assise (Olivier Messiaen). 120 orchestral players are required for this opera, as well as a sizable chorus.
1984 Un re in ascolto (Luciano Berio). This opera was set to a libretto assembled by the composer from three different texts by three different authors: Friedrich Einsiedel, W. H. Auden and Friedrich Wilhelm Gotter.
1984 Akhnaten (Philip Glass). Unlike his first opera Einstein on the Beach, the writing and style are more conventional and lyrical and much of the music of Akhnaten is some of the most dissonant that Glass has composed.
1986 The Mask of Orpheus (Birtwistle). Birtwistle's most ambitious opera examines the myth of Orpheus from several different angles.
1987 A Night at the Chinese Opera (Judith Weir). This piece is based on a Chinese play of the Yuan dynasty.
1987 Nixon in China (John Adams). Musically Minimalist in style, this "news opera" recounts Richard Nixon's 1972 meeting with Mao Zedong.
1991 Gawain (Birtwistle). Birtwistle's opera is based on the medieval English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.