List of opera genres
Encyclopedia
This is an inclusive glossary
Glossary
A glossary, also known as an idioticon, vocabulary, or clavis, is an alphabetical list of terms in a particular domain of knowledge with the definitions for those terms...

 list of opera genres, giving alternative names.

'Opera' is an Italian word (short for 'opera in musica'), however it was not commonly used in Italy (or indeed in other countries) to refer to the genre of particular works. Most composers used more precise designations to present their work to the public. Often specific genres of opera were commissioned by theatres or patrons (in which case the form of the work might deviate more or less from the genre norm, depending on the inclination of the composer). Opera genres are not exclusive. Some operas are regarded as belonging to several.

Definitions

Opera genres have been defined in different ways, not always in terms of stylistic rules. Some, like opera seria
Opera seria
Opera seria is an Italian musical term which refers to the noble and "serious" style of Italian opera that predominated in Europe from the 1710s to c. 1770...

, refer to traditions identified by later historians, while others, like Zeitoper
Zeitoper
Zeitoper was a short-lived genre of opera associated with Weimar Germany. It is not known when or by whom the term was coined, but by 1928 Kurt Weill was able to complain that it was more a slogan than a description...

, have been defined by their own inventors. Other forms have been associated with a particular theatre, for example opéra comique
Opéra comique
Opéra comique is a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged out of the popular opéra comiques en vaudevilles of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent , which combined existing popular tunes with spoken sections...

 at the theatre of the same name
Opéra-Comique
The Opéra-Comique is a Parisian opera company, which was founded around 1714 by some of the popular theatres of the Parisian fairs. In 1762 the company was merged with, and for a time took the name of its chief rival the Comédie-Italienne at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and was also called the...

, or opéra bouffe
Opéra bouffe
Opéra bouffe is a genre of late 19th-century French operetta, closely associated with Jacques Offenbach, who produced many of them at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens that gave its name to the form....

 at the Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens
Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens
The Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens is a Parisian theatre which was founded in 1855 by the composer Jacques Offenbach for the performance of opéra bouffe and operetta. The current theatre is located in the 2nd arrondissement at 4 rue Monsigny with an entrance at the back at 65 Passage Choiseul. In...

.

This list does not include terms that are vague and merely descriptive, such as 'comic opera
Comic opera
Comic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...

', 'sacred opera', 'tragic opera' or 'one-act opera' etc. Original language terms are given to avoid the ambiguities that would be caused by English translations.

List

GenreLanguage|Major works|Last known example|Refs.
Acte de ballet French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 
An opéra ballet consisting of a single entrée. 18th century. Les fêtes de Ramire
Les fêtes de Ramire
Les fêtes de Ramire is an opera in the form of a one-act acte de ballet by Jean-Philippe Rameau with a libretto by Voltaire, first performed on 22 December 1745 at Versailles....

(1745), Anacréon
Anacréon (1754)
Anacréon is an opera by Jean-Philippe Rameau which was first performed at Fontainebleau on 23 October 1754. Its libretto is by Louis de Cahusac. It takes the form of an acte de ballet in one act. Rameau also composed another opera called Anacréon in 1757...

(1754),
Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau was one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the Baroque era. He replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French composer for the harpsichord of his time, alongside François...

 
Afterpiece
Afterpiece
An afterpiece is a short, usually humorous one-act playlet or musical work following the main attraction, the full-length play, and concluding the theatrical evening. This short comedy, farce, opera or pantomime was a popular theatrical form in the 18th and 19th centuries...

 
English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 
18th/early 19th century short opera or pantomime performed after a full-length play. The Padlock
The Padlock
The Padlock is a two-act 'afterpiece' opera by Charles Dibdin. The text was by Isaac Bickerstaffe. It debuted in 1768 at the Drury Lane Theatre in London, England, as a companion piece to The Earl of Warwick. It partnered other plays before a run of six performances in tandem with "The Fatal...

(1768)
Dibdin
Charles Dibdin
Charles Dibdin was a British musician, dramatist, novelist, actor and songwriter. The son of a parish clerk, he was born in Southampton on or before 4 March 1745, and was the youngest of a family of 18....

 
Azione sacra Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

 
Literally, 'sacred action'. 17th and early 18th century opera with religious subject. Performed at Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

 court.
L'humanità redenta (Draghi
Antonio Draghi
Antonio Draghi was a Baroque composer. He possibly was the brother of Giovanni Battista Draghi.Draghi was born at Rimini in Italy, and was one of the most prolific composers of his time. His contribution to the development of Italian opera was particularly significant...

, 1669)
Draghi
Antonio Draghi
Antonio Draghi was a Baroque composer. He possibly was the brother of Giovanni Battista Draghi.Draghi was born at Rimini in Italy, and was one of the most prolific composers of his time. His contribution to the development of Italian opera was particularly significant...

, Bertali
Antonio Bertali
Antonio Bertali was an Italian composer and violinist of the Baroque era.He was born in Verona and received early music education there from Stefano Bernardi. Probably from 1624, he was employed as court musician in Vienna by Emperor Ferdinand II. In 1649 Bertali succeeded Giovanni Valentini as...

, Pietro Andrea Ziani, Giovanni Battista Pederzuoli, Cesti
Antonio Cesti
Antonio Cesti , known today primarily as an Italian composer of the Baroque era, he was also a singer , and organist. He was "the most celebrated Italian musician of his generation".- Biography :...

 
Azione sepolcrale Italian alternative name for azione sacra
Azione scenica Italian alternative name for azione teatrale Al gran sole carico d'amore
Al gran sole carico d'amore
Al gran sole carico d'amore is an opera with music by Luigi Nono, based mainly on plays by Bertolt Brecht, but also incorporating texts of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Karl Marx, and Vladimir Lenin. Nono himself and Yury Lyubimov wrote the libretto. It premiered at the Teatro alla Scala on April...

(1975)
Azione teatrale
Azione teatrale
Azione teatrale is a genre of opera, popular in Italy in the late 17th and 18th centuries...

 (plural azioni teatrali)
Italian Small-scale one-act opera, or musical play. Early form of chamber opera. Popular in late 17th and 18th centuries. (See also festa teatrale
Festa teatrale
The term festa teatrale refers to a genre of drama, and of opera in particular. The genre cannot be rigidly defined, and in any case feste teatrali tend to be split into two different sets: feste teatrali divided by acts are operas, while works in this genre performed without division, or merely...

, a similar genre but on a larger scale.)
Le cinesi
Le cinesi
Le cinesi is an opera in one act, with music composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck. The Italian-language libretto was by Pietro Metastasio, and this libretto had first been set by Antonio Caldara in 1735...

(1754), Il sogno di Scipione
Il sogno di Scipione
Il sogno di Scipione, K. 126, is a dramatic serenade in one act composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a libretto by Pietro Metastasio, which is based on the book Somnium Scipionis by Cicero. Mozart had originally composed the work at the age of 15 for his patron, Prince-Archbishop Sigismund von...

(1772), L'isola disabitata
L'isola disabitata
L'isola disabitata , Hob. 28/9, is an opera by Joseph Haydn, his tenth opera, written for the Eszterházy court and premiered December 6, 1779. The libretto by Pietro Metastasio was previously set by Giuseppe Bonno and subsequently used by Manuel García...

(1779)
Bonno
Giuseppe Bonno
Giuseppe Bonno was an Austrian composer of Italian origin....

, Gluck
Christoph Willibald Gluck
Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck was an opera composer of the early classical period. After many years at the Habsburg court at Vienna, Gluck brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years...

, Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...

, Haydn
Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...

Ballad opera
Ballad opera
The term ballad opera is used to refer to a genre of English stage entertainment originating in the 18th century and continuing to develop in the following century and later. There are many types of ballad opera...

 
English Entertainment originating in 18th-century London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 as a reaction against Italian opera. Early examples used existing popular ballad tunes set to satirical texts. Also popular in Dublin and America, Influenced the German Singspiel
Singspiel
A Singspiel is a form of German-language music drama, now regarded as a genre of opera...

, and subsequently 20th-century opera.
The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today...

(1728)
Love in a Village
Love in a Village
Love in a Village is a ballad opera in three acts that was composed and arranged by Thomas Arne. A pastiche, the work contains 42 musical numbers of which only five were newly composed works by Arne. The other music is made up of 13 pieces borrowed from Arne's earlier stage works, a new overture...

(1762), Hugh the Drover
Hugh the Drover
Hugh the Drover is an opera in two acts by Ralph Vaughan Williams to an original English libretto by Harold Child. According to Michael Kennedy, the composer took first inspiration for the opera from this question to Bruce Richmond, editor of The Times Literary Supplement, around 1909–1910:"I...

(1924), The Threepenny Opera
The Threepenny Opera
The Threepenny Opera is a musical by German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill, in collaboration with translator Elisabeth Hauptmann and set designer Caspar Neher. It was adapted from an 18th-century English ballad opera, John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, and offers a Marxist critique...

(1928)
Pepusch
Johann Christoph Pepusch
Johann Christoph Pepusch , also known as John Christopher Pepusch and Dr Pepusch, was a German-born composer who spent most of his working life in England....

, Coffey
Charles Coffey
Charles Coffey was an Irish playwright and composer.His best known opera is probably The Beggar’s Wedding , which capitalizes on the success of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera...

, Arne, Weill
Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...

 
Ballet héroïque French Literally 'heroic ballet'. A type of opéra ballet featuring the heroic and exotic, of the early/mid 18th century. Les festes grecques et romaines (Colin de Blamont
François Colin de Blamont
François Colin de Blamont was a French composer of the Baroque era.Born at Versailles as François Colin, he served as a royal musician and was eventually ennobled in 1750, his surname becoming Colin de Blamont. He was the protegé of Michel-Richard de Lalande and succeeded the latter as Master of...

, 1723)
Zaïde, reine de Grenade
Zaïde, reine de Grenade
Zaïde, reine de Grenade is a ballet-héroïque written by the French Baroque composer Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer Zaïde, reine de Grenade (Zaïde, Queen of Grenada) is a ballet-héroïque written by the French Baroque composer Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer Zaïde, reine de Grenade (Zaïde, Queen of...

(1739), Les fêtes de Paphos
Les fêtes de Paphos
Les fêtes de Paphos is an opéra-ballet in three acts by the French composer Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville. The work was described as a ballet héroïque on the title page of the printed score. Each act had a different librettist...

(1758)
Royer
Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer
Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer was a French composer and harpsichordist.Born in Turin, Royer went to Paris in 1725, and in 1734 became maître de musique des enfants de France, responsible for the musical education of the children of the king, Louis XV...

, Mondonville
Jean-Joseph de Mondonville
Jean-Joseph de Mondonville , also known as Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville, was a French violinist and composer. He was a younger contemporary of Jean-Philippe Rameau and enjoyed great success in his day...

, Mion
Charles-Louis Mion
Charles-Louis Mion was a French composer of the Baroque era. He was the grand-nephew of Michel Richard Delalande who also taught him music. Between 1710 and 1718 he was a choirboy at the Sainte-Chapelle du Palais . Later in life he became music teacher to his patroness Madame de Pompadour...

 
Bühnenfestspiel German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 
Literally, 'stage festival play'. Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

's description of the four operas of Der Ring des Nibelungen
Der Ring des Nibelungen
Der Ring des Nibelungen is a cycle of four epic operas by the German composer Richard Wagner . The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied...

Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

 
Bühnenweih­festspiel German Literally, 'consecrated stage festival play'. Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

's description for Parsifal
Parsifal
Parsifal is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. It is loosely based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the 13th century epic poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival and his quest for the Holy Grail, and on Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail.Wagner first conceived the work...

Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

 
Burla Italian alternative name for burletta
Burletta
A burletta , also sometimes burla or burlettina, is a musical term generally denoting a brief comic Italian opera...

 
Burletta
Burletta
A burletta , also sometimes burla or burlettina, is a musical term generally denoting a brief comic Italian opera...

 
Italian Literally, 'little joke'. Informal term for comic pieces in the 18th century. Used in England for intermezzos and light, satirical works. The Recruiting Serjeant
The Recruiting Serjeant
The Recruiting Serjeant is a burletta by composer Charles Dibdin and playwright Isaac Bickerstaff. It premièred on 20 July 1770 at Ranelagh Gardens, London.-Roles:-Synopsis:...

(1770)
Dibdin
Charles Dibdin
Charles Dibdin was a British musician, dramatist, novelist, actor and songwriter. The son of a parish clerk, he was born in Southampton on or before 4 March 1745, and was the youngest of a family of 18....

 
Burletta per musica Italian alternative name for burletta
Burletta
A burletta , also sometimes burla or burlettina, is a musical term generally denoting a brief comic Italian opera...

 
Il vero originale (Mayr
Simon Mayr
Johann Simon Mayr , also known in Italian as Giovanni Simone Mayr or Simone Mayr was a German composer.- Life :...

 1808)
Burlettina Italian alternative name for burletta
Burletta
A burletta , also sometimes burla or burlettina, is a musical term generally denoting a brief comic Italian opera...

 
Characterposse German Specialized form of Posse mit Gesang
Posse mit Gesang
Posse mit Gesang is a form of popular German-language music drama, that developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Early examples are sometimes called 'Possenspil' or 'Possenspiel'...

 concentrating on personalities.
Comédie en vaudeville
Comédie en vaudeville
The Comédie en vaudeville was a theatrical entertainment which began in Paris towards the end of the 17th century, in which comedy was enlivened though lyrics using the melody of popular vaudeville songs.-Evolution:...

 
French Entertainment in Paris fair theatres
Théâtre de la foire
Théâtre de la foire is the collective name given to the theatre put on at the annual fairs at Saint-Germain and Saint-Laurent in Paris.-Foire Saint-Germain:The earliest references to the annual fair date to 1176...

 at the end of the 17th century, mixing popular vaudeville
Vaudeville (song)
A vaudeville is a French satirical poem or song born of the 17th and 18th centuries. Its name is lent to the French theatrical entertainment comédie en vaudeville of the 19th and 20th century. From these vaudeville took its name....

 songs with comedy. In the 18th century, developed into the opéra comique
Opéra comique
Opéra comique is a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged out of the popular opéra comiques en vaudevilles of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent , which combined existing popular tunes with spoken sections...

, while influencing directly the English ballad opera
Ballad opera
The term ballad opera is used to refer to a genre of English stage entertainment originating in the 18th century and continuing to develop in the following century and later. There are many types of ballad opera...

 and indirectly the German Singspiel
Singspiel
A Singspiel is a form of German-language music drama, now regarded as a genre of opera...

.
Comédie lyrique French Literally, 'lyric comedy'. 18th century: description used by Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau was one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the Baroque era. He replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French composer for the harpsichord of his time, alongside François...

. 19th century: alternative name for opéra lyrique.
Platée
Platée
Platée is an opera in a prologue and three acts by Jean-Philippe Rameau with a libretto by Adrien-Joseph Le Valois d'Orville. Rameau bought the rights to the libretto Platée ou Junon Jalouse by Jacques Autreau and had d'Orville modify it...

(1745), Les Paladins
Les Paladins
Les Paladins is an opera by Jean-Philippe Rameau first performed on 12 February 1760. The author of the libretto is unknown, but it has been attributed to Duplat de Monticourt...

(1760)
Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau was one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the Baroque era. He replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French composer for the harpsichord of his time, alongside François...

 
Comédie mêlée d'ariettes
Comédie mêlée d'ariettes
Comédie mêlée d'ariettes is a form of French opéra comique that developed in the mid 18th century following the Querelle des Bouffons dispute over the respective merits of the French and Italian styles, between serious drama and comedy in opera.The best-known ones are Christoph Willibald Gluck's...

