Opera's 8 best Shakespeare moments

For centuries, Shakespeare’s plays have provided a wealth of inspiration for opera’s great composers, with more than 200 operas inspired by his work. And it’s no wonder why: his plays are full of great loves, ruthless villains, endless conflict, spectacular deaths and the occasional belly laugh. In other words, his plays are ready-made operas. Just add music.

Here’s just a handful of those operas, in chronological order, and some of the beautiful music inspired by the Bard.

1. The Fairy-Queen (Purcell) – 1692
Opera is said to have been born at the premiere of Jacopo Peri’s Dafne in Florence in 1598, right when Shakespeare was writing some of his most celebrated plays in England. But it was almost a century later when Shakespeare and opera finally met.

Henry Purcell’s The Fairy-Queen is one of the first operas to spring from a Shakespearean text. The 1692 opera draws (very) loose inspiration from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, focussing on the relationship between Oberon and Titania. It bears little relationship to the plot of Shakespeare’s play, but it’s a fascinating dramatic work with some beautiful baroque music.

2. Otello (Rossini) – 1816
Gioachino Rossini’s most-performed operas remain his sparkling comedies like The Barber of Seville, but in 1816 he turned his hand to one of Shakespeare’s great tragedies: Othello.

Rossini’s Otello came more than 70 years before Verdi’s adaptation, which has eclipsed Rossini’s version in popularity. But Rossini’s version, set in Venice instead of the original Cyprus, is still sometimes performed. Its tenor duet ‘Ah vieni, nel tuo sangre’ is often heard in concerts.

3. Macbeth (Verdi) – 1847
Giuseppe Verdi adapted his first Shakespeare of three in 1847, relatively early in his career, the story of a Scottish general who has a ruthless and bloody rise to power. It’s Lady Macbeth who really steals the limelight in this opera with some fabulously dramatic arias.

4. Romeo and Juliet (Gounod) – 1867
Charles Gounod took on Shakespeare’s most beloved romantic tragedy, digging deep into the relationship between its two main characters. The opera features four wonderful duets for Romeo and Juliet, although it’s Juliet’s waltz ‘Ve veux vivre’ that is performed most frequently.

5. Hamlet (Thomas) – 1868
Hamlet, the tragic story of a Danish Prince, has been adapted countless times, including into several operas. The most recent was Australian composer Brett Dean’s version, which premiered at Glyndebourne in England in 2017.

But it’s Ambroise Thomas’s 1868 adaptation which remains the most popular operatic Hamlet. Thomas wrote the opera right when Paris became obsessed with the play – particularly with the tragic character of Ophelia – owing to a number of high-profile performances. Thomas wrote some of his most complex, beautiful and challenging music for Ophelia.

6. Otello (Verdi) – 1887
After Rossini’s successful adaptation, Verdi tried his hand at Shakespeare’s Othello. His opera was initially going to be named “Iago”, after the story’s villain, to differentiate itself from Rossini’s version.

After a lukewarm initial response to his Macbeth, Verdi struck gold with Otello, and the premiere at La Scala was a huge hit. Verdi wrote beautiful music for his three main characters: Otello, Iago and Desdemona. Desdemona’s two back-to-back arias: the ‘Willow Song’ and ‘Ave Maria’ are fabulous showpieces for a soprano, while his writing for Iago and Otello ramps up this tragedy’s enormous tension.

See Otello at Sydney Opera House

7. Falstaff (Verdi) – 1893
Verdi ended his career with this joyous adaptation of The Merry Wives of Windsor, which has become a regularly performed and popular work after decades of neglect. It’s a departure from Verdi’s earlier work and there’s only one traditional aria. Verdi brought some darker musical themes from his earlier scores – including Rigoletto and A Masked Ball – and transformed them into comedy. Music critic Richard Osborne called Falstaff “the finest opera, inspired by the finest dramatist, by the finest opera composer the world has known.”

8. A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Britten) – 1960
English composer Benjamin Britten took the unusual step of using Shakespeare’s original text as his libretto, altering very little in the play. Since its 1960 premiere at the Aldeburgh Festival, Britten’s opera has proven to be a very popular Shakespearean adaptation. It has received high-profile productions from many of the world’s leading opera companies. Baz Luhrmann created a new version for Opera Australia in 1993, which toured to Edinburgh Festival to great acclaim.

Britten’s writing for the role of Oberon (written for the unusually high voice of a male countertenor) is among his most striking.

Otello at Sydney Opera House

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