Operas about composers

An incomplete list, including several operettas. There is surely no need for any more operas about Gesualdo, unless, as Will Robin once suggested, someone wants to write an opera about a composer who goes insane while trying to write an opera about Gesualdo. To date, only one person has written an opera about a composer and then gone on to become the subject of an opera. But maybe we will one day see a work entitled Pfitzner.

Ignaz von Seyfried, Die Ochsenmenuett, 1823 (Haydn)

Friedrich von Flotow, Alessandro Stradella, 1837/44

Louis Niedermeyer, Stradella, 1837

Charles Luce-Varlet, L'élève de Presbourg, 1840 (Haydn)

César Franck, Stradella, 1841

Franz von Suppé, Franz Schubert, 1864

Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, 1868 (Hans Sachs)

Flotow, Die Musikanten (La jeunesse de Mozart), 1870

Suppé, Joseph Haydn, 1887

Rimsky-Korsakov, Mozart and Salieri, 1897

Stanislao Falchi, Il trillo del diavolo, 1899 (Tartini)

Chopin arr. Giacomo Orefice, Chopin, 1901

Schubert arr. Heinrich Berté, Das Dreimäderlhaus, 1916 (Schubert)

Hans Pfitzner, Palestrina, 1917

Franz Lehár, Paganini, 1925

Paul Graener, Friedemann Bach, 1931

Bernhard Paumgartner, Rossini in Neapel, 1936

Peter Maxwell Davies, Taverner, 1972

Francesco d'Avalos, Maria di Venosa, 1992 (Gesualdo)

Alfred Schnittke, Gesualdo, 1993

Franz Hummel, Gesualdo, 1996

Salvatore Sciarrino, Luci mie traditrici, 1998 (Gesualdo)

Scott Glasgow, The Prince of Venosa, 1998 (Gesualdo)

Franz Hummel, Styx, 2001 (Handel)

Bo Holten, Gesualdo—Shadows, 2003

Luca Francesconi, Gesualdo Considered as a Murderer, 2004

Jonathan Harvey, Wagner Dream, 2007

Marc-André Dalbavie, Gesualdo, 2010

Gabriel Kahane, February House, 2012 (features Benjamin Britten)

Dante De Silva, Gesualdo, Prince of Madness, 2013

Michael Dellaira, The Death of Webern, 2016

Avner Dorman, Wahnfried, 2017 (features Siegfried Wagner)

Todd Machover, Schoenberg in Hollywood, 2018

Johannes Boer, La Tragedia di Claudio M., 2018 (Monteverdi)

Tarik O’Regan, The Phoenix, 2019 (about da Ponte, features Mozart)

Victoria Bond, Clara, 2019 (Clara Schumann)

Elliott Sharp, Die Grösste Fuge, 2024 (Beethoven)

Ella Milch-Sheriff, Alma, 2024 (Alma Mahler-Werfel)

Sarah Kirkland Snider, Hildegard, 2025