 
French Literally, 'comedy mixed with brief arias'. An early form of French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 opéra comique
Opéra comique
Opéra comique is a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged out of the popular opéra comiques en vaudevilles of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent , which combined existing popular tunes with spoken sections...

 dating to the mid 18th century.
La rencontre imprévue
La rencontre imprévue
Les pèlerins de la Mecque ou La rencontre imprévue Wq. 32 is a comédie mêlée d'ariettes, a form of opéra comique, composed in 1763 by Christoph Willibald Gluck to a libretto by Louis Hurtaut Dancourt after the 1726 play by Alain René Lesage and d'Orneval....

(1764), Tom Jones
Tom Jones (Philidor)
Tom Jones is a comédie mêlée d'ariettes, a kind of opéra comique, by the French composer François-André Danican Philidor which first appeared at the Comédie-Italienne, Paris on 27 February 1765...

(1765), Le déserteur
Le déserteur
Le déserteur is an opéra comique by the French composer Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny with a libretto by Michel-Jean Sedaine. It was first staged at the Comédie-Italienne, Paris on 6 March 1769....

(1769), Zémire et Azor
Zémire et Azor
Zémire et Azor is an opéra comique, described as a comédie-ballet mêlée de chants et de danses, in four acts by the Belgian composer André Grétry, The French text was by Jean François Marmontel based on La Belle et la bête by Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont, and Amour pour amour by P. C....

(1771), Le congrès des rois (Cherubini
Luigi Cherubini
Luigi Cherubini was an Italian composer who spent most of his working life in France. His most significant compositions are operas and sacred music. Beethoven regarded Cherubini as the greatest of his contemporaries....

 et al., 1794)
Gluck
Christoph Willibald Gluck
Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck was an opera composer of the early classical period. After many years at the Habsburg court at Vienna, Gluck brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years...

, Grétry 
Commedia Italian abbreviation of commedia in musica Il barbiere di Siviglia (1816)
Commedia in musica Italian alternative name for opera buffa
Opera buffa
Opera buffa is a genre of opera. It was first used as an informal description of Italian comic operas variously classified by their authors as ‘commedia in musica’, ‘commedia per musica’, ‘dramma bernesco’, ‘dramma comico’, ‘divertimento giocoso' etc...

 
Commedia per musica Italian alternative name for opera buffa
Opera buffa
Opera buffa is a genre of opera. It was first used as an informal description of Italian comic operas variously classified by their authors as ‘commedia in musica’, ‘commedia per musica’, ‘dramma bernesco’, ‘dramma comico’, ‘divertimento giocoso' etc...

 
La pastorella nobile
La pastorella nobile
La pastorella nobile is an commedia per musica in two acts by Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi. The Italian libretto was by Francesco Saverio Zini.-Performance history:...

(1788)
Componimento da camera Italian alternative name for azione teatrale
Componimento drammatico Italian alternative name for azione teatrale
Componimento pastorale Italian alternative name for azione teatrale La danza (Gluck, 1755) Gluck
Christoph Willibald Gluck
Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck was an opera composer of the early classical period. After many years at the Habsburg court at Vienna, Gluck brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years...

Conte lyrique French alternative name for opéra lyrique Grisélidis
Grisélidis
Grisélidis is an opera in three acts and a prologue by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Armand Silvestre and Eugène Morand. It is based on the play by the same authors first performed at the Comédie-Française on 15 May 1891, which is drawn from the medieval tale of 'patient Grissil'...

(Massenet, 1901)
Divertimento giocoso Italian alternative name for opera buffa
Opera buffa
Opera buffa is a genre of opera. It was first used as an informal description of Italian comic operas variously classified by their authors as ‘commedia in musica’, ‘commedia per musica’, ‘dramma bernesco’, ‘dramma comico’, ‘divertimento giocoso' etc...

 
Dramatic (or dramatick) opera English alternative name for semi-opera
Semi-opera
The terms Semi-opera, dramatic[k] opera and English opera were all applied to Restoration entertainments that combined spoken plays with masque-like episodes employing singing and dancing characters. They usually included machines in the manner of the restoration spectacular...

 
Drame forain French alternative name for Comédie en vaudeville
Comédie en vaudeville
The Comédie en vaudeville was a theatrical entertainment which began in Paris towards the end of the 17th century, in which comedy was enlivened though lyrics using the melody of popular vaudeville songs.-Evolution:...

 
Drame lyrique French Literally, 'lyric drama'. (1) Term used in the 18th century. (2) Reinvented in the late 19th/early 20th century to describe opera that developed out of opéra comique
Opéra comique
Opéra comique is a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged out of the popular opéra comiques en vaudevilles of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent , which combined existing popular tunes with spoken sections...

, influenced by Massenet
Jules Massenet
Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet was a French composer best known for his operas. His compositions were very popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and he ranks as one of the greatest melodists of his era. Soon after his death, Massenet's style went out of fashion, and many of his operas...

.
Echo et Narcisse
Echo et Narcisse
Echo et Narcisse was the last original opera, specifically a drame lyrique, written by Christoph Willibald Gluck, his sixth for the French stage. The libretto was written by Louis Theodor von Tschudi.-Performance history:...

(1779), La marquise de Brinvilliers
La marquise de Brinvilliers (opera)
La marquise de Brinvilliers is an operatic 'drame lyrique' that was written as a collaborative effort on the part of nine composers. It premiered in Paris at the Salle Ventadour of the Opéra-Comique on October 31, 1831.-Composition and performances:...

(1831), Werther
Werther
Werther is an opera in four acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Édouard Blau, Paul Milliet and Georges Hartmann based on the German epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe....

 (1892),
Briséïs
Briséïs
Briséïs, or Les amants de Corinthe is an operatic 'drame lyrique' by Emmanuel Chabrier with libretto by Catulle Mendès and Ephraïm Mikaël after Goethe's Die Braut von Korinth.-Composition history:...

(1897), Messidor
Messidor (opera)
Messidor is a four-act operatic drame lyrique by Alfred Bruneau to a French libretto by Emile Zola. The opera premiered on February 19, 1897 in Paris...

(1897)
Gluck
Christoph Willibald Gluck
Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck was an opera composer of the early classical period. After many years at the Habsburg court at Vienna, Gluck brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years...

, Chabrier
Emmanuel Chabrier
Emmanuel Chabrier was a French Romantic composer and pianist. Although known primarily for two of his orchestral works, España and Joyeuse marche, he left an important corpus of operas , songs, and piano music as well...

, Bruneau
Alfred Bruneau
Louis-Charles-Bonaventure-Alfred Bruneau was a French composer who played a key role in the introduction of realism in French opera....

, Erlanger
Camille Erlanger
Camille Erlanger was a Parisian-born French opera composer. He studied at the Paris Conservatory under Léo Delibes and Émile Durand, and in 1888 won the Prix de Rome for his cantata Velléda...

 
Dramma bernesco Italian alternative name for opera buffa
Opera buffa
Opera buffa is a genre of opera. It was first used as an informal description of Italian comic operas variously classified by their authors as ‘commedia in musica’, ‘commedia per musica’, ‘dramma bernesco’, ‘dramma comico’, ‘divertimento giocoso' etc...

 
Dramma comico Italian alternative name for opera buffa
Opera buffa
Opera buffa is a genre of opera. It was first used as an informal description of Italian comic operas variously classified by their authors as ‘commedia in musica’, ‘commedia per musica’, ‘dramma bernesco’, ‘dramma comico’, ‘divertimento giocoso' etc...

, 18th/early 19th century. Also used for the genre that replaced it from mid 19th century, with the elimination of recitative
Recitative
Recitative , also known by its Italian name "recitativo" , is a style of delivery in which a singer is allowed to adopt the rhythms of ordinary speech...

s.
Dramma comico per musica Italian alternative name for dramma comico
Dramma di sentimento Italian alternative name for opera semiseria
Opera semiseria
Opera semiseria is an Italian genre of opera, popular in the early and middle 19th century.Related to the opera buffa, opera semiseria contains elements of comedy but also of pathos, sometimes with a pastoral setting. It can usually be distinguished from tragic operas or melodramas by the presence...

 
Dramma eroicomico Italian Literally 'heroic-comic drama'. A late 18th century opera buffa
Opera buffa
Opera buffa is a genre of opera. It was first used as an informal description of Italian comic operas variously classified by their authors as ‘commedia in musica’, ‘commedia per musica’, ‘dramma bernesco’, ‘dramma comico’, ‘divertimento giocoso' etc...

 with some heroic content.
Orlando paladino
Orlando paladino
Orlando paladino , Hob. 28/11, is an opera in three acts by Joseph Haydn which was first performed at Eszterháza on 6 December 1782. The libretto by Nunziano Porta is based on another libretto, Le pazzie d'Orlando, by Carlo Francesco Badini , itself inspired by Ariosto's epic poem Orlando furioso...

(1782), Palmira, regina di Persia
Palmira, regina di Persia
Palmira, regina di Persia is an opera by Antonio Salieri: more specifically, it is a dramma eroicomico. The opera is in two acts and is set to a libretto by Giovanni de Gamerra....

(1795)
Haydn
Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...

, Salieri
Antonio Salieri
Antonio Salieri was a Venetian classical composer, conductor and teacher born in Legnago, south of Verona, in the Republic of Venice, but who spent his adult life and career as a faithful subject of the Habsburg monarchy....

 
Dramma giocoso
Dramma giocoso
Dramma giocoso is the name of a genre of opera common in the mid-18th century. The term is a contraction of "dramma giocoso per musica" and is essentially a description of the text rather than the opera as a whole...

 (plural drammi giocosi)
Italian Literally, 'jocular drama'. Mid 18th century form that developed out of the opera buffa
Opera buffa
Opera buffa is a genre of opera. It was first used as an informal description of Italian comic operas variously classified by their authors as ‘commedia in musica’, ‘commedia per musica’, ‘dramma bernesco’, ‘dramma comico’, ‘divertimento giocoso' etc...

, marked by the addition of serious, even tragic roles and situations to the comic ones. (Effectively a sub-genre of opera buffa
Opera buffa
Opera buffa is a genre of opera. It was first used as an informal description of Italian comic operas variously classified by their authors as ‘commedia in musica’, ‘commedia per musica’, ‘dramma bernesco’, ‘dramma comico’, ‘divertimento giocoso' etc...

 in the 18th century.)
La scuola de' gelosi
La scuola de' gelosi
La scuola de' gelosi is a dramma giocoso in two acts by Antonio Salieri, set to a libretto by Caterino Mazzolà.-Performance history:It was first performed at the Teatro S Moisè in Venice on 27 December 1778...

(1778), La vera costanza
La vera costanza
La vera costanza , Hob. 28/8, is an operatic dramma giocoso by Joseph Haydn. The Italian libretto was a shortened version of the one by Francesco Puttini set by Pasquale Anfossi for the opera of the same name given in Rome in 1776...

(1779), Il viaggio a Reims
Il viaggio a Reims
Il viaggio a Reims, ossia L'albergo del giglio d'oro is an operatic dramma giocoso, originally performed in three acts, by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Balocchi, based in part on Corinne, ou L'Italie by Mme de Staël.Rossini's last opera in the Italian language Il viaggio a...

(1825),
Haydn
Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...

, Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...

, Salieri
Antonio Salieri
Antonio Salieri was a Venetian classical composer, conductor and teacher born in Legnago, south of Verona, in the Republic of Venice, but who spent his adult life and career as a faithful subject of the Habsburg monarchy....

, Sarti
Giuseppe Sarti
Giuseppe Sarti was an Italian opera composer.-Biography:He was born at Faenza. His date of birth is not known, but he was baptised on 1 December 1729. Some earlier sources say he was born on 28 December, but his baptism certificate proves the later date impossible...

, Rossini, Donizetti
Gaetano Donizetti
Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti was an Italian composer from Bergamo, Lombardy. His best-known works are the operas L'elisir d'amore , Lucia di Lammermoor , and Don Pasquale , all in Italian, and the French operas La favorite and La fille du régiment...

 
Dramma giocoso per musica Italian full term for dramma giocoso
Dramma giocoso
Dramma giocoso is the name of a genre of opera common in the mid-18th century. The term is a contraction of "dramma giocoso per musica" and is essentially a description of the text rather than the opera as a whole...

 
Dramma pastorale Italian Literally, 'pastoral drama'. Used for some of the earliest operas down to the 18th century. Eumelio (Agazzari
Agostino Agazzari
Agostino Agazzari was an Italian composer and music theorist.-Life:Agazzari was born in Siena to an aristocratic family. After working in Rome, as a teacher at the Roman College, he returned to Siena in 1607, becoming first organist and later choirmaster of the cathedral there...

, 1606),
La fede riconosciuta (A Scarlatti
Alessandro Scarlatti
Alessandro Scarlatti was an Italian Baroque composer especially famous for his operas and chamber cantatas. He is considered the founder of the Neapolitan school of opera. He was the father of two other composers, Domenico Scarlatti and Pietro Filippo Scarlatti.-Life:Scarlatti was born in...

, 1710)
A Scarlatti
Alessandro Scarlatti
Alessandro Scarlatti was an Italian Baroque composer especially famous for his operas and chamber cantatas. He is considered the founder of the Neapolitan school of opera. He was the father of two other composers, Domenico Scarlatti and Pietro Filippo Scarlatti.-Life:Scarlatti was born in...

, Sarti
Giuseppe Sarti
Giuseppe Sarti was an Italian opera composer.-Biography:He was born at Faenza. His date of birth is not known, but he was baptised on 1 December 1729. Some earlier sources say he was born on 28 December, but his baptism certificate proves the later date impossible...

 
Dramma per musica
Dramma per musica
Dramma per musica is a term which was used by dramatists in Italy and elsewhere between the late-17th and mid-19th centuries...

 (plural drammi per musica)
Italian Literally, 'drama for music', or 'a play intended to be set to music' (i.e. a libretto
Libretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

). Later, synonymous with opera seria
Opera seria
Opera seria is an Italian musical term which refers to the noble and "serious" style of Italian opera that predominated in Europe from the 1710s to c. 1770...

; in the 19th century, sometimes used for serious opera.
Erismena
Erismena
Erismena is an opera in a prologue and three acts by Francesco Cavalli. It was designated as a dramma per musica. The Italian libretto was by Aurelio Aureli, the only work by this writer for Cavalli....

(1656), Tito Manlio
Tito Manlio
Tito Manlio is an opera in three acts by Antonio Vivaldi, to a libretto by Matteo Noris. It was written in celebration of the marriage of Philip of Hesse-Darmstadt , the governor of Mantua, which he had announced at Christmas. Vivaldi quickly composed the opera within five days...

(1719), Paride ed Elena
Paride ed Elena
Paride ed Elena is an opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck, the third and final of his Italian reformist works, following Orfeo ed Euridice and Alceste. Like its predecessors, its libretto was written by Ranieri de' Calzabigi. The opera tells the story of the events between the Judgment of Paris and...

(1770), Idomeneo
Idomeneo
Idomeneo, re di Creta ossia Ilia e Idamante is an Italian language opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The libretto was adapted by Giambattista Varesco from a French text by Antoine Danchet, which had been set to music by André Campra as Idoménée in 1712...

(1781), Rossini's Otello
Otello (Rossini)
Otello is an opera in three acts by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Berio di Salsi, based on Shakespeare's play Othello....

(1816)
A Scarlatti
Alessandro Scarlatti
Alessandro Scarlatti was an Italian Baroque composer especially famous for his operas and chamber cantatas. He is considered the founder of the Neapolitan school of opera. He was the father of two other composers, Domenico Scarlatti and Pietro Filippo Scarlatti.-Life:Scarlatti was born in...

, Cavalli
Francesco Cavalli
Francesco Cavalli was an Italian composer of the early Baroque period. His real name was Pietro Francesco Caletti-Bruni, but he is better known by that of Cavalli, the name of his patron Federico Cavalli, a Venetian nobleman.-Life:Cavalli was born at Crema, Lombardy...

, Vivaldi
Antonio Vivaldi
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi , nicknamed because of his red hair, was an Italian Baroque composer, priest, and virtuoso violinist, born in Venice. Vivaldi is recognized as one of the greatest Baroque composers, and his influence during his lifetime was widespread over Europe...

