Operas set in Italy

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. The work, based on Victorien Sardou's 1887 French-language dramatic play, La Tosca, is a melodramatic piece set in Rome in June 1800, with the Kingdom of Naples's control of Rome threatened by Napoleon's invasion of Italy. It contains depictions of torture, murder, and suicide, as well as some of Puccini's best-known lyrical arias.

Rigoletto is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the 1832 play ''Le roi s'amuse'' by Victor Hugo. Despite serious initial problems with the Austrian censors who had control over northern Italian theatres at the time, the opera had a triumphant premiere at La Fenice in Venice on 11 March 1851.

Pagliacci (; literal translation, 'Clowns') is an Italian opera in a prologue and two acts, with music and libretto by Ruggero Leoncavallo. The opera tells the tale of Canio, actor and leader of a commedia dell'arte theatrical company, who murders his wife Nedda and her lover Silvio on stage during a performance. Canio portrays on stage the character of Pagliaccio (Pierrot), while Nedda portays Pierrot's unfaithful lover Columbina.

opera by Giuseppe Verdi

opera by Gaetano Donizetti

opera by Giuseppe Verdi

opera by Gioachino Rossini

opera by Giuseppe Verdi

opera by Giuseppe Verdi

'''''''' (Rienzi, the last of the tribunes''; WWV 49) is an 1842 opera by Richard Wagner in five acts, with the libretto written by the composer after Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel of the same name (1835). The title is commonly shortened to Rienzi . Written between July 1838 and November 1840, it was first performed at the Königliches Hoftheater Dresden, on 20 October 1842, and was the composer's first success.

opera by Giuseppe Verdi

opera by Giuseppe Verdi

opera by Giuseppe Verdi

opera by Giacomo Puccini

Tancredi is a melodramma eroico (opera seria or heroic opera) in two acts by composer Gioachino Rossini and librettist Gaetano Rossi (who was also to write Semiramide ten years later), based on Voltaire's play Tancrède (1760). The opera made its first appearance at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice on 6 February 1813, less than a month after the premiere of his previous opera Il signor Bruschino. The overture, borrowed from La pietra del paragone, is a popular example of Rossini's characteristic style and is regularly performed in concert and recorded.

opera buffa in three acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

opéra comique by Daniel-François-Esprit Auber

Mignon () is an 1866 opéra comique (or opera in its second version) in three acts by Ambroise Thomas. The original French libretto was by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, based on Goethe's 1795-96 novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. The Italian version was translated by Giuseppe Zaffira. The opera is mentioned in James Joyce's "The Dead" (in Dubliners) and Willa Cather's ''The Professor's House''. Thomas's goddaughter Mignon Nevada was named after the main character. The aria “I am Titania” was used repeatedly in the British feature film The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.

tragic opera in two acts by Vincenzo Bellini

opera by Gioachino Rossini

opera by Joseph Haydn

opera by Mozart

opera by Gaetano Donizetti

opera by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari

opera by Gaetano Donizetti

opera by Gaetano Donizetti

opera by Sergei Rachmaninoff

opera in three acts and three scenes by Mascagni

opera by Ruggero Leoncavallo

opera by Hans Pfitzner

operetta by Franz Lehár

opera by Olivier Messiaen

opera by Gaetano Donizetti

opera by Gaetano Donizetti

opera by Riccardo Zandonai

thumb|upright=1.1|George Frideric Handel Ottone, re di Germania ("Otto, King of Germany", HWV 15) is an opera by George Frideric Handel, to an Italian–language libretto adapted by Nicola Francesco Haym from the libretto by Stefano Benedetto Pallavicino for Antonio Lotti's opera Teofane. It was the first new opera written for the Royal Academy of Music (1719)'s fourth season and had its first performance on 12 January 1723 at the King's Theatre, Haymarket in London. Handel had assembled a cast of operatic superstars for this season and the opera became an enormous success.

opera by Gaetano Donizetti

opera by Franz Schreker

opera by Pietro Mascagni

opera by Gaetano Donizetti

Zanetto is an opera in one act by Pietro Mascagni to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci. It received its first performance on 2 March 1896 at the Liceo Musicale Rossini in Pesaro. Only 40 minutes long and with cast of two singers, Zanetto was originally described by its composer as a scena lirica (lyric scene) rather than an opera. It is set in the countryside near Florence during the Renaissance and tells the story of an encounter between a beautiful courtesan, Silvia, and a young wandering minstrel, Zanetto. The libretto was adapted from an Italian translatio

1833 opera by Gaetano Donizeti

opera by Ottorino Respighi

Ferruccio Busoni opera

opera by Joseph Haydn

opera by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

opera buffa by Gian Carlo Menotti

opera by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi

opera by Italo Montemezzi

opera by Saverio Mercadante

opera by Carlos Gomes

operetta composed by Johann Strauss II

opera by Giovanni Paisiello

opera seria in four acts by Antônio Carlos Gomes

opera in two acts, op. 34 by Alberto Ginastera

Fiesque (The Genoese Conspiracy) is an opera in three acts by the French composer Édouard Lalo. The libretto, by Charles Beauquier, is based on Schiller's 1784 play, Die Verschwörung des Fiesco zu Genua, an account of the conspiracy in 1547 led by Giovanni Luigi Fieschi against the ruling Doria family. Although completed in 1868, it was not staged until 16 June 2007 when it premiered at the Nationaltheater in Mannheim.

opera by Riccardo Zandonai

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 Ambroise Thomas

French opera by Daniel-François-Esprit Auber