Operas with similar titles / subjects

The human voice with or without any instrument(s)
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Timtin
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Operas with similar titles / subjects

Post by Timtin »

The slight similarity between the names of The Merry Widow (Lehar) and The Merry Wives of Windsor (Nicolai) led me to wonder which operas have identical names, but were written by different composers. This is the list I've got so far:-

Don Giovanni (Gazzaniga, Mozart),
Faust (Gounod, Spohr)
La Boheme (Leoncavallo, Puccini),
Manon Lescaut (Auber, Puccini),
Otello (Rossini, Verdi),
Rusalka (Dargominsky, Dvorak),
Sarka (Fibich, Janacek),
The Barber of Seville (Paisiello, Rossini),
Turandot (Busoni, Puccini),
William Ratcliff (Cui, Mascagni),
Wozzeck (Berg, Gurlitt).

Further additions to this list would be welcomed.
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arglmann
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Re: Operas with similar titles / subjects

Post by arglmann »

There's an Rusalka opera also by Stepan Davidov.
It features a glass harmonica
- and I'm searching for it for ages!!! :-)

I think there are lots of adaptions of Walter Scott's
novel "The Bride of Lammermoor" as well.
There should be an entry in the old forum archive
opera thread about this opera by lots of different
composers - found out by Caprotti!

Arglmann
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Timtin
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Re: Operas with similar titles / subjects

Post by Timtin »

Here are two additions to my previous list:-

Artaserse (Arne, JCBach, Galuppi, Gluck, Graun, Hasse, Myslivecek, Vinci),
The Tempest (Ades, Lieberman).

Operas with closely related titles (but not necessarily related plots) include:-

Ariane (Massenet) c.f. Ariadne auf Naxos (RStrauss),
Artaserse (Arne et al) c.f. Xerxes (Handel),
A Village Romeo and Juliet (Delius) c.f. Romeo and Juliet (Gounod),
Doctor Faustus (Busoni) c.f. Faust (Gounod, Spohr) c.f. The Damnation of Faust (Berlioz),
Iolanthe (Gilbert and Sullivan) c.f. Iolanta (Tchaikovsky).
Last edited by Timtin on Tue Oct 06, 2009 12:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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FW190
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Re: Operas with similar titles / subjects

Post by FW190 »

Lodoiska is a famous opera by Cherubini. But the same libretto by Fulleto-Loreaux and the same title was used by Rodolphe Kreutzer (1791), Stephen Storace (1794) and Johann Simon Mayr (1796).

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Ferruccio
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Re: Operas with similar titles / subjects

Post by Ferruccio »

Ok, not very correctly at the topic ...

Pelléas et Mélisande (Opera by Debussy, Symphonic poem by Schoenberg, Schauspielmusik by Sibelius)
Best regards, Ferruccio
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Re: Operas with similar titles / subjects

Post by lito valle »

El Barbero de Sevilla
zarzuela
text by Miguel Nieto, music by Gerónimo Giménez
(1901)
The most popular aria is "Me llaman la primorosa" (soprano with coloratura)
Saludos...
midlope

theatre of cruelty

Post by midlope »

and the infamous case of the Cenci family:

Beatrix Cenci, music by Ginastera

Beatrice Cenci, music by Berthold Goldschmitt (1951, after Bysshe-Shelley's play)

The Cenci, music by Havergal Brian (1951-2, also after Shelley)

The composer Gesualdo has been an inspiration for more or less contemporary operas, his patronymic snaring the title of works by Schnittke, Craig Armstrong, Bo Holton, likely more.

Nerone were operas composed respectively by Arrigo Boito and Pietro Mascagni on the historically debauched emperor, while Anton Rubinstein composed a Nero.
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