Dave's Music Hall of Fame: Album Inductees (August 2024)

The Top Operas Originally posted 8/22/2024. January 22, 2019 marked the 10-year anniversary of the DMDB blog. To honor that, Dave’s Music Database announced its own Hall of Fame. This month marks the 23rd group of album inductees. These are the top 10 operas of all time (see the full list here). Four were already inducted in previously classes: George & Ira Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) and Don Giovanni, and Richard Wagner’s The Ring Cycle (Der Ring Des Nibelungen). See the full list of album inductees here.

Georges Bizet Carmen (1874) Inducted August 2024 as “The Top Operas.”

Carmen is “one of the most popular and frequently performed operas in the classical canon.” WK Bizet based the four-act opera on a Prosper Mérimée novella of the same name with a libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. WK The music “has since been widely acclaimed for brilliance of melody, harmony, atmosphere, and orchestration, and for the skill with which Bizet musically represented the emotions and suffering of his characters.” WK Read more.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Die Zauberflote (The Magic Flute) (1791) Inducted August 2024 as “The Top Operas.”

The Magic Flute is a two-act opera with both singing and spoken dialogue, or libretto, by Emanuel Schikaneder. Jakob August Libeskind’s story “Lulu or the Magic Flute” is considered a possible source for Schikaneder’s libretto. AM “Although overwhelmed by many adversities, Mozart found great joy in working” AM on the opera. It premiered at Schikaneder’s Theater auf der Wieden in the suburbs of Vienna on September 30, 1791. WK Read more.

Giacomo Puccini La Bohème (The Bohemian Life) (1896) Inducted August 2024 as “The Top Operas.”

Puccini’s opera was inspired by the “nineteenth century cultural fad of Bohemianism” AM and the “theme of Parisian starving artists.” AM While the opera world sometimes suffered “recklessly wordy narratives in search of musical anchor and gorgeous music lacking plot lines” Puccini “achieved a very happy medium” TM with La Bohème. His “musical decisions were informed by the necessities of the drama” TM and he offers “genuinely memorable melodies, songs that would be deeply affecting independent of any narrative.” TM Read more.

Giacomo Puccini Tosca (1900) Inducted August 2024 as “The Top Operas.”

When Puccini started writing Tosca, he’d already composed four operas, including the popular La Bohème. In “a marked change from the late Romantic sentimentality” AM of that work, Tosca was an exploration of “the dark side of human emotion.” AM It “premiered in 1900 at Rome’s Teatro Costanzi to a temperate critical reception.” AM Read more.

Gioacchino Rossini Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) (1816) Inducted August 2024 as “The Top Operas.”

The Barber of Seville “has proven to be one of the greatest masterpieces of comedy within music.” WK It is “widely considered the greatest of comic operas.” AM It is an opera buffa in two acts. The Italian libretto, by Cesare Sterbini, was based on the 1775 French Comedy Le Barbier de Séville by Pierre Beaumarchais. WK in which nobility were depicted as buffoons dependent on their servants. AM “After two hundred years, it remains a popular work.” WK Read more.

Richard Wagner Tristan Und Isolde (1859) Inducted August 2024 as “The Top Operas.”

“Wagner once explained it was his need to ‘vent his feelings musically’ that led him to compose Tristan und Isolde.” TM He was inspired by his affair with Mathilde Wesendonck, his patron’s wife to whom he wrote poems which became the basis for five of the opera’s songs. JH The opera is largely based on Tristan, a 12th-century romance by Gottfried von Strassburg. It premiered on June 10, 1865 at the Königliches Hof- und Nationaltheater in Munich with Hans von Bülow as the conductor. WK Read more.