, Sarti
Giuseppe Sarti
Giuseppe Sarti was an Italian opera composer.-Biography:He was born at Faenza. His date of birth is not known, but he was baptised on 1 December 1729. Some earlier sources say he was born on 28 December, but his baptism certificate proves the later date impossible...

, Gluck
Christoph Willibald Gluck
Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck was an opera composer of the early classical period. After many years at the Habsburg court at Vienna, Gluck brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years...

, Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...

 
Dramma semiserio Italian alternative name for opera semiseria
Opera semiseria
Opera semiseria is an Italian genre of opera, popular in the early and middle 19th century.Related to the opera buffa, opera semiseria contains elements of comedy but also of pathos, sometimes with a pastoral setting. It can usually be distinguished from tragic operas or melodramas by the presence...

 
Torvaldo e Dorliska
Torvaldo e Dorliska
Torvaldo e Dorliska is an operatic dramma semiserio in two act by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto by Cesare Sterbini, based on Les amours du chevalier de Faublas by the revolutionary Jean-Baptiste Louvet de Couvrai, whose work was the source of the Lodoïska libretto set by Luigi Cherubini...

(1815)
Dramma tragicomico Italian alternative name for opera semiseria
Opera semiseria
Opera semiseria is an Italian genre of opera, popular in the early and middle 19th century.Related to the opera buffa, opera semiseria contains elements of comedy but also of pathos, sometimes with a pastoral setting. It can usually be distinguished from tragic operas or melodramas by the presence...

.
Axur, re d'Ormus
Axur, re d'Ormus
Axur, re d'Ormus is an operatic dramma tragicomico in five acts by Antonio Salieri. The libretto was by Lorenzo da Ponte....

(1787)
Entr'acte
Entr'acte
' is French for "between the acts" . It can mean a pause between two parts of a stage production, synonymous to an intermission, but it more often indicates a piece of music performed between acts of a theatrical production...

 
French French name for intermezzo 
Episode lyrique French alternative name for opéra lyrique
Fait historique French Late 18th/19th century. Opéra or opéra comique based on French history, especially popular during the revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

.
L'incendie du Havre (1786) Joseph Barra (Grétry 1794), Le pont de Lody (Méhul
Étienne Méhul
Etienne Nicolas Méhul was a French composer, "the most important opera composer in France during the Revolution." He was also the first composer to be called a "Romantic".-Life:...

 1797),
Milton
Milton (opera)
Milton is an opéra comique in one act by Gaspare Spontini. The French libretto, by Victor-Joseph Étienne de Jouy and Armand-Michel Dieulafoy, is based on the life of the English poet John Milton. Milton was first performed on 27 November 1804 by the Opéra-Comique at the Salle Feydeau in Paris . It...

(1804)
Grétry, Méhul
Étienne Méhul
Etienne Nicolas Méhul was a French composer, "the most important opera composer in France during the Revolution." He was also the first composer to be called a "Romantic".-Life:...

, Spontini
Gaspare Spontini
Gaspare Luigi Pacifico Spontini was an Italian opera composer and conductor, extremely celebrated in his time, though largely forgotten after his death.-Biography:...

 
Farsa
Farsa
Farsa is a genre of opera, associated with Venice in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It is also sometimes called farsetta....

 (plural farse)
Italian Literally, 'farce'. A form of one-act opera, sometimes with dancing, associated with Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

, especially the Teatro San Moisè
Teatro San Moisè
The Teatro San Moisè was an opera house in Venice, active from 1640 to 1818. It was in a prominent location near the Palazzo Giustinian and the church of San Moisè at the entrance to the Grand Canal....

, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
La cambiale di matrimonio
La cambiale di matrimonio
La cambiale di matrimonio is a one-act operatic farsa comica by Gioachino Rossini to a libretto by Gaetano Rossi. The libretto was based on the play by Camillo Federici and a previous libretto by Giuseppe Checcherini for Carlo Coccia's 1807 opera, Il matrimonio per lettera di cambio...

(1810), L'inganno felice
L'inganno felice
L'inganno felice is an opera in one act by Gioachino Rossini with a libretto by Giuseppe Maria Foppa. Foppa reworked the libretto which Giuseppe Palomba had written for an opera of the same name by Paisiello ....

(1812), La scala di seta
La scala di seta
La scala di seta is an operatic farsa comica in one act by Gioachino Rossini to a libretto by Giuseppe Maria Foppa. It was first performed in Venice, Italy at the Teatro San Moisè on May 9, 1812...

(1812), Il signor Bruschino
Il signor Bruschino
Il signor Bruschino, ossia Il figlio per azzardo is a one act operatic farce by Gioachino Rossini to a libretto by Giuseppe Maria Foppa, based upon the play Le fils par hasard, ou ruse et folie by Alissan de Chazet and E.T.M. Ourry...

(1813), Adina
Adina (opera)
Adina is an operatic farsa in one act by Gioachino Rossini with a libretto by Marchese Gherardo Bevilacqua-Aldobrandini. The opera develops the popular theme of the "abduction from the seraglio"....

(1818)
Rossini
Farsetta Italian alternative name for farsa
Feenmärchen German alternative name for Märchenoper
Festa teatrale
Festa teatrale
The term festa teatrale refers to a genre of drama, and of opera in particular. The genre cannot be rigidly defined, and in any case feste teatrali tend to be split into two different sets: feste teatrali divided by acts are operas, while works in this genre performed without division, or merely...

 
Italian A grander version of the azione teatrale
Azione teatrale
Azione teatrale is a genre of opera, popular in Italy in the late 17th and 18th centuries...

. An opera given as part of a court celebration (of a marriage etc.) Typically associated with Vienna.
Il pomo d'oro (Cesti
Antonio Cesti
Antonio Cesti , known today primarily as an Italian composer of the Baroque era, he was also a singer , and organist. He was "the most celebrated Italian musician of his generation".- Biography :...

, 1668)
Draghi
Antonio Draghi
Antonio Draghi was a Baroque composer. He possibly was the brother of Giovanni Battista Draghi.Draghi was born at Rimini in Italy, and was one of the most prolific composers of his time. His contribution to the development of Italian opera was particularly significant...

, Fux
Johann Fux
Johann Joseph Fux was an Austrian composer, music theorist and pedagogue of the late Baroque era. He is most famous as the author of Gradus ad Parnassum, a treatise on counterpoint, which has become the single most influential book on the Palestrina style of Renaissance polyphony...

, Caldara
Antonio Caldara
Antonio Caldara was an Italian Baroque composer.Caldara was born in Venice , the son of a violinist. He became a chorister at St Mark's in Venice, where he learned several instruments, probably under the instruction of Giovanni Legrenzi...

Geistliche Oper German Literally, 'sacred opera'. Genre invented by the Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n composer Anton Rubinstein
Anton Rubinstein
Anton Grigorevich Rubinstein was a Russian-Jewish pianist, composer and conductor. As a pianist he was regarded as a rival of Franz Liszt, and he ranks amongst the great keyboard virtuosos...

 for his German-language, staged opera-oratorios.
Das verlorene Paradies (Rubinstein, 1856) Der Thurm zu Babel (1870), Sulamith (1883), Moses (1894) Christus (Rubinstein, 1895) Rubinstein
Anton Rubinstein
Anton Grigorevich Rubinstein was a Russian-Jewish pianist, composer and conductor. As a pianist he was regarded as a rival of Franz Liszt, and he ranks amongst the great keyboard virtuosos...

 
Género chico
Género chico
Género chico is a Spanish genre of short light musical plays. It is a subgenre of zarzuela, the Spanish operetta...

 
Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

 
Literally, 'little genre'. A type of zarzuela
Zarzuela
Zarzuela is a Spanish lyric-dramatic genre that alternates between spoken and sung scenes, the latter incorporating operatic and popular song, as well as dance...

, differing from zarzuela grande by its brevity and popular appeal.
Ruperto Chapí
Ruperto Chapí
Ruperto Chapí y Lorente was a Spanish composer, and co-founder of the Sociedad General de Autores y Editores.Chapí was born at Villena, the son of a Valencian barber. He trained in his home town and Madrid...

 
Género grande Spanish alternative name for zarzuela
Zarzuela
Zarzuela is a Spanish lyric-dramatic genre that alternates between spoken and sung scenes, the latter incorporating operatic and popular song, as well as dance...

 grande
Grand opéra
Grand Opera
Grand opera is a genre of 19th-century opera generally in four or five acts, characterised by large-scale casts and orchestras, and lavish and spectacular design and stage effects, normally with plots based on or around dramatic historic events...

 
French 19th-century genre, usually with 4 or 5 acts, large-scale casts and orchestras, and spectacular staging, often based on historical themes. Particularly associated with the Paris Opéra
Paris Opera
The Paris Opera is the primary opera company of Paris, France. It was founded in 1669 by Louis XIV as the Académie d'Opéra and shortly thereafter was placed under the leadership of Jean-Baptiste Lully and renamed the Académie Royale de Musique...

 (1820s to c. 1850), but similar works were created in other countries.
La muette de Portici
La muette de Portici
La muette de Portici originally called Masaniello, ou La muette de Portici, is an opera in five acts by Daniel Auber, with a libretto by Germain Delavigne, revised by Eugène Scribe...

(1828)
Robert le diable
Robert le diable (opera)
Robert le diable is an opera by Giacomo Meyerbeer, often regarded as the first grand opera. The libretto was written by Eugène Scribe and Casimir Delavigne and has little connection to the medieval legend of Robert the Devil. Originally planned as a three-act opéra comique, "Meyerbeer persuaded...

(1831), La Juive
La Juive
La Juive is a grand opera in five acts by Fromental Halévy to an original French libretto by Eugène Scribe; it was first performed at the Opéra, Paris, on February 23, 1835.-Composition history:...

(1835), Les Huguenots
Les Huguenots
Les Huguenots is a French opera by Giacomo Meyerbeer, one of the most popular and spectacular examples of the style of grand opera. The opera is in five acts and premiered in Paris in 1836. The libretto was written by Eugène Scribe and Émile Deschamps....

(1836)
Patrie! (Paladilhe
Emile Paladilhe
Émile Paladilhe was a French composer of the late romantic period.-Biography:Émile Paladilhe was born in Montpellier. He was a musical child prodigy, and moved from his home in the south of France to Paris to begin his studies at the Conservatoire de Paris at age 10...

, 1886)
Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer was a noted German opera composer, and the first great exponent of "grand opera." At his peak in the 1830s and 1840s, he was the most famous and successful composer of opera in Europe, yet he is rarely performed today.-Early years:He was born to a Jewish family in Tasdorf , near...

, Halévy
Fromental Halévy
Jacques-François-Fromental-Élie Halévy, usually known as Fromental Halévy , was a French composer. He is known today largely for his opera La Juive.-Early career:...

, Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...

 
Handlung German Literally 'action' or 'drama'. Wagner's description for Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde is an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the romance by Gottfried von Straßburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting...

.
Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

 
Intermezzo  Italian Comic relief inserted between acts of opere serie
Opera seria
Opera seria is an Italian musical term which refers to the noble and "serious" style of Italian opera that predominated in Europe from the 1710s to c. 1770...

in the early 18th century, typically involving slapstick
Slapstick
Slapstick is a type of comedy involving exaggerated violence and activities which may exceed the boundaries of common sense.- Origins :The phrase comes from the batacchio or bataccio — called the 'slap stick' in English — a club-like object composed of two wooden slats used in Commedia dell'arte...

, disguises etc. Spread throughout Europe In the 1730s. Predated Opera buffa
Opera buffa
Opera buffa is a genre of opera. It was first used as an informal description of Italian comic operas variously classified by their authors as ‘commedia in musica’, ‘commedia per musica’, ‘dramma bernesco’, ‘dramma comico’, ‘divertimento giocoso' etc...

.
Frappolone e Florinetta (Gasparini
Francesco Gasparini
Francesco Gasparini was an Italian Baroque composer and teacher whose works were performed throughout Italy, and also on occasion in Germany and England....

?, 1706)
La serva padrona
La serva padrona
La serva padrona is an opera buffa by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi to a libretto by Gennaro Antonio Federico, after the play by Jacopo Angello Nelli. The opera is only 45 minutes long and was originally performed as an intermezzo between the acts of a larger serious opera...

(1733)
Pergolesi
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi was an Italian composer, violinist and organist.-Biography:Born at Iesi, Pergolesi studied music there under a local musician, Francesco Santini, before going to Naples in 1725, where he studied under Gaetano Greco and Francesco Feo among others...

, Hasse
Johann Adolph Hasse
Johann Adolph Hasse was an 18th-century German composer, singer and teacher of music. Immensely popular in his time, Hasse was best known for his prolific operatic output, though he also composed a considerable quantity of sacred music...

 
Liederspiel German Literally 'song-play'. Early 19th century genre in which existing lyrics, often well-known, were set to new music and inserted into a spoken play. Lieb' und Treue (Reichardt
Johann Friedrich Reichardt
Johann Friedrich Reichardt was a German composer, writer and music critic.-Early life:Reichardt was born in Königsberg, East Prussia, to lutenist and Stadtmusiker Johann Reichardt . Johann Friedrich began his musical training, in violin, keyboard, and lute, as a child...

, 1800)
Kunst und Liebe (Reichardt
Johann Friedrich Reichardt
Johann Friedrich Reichardt was a German composer, writer and music critic.-Early life:Reichardt was born in Königsberg, East Prussia, to lutenist and Stadtmusiker Johann Reichardt . Johann Friedrich began his musical training, in violin, keyboard, and lute, as a child...

, 1807)
Reichardt
Johann Friedrich Reichardt
Johann Friedrich Reichardt was a German composer, writer and music critic.-Early life:Reichardt was born in Königsberg, East Prussia, to lutenist and Stadtmusiker Johann Reichardt . Johann Friedrich began his musical training, in violin, keyboard, and lute, as a child...

 Lindpaintner
Peter Josef von Lindpaintner
Peter Josef von Lindpaintner was a German composer and conductor.Born in Koblenz as the son of a tenor, he studied with Peter Winter and Joseph Graetz. From 1819 onwards he was based in Stuttgart...

 
Lokalposse German Specialized form of Posse mit Gesang
Posse mit Gesang
Posse mit Gesang is a form of popular German-language music drama, that developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Early examples are sometimes called 'Possenspil' or 'Possenspiel'...

 concentrating on daily life themes, associated with the playwright Karl von Marinelli
Karl von Marinelli
Karl Edler von Marinelli was an actor, theatre manager and playwright....

.
Märchenoper German 'Fairy-tale opera', a genre of 19th century opera usually with a supernatural theme. Similar to Zauberoper. Hänsel und Gretel (1893) Humperdinck
Engelbert Humperdinck
Engelbert Humperdinck was a German composer, best known for his opera, Hänsel und Gretel. Humperdinck was born at Siegburg in the Rhine Province; at the age of 67 he died in Neustrelitz, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.-Life:After receiving piano lessons, Humperdinck produced his first composition...

, Siegfried Wagner
Siegfried Wagner
Siegfried Wagner was a German composer and conductor, the son of Richard Wagner. He was an opera composer and the artistic director of the Bayreuth Festival from 1908 to 1930.-Life:...

 
Märchenspiel German alternative name for Märchenoper
Melodramma
Melodramma
Melodramma is an Italian term for opera, used in a much narrower sense by English writers to discuss developments in the early 19th century Italian libretto...

 
Italian 19th century. General term for opera sometimes used instead of more specific genres.
Melodramma serio Italian alternative name for opera seria
Musikdrama German Term associated with the later operas of Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

 but repudiated by him. Nevertheless widely used by post-Wagnerian composers.
Tiefland
Tiefland (opera)
Tiefland is an opera in a prologue and three acts by Eugen d'Albert, to a libretto in German by Rudolph Lothar. Based on the 1896 Catalan play Terra baixa by Àngel Guimerà, Tiefland was d'Albert's seventh opera, and is the one which is now the best known.-Performance history:Tiefland was first...

