Operas based on the Bible

Nabucco (; short for Nabucodonosor , i.e. "Nebuchadnezzar") is an Italian-language opera in four acts composed in 1841 by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Temistocle Solera. The libretto is based on the biblical books of 2 Kings, Jeremiah, Lamentations, and Daniel, and on the 1836 play by Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois and Francis Cornu. However, Antonio Cortese's ballet adaptation of the play (with its necessary simplifications), given at La Scala in 1836, was a more important source for Solera than the play itself. Under its original name of Nabucodonosor, the opera was first performed at

opera by Richard Strauss

opera by Camille Saint-Saëns

opera by Gioachino Rossini

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.

opera by Gioachino Rossini

opera by Arnold Schoenberg

opera by Carl Nielsen

opera by Gaetano Donizetti

opera by Myroslav Skoryk

opera by Karl Goldmark

opera by Étienne-Nicolas Méhul

opera by Benjamin Britten

opera by Georges Bizet

opera by Marc-Antoine Charpentier

Benjamin Brittan, second parable for church performance, op. 77

musical play by Igor Stravinsky, with choreography by George Balanchine

Susannah is an opera in two acts by the American composer Carlisle Floyd, who wrote the libretto and music while a member of the piano faculty at Florida State University. Floyd adapted the story from the Apocryphal tale of Susannah and the Elders, though the latter story has a more positive ending. The story focuses on 18-year-old Susannah Polk, an innocent girl who is targeted as a sinner in the small mountain town of New Hope Valley, in the Southern American state of Tennessee.

opera by Giacomo Meyerbeer

opera by Anton Rubinstein

multimedia opera in three acts by Steve Reich to an English libretto by Beryl Korot.