Iphigénie en Tauride of 1779 was Christoph Willibald Gluck’s fifth and penultimate opera for the French stage. In it he took his ideas concerning reform opera to what might be deemed their logical conclusion, employing récitatif accompagné and largely omitting the dance movements that were a hallmark of French tragédie en musique. Knowing that many of the operas and ballets he had already written in Italian would probably never be performed again, he...

Based on Victorien Sardou’s 1887 French-language play, Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca of 1900, with a libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, not only occurs in a specific time and place, but on a precise date that can be linked to an historical event. All of the action takes place during the afternoon, evening and early morning of 17 and 18 June 1800, following the Battle of Marengo between Napoleon’s army and Austrian forces. The Austrians were initially...

Angel’s Bone, by composer Du Yun and librettist Royce Vavrek, began life in 2011 as a 35-minute chamber opera that had been commissioned by Philadelphia’s Mann Center for Performing Arts. It was then developed into a full length (although still one act) opera, with the premiere of this 80-minute version taking place on 6 January 2016 at the 3LD Art & Technology Center in Lower Manhattan. The story sees two Angels, simply referred to as the Boy Angel and Girl Angel,...

The story to be found in George Frideric Handel’s Alcina, which first appeared at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in 1735, comes from Ludovico Ariosto’s epic sixteenth century poem Orlando furioso. It was employed for many operas, one of which was Riccardo Broschi’s L'isola di Alcina, which premiered in Rome in 1728. Handel acquired Antonio Fanzaglia’s libretto for it the following year during his travels in Italy, and that for his own opera was arranged by...

I puritani, with a libretto by Count Carlo Pepoli, was Vincenzo Bellini’s final opera, as he died just eight months after its premiere in January 1835. Based on Têtes Rondes et Cavaliers, an historical play by Jacques-François Ancelot and Joseph Xavier Saintine, it is set during the English Civil War, although the specific episode described is fictitious. In fact, the narrative was always intended to be a commentary on the political climate of 1830s Paris following the...

Camille Saint-Saëns’ Samson et Dalila, which premiered in Weimar in 1877, is the only one of the composer’s operas to be regularly performed today. In describing how the Israelite Samson is duped by the Philistine Dalila into divulging the secret to his strength, thus enabling him to be weakened and blinded, the story comes from Chapter 16 of the Book of Judges. However, it concentrates on certain elements and downplays others, ignoring the heroic deeds that earned...