Boris Godunov is Modest Mussorgsky’s only completed opera, and widely considered to be his masterpiece. Its subjects are the eponymous Russian ruler, who reigned as Tsar from 1598 to 1605, and the False Dmitry I, who succeeded him almost immediately but was killed a year later. The Russian language libretto was written by the composer, and is based on Pushkin’s blank verse drama Boris Godunov as well as Nikolay Karamzin’s History of the Russian...

Charles-François Gounod’s Faust, with a libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, premiered at the Théâtre Lyrique on the Boulevard du Temple in Paris on 19 March 1859. It underwent several revisions over the following decade, including the insertion of a ballet into Act V to meet the expectations of grand opera, and was extremely popular in the nineteenth century. It was the work with which New York’s Metropolitan Opera opened for the first time on...

Turandot, with a libretto by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni, is Giacomo Puccini’s final opera. It was left unfinished at the time of his death in 1924, and posthumously completed by Franco Alfano before premiering at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala in 1926. There have subsequently been other completions of the score, most notably by Luciano Berio in 2001, but the Alfano version remains the most frequently performed, and is the one used in this instance.  Set in Peking in...