Here is a list of all 199 (edit: 200) pieces in the opera category that will be part of The Works project. I say “the opera category” because it includes a few musicals, several operettas, and other genres like the Baroque “comedie-ballet” and semi-opera, as well as a single surviving aria from an opera that has been lost.
The list is arranged in roughly chronological order by composer, based on the earliest piece in the list by each composer. Titles are capitalized according to English usage rather than the language of each title.
Baroque Era
Claudio Monteverdi: L'Orfeo; L'Arianna (only the lament survives); L'Incoronazione di Poppea
Francesco Cavalli: La Calisto
Jean-Baptiste Lully: Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme; Armide
Henry Purcell: Dido and Aeneas; The Fairy Queen
Marc-Antoine Charpentier: Médée
Alessandro Scarlatti: La Griselda
Handel: Giulio Cesare; Alcina; Serse (Xerxes)
John Gay (librettist): The Beggar's Opera (music from various sources, arranged by Johann Pepusch)
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi: La Serva Padrona
Jean-Philippe Rameau: Les Indes Galantes; Castor et Pollux; Platée; Zoroastre
Classical Era
Christoph Willibald Gluck: Orfeo ed Euridice; Alceste; Iphigénie en Aulide; Armide; Iphigénie en Tauride
Mozart: Idomeneo; Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail; Le Nozze di Figaro; Don Giovanni; Cosi fan Tutte; Die Zauberflote
Domenico Cimarosa: Il Matrimonio Segreto
Luigi Cherubini: Médée
Beethoven: Fidelio
Romantic Era
Rossini: L'Italiana in Algeri; Il Barbiere di Siviglia; La Cenerentola; Semiramide; Guillaume Tell
Carl Maria von Weber: Der Freischutz; Euryanthe; Oberon
Vincenzo Bellini: Il Pirata; Norma; La Sonnambula; I Puritani
Daniel-Francois Auber: Fra Diavolo
Gaetano Donizetti: Anna Bolena; L'Elisir d'Amore; Lucrezia Borgia; Lucia di Lammermoor; La Favorite; La Fille du Regiment; Don Pasquale
Mikhail Glinka: A Life for the Tsar; Ruslan and Ludmila
Giacomo Meyerbeer: Les Huguenots
Berlioz: Benvenuto Cellini; La Damnation de Faust; Les Troyens; Béatrice et Benedict
Verdi: Nabucco; Macbeth; Rigoletto; Il Trovatore; La Traviata; Simon Boccanegra; Un Ballo in Maschera; La Forza del Destino; Don Carlo; Aida; Otello; Falstaff
Wagner: Der Fliegende Hollander; Tannhauser; Lohengrin; Der Ring des Nibelungen (cycle of 4 operas: Das Rheingold, Die Walkure, Siegfried, Gotterdammerung); Tristan und Isolde; Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg; Parsifal
Otto Nicolai: Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor (The Merry Wives of WIndsor)
Jacques Offenbach: Orphée aux Enfers; La Belle Hélène; La Vie Parisienne; Les Contes d'Hoffmann
Charles Gounod: Faust; Roméo et Juliette
Georges Bizet: Les Pecheurs de Perles; Carmen
Bedrich Smetana: The Bartered Bride
Arrigo Boito: Mefistofele
Mussorgsky: Boris Godunov; Khovanschina
Johann Strauss II: Die Fledermaus; Die Zigeunerbaron
Amilcare Ponchielli: La Gioconda
Camille Saint-Saens: Samson et Dalila
Arthur Sullivan (librettos by William Gilbert): H.M.S. Pinafore; The Mikado
Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin; The Queen of Spades
Léo Delibes: Lakmé
Jules Massenet: Manon; Werther
Borodin: Prince Igor
Pietro Mascagni: Cavalleria Rusticana
Ruggero Leoncavallo: Pagliacci
Puccini: Manon Lescaut; La Bohème; Tosca; Madama Butterfly; La Fanciulla del West; La Rondine; Il Trittico (trilogy of one-act operas: Il Tabarro, Suor Angelica, Gianni Schicchi); Turandot
Engelbert Humperdinck: Hansel und Gretel
Hugo Wolf: Der Corregidor
Umberto Giordano: Andrea Chenier
Dvorak: Rusalka
Frederick Delius: A Village Romeo and Juliet
Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande
Janacek: Jenufa; Katya Kabanova; The Cunning Little Vixen
Richard Strauss: Salome; Elektra; Der Rosenkavalier; Ariadne auf Naxos; Die Frau ohne Schatten; Arabella; Capriccio
Nielsen: Maskarade
Rimsky-Korsakov: The Golden Cockerel
Modern Era
Franz Lehar: The Merry Widow
Ernst Bloch: Macbeth
Bela Bartok: Duke Bluebeard's Castle
Scott Joplin: Treemonisha
Hans Pfitzner: Palestrina
Sergei Prokofiev: The Love for Three Oranges; War and Peace
Alban Berg: Wozzeck; Lulu
Manuel de Falla: Master Peter's Puppet Show
Ferrucio Busoni: Doktor Faust
Karol Szymanowski: King Roger
Maurice Ravel: L'Enfant et les Sortilèges
Zoltan Kodaly: Hary Janos
Igor Stravinsky: Oedipus Rex; The Rake's Progress
Virgil Thomson: Four Saints in Three Acts; The Mother of Us All
Kurt Weill: Die Dreigroschenoper (The Three-Penny Opera); The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny; Street Scene
Arnold Schoenberg: Erwartung; Moses und Aron
Dmitri Shostakovich: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
George Gershwin: Porgy and Bess
Paul Hindemith: Mathis der Maler
Leonard Bernstein: On the Town; Candide; West Side Story
Benjamin Britten: Peter Grimes: The R@pe of Lucretia; Billy Budd; The Turn of the Screw; A Midsummer Night's Dream; Death in Venice
Marc Blitzstein: Regina
Gian Carlo Menotti: The Consul
Aaron Copland: The Tender Land
Carlisle Floyd: Susannah
Douglas Moore: The Ballad of Baby Doe
Francis Poulenc: Dialogues des Carmelites; La Voix Humaine
Samuel Barber: Vanessa
Bernd Alois Zimmermann: Die Soldaten
Hans Werner Henze: Elegy for Young Lovers
Luigi Nono: Intolleranza
Michael Tippett: King Priam
Peter Maxwell Davies: Taverner
Philip Glass: Einstein on the Beach; Satyagraha; Akhnaten
Gyorgy Ligeti: Le Grand Macabre
Steven Sondheim: Sweeney Todd
Oliver Knussen: Where the Wild Things Are
John Adams: Nixon in China
Alfred Schnittke: The History of Dr. Johann Faustus
Karlheinz Stockhausen: Licht (cycle of seven operas named for the days of the week)
original post 10/23/25; edited 11/17/25
