List of major opera composers


This list provides a guide to opera composers, as determined by their presence on a majority of compiled lists of significant opera composers. The composers run from Jacopo Peri, who wrote the first ever opera in late 16th century Italy, to John Adams, one of the leading figures in the contemporary operatic world. The brief accompanying notes offer an explanation as to why each composer has been considered major. Also included is a section about major women opera composers, compiled from the same lists. For an introduction to operatic history, see opera. The organisation of the list is by birthdate.

Major opera composers

1550–1699


  • Jacopo Peri Florentine who composed both the first opera ever, Dafne, and the first surviving opera, Euridice.
  • Claudio Monteverdi Generally regarded as the first major opera composer. In Orfeo he blended Peri's experiments in opera with the lavish spectacle of the intermedi. Later, in Venice in the 1640s, he helped make opera a commercially viable form with Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria and L'incoronazione di Poppea, one of the earliest operas in the present-day operatic repertoire.
  • Francesco Cavalli Amongst the most important of Monteverdi's successors, Cavalli was a major force in spreading opera throughout Italy and also helped introduce it to France. His Giasone was " the most popular opera of the 17th century".
  • Jean-Baptiste Lully In close collaboration with the librettist Philippe Quinault, Lully founded the tradition of tragédie en musique, combining singing, dance and visual spectacle, which would remain the most prestigious French operatic genre for almost a hundred years. Cadmus et Hermione is often regarded as the first example of French opera.
  • Henry Purcell First English operatic composer of significance. His masterwork is Dido and Aeneas.
  • Alessandro Scarlatti Key figure in the development of opera seria, Scarlatti claimed to have composed over 100 operas, of which La Griselda is a notable example.
  • Jean-Philippe Rameau Most important French opera composer of the 18th century. Following in the genre established by Lully, he endowed his works with a great richness of invention. Rameau's musical daring provoked great controversy in his day, but he was an important influence on Gluck.
  • Johann Christoph Pepusch Arranger of the first English ballad opera, the biting political satire, The Beggar's Opera.
  • George Frideric Handel Handel's opera serie set the standard in his day. Handel composed a series of over 40 operas.

    1700–1799

  • Giovanni Battista Pergolesi Though Pergolesi also composed opera serias, his most influential work was the short opera buffa, La serva padrona.
  • Christoph Willibald Gluck Was a key figure in the transformation of Baroque into Classical opera, paving the way for Mozart, though his influence stretched much further into the 19th century, with both Berlioz and Wagner acknowledging their debt to him. In his reform operas from Orfeo ed Euridice onwards, he sought to throw off the formal conventions of opera seria and write music of "beautiful simplicity".
  • Joseph Haydn Haydn wrote nineteen operas including several comic operas and singspiels.
  • Giovanni Paisiello Italian composer who wrote the first opera to include Beaumarchais' character Figaro as a main character, as well as writing a substantial number of other operas, some of them in St. Petersburg.
  • André Grétry Liège composer crucial to the development of French opéra comique, whose simplicity of musical style and sophisticated dramaturgy were immensely popular, as well as linking pre-revolutionary rococo comedy to the later romantic style.
  • Domenico Cimarosa Italian composer most famous for the opera buffa, Il matrimonio segreto, which forms a bridge between the comedies of Mozart and Rossini.
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Mozart's series of comic collaborations with Lorenzo Da Ponte are among the most popular operas in the repertoire today, along with his Singspiel The Magic Flute.
  • Antonio Salieri Italian composer who was a major contributor to and shaper of Viennese musical life from 1770 to 1820, he also composed successful operas in Italy and Paris, and won admiration from German operagoers as a composer who, in the words of one contemporary critic, ‘could bind all the power of German music to the sweet Italian style’. His opera Europa riconosciuta was composed for the inauguration of La Scala. Among his other most successful operas were Les Danaïdes, Axur, re d'Ormus and Falstaff.
  • Luigi Cherubini Follower of Gluck, Cherubini's most famous opera is Médée. The title role has proved a challenge to sopranos since its premiere in 1797.
  • Ludwig van Beethoven Wrote only one opera, Fidelio, a tale of freedom from political oppression, which has become one of the major German language operas.
  • Gaspare Spontini Though Italian, Spontini is best known for his work in France during the Napoleonic era. His masterpiece La vestale influenced Bellini and Berlioz.
  • Daniel Auber French composer celebrated for high-spirited opéra comiques such as Fra Diavolo and Le domino noir. His grand opera La muette de Portici attained unexpected political influence when a performance in Brussels in 1830 sparked off a revolution which led to the creation of Belgium.
  • Carl Maria von Weber Founded German Romantic opera in order to challenge the dominance of Italian bel canto. Master of orchestral colour and atmosphere, Weber was never well served by his librettists, and only one of his works, Der Freischütz, is performed with any frequency. Though he died young, his influence on later German composers, especially Wagner, was immense.
  • Giacomo Meyerbeer The archetypal composer of French grand opera, Meyerbeer's huge extravaganzas such as Les Huguenots and Le prophète were immensely popular in their day.
  • Gioachino Rossini Links bel canto with grand opera. His immortal Barber of Seville was the only one of his operas that was continuously performed into the 20th century, but his serious operas, such as Semiramide and Ermione, are recognised as masterpieces now that singers with appropriate technique are again available to perform them. Guillaume Tell, his swan-song, has a vast sweep only equalled in the 19th century by the later works of Verdi, Mussorgsky and Wagner.
  • Heinrich Marschner German composer who was the most important exponent of German Romantic opera in the generation between Weber and Wagner. His most successful operas were Hans Heiling, Der Vampyr and Der Templer und die Jüdin.
  • Gaetano Donizetti Along with Rossini and Bellini, Donizetti is generally acknowledged as one of the masters of the bel canto style. His masterwork is generally cited as being Lucia di Lammermoor.
  • Fromental Halévy Along with Meyerbeer, the best known composer of French grand opera, Halévy's key work is La Juive, a story of religious intolerance set in 15th century Switzerland.