 (1903), Salome
Salome (opera)
Salome is an opera in one act by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by the composer, based on Hedwig Lachmann’s German translation of the French play Salomé by Oscar Wilde. Strauss dedicated the opera to his friend Sir Edgar Speyer....

 (1905), Der Golem (d'Albert
Eugen d'Albert
Eugen Francis Charles d'Albert was a Scottish-born German pianist and composer.Educated in Britain, d'Albert showed early musical talent and, at the age of seventeen, he won a scholarship to study in Austria...

 1926)
d'Albert
Eugen d'Albert
Eugen Francis Charles d'Albert was a Scottish-born German pianist and composer.Educated in Britain, d'Albert showed early musical talent and, at the age of seventeen, he won a scholarship to study in Austria...

, Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...

 
Opéra French Referring to individual works: 1. 18th century. Occasionally used for operas outside specific, standard genres. 2. 19th/20th century: an opéra is a "French lyric stage work sung throughout" in contrast to an opéra comique
Opéra comique
Opéra comique is a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged out of the popular opéra comiques en vaudevilles of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent , which combined existing popular tunes with spoken sections...

 that mixed singing with spoken dialogue. Opéra (which included grand opéra
Grand Opera
Grand opera is a genre of 19th-century opera generally in four or five acts, characterised by large-scale casts and orchestras, and lavish and spectacular design and stage effects, normally with plots based on or around dramatic historic events...

), was associated with the Paris Opéra
Paris Opera
The Paris Opera is the primary opera company of Paris, France. It was founded in 1669 by Louis XIV as the Académie d'Opéra and shortly thereafter was placed under the leadership of Jean-Baptiste Lully and renamed the Académie Royale de Musique...

 (the Opéra). Also used for some works with a serious tone at the Opéra-Comique
Opéra-Comique
The Opéra-Comique is a Parisian opera company, which was founded around 1714 by some of the popular theatres of the Parisian fairs. In 1762 the company was merged with, and for a time took the name of its chief rival the Comédie-Italienne at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and was also called the...

.
Naïs
Naïs
Naïs is an opera by Jean-Philippe Rameau first performed on 22 April 1749 at the Opéra in Paris. It takes the form of a pastorale héroïque in three acts and a prologue. The librettist was Louis de Cahusac, in the fourth collaboration between him and Rameau...

(1749), Fernand Cortez
Fernand Cortez
Fernand Cortez, ou La conquête du Mexique is an opéra in three acts by Gaspare Spontini with a French libretto by Etienne de Jouy and Joseph-Alphonse d’Esmenard...

(1809), Moïse et Pharaon
Mosè in Egitto
Mosè in Egitto is a three-act opera written by Gioachino Rossini to a libretto by Andrea Leone Tottola, which was based on a play by Francesco Ringhieri, L'Osiride, of 1760....

 (1827), Les vêpres siciliennes
Les vêpres siciliennes
Les vêpres siciliennes is an opéra in five acts by the Italian romantic composer Giuseppe Verdi set to a French libretto by Charles Duveyrier and Eugène Scribe from their work Le duc d'Albe, which was written in 1838 and offered to Halevy and Donizetti before Verdi...

(1855), Roméo et Juliette
Roméo et Juliette
Roméo et Juliette is an opéra in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, based on The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. It was first performed at the Théâtre Lyrique , Paris on 27 April 1867...

(1867)
Grétry, Spontini
Gaspare Spontini
Gaspare Luigi Pacifico Spontini was an Italian opera composer and conductor, extremely celebrated in his time, though largely forgotten after his death.-Biography:...

, Rossini, Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...

, Gounod
Charles Gounod
Charles-François Gounod was a French composer, known for his Ave Maria as well as his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette.-Biography:...

 
Opéra-ballet
Opéra-ballet
Opéra-ballet was a popular genre of French Baroque opera, "that grew out of the ballets à entrées of the early seventeeth century". It differed from the more elevated tragédie en musique as practised by Jean-Baptiste Lully in several ways...

 
French Genre with more dancing than tragédie en musique. Usually with a prologue and a number of self-contained acts (called entrées), following a theme. L'Europe galante
L'Europe galante
L'Europe galante is an opéra-ballet in a prologue and four entrées by André Campra, The French text was by Antoine Houdar de la Motte....

(1697)
Les élémens
Les élémens
Les élémens , or Ballet des élémens, is an opera-ballet by the French composers André Cardinal Destouches and Michel Richard Delalande . It has a prologue and four entrées. The libretto was written by Pierre-Charles Roy.Destouches was responsible for most of the music...

(1721), Les Indes galantes
Les Indes galantes
Les Indes galantes is an opéra-ballet consisting of a prologue and four entrées by Jean-Philippe Rameau with libretto by Louis Fuzelier...

(1735), Les fêtes d'Hébé
Les fêtes d'Hébé
Les fêtes d'Hébé, ou Les talents lyriques is an opéra-ballet in a prologue and three entrées by the French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau. The libretto was written by Antoine Gautier de Montdorge...

(1739)
Destouches
André Cardinal Destouches
André Cardinal Destouches was a French composer best known for the opéra-ballet Les élémens....

, Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau was one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the Baroque era. He replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French composer for the harpsichord of his time, alongside François...

 
Opera ballo Italian 19th-century Italian grand opéra
Grand Opera
Grand opera is a genre of 19th-century opera generally in four or five acts, characterised by large-scale casts and orchestras, and lavish and spectacular design and stage effects, normally with plots based on or around dramatic historic events...

.
Il Guarany
Il Guarany
Il Guarany is an opera ballo composed by Antônio Carlos Gomes, based on the novel O Guarani, written by José de Alencar. The libretto was written by Antonio Scalvini and Carlo D'Ormeville.-Performance history:...

(1870), Aida
Aida
Aida sometimes spelled Aïda, is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni, based on a scenario written by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette...

(1871), La Gioconda (opera)
La Gioconda (opera)
La Gioconda is an opera in four acts by Amilcare Ponchielli set to an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on Angelo, tyran de Padoue, a play in prose by Victor Hugo, dating from 1835...

(1876)
Gomes
Antônio Carlos Gomes
Antônio Carlos Gomes was the first New World composer whose work was accepted by Europe.-Life:He was born in Campinas, Brazil, son of Maestro Manuel José Gomes and Fabiana Maria Jaguari Cardoso....

, Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...

, Ponchielli
Amilcare Ponchielli
Amilcare Ponchielli was an Italian composer, largely of operas.-Biography:Born in Paderno Fasolaro, now Paderno Ponchielli, near Cremona, Ponchielli won a scholarship at the age of nine to study music at the Milan Conservatory, writing his first symphony by the time he was ten years old.Two years...

 
Opera buffa
Opera buffa
Opera buffa is a genre of opera. It was first used as an informal description of Italian comic operas variously classified by their authors as ‘commedia in musica’, ‘commedia per musica’, ‘dramma bernesco’, ‘dramma comico’, ‘divertimento giocoso' etc...

 (plural, opere buffe)
Italian Major genre of comic opera in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Originating in Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...

 (especially the Teatro dei Fiorentini), its popularity spread during the 1730s, notably to Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

 where development was influenced by the playwright/librettist Goldoni
Carlo Goldoni
Carlo Osvaldo Goldoni was an Italian playwright and librettist from the Republic of Venice. His works include some of Italy's most famous and best-loved plays. Audiences have admired the plays of Goldoni for their ingenious mix of wit and honesty...

. Typically in three acts, unlike the intermezzo. Contrasting in style, subject matter, and the use of dialect with the formal, aristocratic opera seria
Opera seria
Opera seria is an Italian musical term which refers to the noble and "serious" style of Italian opera that predominated in Europe from the 1710s to c. 1770...

.
La Cilla (Michelangelo Faggioli, 1706) Li zite 'ngalera
Li zite 'ngalera
Li zite 'ngalera is a commedia per musica in three acts by the Italian composer Leonardo Vinci. The libretto, by Bernardo Saddumene, is written in Neapolitan dialect...

(1722), Il filosofo di campagna (Galuppi, 1754), La buona figliuola
La buona figliuola
La Cecchina, ossia La buona figliuola is an opera buffa in three Acts by Niccolò Piccinni. The libretto, by Carlo Goldoni, is based on Samuel Richardson's novel Pamela. This was Piccinni's most successful Italian opera. There was a sequel entitled La buona figliuola maritata by the same composer...

(1760), Le nozze di Figaro (1786), Il barbiere di Siviglia (1816), Don Pasquale
Don Pasquale
Don Pasquale is an opera buffa, or comic opera, in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The librettist Giovanni Ruffini wrote the Italian language libretto after Angelo Anelli's libretto for Stefano Pavesi's Ser Marcantonio ....

(1843)
Crispino e la comare
Crispino e la comare
Crispino e la comare is an opera by Luigi Ricci and Federico Ricci with an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave.-Performance history:The premiere took place on 28 February 1850 at the Teatro San Benedetto in Venice....

(1850)
Vinci
Leonardo Vinci
Leonardo Vinci was an Italian composer, best known for his operas.He was born at Strongoli and educated at Naples under Gaetano Greco in the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo. He first became known for his opere buffe in Neapolitan dialect in 1719; he also composed many opere serie...

, Galuppi, Duni, Piccinni
Niccolò Piccinni
Niccolò Piccinni was an Italian composer of symphonies, sacred music, chamber music, and opera. Although he is somewhat obscure, even to music lovers today, Piccinni was one of the most popular composers of opera—particularly the Neapolitan opera buffa—of his day...

, Sacchini
Antonio Sacchini
Antonio Maria Gasparo Sacchini was an Italian opera composer.Sacchini was born in Florence, but was raised in Naples, where he received his musical education at the San Onofrio conservatory. He wrote his first operas in Naples, thereafter moving to Venice, then London and eventually Paris, where...

, Salieri
Antonio Salieri
Antonio Salieri was a Venetian classical composer, conductor and teacher born in Legnago, south of Verona, in the Republic of Venice, but who spent his adult life and career as a faithful subject of the Habsburg monarchy....

, Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...

, Rossini 
Opéra bouffe
Opéra bouffe
Opéra bouffe is a genre of late 19th-century French operetta, closely associated with Jacques Offenbach, who produced many of them at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens that gave its name to the form....

 (plural, opéras bouffes)
French Comic genre of opérette
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...

 including satire, parody and farce. Closely connected with Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....

 and the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens where most of them were produced.
Orphée aux enfers (1858) La belle Hélène
La belle Hélène
La belle Hélène , opéra bouffe in three acts, is an operetta by Jacques Offenbach to an original French libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy...

(1864), La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein
La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein
La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein is an opéra bouffe , in three acts and four tableaux by Jacques Offenbach to an original French libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy...

(1867), La Périchole
La Périchole
La Périchole is an opéra bouffe in three acts by Jacques Offenbach. Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy wrote the French-language libretto based on the 1829 one act play Le carrosse du Saint-Sacrement by Prosper Mérimée, which was revived on 13 March 1850 at the Théâtre-Français...

(1868)
Les mamelles de Tirésias
Les mamelles de Tirésias
Les mamelles de Tirésias is a surrealist two-act opéra bouffe by Francis Poulenc, based on the play of the same title by Guillaume Apollinaire, which was written in 1903 but first performed in 1917...

(1947)
Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....

, Hervé
Hervé (composer)
Hervé , real name Louis Auguste Florimond Ronger, was a French singer, composer, librettist, conductor and scene painter, whom Ernest Newman, following Reynaldo Hahn, credited with inventing the genre of operetta in Paris.-Life:Hervé was born in Houdain near Arras...

, Lecocq 
Opéra bouffon
Opéra bouffon
Opéra bouffon is the French term for the Italian genre of opera called opera buffa performed in 18th-century France, either in the original language or in French translation...

 
French Opera buffa
Opera buffa
Opera buffa is a genre of opera. It was first used as an informal description of Italian comic operas variously classified by their authors as ‘commedia in musica’, ‘commedia per musica’, ‘dramma bernesco’, ‘dramma comico’, ‘divertimento giocoso' etc...

 as performed in 18th-century France, either in the original language or in translation. (Sometimes confused with opéra comique
Opéra comique
Opéra comique is a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged out of the popular opéra comiques en vaudevilles of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent , which combined existing popular tunes with spoken sections...

.)
Le roi Théodore à Venise (Paisiello, 1786)
Opéra comique
Opéra comique
Opéra comique is a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged out of the popular opéra comiques en vaudevilles of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent , which combined existing popular tunes with spoken sections...

 (plural, opéras comiques)
French Literally, 'comic opera'. Genre including aria
Aria
An aria in music was originally any expressive melody, usually, but not always, performed by a singer. The term is now used almost exclusively to describe a self-contained piece for one voice usually with orchestral accompaniment...

s, a certain amount of spoken dialogue (and sometimes recitatives). Closely associated with works written for the Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 Opéra-Comique
Opéra-Comique
The Opéra-Comique is a Parisian opera company, which was founded around 1714 by some of the popular theatres of the Parisian fairs. In 1762 the company was merged with, and for a time took the name of its chief rival the Comédie-Italienne at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and was also called the...

. Themes included were serious and tragic, as well as light. Tradition developed from popular early 18th century comédies en vaudevilles
Comédie en vaudeville
The Comédie en vaudeville was a theatrical entertainment which began in Paris towards the end of the 17th century, in which comedy was enlivened though lyrics using the melody of popular vaudeville songs.-Evolution:...

 and lasted into 20th century with many changes in style.
Télémaque (Jean-Claude Gillier, 1715) Les troqueurs
Les troqueurs
Les troqueurs is a comic opera in one act by the French composer Antoine Dauvergne, first performed at the Foire Saint-Laurent in Paris on 30 July 1753 and revived by the Opéra-Comique at the Hôtel de Bourgogne on 26 February 1762...

(1753), La dame blanche
La Dame blanche
La dame blanche is an opéra comique in three acts by the French composer François-Adrien Boieldieu. The libretto was written by Eugène Scribe and is based on episodes from no less than five of the works by Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott, including his novels The Monastery, Guy Mannering, and The...

(1825), Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...

(1875), Lakmé
Lakmé
Lakmé is an opera in three acts by Léo Delibes to a French libretto by Edmond Gondinet and Philippe Gille. Delibes wrote the score during 1881–82 with its first performance on 14 April 1883 at the Opéra Comique in Paris. Set in British India in the mid 19th century, Lakmé is based on the 1880 novel...

(1883)
Philidor
François-André Danican Philidor
François-André Danican Philidor , often referred to as André Danican Philidor during his lifetime, was a French composer and chess player. He contributed to the early development of the opéra comique...

, Monsigny
Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny
Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny was a French composer and a member of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts .He is considered alongside André Grétry and François-André Danican Philidor to have been the founder of a new musical genre, the opéra comique, laying a path for other French composers such as...

, Grétry, Boieldieu
François-Adrien Boïeldieu
François-Adrien Boieldieu was a French composer, mainly of operas, often called "the French Mozart".-Biography:...

, Auber
Daniel Auber
Daniel François Esprit Auber was a French composer.-Biography:The son of a Paris print-seller, Auber was born in Caen in Normandy. Though his father expected him to continue in the print-selling business, he also allowed his son to learn how to play several musical instruments...

,
Opéra comique en vaudeville French alternative name for comédie en vaudeville
Comédie en vaudeville
The Comédie en vaudeville was a theatrical entertainment which began in Paris towards the end of the 17th century, in which comedy was enlivened though lyrics using the melody of popular vaudeville songs.-Evolution:...

Opéra féerie
Opéra féerie
Opéra féerie is a French genre of opera or opéra-ballet based on fairy tales, often with elements of magic in their stories...

 (plural, opéras féeries)
French 18th/19th century genre of works based on fairy tales, often involving magic. Zémire et Azor
Zémire et Azor
Zémire et Azor is an opéra comique, described as a comédie-ballet mêlée de chants et de danses, in four acts by the Belgian composer André Grétry, The French text was by Jean François Marmontel based on La Belle et la bête by Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont, and Amour pour amour by P. C....

