I do know that, reiner.  What I was referring to was part 1 of Les Troyens, (which I notice nobody has bothered to defend from my lukewarm reaction.)

Fall out from Troy include at least Rossini's Erminone, Mozart's Idomeneo and Monteverdi's Ulisse.

Pre-Troy bits go to Gluck.  (Not a composer I have ever been inspired to explore.)

O, and give me Ermione any day rather than Idomeneo and Ulisse.

It is not the sort of thing that is thought of when Rossini is regularly called "sparkling."  Haven't listened to it for a year.

Not as a preference over the Puccini as a whole, no, but I like the Leoncavallo version's lack of sentimentality.  I posted in some detail about this opera in these parts before... I wonder whether I can find the post in question to save me saying all the same things again?

Here you go

http://r3ok.myforum365.com/index.php?topic=2408.msg84318#msg84318

I have been to a performance of the Gazzaniga.  The quoted review is quite true, though it contains some very attractive music.

The performance in question was one of Bampton Classical Opera's annual visits to St John's Smith Square in London.  Bampton's a great little company which makes a point of addressing little-known settings of well-known opera plots.  They have done the Paisiello Barber too, though I didn't see it, as well as Benda's Romeo and Juliet and Salieri's Falstaff.  This year, in the same vein, they are doing Paer's Leonora, ossia l'amor conjugale (in London on 16th September)...

In the Murger, Mimi turns up on Rodolphe's doorstep seriously ill; a couple of days later she is sent to hospital.  The lads visit her a couple of times, then one day they hear second hand that she has died.  Some days later, it turns out that they have been misinformed, and that she had been moved to another ward, subsequent to which the next occupant of the bed had died, hence the confusion.  The boys of course hot-foot it to the hospital to see her, only to discover that now she really has died (earlier the same day), all the while believing she has been abandoned by all her friends 

The Murger novel seems to be out of print in English - I have it in French, which I can't read very well  but managed to find it in English in the university library while at York.  Much of it is laugh-out-loud funny, but my goodness, you've got to be prepared for the sad bits

Edited to say OH MY GOODNESS, LOOK WHAT I'VE JUST FOUND:

http://home.swbell.net/worchel/chap22.htm

Edited AGAIN to say and here's Chapter 18, which you will recognise as the source of a great deal of the plot material for Puccini's opera, despite being a story of two characters who do not appear in the rest of the book: http://home.swbell.net/worchel/chap18.htm  I have always enjoyed the description of why Francine faints on Jacques' doorstep - he's been chain-smoking noxious substances, and she - being delicate in the chest - can't cope with the fug on a cold night 

Well to start with ...

Mime's broth in Act 1 of Siegfried

The Dyer's Wife frying fish (which then start to sing - what exactly was Hofmanstahl on?) in Act 1 of Die Frau Ohne Schatten

Madame Larina and Filipevna making jam at the start of Evgeny Onegin

There's a Cook (mezzo breeches role) in RUSALKA too, but I don't remember him/her cooking anything on stage...?

Someone (in operetta) sings himself a lullaby as he cooks his own supper?

Someone's served breakfast by his housekeeper that turns out to be an unpleasant surprise (the housekeeper has about 3 lines so we're pushing the envelope a bit - but cook indeed she does)

Well done for the jam detail in Onegin!!   I saw it again on Sunday evening, in a production that keeps the "jam motif" running to the very end

The witch in Hänsel und Gretel gets cooked onstage.  I'm not sure if she counts as food but I believe there are productions in which she becomes a Lebkuchenhexe with the implication that she is eaten.

The only operatic housekeeper I can think of at the moment was in Die Tote Stadt, and there were certainly some unpleasant surprises in the DVD I saw of that, but I don't remember a breakfast?