Ariadne auf Naxos comes to mind.

In I Pagliacci, the performance for which the characters are preparing is Commedia dell'arte rather than opera proper.

I suppose the "mechanicals" in MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM are producing (viz "wrecking") an opera, rather than just a play, in the Britten setting? ;-)

What are your greatest regrets about operas composers didn’t write?

It will remain a huge disappointment to many Verdians, myself included, that he never composed ‘King Lear’, despite writing a detailed synopsis in four acts (eleven scenes). A libretto was commissioned from Salvatore Cammarano, but he died before its completion, but Antonio Somma took over the libretto and two versions were produced in 1853 and 1855. Verdi wrote some musical sketches and I have read a suggestion that one of them found its way into Leonora's first act cavatina in La Forza del Destino. He seemed unable to find a satisfactory cast of singers and kept putting the project on the ‘back-burner’, but rumours continued until his final years that he was about to work on Lear again.
In 1896, Verdi offered the libretto to Mascagni, who apparently asked why he didn’t compose it himself. According to Mascagni, "softly and slowly he replied 'the scene in which King Lear finds himself on the heath terrified me.'"
Given that father/ daughter relationships form such a pivotal role in so many Verdi operas, it is my greatest regret that ‘Re Lear’ never saw the light of day.

Which other operatic projects that never attained fruition cause you the most regret? Or perhaps you have ideas of operas you wish the likes of Mozart, Puccini, Britten, Tchaikovsky or Strauss had considered? Over to you…

I think there were two other King Lears that sadly never quite happened, by Beethoven and Shostakovich. And didn't Mozart toy with the idea of The Tempest? I could happily have done with those three for starters.


[Ah, correction. The Beethoven Shakespeare opera that nearly happened but didn't was a Macbeth not a Lear. He began working in collaboration with librettist Heinrich von Collin and got as far as some sketches but Collins died before the libretto was completed and Beethoven didn't pursue it further.]   

One opera I would love to have seen is Janacek's ANNA KARENINA, for which he began making sketches.... as usual, to a libretto of his own devising.  Rather like HOUSE OF THE DEAD, Janacek's preferred method was simply going through his (Russian-text) copy of the book, and underlining in pencil those parts of the text which interested him... as a fluent Russian-speaker, and considering the similarity of the two slavic languages, he seems to have devised his own Czech text on-the-fly.   It's not hard to see the attraction for Janacek personally in AK, given his "confession" to Stosslova that he had modelled most of his Leading Ladies (including Aljeja, the breeches-role in HotD) on her own character, and saw her in all of them.  Perhaps it was the conclusion that such a relationship would tear his beloved Stosslova apart and induce her to commit suicide that caused him to abandon the project?   He'd already completed one Tolstoy-based project - the String Quartet entitled "The Kreutzer Sonata", which once again returns to the theme of adultery (although in that case, adultery which existed only in the mind of a jealous husband).

I also wish that Stephen Storace had lived to complete MAHMOUD, PRINCE OF PERSIA (allegedly incomplete at the time of his death in 1796... a concert performance - reputedly of a version "completed" by Michael Kelly -  was given as a Benefit for his widow, but all the music is now completely lost).  I also regret that Storace hadn't made some other copy of his "masterpiece", DIDO QUEEN OF CARTHAGE, which "fail'd in circumstance of its Italianate complexities"... the only score is presumed to have been lost in the Drury Lane Theatre Fire of 1809...  along with the rest of Storace's works it had been locked in Richard Sheridan's office in the theatre "for safekeeping".  


PS I would also like to see ANY operatic settings of Chekhov's plays  Well, when I say "any", I exclude "travesty" versions

There was a concert performance here in Moscow this summer of "DSCH's KING LEAR".  I only found out about it later, as I had been abroad on work of my own when it happened...  I haven't yet found anyone who went, who could tell me what was actually performed.  I believe it was "assembled" out of both the incidental music and the "film" version.

After further reading, it seems Verdi was really held up by his second librettist, Somma, who had to more or less be taught how to write a libretto; lots of things got rejected/ revised and then another commission got in the way, Les vêpres siciliennes for Paris. Afterwards, Verdi got as far as negotiating particular singers for Lear, even writing personally to Piccolomini to offer her the part of Cordelia, but for a variety of reasons he was unable to get the singers he wanted and was not prepared to mount a production with a cast he felt were not totally right for their roles. He then transferred his interest to the rewrite of his earlier opera Stiffelio, as Aroldo, and a new opera for Venice, Simon Boccanegra. The author, Vincent Godefroy, suggests that “Having made up his mind, he scotches the career of Re Lear, transferring his interest to Aroldo and Boccanegra. They are his Goneril and his Regan. Between them he divides his musical kingdom.”

Interestingly, the Fool was going to be a contralto role, and in revising his synopsis, Edgar got the boot in an attempt to cut some of the sub-plots for fear the opera would be too big. There was to be no ‘blinding of Gloucester scene’. In fact, Gloucester’s role was cut too by 1855.

There has been some speculation about where the music went that Verdi surely started to compose. Besides the setting of some of Cordelia’s banishment aria in Leonora’s first aria in Forza (quite convincing given that there are some almost identical lines), Charles Osborne suggested that the father-daughter recognition scene in Boccanegra may well have drawn upon some of the Lear-Cordelia music. And the storm may well be the one which breaks, for no apparent reason, over Loch Lomond in Act IV of Aroldo. I’d like to think that some of Verdi’s sketches for Lear did finally reach us, even in another guise.

A pleasure, Reiner.  

Some more operatic projects that, for one reason or another, never saw the light of day:

Albeniz – his King Arthur trilogy was left incomplete. Merlin (1898-1902) was performed (and recorded) but he only completed Act I of Lancelot. Guinevere was to be the third part.

Dvorak – wrote sketches for an opera about Hiawatha

Ravel - Of a projected opera inspired by The Arabian Nights, only the overture, Shéhérazade (1898), was written, plus, of course, the song cycle although apart from the title, it’s unrelated

Rimsky-Korsakov – left sketches for The Barber of Baghdad and had plans for settings of The Tempest, Saul and David and Il'ya Muromets.

Tchaikovsky – sketches for a projected opera on Romeo and Juliet; I think a duet or scene survives

Any of those make you wish they had been written? I think the prospect of an opera on the theme of the Arabian Nights by such a colourful orchestrator as Ravel would have been wonderful to hear.