I'm sure we've done this before, but don't want to be a spoilsport.

Enescu's Oedipe includes a Shepherd, who brings the news that leads Oedipe to realise he has indeed murdered his father and married his mother.

Offenbach's La belle Helene includes Paris disguised as a shepherd.

I don't know Mozart's Il pastor fido, and I expect reiner will say don't bother, and he's probably right,  but it must include a shepherd of some sort.

The wonderful Ralph Vaughan Williams  * wrote a one acter, The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains, which was subsequently Act 4 Scene 1 of Pilgrim's Progress.  Reiner will say again don't bother, and in this case I will stand up and say it's lovely.

Off stage shepherds in Tosca and Tristan. 


* I wish he had written more wonderful operas rather than all those beloved symphonies, and I suspect he would too.

I wish he had written more wonderful operas than the ones he actually did write   RIDERS TO THE SEA is a masterpiece - and then somehow he could never achieve that kind of writing again.

Since Oedipus has been mentioned, there are almost certainly shepherds in all the (many) operas about him.  Stravinsky's, for example - "Opor-TE-bat!"   It would be worth being a tenor, just to sing that one phrase

Oh come long someone - there's a Wagnerian one that needs to be eliminated from our enquiries

A complete swizz at full-price, I fear. But nonetheless I would dearly like to see that piece performed

My production of THE MEDIUM is available (back "by popular demand" this season!) very cheaply as a 50-minute curtain-raiser, hem-hem   Perhaps we should give a street-theatre performance in Mays Court afterwards - and pass the hat round opera-goers disinclined to go home so early?   We also have THE ELECTRO-MAGNETIC SINGING LESSON or TRAFALGAR if you fancy something sillier

But I really can't being to understand why they didn't do Holst's SAVITRI as a companion piece.  The composers were friends, they are both early works,  and both are compact and an easy fit.  SAVITRI's subject matter, about a philosophical acceptance of death, even sits well with the subject matter in RIDERS.   SAVITRI would have made a very nice piece in which to offer ENO Young Artists a first outing in a major role,  or give an opportunity to a promising young member of the chorus - we used to do that sort of project when I was there myself, and some of them made the leap - John Schofield ("John Riley-Schofield" as he was forced to become for his Equity Card) , my touring-version Papageno, was a chorister who went on to a decent solo career in the Netherlands, and very deserved too.

Ye're bang-on there, gal



IL PASTOR FIDO would be another rather obvious Handelian entry

The last of these is King Priam.

Has anyone mentioned the Shepherd in Krol Roger yet?

Aminta in Il re pastore?

The Opera Register had this to say of IL PASTOR FIDO in 1712:

"The scene represented only ye country of Arcadia. Ye habits were old - ye opera short."

I must admit I don't know the piece at all.  It was Handel's second piece for London (after RINALDO, an instant success) - the public came expecting RINALDO II, and went home very disappointed..  it closed very quickly.  It had been cast with singers we never hear of before or after -  Jane Barbier, Francesca Margherita de L'Epine, Valeriano Pellegrini, and this might have been a large part of the reason?  The only member of the RINALDO cast to appear was Elisabetta Pilotti-Schiavonetti.  No hint from the score whether they are shepherds or not, but with names like Mirtillo, Amarilli, Eurilla, Silvio, and Dorinda (all sops and altos) it seems pretty likely. The only bass role is Tirenio, Grand Priest Of Diana.

 

Il Re Pastore is the Mozart protagonist I was thinking of, Ruth. Il Pastor Fido certainly sounds as if it should be shepherd-packed.

The shepherds in the Mozart multi-shepherd one are classical shepherds (as indeed they are in the Handel multi-shepherd one, which is really a masque or something rather than an opera, and exists in two versions).

The Handel aria is one where a usurper compares himself to a shepherd in an uneasy-lies-the-head-that-wears-a-crown vein.

Here's some more, after which I think I've run out of shepherds, though there are probably loads more:

A deity disguised as a shepherd in an early baroque work
A shepherd acting as a guide in a French opera
A rather reticent shepherd in a later French opera
A story about a shepherd miraculously healed
A smitten shepherd in Purcell
A pastoral scene enacted at a Russian party
A couple of toffs in two separate Handel operas who both disguise themselves as shepherds (though I wouldn't be surprised if other characters in Handel had come up with the same idea  )