(1771), Cendrillon
Cendrillon (Isouard)
Cendrillon is a French opera in three acts by the Maltese-born composer Nicolas Isouard. It takes the form of an opéra comique with spoken dialogue between the musical numbers, although its authors designated it an opéra série. The libretto, by Charles Guillaume Etienne, is based on Charles...

(1810), La belle au bois dormant
La belle au bois dormant (opera)
La belle au bois dormant is an opera in three acts by Michele Carafa to a French libretto by François-Antonine-Eugène de Planard after the tale by Charles Perrault....

(1825)
Carafa
Michele Carafa
Michele Enrico Carafa di Colobrano was an Italian opera composer. He was born in Naples and studied in Paris with Luigi Cherubini. He was Professor of counterpoint at the Paris Conservatoire from 1840 to 1858...

, Isouard
Nicolas Isouard
Nicolas Isouard was a Maltese composer.Isouard studied in Valletta with Francesco Azopardi, in Palermo with Giuseppe Amendola, and in Naples with Nicola Sala and Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi. From 1795 he was organist at St...

 
Opéra lyrique French Literally, 'lyric opera'. Late 18th/19th century, less grandiose than grand opéra, but without the spoken dialogue of opéra comique
Opéra comique
Opéra comique is a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged out of the popular opéra comiques en vaudevilles of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent , which combined existing popular tunes with spoken sections...

. (Term applied more to the genre as a whole than individual operas.)
Gounod
Charles Gounod
Charles-François Gounod was a French composer, known for his Ave Maria as well as his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette.-Biography:...

, Ambroise Thomas
Ambroise Thomas
Charles Louis Ambroise Thomas was a French composer, best known for his operas Mignon and Hamlet and as Director of the Conservatoire de Paris from 1871 till his death.-Biography:"There is good music, there is bad music, and then there is Ambroise Thomas."- Emmanuel Chabrier-Early life...

, Massenet
Jules Massenet
Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet was a French composer best known for his operas. His compositions were very popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and he ranks as one of the greatest melodists of his era. Soon after his death, Massenet's style went out of fashion, and many of his operas...

 
Opera semiseria
Opera semiseria
Opera semiseria is an Italian genre of opera, popular in the early and middle 19th century.Related to the opera buffa, opera semiseria contains elements of comedy but also of pathos, sometimes with a pastoral setting. It can usually be distinguished from tragic operas or melodramas by the presence...

 
Italian Literally, 'semi-serious opera'. Early/mid 19th century genre employing comedy but also, unlike opera buffa
Opera buffa
Opera buffa is a genre of opera. It was first used as an informal description of Italian comic operas variously classified by their authors as ‘commedia in musica’, ‘commedia per musica’, ‘dramma bernesco’, ‘dramma comico’, ‘divertimento giocoso' etc...

, pathos, often with a pastoral setting. Typically included a basso buffo role.
Camilla (Paer
Ferdinando Paer
-Biography:Paer was born at Parma. His father was a trumpeter with the Ducal Bodyguards and also performed at church and court events. His name, Ferdinando, was after Duke Ferdinand of Parma and was given to him by Archduchess Maria Amalia of Austria, Duke Ferdinand's wife...

, 1799)
La gazza ladra
La gazza ladra
La gazza ladra is a melodramma or opera semiseria in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The libretto was by Giovanni Gherardini after La pie voleuse by JMT Badouin d'Aubigny and Louis-Charles Caigniez....

(1817), Linda di Chamounix
Linda di Chamounix
Linda di Chamounix is an operatic melodramma semiserio in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The Italian libretto was written by Gaetano Rossi. It premiered in Vienna, at the Kärntnertortheater, on May 19, 1842.-Performance history:...

(1842)
Violetta (Mercadante
Saverio Mercadante
Giuseppe Saverio Raffaele Mercadante was an Italian composer, particularly of operas. While Mercadante may not have retained the international celebrity of Gaetano Donizetti or Gioachino Rossini beyond his own lifetime, he composed as impressive a number of works as either; and his development of...

, 1853)
Paer
Ferdinando Paer
-Biography:Paer was born at Parma. His father was a trumpeter with the Ducal Bodyguards and also performed at church and court events. His name, Ferdinando, was after Duke Ferdinand of Parma and was given to him by Archduchess Maria Amalia of Austria, Duke Ferdinand's wife...

, Rossini, Donizetti
Gaetano Donizetti
Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti was an Italian composer from Bergamo, Lombardy. His best-known works are the operas L'elisir d'amore , Lucia di Lammermoor , and Don Pasquale , all in Italian, and the French operas La favorite and La fille du régiment...

 
Opera seria
Opera seria
Opera seria is an Italian musical term which refers to the noble and "serious" style of Italian opera that predominated in Europe from the 1710s to c. 1770...

 (plural, opere serie)
Italian Literally, 'serious opera'. Dominant style of opera in the 18th century, not only in Italy but throughout Europe (except France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

). Rigorously formal works using texts, mainly based on ancient history, by poet-librettists led by Metastasio
Metastasio
Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi, better known by his pseudonym of Metastasio, was an Italian poet and librettist, considered the most important writer of opera seria libretti.-Early life:...

. Patronized by the court and the nobility. Star singers were often castrati
Castrato
A castrato is a man with a singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto voice produced either by castration of the singer before puberty or one who, because of an endocrinological condition, never reaches sexual maturity.Castration before puberty prevents a boy's...

.
Griselda
Griselda (A. Scarlatti)
Griselda is an opera seria in three acts by the Italian composer Alessandro Scarlatti, the last of Scarlatti’s operas to survive completely today. The libretto is by Apostolo Zeno, with revisions by an anonymous author...

(1721), Cleofide (Hasse, 1731), Ariodante
Ariodante
Ariodante is an opera seria in three acts by Handel. The anonymous Italian libretto was based on a work by Antonio Salvi, which in turn was adapted from Canti 5 and 6 of Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso...

(1735), Alceste
Alceste (Gluck)
Alceste is an opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck from 1767. The libretto was written by Ranieri de' Calzabigi and based on the play Alcestis by Euripides. The premiere took place in Vienna.-Preface and reforms:...

(1767), La clemenza di Tito
La clemenza di Tito
La clemenza di Tito , K. 621, is an opera seria in two acts composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Caterino Mazzolà, after Metastasio...

(1791)
Alessandro Scarlatti
Alessandro Scarlatti
Alessandro Scarlatti was an Italian Baroque composer especially famous for his operas and chamber cantatas. He is considered the founder of the Neapolitan school of opera. He was the father of two other composers, Domenico Scarlatti and Pietro Filippo Scarlatti.-Life:Scarlatti was born in...

, Vivaldi
Antonio Vivaldi
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi , nicknamed because of his red hair, was an Italian Baroque composer, priest, and virtuoso violinist, born in Venice. Vivaldi is recognized as one of the greatest Baroque composers, and his influence during his lifetime was widespread over Europe...

, Hasse
Johann Adolph Hasse
Johann Adolph Hasse was an 18th-century German composer, singer and teacher of music. Immensely popular in his time, Hasse was best known for his prolific operatic output, though he also composed a considerable quantity of sacred music...

, Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...

, Gluck
Christoph Willibald Gluck
Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck was an opera composer of the early classical period. After many years at the Habsburg court at Vienna, Gluck brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years...

, Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...

Opéra-tragédie French alternative name for tragédie en musique
Operetta
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...

 
English (from Italian) Literally, 'little opera'. Derived from English versions of Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....

's opéras bouffes
Opéra bouffe
Opéra bouffe is a genre of late 19th-century French operetta, closely associated with Jacques Offenbach, who produced many of them at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens that gave its name to the form....

 performed in London in the 1860s. Some of the earliest native operettas in English were written by Frederic Clay
Frederic Clay
Frederic Emes Clay was an English composer known principally for his music written for the stage. Clay, a great friend of Arthur Sullivan's, wrote four comic operas with W. S...

 and Sullivan
Arthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer of Irish and Italian ancestry. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado...

. (W. S. Gilbert
W. S. Gilbert
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S...

 and Sullivan wished to distinguish their joint works
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...

 from continental operetta and later called them 'comic operas' or Savoy opera
Savoy opera
The Savoy Operas denote a style of comic opera that developed in Victorian England in the late 19th century, with W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan as the original and most successful practitioners. The name is derived from the Savoy Theatre, which impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte built to house...

s).
Cox and Box
Cox and Box
Cox and Box; or, The Long-Lost Brothers, is a one-act comic opera with a libretto by F. C. Burnand and music by Arthur Sullivan, based on the 1847 farce Box and Cox by John Maddison Morton. It was Sullivan's first successful comic opera. The story concerns a landlord who lets a room to two...

(1866)
Princess Toto
Princess Toto
Princess Toto is a three-act comic opera by W. S. Gilbert and his long-time collaborator Frederic Clay. It opened on 24 June 1876 at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham, starring Kate Santley, W. S. Penley and J. H. Ryley. It transferred to the Royal Strand Theatre in London on 2 October 1876 for a run...

(1876), Rip Van Winkle
Rip Van Winkle (operetta)
Rip Van Winkle is an operetta in three acts by Robert Planquette. The English libretto by Henry Brougham Farnie was based on the stories The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving after the play by Dion Boucicault and Joseph Jefferson.-Performance history:The operetta...

(1882), Naughty Marietta
Naughty Marietta (operetta)
Naughty Marietta is an operetta in two acts, with libretto by Rida Johnson Young and music by Victor Herbert. Set in New Orleans in 1780, it tells how Captain Richard Warrington is commissioned to unmask and capture a notorious French pirate calling himself "Bras Priqué" – and how he is helped and...

(1910), Monsieur Beaucaire
Monsieur Beaucaire (operetta)
Monsieur Beaucaire is a romantic opera in three acts, composed by André Messager. The libretto, based on the 1900 novel by Booth Tarkington, is by Frederick Lonsdale, with lyrics by Adrian Ross...

(1919), The Student Prince
The Student Prince
The Student Prince is an operetta in four acts with music by Sigmund Romberg and book and lyrics by Dorothy Donnelly. It is based on Wilhelm Meyer-Förster's play Alt Heidelberg. The piece has elements of melodrama but lacks the swashbuckling style common to Romberg's other works...

(1924), The Vagabond King
The Vagabond King
The Vagabond King is a 1925 operetta by Rudolf Friml in four acts, with a book and lyrics by Brian Hooker and William H. Post, based upon Justin Huntly McCarthy's 1901 romantic play If I Were King...

(1925)
Candide
Candide (operetta)
Candide is an operetta with music composed by Leonard Bernstein, based on the novella of the same name by Voltaire. The operetta was first performed in 1956 with a libretto by Lillian Hellman; but since 1974 it has been generally performed with a book by Hugh Wheeler which is more faithful to...

(1956)
Sullivan
Arthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer of Irish and Italian ancestry. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado...

, Herbert
Victor Herbert
Victor August Herbert was an Irish-born, German-raised American composer, cellist and conductor. Although Herbert enjoyed important careers as a cello soloist and conductor, he is best known for composing many successful operettas that premiered on Broadway from the 1890s to World War I...

, Romberg
Sigmund Romberg
Sigmund Romberg was a Hungarian-born American composer, best known for his operettas.-Biography:Romberg was born as Siegmund Rosenberg to a Jewish family in Gross-Kanizsa during the Austro-Hungarian kaiserlich und königlich monarchy period...

, Friml
Rudolf Friml
Rudolf Friml was a composer of operettas, musicals, songs and piano pieces, as well as a pianist. After musical training and a brief performing career in his native Prague, Friml moved to the United States, where he became a composer...

, Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...

 
Opérette (plural, opérettes) French French operetta
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...

. Original genre of light (both of music and subject matter) opera that grew out of the French opéra comique
Opéra comique
Opéra comique is a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged out of the popular opéra comiques en vaudevilles of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent , which combined existing popular tunes with spoken sections...

in the mid 19th century. Associated with the style of the Second Empire
Second French Empire
The Second French Empire or French Empire was the Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France.-Rule of Napoleon III:...

 by the works of Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....

, though his best known examples are designated subgenerically as opéras bouffes
Opéra bouffe
Opéra bouffe is a genre of late 19th-century French operetta, closely associated with Jacques Offenbach, who produced many of them at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens that gave its name to the form....

.
L'ours et le pacha (Hervé
Hervé (composer)
Hervé , real name Louis Auguste Florimond Ronger, was a French singer, composer, librettist, conductor and scene painter, whom Ernest Newman, following Reynaldo Hahn, credited with inventing the genre of operetta in Paris.-Life:Hervé was born in Houdain near Arras...

, 1842)
Madame Papillon (Offenbach, 1855), Les mousquetaires au couvent
Les mousquetaires au couvent
Les mousquetaires au couvent is an opérette in three acts by Louis Varney, with a libretto by Jules Prével and Paul Ferrier, after a vaudeville by St-Hilaire and Dupont from 1835 entitled L'habit ne fait pas le moine...

(1880), Les p'tites Michu (1897), Ciboulette
Ciboulette
Ciboulette is a French opérette in three acts, music by Reynaldo Hahn, libretto by Robert de Flers and Francis de Croisset, first performed at the Théâtre des Variétés, in Paris, on April 7, 1923...

(1923)
Hervé
Hervé (composer)
Hervé , real name Louis Auguste Florimond Ronger, was a French singer, composer, librettist, conductor and scene painter, whom Ernest Newman, following Reynaldo Hahn, credited with inventing the genre of operetta in Paris.-Life:Hervé was born in Houdain near Arras...

, Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....

, Varney
Louis Varney
Louis Varney was a French composer.-Biography:Louis Varney was the son of Alphonse Varney, a French conductor at the Bouffes-Parisiens and at the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux, he was also invited to conduct the "French Opera Season" abroad, notably in New Orleans, Louisiana, and this is how Louis came...

, Messager
André Messager
André Charles Prosper Messager , was a French composer, organist, pianist, conductor and administrator. His stage compositions included ballets and 30 opéra comiques and operettas, among which Véronique, had lasting success, with Les p'tites Michu and Monsieur Beaucaire also enjoying international...

, Hahn
Reynaldo Hahn
Reynaldo Hahn was a Venezuelan, naturalised French, composer, conductor, music critic and diarist. Best known as a composer of songs, he wrote in the French classical tradition of the mélodie....

 
Opérette bouffe French Subgenre of French opérette. La bonne d'enfant
La bonne d'enfant
La bonne d'enfant is an opérette bouffe, in one act by Jacques Offenbach to a French libretto by Eugène Bercioux.It was first performed at the Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens, Paris on 14 October 1856...

(1856), M. Choufleuri restera chez lui le . . .
M. Choufleuri restera chez lui le . . .
M. Choufleuri restera chez lui le... is an opéra bouffe, or operetta, in one act by Jacques Offenbach and the Duc de Morny...

(1861)
Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....

 
Opérette vaudeville (or vaudeville opérette) French Subgenre of French opérette. L'ours et le pacha (Hervé, 1842) Mam'zelle Nitouche
Mam'zelle Nitouche
Mam'zelle Nitouche is a vaudeville-opérette by Hervé. The libretto was by Henri Meilhac and Albert Millaud.-Performance history:It was first performed at the Théâtre des Variétés, Paris on 26 January 1883.- Roles :-Synopsis:...

(1883)
Hervé
Hervé (composer)
Hervé , real name Louis Auguste Florimond Ronger, was a French singer, composer, librettist, conductor and scene painter, whom Ernest Newman, following Reynaldo Hahn, credited with inventing the genre of operetta in Paris.-Life:Hervé was born in Houdain near Arras...

, Victor Roger
Operette (plural, operetten) German German operetta
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...

. Popular Viennese
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

 genre during the 19th and 20th centuries, created under the influence of Offenbach and spread to Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...