    1800–1849

  • Vincenzo Bellini On account of such works as Norma and I puritani, Bellini is recognised as one of the leading composers of the bel canto style of opera.
  • Hector Berlioz Berlioz's attempts to carve out an operatic career for himself were thwarted by an unimaginative musical establishment. Nevertheless, he managed to produce Benvenuto Cellini, Béatrice et Bénédict and his masterpiece, the epic Les Troyens,. Berlioz's dramatic legend, La damnation de Faust, has also been staged as an opera in recent years.
  • Mikhail Glinka Founded the Russian operatic tradition with his historical drama A Life for the Tsar and his fairy tale piece Ruslan and Lyudmila.
  • Michael William Balfe Irish composer, his opera The Bohemian Girl is notable for its Arline's aria Gipsy Girl's Dream.
  • Ambroise Thomas French composer noted for the operas Mignon and Hamlet.
  • George Alexander Macfarren English composer noted for the operas Robin Hood and Helvellyn.
  • Richard Wagner Wagner revolutionised opera. In a series of "music dramas" such as Tristan und Isolde, Parsifal, and most of all his epic tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen, Wagner abolished the traditional distinction between recitative and aria and pioneered a new through-composed style of opera.
  • Giuseppe Verdi Had a long composing career, during which his compositional style kept evolving. Among his most famous works are Nabucco, Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, La traviata, Don Carlos, Aida, and Otello.
  • Charles Gounod Wrote lyrical operas on literary themes, including Roméo et Juliette and Mireille. His Faust still holds the stage today, in spite of criticisms of its "Victorianism".
  • Jacques Offenbach Founder of French operetta and a prolific composer of pieces which achieved tremendous success with Parisian audiences for their catchy melodies and satirical bite such as La Vie parisienne and Orpheus in the Underworld. At the time of his death, Offenbach was working on a more serious opera, The Tales of Hoffmann.
  • Bedřich Smetana Established Czech national opera with such historical epics as Dalibor. His folk comedy The Bartered Bride has entered the international repertory.
  • Alexander Borodin A "weekend composer" who spent 17 years working on a single opera, Prince Igor, which now forms a key part of the Russian repertory.
  • Camille Saint-Saëns. French composer of around a dozen operas of which one, the Biblical Samson et Delila, is still performed.
  • Léo Delibes French composer, whose Lakmé is notable for its Flower Duet and as a vehicle for coloratura sopranos.
  • Georges Bizet Bizet's masterwork Carmen is a staple of the repertoire of opera houses the world over. At the time of its premiere, the controversial plot scandalised both critics and the public.
  • Modest Mussorgsky Mussorgsky completed only one opera, but Boris Godunov proved to be inspiration for generations of Russian composers on account of its uniquely nationalist character.
  • Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Tchaikovsky's international fame as an opera composer mainly rests on two works, Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades. Less interested in cultivating a uniquely Russian style than his contemporary Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky also shows the influence of Mozart, bel canto and Bizet's Carmen in these pieces.
  • Emmanuel Chabrier Had ambitions to write grand operas in the Wagnerian vein, but is now most celebrated for lighter pieces, such as L'étoile and Le roi malgré lui, which were greatly admired by Ravel and Poulenc.
  • Antonín Dvořák Leading Czech opera composer between Smetana and Janáček. His Rusalka, based on the Undine legend, is his most popular work internationally.
  • Jules Massenet Arguably the most representative French opera composer of his era, Massenet was a prolific and versatile writer whose works cover a wide variety of themes. His popularity faded somewhat after the First World War, but Werther and Manon still make regular appearances in the opera house.
  • Arthur Sullivan English composer who is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado.
  • Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov Russian composer who wrote colourful operas on legendary and historical subjects.