Fidelio is the only opera that Beethoven ever wrote. Originally entitled Leonore, oder Der Triumph der ehelichen Liebe, with the libretto prepared by Joseph Sonnleithner from the French of Jean-Nicolas Bouilly, it premiered at the Theater an der Wien on 20 November 1805. The following year Beethoven’s friend Stephan von Breuning rewrote the libretto to create a second version that shortened the opera from three acts to two. In 1814 Beethoven revised his opera yet again,...

Giacomo Puccini’s Il trittico, which premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 1918, is a triptych of one-act operas comprising Il tabarro, Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi. The composer originally intended for each opera to reflect one part of Dante’s Divina Commedia, although in the event only the final work is based on the poem. As a result, the only theme that really underpins the operas is that they all involve, in one way or another, the concealment of a...

Piotr Tchaïkovski’s Eugene Onegin, which premiered in Moscow in 1879, is based on Alexander Pushkin’s eponymous verse poem. The libretto, which was organised by the composer himself, closely follows certain passages in its source material and retains much of the poetry. Set in the 1820s in and around St Petersburg, it sees Tatyana, the daughter of landowner Madame Larina, fall in love with one Eugene Onegin. She is introduced to him when her sister Olga’s...

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

Antonio Vivaldi’s L'Olimpiade uses an Italian libretto by Pietro Metastasio that was originally written for Antonio Caldara’s eponymous 1733 opera. Vivaldi’s own version premiered at Venice’s Teatro Sant’Angelo on 17 February 1734, while the libretto would go on to be set to music by over fifty composers including Giovanni Battista Pergolesi in 1735. The action takes place in ancient times in Sicyon during an Olympic Games. Megacle plans to enter...

This Royal Opera double bill, performed by Jette Parker Artists, presents two one-act operas that were written at broadly opposite ends of the twentieth century, but received their premieres just eight years apart. Bohuslav Martinů composed Larmes de couteau, to a French libretto by Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, in 1928, but it did not receive its premiere until 1969 at the State Theatre, Brno. The music demonstrates the composer’s then preoccupation with jazz, while the story...