, and other German and east European cities.
Das Pensionat (Suppé
Franz von Suppé
Franz von Suppé or Francesco Suppé Demelli was an Austrian composer of light operas who was born in what is now Croatia during the time his father was working in this outpost of the Austro-Hungarian Empire...

, 1860)
Die Fledermaus
Die Fledermaus
Die Fledermaus is an operetta composed by Johann Strauss II to a German libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Genée.- Literary sources :...

(1874), The Merry Widow
The Merry Widow
The Merry Widow is an operetta by the Austro–Hungarian composer Franz Lehár. The librettists, Viktor Léon and Leo Stein, based the story – concerning a rich widow, and her countrymen's attempt to keep her money in the principality by finding her the right husband – on an 1861 comedy play,...

(1905), Das Land des Lächelns (1929)
Frühjahrsparade (Robert Stolz
Robert Stolz
Robert Elisabeth Stolz was an Austrian songwriter and conductor as well as a composer of operettas and film music.- Biography :...

, 1964)
Johann Strauss II
Johann Strauss II
Johann Strauss II , also known as Johann Baptist Strauss or Johann Strauss, Jr., the Younger, or the Son , was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas. He composed over 500 waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, and other types of dance music, as well as several operettas...

, Lehár
Franz Lehár
Franz Lehár was an Austrian-Hungarian composer. He is mainly known for his operettas of which the most successful and best known is The Merry Widow .-Biography:...

, Oscar Straus
Oscar Straus (composer)
Oscar Nathan Straus was a Viennese composer of operettas and film scores and songs. He also wrote about 500 cabaret songs, chamber music, and orchestral and choral works...

 
Pasticcio
Pasticcio
In music, a pasticcio or pastiche is an opera or other musical work composed of works by different composers who may or may not have been working together, or an adaptation or localization of an existing work that is loose, unauthorized, or inauthentic.-Etymology:The term is first attested in the...

 
Italian Literally 'a pie' or a hotchpotch. An adaptation or localization of an existing work that is loose, unauthorized, or inauthentic. Also used for a single work by a number of different composers, particularly in early 18th-century London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

.
Thomyris (Pepusch
Johann Christoph Pepusch
Johann Christoph Pepusch , also known as John Christopher Pepusch and Dr Pepusch, was a German-born composer who spent most of his working life in England....

, Bononcini
Giovanni Battista Bononcini
Giovanni Battista Bononcini was an Italian Baroque composer and cellist, one of a family of string players and composers. His father, Giovanni Maria Bononcini , was a violinist and a composer.-Biography:...

, Scarlatti
Alessandro Scarlatti
Alessandro Scarlatti was an Italian Baroque composer especially famous for his operas and chamber cantatas. He is considered the founder of the Neapolitan school of opera. He was the father of two other composers, Domenico Scarlatti and Pietro Filippo Scarlatti.-Life:Scarlatti was born in...

, Gasparini
Francesco Gasparini
Francesco Gasparini was an Italian Baroque composer and teacher whose works were performed throughout Italy, and also on occasion in Germany and England....

, Albinoni
Tomaso Albinoni
Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni was an Italian Baroque composer. While famous in his day as an opera composer, he is mainly remembered today for his instrumental music, such as the concertos, some of which are regularly recorded.-Biography:Born in Venice, Republic of Venice, to Antonio Albinoni, a...

, 1707) Muzio Scevola
Muzio Scevola
Muzio Scevola is an opera in three acts about Gaius Mucius Scaevola. The Italian-language libretto was by Paolo Antonio Rolli, adapted from a text by Silvio Stampiglia. The music for the first act was composed by Filippo Amadei , the second act by Giovanni Battista Bononcini, and the third by...

(1721), Ivanhoé
Ivanhoé
Ivanhoé is an 1826 pastiche opera in three acts with music by Gioachino Rossini to a French-language libretto by Émile Deschamps and Gabriel-Gustave de Wailly, after Walter Scott's novel of the same name...

(1826)
Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...

, Vivaldi
Antonio Vivaldi
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi , nicknamed because of his red hair, was an Italian Baroque composer, priest, and virtuoso violinist, born in Venice. Vivaldi is recognized as one of the greatest Baroque composers, and his influence during his lifetime was widespread over Europe...

 
Pièce lyrique French alternative name for opéra lyrique
Pastorale héroïque
Pastorale héroïque
Pastorale héroïque was a type of ballet héroïque, a form of the opéra-ballet genre of French Baroque opera. The first work to bear the name was Jean-Baptiste Lully's final completed opera Acis et Galatée , although musical works on pastoral themes had already appeared on the French stage...

 
French Type of ballet héroïque (opéra-ballet
Opéra-ballet
Opéra-ballet was a popular genre of French Baroque opera, "that grew out of the ballets à entrées of the early seventeeth century". It differed from the more elevated tragédie en musique as practised by Jean-Baptiste Lully in several ways...

). Usually in three acts with an allegorical prologue, that typically drew on classical themes associated with pastoral poetry.
Acis et Galatée
Acis et Galatée
Acis et Galatée is an opera by Jean-Baptiste Lully. Unlike most of his operas, which are designated tragédies en musique, Lully called this work a pastorale-héroïque, because it was on a pastoral theme and had only three acts compared to the usual five...

(1686)
Issé
Issé (opera)
Issé is a operatic pastorale héroïque by the French composer André Cardinal Destouches. It has a prologue and three acts. The libretto was by Antoine Houdar de la Motte.-Performance history:...

(1697), Zaïs
Zaïs
Zaïs is an opera by Jean-Philippe Rameau first performed on 29 February 1748 at the Opéra in Paris. It takes the form of a pastorale héroïque in four acts and a prologue. The librettist was Louis de Cahusac....

(1748), Naïs
Naïs
Naïs is an opera by Jean-Philippe Rameau first performed on 22 April 1749 at the Opéra in Paris. It takes the form of a pastorale héroïque in three acts and a prologue. The librettist was Louis de Cahusac, in the fourth collaboration between him and Rameau...

(1749)
Lully
Jean-Baptiste Lully
Jean-Baptiste de Lully was an Italian-born French composer who spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France. He is considered the chief master of the French Baroque style. Lully disavowed any Italian influence in French music of the period. He became a French subject in...

, Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau was one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the Baroque era. He replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French composer for the harpsichord of his time, alongside François...

 
Posse German alternative name for Posse mit Gesang
Posse mit Gesang
Posse mit Gesang is a form of popular German-language music drama, that developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Early examples are sometimes called 'Possenspil' or 'Possenspiel'...

 
Posse mit Gesang
Posse mit Gesang
Posse mit Gesang is a form of popular German-language music drama, that developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Early examples are sometimes called 'Possenspil' or 'Possenspiel'...

 (plural Possen mit Gesang)
German Literally, 'farce with singing'. Popular entertainment of late 18th/early 19th centuries, associated with Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 and Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

. Similar to the Singspiel
Singspiel
A Singspiel is a form of German-language music drama, now regarded as a genre of opera...

, but with more action and less music. Re-invented in the early 20th-century by Walter Kollo
Walter Kollo
Walter Kollo was a German composer of operettas, Possen mit Gesang, and Singspiele as well as popular songs. He was also a conductor and a music publisher.Kollo was born in Neidenburg, East Prussia...

 and others.
Der Alpenkönig und der Menschenfeind (Raimund
Ferdinand Raimund
Ferdinand Raimund was an Austrian actor and dramatist.- Life and work :...

, 1828), Filmzauber (1912)
Kreutzer
Conradin Kreutzer
Conradin Kreutzer or Kreuzer was a German composer and conductor. His works include the opera for which he is remembered, Das Nachtlager in Granada, and Der Verschwender, both produced in 1834.Kreutzer owes his fame almost exclusively to Das Nachtlager in Granada , which kept the stage for...

, Müller
Wenzel Müller
Wenzel Müller was an Austrian composer and conductor.Müller was born in Turnau. He studied with Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf and performed as a theatre musician in his youth. In 1786 he became Kapellmeister at the Theater in der Leopoldstadt in Leopoldstadt, Vienna...

, Schubert
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...

, Walter Kollo
Walter Kollo
Walter Kollo was a German composer of operettas, Possen mit Gesang, and Singspiele as well as popular songs. He was also a conductor and a music publisher.Kollo was born in Neidenburg, East Prussia...

 
Possenspiel German early name for Posse mit Gesang
Posse mit Gesang
Posse mit Gesang is a form of popular German-language music drama, that developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Early examples are sometimes called 'Possenspil' or 'Possenspiel'...

 
Possenspil German early name for Posse mit Gesang
Posse mit Gesang
Posse mit Gesang is a form of popular German-language music drama, that developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Early examples are sometimes called 'Possenspil' or 'Possenspiel'...

 
Radio opera English Works written specifically for the medium of radio. The Red Pen
The Red Pen
The Red Pen is a two-act operetta composed by Geoffrey Toye to a libretto by A. P. Herbert. The piece, described by its creators as "a sort of opera" was written for the BBC, following Herbert's successful Riverside Nights, and had a running time of about 90 minutes. It was first broadcast on the...

(1925)
The Willow Tree (Cadman
Charles Wakefield Cadman
Charles Wakefield Cadman was an American composer.Cadman’s musical education, unlike that of most of his American contemporaries, was completely American. Born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, he began piano lessons at 13...

, 1932), Die schwarze Spinne (Sutermeister
Heinrich Sutermeister
Heinrich Sutermeister was a Swiss opera composer.-Life and career:During the early 1930s he was a student at the Akademie der Tonkunst in Munich where Carl Orff was his teacher and Orff remained a powerful influence on his music. Returning to Switzerland in the mid 1930s, he devoted his life to...

, 1936), Comedy on the Bridge
Comedy on the Bridge
Comedy on the Bridge is an opera in one act by Bohuslav Martinů to a Czech libretto by the composer, based on the comedy by Václav Kliment Klicpera.-Performance history:...

(1937), The Old Maid and the Thief
The Old Maid and the Thief
The Old Maid and the Thief is an opera in one act by Italian-American composer Gian Carlo Menotti. The work uses an English language libretto by the composer which tells a twisted tale of morals and evil womanly power...

(1939), Il prigioniero
Il prigioniero
Il prigioniero is an opera in a prologue and one act, with music and libretto by Luigi Dallapiccola. The opera was first broadcast by the Italian radio station RAI on 1 December 1949...

(1949), I due timidi
I due timidi
I due timidi is a one-act radio opera composed in 1950 by Nino Rota with libretto by the film writer Suso Cecchi d'Amico.-Performance history:...

(1950)
Martinů
Bohuslav Martinu
Bohuslav Martinů was a prolific Czech composer of modern classical music. He was of Czech and Rumanian ancestry. Martinů wrote six symphonies, 15 operas, 14 ballet scores and a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works. Martinů became a violinist in the Czech Philharmonic...

, Sutermeister
Heinrich Sutermeister
Heinrich Sutermeister was a Swiss opera composer.-Life and career:During the early 1930s he was a student at the Akademie der Tonkunst in Munich where Carl Orff was his teacher and Orff remained a powerful influence on his music. Returning to Switzerland in the mid 1930s, he devoted his life to...

, Menotti
Gian Carlo Menotti
Gian Carlo Menotti was an Italian-American composer and librettist. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship. He wrote the classic Christmas opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, among about two dozen other operas intended to appeal to popular...

, Dallapiccola
Luigi Dallapiccola
Luigi Dallapiccola was an Italian composer known for his lyrical twelve-tone compositions.-Biography:Dallapiccola was born at Pisino d'Istria , to Italian parents....

, Rota
Nino Rota
Nino Rota was an Italian composer and academic who is best known for his film scores, notably for the films of Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti...

 
Rappresentazione sacra Italian alternative name for azione sacra
Rescue opera
Rescue opera
Rescue opera was a popular genre of opera in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in France and Germany. Generally, rescue operas deal with the rescue of a main character from danger and end with a happy dramatic resolution in which lofty humanistic ideals triumph over base motives...

 
French Early nineteenth century transitional genre between opéra comique, Romantic opera, and grand opera, featuring the rescue of a main character Les rigueurs du cloître (Henri Montan Berton
Henri Montan Berton
Henri Montan Berton was a French composer, teacher, and writer, and the son of Pierre Montan Berton.-Career:...

, 1790) or Lodoïska
Lodoïska
Lodoïska is an opera by Luigi Cherubini to a French libretto by Claude-François Fillette-Loraux after an episode from Jean-Baptiste Louvet de Couvrai’s novel, Les amours du chevalier de Faublas. It takes the form of a comédie héroïque in three acts, and was a founding work of rescue opera...

(1791); some antecedents whose inclusion in the genre is debated
Fidelio
Fidelio
Fidelio is a German opera in two acts by Ludwig van Beethoven. It is Beethoven's only opera. The German libretto is by Joseph Sonnleithner from the French of Jean-Nicolas Bouilly which had been used for the 1798 opera Léonore, ou L’amour conjugal by Pierre Gaveaux, and for the 1804 opera Leonora...

, Lodoïska
Lodoïska
Lodoïska is an opera by Luigi Cherubini to a French libretto by Claude-François Fillette-Loraux after an episode from Jean-Baptiste Louvet de Couvrai’s novel, Les amours du chevalier de Faublas. It takes the form of a comédie héroïque in three acts, and was a founding work of rescue opera...

, Les deux journées
Les deux journées
Les deux journées, ou Le porteur d'eau is an opera in three acts by Luigi Cherubini with a libretto by Jean-Nicolas Bouilly. It takes the form of an opéra comique, meaning not that the subject matter is humorous, but that the piece is a mixture of spoken dialogue and musical numbers...

Dalibor (1868) Cherubini
Luigi Cherubini
Luigi Cherubini was an Italian composer who spent most of his working life in France. His most significant compositions are operas and sacred music. Beethoven regarded Cherubini as the greatest of his contemporaries....

, Dalayrac
Nicolas Dalayrac
Nicolas-Marie d'Alayrac, known as Nicolas Dalayrac , was a French composer, best known for his opéras-comiques.- Biography :...

, Le Sueur
Jean-François Le Sueur
Jean-François Le Sueur was a French composer, best known for his oratorios and operas.-Life:...

 
Romantische Oper
Romantische Oper
Romantische Oper was a genre of early nineteenth-century German opera, developed not from the German Singspiel of the eighteenth-century but from the opéras comiques of the French Revolution...

 
German Early 19th-century German genre derived from earlier French opéras comiques
Opéra comique
Opéra comique is a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged out of the popular opéra comiques en vaudevilles of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent , which combined existing popular tunes with spoken sections...

, dealing with 'German' themes of nature, the supernatural, folklore etc. Spoken dialogue, originally included with musical numbers, was eventually eliminated in works by Richard Wagner.
Der Freischütz
Der Freischütz
Der Freischütz is an opera in three acts by Carl Maria von Weber with a libretto by Friedrich Kind. It premiered on 18 June 1821 at the Schauspielhaus Berlin...

(1821)
Hans Heiling
Hans Heiling
Hans Heiling is a German Romantic opera in 3 acts with prologue by Heinrich Marschner with a libretto by Eduard Devrient, who also sang the title role at the première which occurred at the Königliche Hofoper , Berlin on 24 May 1833, and went on to become his most successful opera...

(1833), Undine
Undine (Lortzing)
Undine is an opera in four acts by Albert Lortzing. The German libretto was by the composer after Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's story of the same name....

(1845), Tannhäuser
Tannhäuser (opera)
Tannhäuser is an opera in three acts, music and text by Richard Wagner, based on the two German legends of Tannhäuser and the song contest at Wartburg...

(1845)
Lohengrin
Lohengrin (opera)
Lohengrin is a romantic opera in three acts composed and written by Richard Wagner, first performed in 1850. The story of the eponymous character is taken from medieval German romance, notably the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach and its sequel, Lohengrin, written by a different author, itself...

