Salieri's first full opera was composed during the winter and carnival season of 1770 ; Le donne letterate and was based on Molière's Les Femmes Savantes ( The Learned Ladies ) with a libretto by Giovanni Gastone Boccherini a dancer in the court ballet, and a brother of the famous composer.

Da Ponte would write his first opera libretto for Salieri, Il ricco d ' un giorno ( A Rich Man for a Day ) in 1784, it was not a success.

The first, most important and successful was The Beggar's Opera of 1728, with a libretto by John Gay and music arranged by John Christopher Pepusch, both of whom probably influenced by Parisian vaudeville and the burlesques and musical plays of Thomas D ' Urfey ( 1653 – 1723 ), a number of whose collected ballads they used in their work.

In 1691, he wrote the music for what is sometimes considered his dramatic masterpiece, King Arthur, with the libretto by Dryden and first published by the Musical Antiquarian Society in 1843.

An early leader of this movement was Ferruccio Busoni, who in 1913 wrote the libretto for his neoclassical number opera Arlecchino ( first performed in 1917 ).

Together with the composer Friedrich Pacius he wrote the libretto ( in the style of Romantic nationalism ) to the first Finnish opera: Kung Karls jakt.

* The opera Ormindo is first performed in Venice: music by Francesco Cavalli and libretto by Giovanni Faustini.

With a libretto by Angelo Zanardini, La Tilda had a successful first performance in April 1892 at the Teatro Pagliano in Florence, and after performances in a number of Italian theatres, it arrived at the Vienna Exhibition on 24 September 1892, alongside other works from the firm of Sonzogno.

Alfano provided a first version of the ending with a few passages of his own, and even a few sentences added to the libretto which was not considered complete even by Puccini himself.

Salvadore Cammarano wrote the Italian libretto after Luigi Marchionni's adaptation of play, Belisarius, first staged in Munich in 1820 and then ( in Italian ) in Naples in 1826.

Balzac's first project was a libretto for a comic opera called Le Corsaire, based on Lord Byron's The Corsair.

Sullivan's first attempt at opera, The Sapphire Necklace ( 1863 – 64 ) to a libretto by Henry F. Chorley, was not produced and is now lost, except for the overture and two songs from the work, which were separately published.

Gilbert and Sullivan hoped to forestall further " copyright piracy " by mounting the first production of their next opera in America, before others could copy it, and by delaying publication of the score and libretto.

" The Times praised both the libretto and the music of the first act (" Everything sparkles with the flashes of Mr. Gilbert's wit and the graces of Sir Arthur Sullivan's melodiousness ... one is almost at a loss what to select for quotation from an embarrassment of humorous riches.

After the unfavourable reception that the opera received on opening night, Gilbert and Sullivan made numerous significant cuts and alterations :< ref > A copy of the libretto, including material cut before the first night and during the initial run, is at at The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive .</ ref > Sullivan recorded in his diary:

The first opera based on the play, Il duca di Atene, was an opera buffa with a libretto by Carlo Francesco Badini and music by Ferdinando Bertoni.

In 1874, Hermann Goetz created Der Widerspänstigen Zähmung, a comic opera first performed at the National Theatre Mannheim in Germany ; the libretto was by Joseph Widmann and Goetz.

While in America Britten wrote his first music drama, Paul Bunyan, an operetta ( to a libretto by Auden ).

Offenbach's first piece for the company's new home was Ba-ta-clan ( December 1855 ), a well-received piece of mock-oriental frivolity, to a libretto by Halévy.

Through the winter of 1858 – 59 Bizet worked on his first envoi, an opera buffa setting of Carlo Cambiaggio's libretto Don Procopio.

In his first significant opera, Les pêcheurs de perles, Bizet was hampered by a dull libretto and a laborious plot ; nevertheless, the music in Dean's view rises at times " far above the level of contemporary French opera ".

