Operas based on real people

opera by Giuseppe Verdi

comic opera in one act by Giacomo Puccini

thumb|upright=1.2|Title page of the libretto, London 1738 Serse (; English title: Xerxes; HWV 40) is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel. It was first performed in London on 15 April 1738. The Italian libretto was adapted by an unknown hand from that by Silvio Stampiglia (1664–1725) for an earlier opera of the same name by Giovanni Bononcini in 1694. Stampiglia's libretto was itself based on one by Nicolò Minato (ca.1627–1698) that was set by Francesco Cavalli in 1654. The opera is set in Persia (modern-day Iran) about 470 BC and is very loosely based upon Xerxes I of Persia

Khovanshchina (, sometimes rendered The Khovansky Affair) is an opera (subtitled a 'national music drama') in five acts by Modest Mussorgsky. The work was written between 1872 and 1880 in St. Petersburg, Russia. The composer wrote the libretto based on historical sources. The opera was almost finished in piano score when the composer died in 1881, but the orchestration was almost entirely lacking.

opera by Francesco Cilea

opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

opera by John Adams

opera by Jules Massenet

opera by Nikolaj Rimski-Korsakov

opera by Tchaikovsky

1976 opera by Robert Wilson and Philip Glass

thumb|upright=.9|Title page of libretto Tamerlano (Tamerlane, HWV 18) is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel. The Italian libretto was by Nicola Francesco Haym, adapted from Agostino Piovene's Tamerlano together with another libretto entitled Bajazet after Nicolas Pradon's Tamerlan, ou La Mort de Bajazet. The opera was staged by the Royal Academy of Music in the King's Theatre at the Haymarket, London.

opera by Gioachino Rossini

opera by Antonio Vivaldi

Hérodiade is an opera in four acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Paul Milliet and Henri Grémont, based on the novella Hérodias (1877) by Gustave Flaubert. It was first performed at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels on 19 December 1881.

'''''L'Africaine''' (The African Woman) is an 1865 French grand opéra in five acts with music by Giacomo Meyerbeer and a libretto by Eugène Scribe. Meyerbeer and Scribe began working on the opera in 1837, using the title L'Africaine, but around 1852 changed the plot to portray fictitious events in the life of the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama and introduced the working title Vasco de Gama'', the French version of his name. The copying of the full score was completed the day before Meyerbeer died in 1864.

opera by Paul Hindemith

1836 opera by Hector Berlioz

opera by John Adams

Gloriana, Op. 53, is an opera in three acts by Benjamin Britten to an English libretto by William Plomer, based on Lytton Strachey's 1928 Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History. The first performance was presented at the Royal Opera House, London, in 1953 during the celebrations of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Gloriana was the name given by the 16th-century poet Edmund Spenser to his character representing Queen Elizabeth I in his poem The Faerie Queene. It became the popular name given to Elizabeth I.

opera by Gaetano Donizetti

thumb|Arminius says goodbye to Thusnelda, [[Johannes Gehrts (1884)]]Arminio (HWV 36) is an opera composed by George Frideric Handel. The libretto is based on a libretto of the same name by Antonio Salvi, which had been set to music by Alessandro Scarlatti. It is a fictionalisation of events surrounding the Germanic leader Arminius, who defeated the Romans under Publius Quinctilius Varus at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9, and his wife Thusnelda. The opera was performed for the first time at the Covent Garden Theatre on 12 January 1737.

thumb|upright=1.1|George Frideric Handel

operetta by Franz Lehár

Opera by Gaetano Donizetti

opera by Hans Pfitzner

opera by Antonio Vivaldi

opera by Ruggero Leoncavallo

opera by Olivier Messiaen

Croatian opera by Ivan Zajc

opera by John Adams

opera by Sergei Prokofiev

Opera by Georg Friedrich Händel

opera by Antonio Vivaldi

opera by Georg Friedrich Händel

opera by Gaetano Donizetti

chamber opera by Thomas Adès

opera by Georg Friedrich Händel

opera by Gaetano Donizetti

second opera of the Portrait Trilogy by Philip Glass

opera in five acts by Paul Hindemith

opera by Tigran Chukhajian (1868)

opera by Friedrich von Flotow

opera by Georges Bizet

thumb|Jean-Philippe Rameau Zoroastre (Zoroaster) is an opera by Jean-Philippe Rameau, first performed on 5 December 1749 by the Opéra in the first Salle du Palais-Royal in Paris. The libretto is by Louis de Cahusac. Zoroastre was the fourth of Rameau's tragédies en musique to be staged and the last to appear during the composer's own lifetime. Audiences gave the original version a lukewarm reception, so Rameau and his librettist thoroughly reworked the opera for a revival which took place at the Opéra on 19 January 1756. This time the work was a great success and this is the version generally

opera by Kaija Saariaho

opera by Antonio Salieri

opera by Armen Tigranian

opera by Antonín Dvořák

opera by Ottorino Respighi

opera in two parts by the French composer Darius Milhaud, with libretto by Paul Claudel based on his own play about the life of Christopher Columbus

opera by Peter Arnold Heise

opera by Lorenzo Ferrero

Risorgimento! is an opera in one act by Lorenzo Ferrero set to an Italian-language libretto by Dario Oliveri, based on a scenario by the composer. It was completed in 2010 and first performed at the Teatro Comunale di Modena on 26 March 2011.

opera by George Benjamin

chamber opera by Philip Glass

opera by Gottfried von Einem

opera by Daniel-François-Esprit Auber

comic opera by Camille Saint-Saëns