(1850)
Weber
Carl Maria von Weber
Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber was a German composer, conductor, pianist, guitarist and critic, one of the first significant composers of the Romantic school....

, Marschner
Heinrich Marschner
Heinrich August Marschner , was the most important composer of German Romantic opera between Carl Maria von Weber and Richard Wagner, and is remembered principally for his operas Hans Heiling , Der Vampyr , and Der Templer und die Jüdin...

, Lortzing
Albert Lortzing
Gustav Albert Lortzing was a German composer, actor and singer. He is considered to be the main representative of the German Spieloper, a form similar to the French opéra comique, which grew out of the Singspiel.-Biography:Lortzing was born in Berlin to Johann Gottlieb Lortzing and Charlotte Sophie...

, Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

Sainete
Sainete
A sainete was a popular Spanish comic opera piece, a one-act dramatic vignette, with music. It was often placed at the end of entertainments, or between other types of performance. It was vernacular in style, and used scenes of low life. Active from the 18th to 20th centuries, it superseded the...

 
Spanish Literally, 'farce' or 'titbit'. 17th/18th century genre of comic opera similar to the Italian intermezzo
Intermezzo
In music, an intermezzo , in the most general sense, is a composition which fits between other musical or dramatic entities, such as acts of a play or movements of a larger musical work...

, performed together with larger works. Popular in Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

 in the latter 18th century. During 19th century, the Sainete was synonymous with género chico
Género chico
Género chico is a Spanish genre of short light musical plays. It is a subgenre of zarzuela, the Spanish operetta...

.
Il mago (1632) Pablo Esteve, Soler
Antonio Soler
Antonio Francisco Javier José Soler Ramos, usually known as Padre Antonio Soler, known in Catalan as Antoni Soler i Ramos was a Spanish Catalan composer whose works span the late Baroque and early Classical music eras...

, Antonio Rosales
Sainetillo Spanish Diminutive of sainete
Savoy opera
Savoy opera
The Savoy Operas denote a style of comic opera that developed in Victorian England in the late 19th century, with W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan as the original and most successful practitioners. The name is derived from the Savoy Theatre, which impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte built to house...

 
English 19th-century form of operetta
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...

 (sometiimes referred to as a form of 'comic opera
Comic opera
Comic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...

' to distance the English genre from the continental) comprising the works of Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...

 and other works from 1877 to 1903 that played at the Opera Comique
Opera Comique
The Opera Comique was a 19th-century theatre constructed in Westminster, London, between Wych Street and Holywell Street with entrances on the East Strand. It opened in 1870 and was demolished in 1902, to make way for the construction of the Aldwych and Kingsway...

 and then the Savoy Theatre
Savoy Theatre
The Savoy Theatre is a West End theatre located in the Strand in the City of Westminster, London, England. The theatre opened on 10 October 1881 and was built by Richard D'Oyly Carte on the site of the old Savoy Palace as a showcase for the popular series of comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan,...

 in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. These influenced the rise of musical theatre
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

.
Trial by Jury
Trial by Jury
Trial by Jury is a comic opera in one act, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was first produced on 25 March 1875, at London's Royalty Theatre, where it initially ran for 131 performances and was considered a hit, receiving critical praise and outrunning its...

(1875)
H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It opened at the Opera Comique in London, England, on 25 May 1878 and ran for 571 performances, which was the second-longest run of any musical...

(1878), The Pirates of Penzance
The Pirates of Penzance
The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. The opera's official premiere was at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City on 31 December 1879, where the show was well received by both audiences...

(1880), The Mikado
The Mikado
The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations...

(1885), The Gondoliers
The Gondoliers
The Gondoliers; or, The King of Barataria is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 7 December 1889 and ran for a very successful 554 performances , closing on 30 June 1891...

(1889), Merrie England
Merrie England (opera)
Merrie England is an English comic opera in two acts by Edward German to a libretto by Basil Hood. The patriotic story concerns love and rivalries at the court of Queen Elizabeth I, who is portrayed as jealous of the affection of Sir Walter Raleigh for Bessie Throckmorton. Its sunny depiction of...

(1902)
A Princess of Kensington
A Princess of Kensington
A Princess of Kensington is an English comic opera in two acts by Edward German to a libretto by Basil Hood, produced by William Greet. The first performance was at the Savoy Theatre, London, on 22 January 1903 and ran for 115 performances....

(1903)
Sullivan
Arthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer of Irish and Italian ancestry. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado...

, Solomon
Edward Solomon
Edward Solomon was a prolific English composer, as well as a conductor, orchestrator and pianist. Though he died before his fortieth birthday, he wrote dozens of works produced for the stage, including several for the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, such as The Nautch Girl, among others.-Early...

, German
Edward German
Sir Edward German was an English musician and composer of Welsh descent, best remembered for his extensive output of incidental music for the stage and as a successor to Arthur Sullivan in the field of English comic opera.As a youth, German played the violin and led the town orchestra, also...

Saynète French French for sainete. Description used for a particular style of opérette
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...

 in the 19th century.
La caravane de l'amour (Hervé
Hervé (composer)
Hervé , real name Louis Auguste Florimond Ronger, was a French singer, composer, librettist, conductor and scene painter, whom Ernest Newman, following Reynaldo Hahn, credited with inventing the genre of operetta in Paris.-Life:Hervé was born in Houdain near Arras...

, 1854), Le rêve d'une nuit d'été (Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....

, 1855), Le valet de coeur (Planquette
Robert Planquette
Jean Robert Planquette was a French composer of songs and operettas.Several of Planquette's operettas were extraordinarily successful in Britain, including Les cloches de Corneville , the length of whose initial London run broke all records for any piece of musical theatre up to that time, and Rip...

, 1875)
Hervé
Hervé (composer)
Hervé , real name Louis Auguste Florimond Ronger, was a French singer, composer, librettist, conductor and scene painter, whom Ernest Newman, following Reynaldo Hahn, credited with inventing the genre of operetta in Paris.-Life:Hervé was born in Houdain near Arras...

, Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....

, Planquette
Robert Planquette
Jean Robert Planquette was a French composer of songs and operettas.Several of Planquette's operettas were extraordinarily successful in Britain, including Les cloches de Corneville , the length of whose initial London run broke all records for any piece of musical theatre up to that time, and Rip...

 
Schauspiel mit Gesang German Literally, 'play with singing'. Term used by Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...

 for his early libretti, though he called them Singspiel
Singspiel
A Singspiel is a form of German-language music drama, now regarded as a genre of opera...

e when revising them.
Erwin und Elmire (Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...

 1775)
Liebe nur beglückt (Reichardt
Johann Friedrich Reichardt
Johann Friedrich Reichardt was a German composer, writer and music critic.-Early life:Reichardt was born in Königsberg, East Prussia, to lutenist and Stadtmusiker Johann Reichardt . Johann Friedrich began his musical training, in violin, keyboard, and lute, as a child...

, 1781), Die Teufels Mühle am Wienerberg (Müller
Wenzel Müller
Wenzel Müller was an Austrian composer and conductor.Müller was born in Turnau. He studied with Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf and performed as a theatre musician in his youth. In 1786 he became Kapellmeister at the Theater in der Leopoldstadt in Leopoldstadt, Vienna...

 1799)
Schuloper German Literally, 'school opera'. Early 20th century, opera created for performance by school children. Der Jasager
Der Jasager
Der Jasager is an opera by Kurt Weill to a German libretto by Bertolt Brecht .Its companion piece is Der Neinsager...

(1930), Wir bauen eine Stadt (Hindemith
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...

, 1930)
Weill
Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...

, Hindemith
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...

 
Semi-opera
Semi-opera
The terms Semi-opera, dramatic[k] opera and English opera were all applied to Restoration entertainments that combined spoken plays with masque-like episodes employing singing and dancing characters. They usually included machines in the manner of the restoration spectacular...

 
English Early form of opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 with singing, speaking and dancing roles. Popular between 1673 and 1710.
The Tempest (Betterton
Thomas Betterton
Thomas Patrick Betterton , English actor, son of an under-cook to King Charles I, was born in London.-Apprentice and actor:...

, 1674)
Psyche
Psyche (Locke)
Psyche is a semi-opera in five acts with music by Matthew Locke to a libretto by Thomas Shadwell with dances by Giovanni Battista Draghi. It was first performed at Dorset Garden Theatre, London on 27 February, 1675 by the Duke's Company with choreography the French dancing-master Saint-André. Stage...

(1675), King Arthur
King Arthur (opera)
King Arthur or, The British Worthy , is a semi-opera in five acts with music by Henry Purcell and alibretto by John Dryden. It was first performed at the Queen's Theatre, Dorset Garden, London, in late May or early June 1691....

(1691), The Fairy-Queen
The Fairy-Queen
The Fairy-Queen is a masque or semi-opera by Henry Purcell; a "Restoration spectacular". The libretto is an anonymous adaptation of William Shakespeare's wedding comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream. First performed in 1692, The Fairy-Queen was composed three years before Purcell's death at the age...

(1692)
Purcell
Henry Purcell
Henry Purcell – 21 November 1695), was an English organist and Baroque composer of secular and sacred music. Although Purcell incorporated Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, his legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque music...

Sepolcro Italian Azione sacra on the subject of the passion and crucifixion of Christ. Draghi
Antonio Draghi
Antonio Draghi was a Baroque composer. He possibly was the brother of Giovanni Battista Draghi.Draghi was born at Rimini in Italy, and was one of the most prolific composers of his time. His contribution to the development of Italian opera was particularly significant...

 
Serenata  Italian Literally, 'evening song'. Short opera performed at court for celebrations, similar to the azione teatrale
Azione teatrale
Azione teatrale is a genre of opera, popular in Italy in the late 17th and 18th centuries...

. (Also used to refer to serenade
Serenade
In music, a serenade is a musical composition, and/or performance, in someone's honor. Serenades are typically calm, light music.The word Serenade is derived from the Italian word sereno, which means calm....

s.)
Acis and Galatea (1720), Il Parnaso confuso (Gluck
Christoph Willibald Gluck
Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck was an opera composer of the early classical period. After many years at the Habsburg court at Vienna, Gluck brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years...

 1765)
Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...

, Gluck
Christoph Willibald Gluck
Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck was an opera composer of the early classical period. After many years at the Habsburg court at Vienna, Gluck brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years...

 
Singspiel
Singspiel
A Singspiel is a form of German-language music drama, now regarded as a genre of opera...

 (plural Singspiele)
German Literally, 'song play'. Popular genre of the 18th/19th centuries, (though the term is also found as early as the 16th century). Derived originally from translations of English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 ballad opera
Ballad opera
The term ballad opera is used to refer to a genre of English stage entertainment originating in the 18th century and continuing to develop in the following century and later. There are many types of ballad opera...

s, but also influenced by French opéra comique
Opéra comique
Opéra comique is a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged out of the popular opéra comiques en vaudevilles of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent , which combined existing popular tunes with spoken sections...

. Spoken dialogue
Dialogue
Dialogue is a literary and theatrical form consisting of a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people....

, combined with ensembles
Musical ensemble
A musical ensemble is a group of people who perform instrumental or vocal music. In classical music, trios or quartets either blend the sounds of musical instrument families or group together instruments from the same instrument family, such as string ensembles or wind ensembles...

, folk-coloured ballad
Ballad
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...

s and aria
Aria
An aria in music was originally any expressive melody, usually, but not always, performed by a singer. The term is now used almost exclusively to describe a self-contained piece for one voice usually with orchestral accompaniment...

s. Originally performed by traveling troupes. Plots generally comic or romantic, often including magic
Magic (paranormal)
Magic is the claimed art of manipulating aspects of reality either by supernatural means or through knowledge of occult laws unknown to science. It is in contrast to science, in that science does not accept anything not subject to either direct or indirect observation, and subject to logical...

. Developed into German 'rescue opera' and romantische Oper
Romantische Oper
Romantische Oper was a genre of early nineteenth-century German opera, developed not from the German Singspiel of the eighteenth-century but from the opéras comiques of the French Revolution...

.
Der Teufel ist los (Johann Georg Standfuss, 1752) Die verwandelten Weiber
Die verwandelten Weiber
Die verwandelten Weiber, oder Der Teufel ist los, erster Theil is a three-act 'comische Oper' by the German composer Johann Adam Hiller, incorporating 14 musical numbers from the popular farce Der Teufel ist los by Johann Georg Standfuss.The libretto was by Christian Felix Weiße based on the...

(1766), Die Jagd
Die Jagd
Die Jagd is an opera by the German composer Johann Adam Hiller. It takes the form of a Singspiel in three acts. The libretto, by Christian Felix Weiße, is based on the plays La partie de chasse de Henri IV by Charles Collé, The King and the Miller of Mansfield by Robert Dodsley, and the opéra...

(1770), Die Entführung aus dem Serail
Die Entführung aus dem Serail
Die Entführung aus dem Serail is an opera Singspiel in three acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The German libretto is by Christoph Friedrich Bretzner with adaptations by Gottlieb Stephanie...

(1782), Abu Hassan
Abu Hassan
Abu Hassan is a comic opera in one act by Carl Maria von Weber to a German libretto by Franz Hiemer, based on a story in One Thousand and One Nights...

(1811)
Hiller, Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...

, Weber
Carl Maria von Weber
Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber was a German composer, conductor, pianist, guitarist and critic, one of the first significant composers of the Romantic school....

Situationsposse German Specialized form of Posse mit Gesang
Posse mit Gesang
Posse mit Gesang is a form of popular German-language music drama, that developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Early examples are sometimes called 'Possenspil' or 'Possenspiel'...

 concentrating on social situations.
Songspiel German Literally, 'song play'. Term invented by Kurt Weill
Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...

 to update the concept of Singspiel
Singspiel
A Singspiel is a form of German-language music drama, now regarded as a genre of opera...

 
Mahagonny-Songspiel
Mahagonny-Songspiel
Mahagonny-Songspiel, also known as The Little Mahagonny, is a "small-scale 'scenic cantata'" written by the composer Kurt Weill and the dramatist Bertolt Brecht in 1927...

(1927)
Kurt Weill
Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...

 
Spieloper
Spieloper
In the 19th century, Spieloper was understood to mean a light opera genre, developed from Singspiel. Works typical of the genre include those by Albert Lortzing, such as Zar und Zimmermann, and Otto Nicolai's The Merry Wives of Windsor...

 
German Literally, 'opera play'. 19th-century light opera genre, derived from Singspiel
Singspiel
A Singspiel is a form of German-language music drama, now regarded as a genre of opera...

 and to a lesser extent opéra comique
Opéra comique
Opéra comique is a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged out of the popular opéra comiques en vaudevilles of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent , which combined existing popular tunes with spoken sections...

, containing spoken dialogue. Spieltenor and Spielbass are specialized voice types connected with the genre.
Zar und Zimmermann
Zar und Zimmermann
Zar und Zimmermann is an opera in three acts, music by Albert Lortzing, libretto by the composer after Georg Christian Römer's Der Bürgermeister on Saarlem, oder Die zwei Peter, itself based on a French work entitled Le Bourgesmestre de Sardam, ou Les deux Pierres by Anne-Honoré-Joseph Duveyrier...

(1837), The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merry Wives of Windsor (opera)
The Merry Wives of Windsor is an opera in three acts by Otto Nicolai to a German libretto by Hermann Salomon Mosenthal, based on the play The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare....

(1849)
Lortzing
Albert Lortzing
Gustav Albert Lortzing was a German composer, actor and singer. He is considered to be the main representative of the German Spieloper, a form similar to the French opéra comique, which grew out of the Singspiel.-Biography:Lortzing was born in Berlin to Johann Gottlieb Lortzing and Charlotte Sophie...

, Nicolai 
Syngespil Danish Local form of Singspiel
Singspiel
A Singspiel is a form of German-language music drama, now regarded as a genre of opera...

. Late 18th/19th century.
Soliman den Anden (Sarti
Giuseppe Sarti
Giuseppe Sarti was an Italian opera composer.-Biography:He was born at Faenza. His date of birth is not known, but he was baptised on 1 December 1729. Some earlier sources say he was born on 28 December, but his baptism certificate proves the later date impossible...