The Australian composer Peggy Glanville-Hicks wrote an opera entitled Nausicaa ( libretto by Robert Graves ), first performed in 1961 at the Athens Festival.

The libretto was duly translated into German for the production and the opera's first performance was given on 2 December 1877 at the Grossherzogliches Theatre ( Grand Ducal Theater ).

He wrote the libretto himself, and by December 1924 had completed the first draft of the work.

Wolf had scornfully rejected the libretto to Der Corregidor when it was first presented to him in 1890, but his determination to compose an opera blinded him to its faults upon second glance.

It was paired with a Darius Milhaud opera, `` The Poor Sailor '', set to a libretto by Jean Cocteau, a kind of Grand Guignol by the sea, a sailor returns, unrecognized, and gets done in by his wife.

Handel's 1709 opera, Agrippina with a libretto by Vincenzo Grimani.

However the failure of this work was more than made up for with his next Parisian opera Tarare with a libretto by Beaumarchais.

His last opera was a German language singspiel Die Neger, ( The Negroes ), a melodrama set in colonial Virginia with a text by Georg Friedrich Treitschke ( the author of the libretto for Beethoven's Fidelio ) performed in 1804 and was a complete failure.

Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny () is a political-satirical opera composed by Kurt Weill to a German libretto by Bertolt Brecht.

In the wake of the play's US success, the composer Stravinsky invited Thomas to write a libretto for an opera.

* Falstaff ( 1893 ), Giuseppe Verdi's last opera, with a libretto by Arrigo Boito.

* Falstaff ( 1799 ), Antonio Salieri's opera, with a libretto by Carlo Prospero Defranceschi, which is also based upon The Merry Wives of Windsor.

The libretto of this opera by Giovanni Schmidt was in many of its incidents an anticipation of those presented to the world a few years later in Sir Walter Scott's Kenilworth.

The libretto, a version of Pierre Beaumarchais ' stage play Le Barbier de Séville, was newly written by Cesare Sterbini and not the same as that already used by Giovanni Paisiello in his own Barbiere, an opera which had enjoyed European popularity for more than a quarter of a century.

* A Great Auk appears as a prized possession of Baba the Turk in Igor Stravinsky's opera The Rake's Progress ( libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman ).

He also wrote an opera based on the Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's gothic story Undine, with de la Motte Fouqué himself writing the libretto.

While studying at the Conservatory, Puccini obtained a libretto from Ferdinando Fontana and entered a competition for a one-act opera in 1882.

On commencing his next opera, Manon Lescaut, Puccini announced that he would write his own libretto so that " no fool of a librettist " could spoil it.

Verdi's last opera, Falstaff, whose libretto was also by Boito, was based on Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor and Victor Hugo's subsequent translation.

And Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera " Apollo et Hyacinthus " was performed by males only, although the libretto differed from the original text of Ovidius to reduce homosexual relations among Apollon, Hyacinthus, and Zephyrus.

He was also responsible, along with DuBose Heyward, for the libretto to George's opera Porgy and Bess.

The story is the basis of an opera, The Judgment of Paris, with a libretto by William Congreve, that was set to music by four composers in London, 1700-1701.

* Reconstructie ( 1969 ) ( with Reinbert de Leeuw, Misha Mengelberg, Peter Schat, Jan van Vlijmen, libretto by Hugo Claus, Harry Mulisch ) Morality opera for soloists, 3 mixed choruses ( 4 voices each ), orchestra ( 11 winds, 7 brass, 2 guitars, 11 keyboards, 10 strings ), live electronics

The words of an opera are known as the libretto ( literally " little book ").

She also composed the libretto for the opera Margaret Garner ( 2005 ), based on the life and trial of an enslaved woman who escaped with her family across the river.

Polyphemus sings in Georg Friedrich Händel's popular 1718 setting of Acis and Galatea, an English language pastoral opera or masque with the libretto set by John Gay to Ovid's Metamorphosis.