, 1770), Holger Danske
Holger Danske (opera)
Holger Danske is the title of a 1789 Syngespil opera based on the Oberon myth, with music by F.L.Æ. Kunzen and a Danish libretto by Jens Baggesen.-Synopsis:...

(1787), Høstgildet (Schulz
Johann Abraham Peter Schulz
Johann Abraham Peter Schulz was a German musician and composer. Today he is best known as the composer of the melody for Matthias Claudius's poem "Der Mond ist aufgegangen" and the Christmas carol "Ihr Kinderlein kommet".-Life:Schulz attended the Michaelis School from 1757 to 1759 and then the...

, 1790)
Sarti
Giuseppe Sarti
Giuseppe Sarti was an Italian opera composer.-Biography:He was born at Faenza. His date of birth is not known, but he was baptised on 1 December 1729. Some earlier sources say he was born on 28 December, but his baptism certificate proves the later date impossible...

, Schulz
Johann Abraham Peter Schulz
Johann Abraham Peter Schulz was a German musician and composer. Today he is best known as the composer of the melody for Matthias Claudius's poem "Der Mond ist aufgegangen" and the Christmas carol "Ihr Kinderlein kommet".-Life:Schulz attended the Michaelis School from 1757 to 1759 and then the...

, Kunzen
F.L.Æ. Kunzen
Friedrich Ludwig Æmilius Kunzen was a German composer and conductor who lived and worked for much of his life in Denmark.-Life:...

 
Television opera English Works written specifically for the medium of television. Amahl and the Night Visitors
Amahl and the Night Visitors
Amahl and the Night Visitors is an opera in one act by Gian Carlo Menotti with an original English libretto by the composer. It was commissioned by NBC and first performed by the NBC Opera Theatre on December 24, 1951, in New York City at NBC studio 8H in Rockefeller Center, where it was broadcast...

(1951)
The Marriage
The Marriage (opera)
The Marriage is a comic opera in 2 acts by Bohuslav Martinů, to the composer's own libretto, after the play of the same name by Nikolai Gogol. The opera was commissioned for television by the NBC, and the NBC Opera Theatre performed the work's world premiere on their television program NBC TV Opera...

(1953), Owen Wingrave
Owen Wingrave
Owen Wingrave is an opera for television in two acts with music by Benjamin Britten, his Opus 85, and a libretto by Myfanwy Piper, after a short story by Henry James....

(1971), Man on the Moon
Man on the Moon (opera)
Man on the Moon is a 2006 television opera in one act by Jonathan Dove with a libretto by Nicholas Wright. It relates the story of the Apollo 11 moon landing on 20 July 1969 and the subsequent problems experienced by Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon.The opera, about 50 minutes long,...

(2006)
Menotti
Gian Carlo Menotti
Gian Carlo Menotti was an Italian-American composer and librettist. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship. He wrote the classic Christmas opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, among about two dozen other operas intended to appeal to popular...

, Martinů
Bohuslav Martinu
Bohuslav Martinů was a prolific Czech composer of modern classical music. He was of Czech and Rumanian ancestry. Martinů wrote six symphonies, 15 operas, 14 ballet scores and a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works. Martinů became a violinist in the Czech Philharmonic...

, Sutermeister
Heinrich Sutermeister
Heinrich Sutermeister was a Swiss opera composer.-Life and career:During the early 1930s he was a student at the Akademie der Tonkunst in Munich where Carl Orff was his teacher and Orff remained a powerful influence on his music. Returning to Switzerland in the mid 1930s, he devoted his life to...

, Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...

 
Tonadilla
Tonadilla
Tonadilla was a Spanish musical song form of theatrical origin; not danced. The genre was a type of short, satirical musical comedy popular in 18th-century Spain, and later in Cuba and other Spanish colonial countries. It originated as a song type, then dialogue for characters was written into the...

 
Spanish Literally, 'little tune'. 18th century miniature satirical genre, for one or more singer, that developed out of the sainete. Performed in between longer works. La mesonera y el arriero (Luis Misón
Luis Misón
Luis Misón was a Spanish composer. Born in Mataró, Barcelona, he composed over 100 tonadillas, including Una mesonera y un arriero , which contains the song "Seguidilla dolorosa de una enamorada" Luis Misón (c. 26 August 1727 – 13 February 1776) was a Spanish composer. Born in Mataró,...

, 1757)
Antonio Guerrero, Misón
Luis Misón
Luis Misón was a Spanish composer. Born in Mataró, Barcelona, he composed over 100 tonadillas, including Una mesonera y un arriero , which contains the song "Seguidilla dolorosa de una enamorada" Luis Misón (c. 26 August 1727 – 13 February 1776) was a Spanish composer. Born in Mataró,...

, José Palomino
Tragédie French alternative name for tragédie en musique
Tragédie en musique  French 17th/18th century lyric genre with themes from Classical mythology
Classical mythology
Classical mythology or Greco-Roman mythology is the cultural reception of myths from the ancient Greeks and Romans. Along with philosophy and political thought, mythology represents one of the major survivals of classical antiquity throughout later Western culture.Classical mythology has provided...

 and the Italian epics of Tasso
Torquato Tasso
Torquato Tasso was an Italian poet of the 16th century, best known for his poem La Gerusalemme liberata , in which he depicts a highly imaginative version of the combats between Christians and Muslims at the end of the First Crusade, during the siege of Jerusalem...

 and Ariosto
Ludovico Ariosto
Ludovico Ariosto was an Italian poet. He is best known as the author of the romance epic Orlando Furioso . The poem, a continuation of Matteo Maria Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato, describes the adventures of Charlemagne, Orlando, and the Franks as they battle against the Saracens with diversions...

, not necessarily with tragic outcomes. Usually 5 acts, sometimes with a prologue. Short arias (petits airs) contrast with dialogue in recitative, with choral sections and dancing.
Cadmus et Hermione
Cadmus et Hermione
Cadmus et Hermione is a tragédie en musique in a prologue and five acts by Jean-Baptiste Lully. The French-language libretto is by Philippe Quinault, after Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It was first performed on April 27, 1673, by the Paris Opera at the Jeu de Béquet.The prologue, in praise of King Louis...

(1673)
Médée
Médée (Charpentier)
Médée is a tragédie mise en musique in five acts and a prologue by Marc-Antoine Charpentier to a French libretto by Thomas Corneille. It was premiered in Paris on December 4, 1693. Médée is the only opera Charpentier wrote for the Académie Royale de Musique...

(1693), Scylla et Glaucus
Scylla et Glaucus
Scylla et Glaucus is a tragédie en musique with a prologue and five acts, the only full-length opera by Jean-Marie Leclair. The libretto by d'Albaret is based on Ovid's Metamorphoses, books 10, 13 and 14.-Performance history:...

(1746)
Lully
Jean-Baptiste Lully
Jean-Baptiste de Lully was an Italian-born French composer who spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France. He is considered the chief master of the French Baroque style. Lully disavowed any Italian influence in French music of the period. He became a French subject in...

, Marais
Marin Marais
Marin Marais was a French composer and viol player. He studied composition with Jean-Baptiste Lully, often conducting his operas, and with master of the bass viol Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe for 6 months. He was hired as a musician in 1676 to the royal court of Versailles...

, Montéclair, Campra
André Campra
André Campra was a French composer and conductor.Campra was one of the leading French opera composers in the period between Jean-Baptiste Lully and Jean-Philippe Rameau. He wrote several tragédies en musique, but his chief claim to fame is as the creator of a new genre, opéra-ballet...

, Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau was one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the Baroque era. He replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French composer for the harpsichord of his time, alongside François...

 
Tragédie lyrique French alternative name for tragédie en musique
Tragédie mise en musique French alternative name for tragédie en musique 
Tragédie-opéra French alternative name for tragédie en musique
Verismo
Verismo
Verismo was an Italian literary movement which peaked between approximately 1875 and the early 1900s....

 
Italian Late 19th/early 20th century opera movement inspired by literary naturalism and realism, and associated with Italian post-romanticism. Cavalleria rusticana
Cavalleria rusticana
Cavalleria rusticana is an opera in one act by Pietro Mascagni to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci, adapted from a play written by Giovanni Verga based on his short story. Considered one of the classic verismo operas, it premiered on May 17, 1890 at the Teatro...

(1890)
Pagliacci
Pagliacci
Pagliacci , sometimes incorrectly rendered with a definite article as I Pagliacci, is an opera consisting of a prologue and two acts written and composed by Ruggero Leoncavallo. It recounts the tragedy of a jealous husband in a commedia dell'arte troupe...

(1892), Tosca
Tosca
Tosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900...

(1900)
Mascagni
Pietro Mascagni
Pietro Antonio Stefano Mascagni was an Italian composer most noted for his operas. His 1890 masterpiece Cavalleria rusticana caused one of the greatest sensations in opera history and single-handedly ushered in the Verismo movement in Italian dramatic music...

, Leoncavallo
Ruggero Leoncavallo
Ruggero Leoncavallo was an Italian opera composer. His two-act work Pagliacci remains one of the most popular works in the repertory, appearing as number 20 on the Operabase list of the most-performed operas worldwide.-Biography:...

, Puccini
Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...

, Giordano
Umberto Giordano
Umberto Menotti Maria Giordano was an Italian composer, mainly of operas.He was born in Foggia in Puglia, southern Italy, and studied under Paolo Serrao at the Conservatoire of Naples...

Volksmärchen German alternative name for Märchenoper. Das Donauweibchen (Kauer
Ferdinand Kauer
Ferdinand August Kauer , was an Austrian composer and pianist.-Biography:Kauer was born in Klein-Thaya near Znaim in South Moravia. He studied in Znaim, Tyrnau, and Vienna, and later settled in Vienna around 1777. In 1781 he joined Karl von Marinelli's newly formed company at Vienna as leader and...

 1798)
Zarzuela
Zarzuela
Zarzuela is a Spanish lyric-dramatic genre that alternates between spoken and sung scenes, the latter incorporating operatic and popular song, as well as dance...

 
Spanish Dating back to the 17th century and forward to the present day, this form includes both singing and spoken dialogue, also dance. Local traditions are also found in Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

 and the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

.
La selva sin amor (Lope de Vega
Lope de Vega
Félix Arturo Lope de Vega y Carpio was a Spanish playwright and poet. He was one of the key figures in the Spanish Golden Century Baroque literature...

, 1627)
Doña Francisquita
Doña Francisquita
Doña Francisquita is a zarzuela in three acts composed by Amadeo Vives to a Spanish libretto by Federico Romero and Guillermo Fernández Shaw and based on Lope de Vega's play La discreta enamorada...

 (1923), La dolorosa (1930), Luisa Fernanda
Luisa Fernanda (zarzuela)
Luisa Fernanda is a romantic zarzuela in three acts by Federico Moreno Torroba. The libretto is written in Spanish by Federico Romero and Guillermo Fernández Shaw. The first performance of Luisa Fernanda took place at Teatro Calderón in Madrid on March 26, 1932...

 (1932)
Hidalgo, Barbieri
Francisco Asenjo Barbieri
Francisco Asenjo Barbieri was a well-known composer of the popular Spanish opera form, zarzuela. His works include: El barberillo de Lavapiés, Jugar con fuego, Pan y toros, Don Quijote, Los diamantes de la corona, and El Diablo en el poder.He was born and died in Madrid, appropriately, since the...

 
Zauberoper German Literally, 'magic opera'. Late 18th and early 19th centuries, particularly associated with Vienna. Heavier, more formal work than Zauberposse, but also with spoken dialogue. Oberon, König der Elfen (Wranitzky, 1789) Die Zauberflöte (1791), Das Donauweibchen, (Kauer
Ferdinand Kauer
Ferdinand August Kauer , was an Austrian composer and pianist.-Biography:Kauer was born in Klein-Thaya near Znaim in South Moravia. He studied in Znaim, Tyrnau, and Vienna, and later settled in Vienna around 1777. In 1781 he joined Karl von Marinelli's newly formed company at Vienna as leader and...

, 1798)
Kauer
Ferdinand Kauer
Ferdinand August Kauer , was an Austrian composer and pianist.-Biography:Kauer was born in Klein-Thaya near Znaim in South Moravia. He studied in Znaim, Tyrnau, and Vienna, and later settled in Vienna around 1777. In 1781 he joined Karl von Marinelli's newly formed company at Vienna as leader and...

, Müller
Wenzel Müller
Wenzel Müller was an Austrian composer and conductor.Müller was born in Turnau. He studied with Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf and performed as a theatre musician in his youth. In 1786 he became Kapellmeister at the Theater in der Leopoldstadt in Leopoldstadt, Vienna...

, Schubert
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...

Zauberposse German Specialized form of Posse mit Gesang
Posse mit Gesang
Posse mit Gesang is a form of popular German-language music drama, that developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Early examples are sometimes called 'Possenspil' or 'Possenspiel'...

 concentrating on magic.
Der Barometermacher auf der Zauberinsel (Müller
Wenzel Müller
Wenzel Müller was an Austrian composer and conductor.Müller was born in Turnau. He studied with Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf and performed as a theatre musician in his youth. In 1786 he became Kapellmeister at the Theater in der Leopoldstadt in Leopoldstadt, Vienna...

 1823)
Müller
Wenzel Müller
Wenzel Müller was an Austrian composer and conductor.Müller was born in Turnau. He studied with Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf and performed as a theatre musician in his youth. In 1786 he became Kapellmeister at the Theater in der Leopoldstadt in Leopoldstadt, Vienna...

 
Zeitoper
Zeitoper
Zeitoper was a short-lived genre of opera associated with Weimar Germany. It is not known when or by whom the term was coined, but by 1928 Kurt Weill was able to complain that it was more a slogan than a description...

 (plural Zeitopern)
German Literally, 'opera of the times'. 1920s, early 1930s genre, using contemporary settings and characters, including references to modern technology and popular music. Jonny spielt auf
Jonny spielt auf
Jonny spielt auf is an opera with words and music by Ernst Krenek about a jazz violinist. The work typified the cultural freedom of the 'golden era' of the Weimar Republic.-Performance history:...

(1927), Neues vom Tage
Neues vom Tage
Neues vom Tage is an opera in three parts by Paul Hindemith, with a German libretto by Marcellus Schiffer....

(1929)
Krenek
Ernst Krenek
Ernst Krenek was an Austrian of Czech origin and, from 1945, American composer. He explored atonality and other modern styles and wrote a number of books, including Music Here and Now , a study of Johannes Ockeghem , and Horizons Circled: Reflections on my Music...

, Weill
Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...

, Hindemith
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...

 
Zwischenspiel German German name for intermezzo  Pimpinone
Pimpinone
Pimpinone, TWV 21:15, is a comic opera by the German composer Georg Philipp Telemann with a libretto by Johann Philipp Praetorius. Its full title is Die Ungleiche Heirat zwischen Vespetta und Pimpinone oder Das herrsch-süchtige Camer Mägden...

 (1725)

See also

  • Operas by genre

The following cover other forms of entertainment that existed around the time of the appearance of the first operas in Italy at the end of the 16th century, which were influential in the development of the art form:
  • Intermedio
    Intermedio
    The intermedio, or intermezzo, in the Italian Renaissance, was a theatrical performance or spectacle with music and often dance which was performed between the acts of a play to celebrate special occasions in Italian courts. It was one of the important predecessors to opera, and an influence on...

  • Masque
    Masque
    The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment which flourished in 16th and early 17th century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio...

  • Madrigale concertato
    Madrigal (music)
    A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition, usually a partsong, of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six....

  • Madrigal comedy
    Madrigal comedy
    Madrigal comedy is a term for a kind of entertainment music of the late 16th century in Italy, in which groups of related, generally a cappella madrigals were sung consecutively, generally telling a story, and sometimes having a loose dramatic plot. It is an important element in the origins of opera...

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