The most famous librettist of his time, Felice Romani, wrote the libretto of the Opera "Anna Bolena" for the Italian composer Donizetti. This Opera is the third joint work of Donizetti and Romani. On the basis of Romani's libretti, the composer wrote ten operas.
The plot of the Opera is based on two tragedies, "Anna Bolena" by the Italian poet, Count Alessandro Pepoli, and "Henry VIII" by the famous French dramatist Marie-Joseph Chénier.
Anna Bolena is the historical figure Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII of England. In 1536, Anne Boleyn was accused of adultery and incest with her brother and was beheaded at Tower Green on May 19 of the same year.
The premiere of the Opera "Anna Bolena" took place on December 26, 1830, in the Teatro Carcano in Milan.

The libretto of the comic operetta “The Bat” (“Die Fledermaus”) by Johann Strauss Jr. is based on a farce by German playwright Julius Roderich Benedix. Playwrights Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy transformed it into a vaudeville.
Their play was such a big success in Paris that the Director of the Theater An der Wien (Vienna) Maximilian Steiner decided to stage it in his theater. He ordered Austrian playwright and composer Richard Genée to write the final version of the play. One of the friends of Strauss' suggested that Steiner order Strauss to compose the music for the play. Strauss began working with great enthusiasm; he fell in love with the libretto so much that he completed his work in only 1.5 months. The premiere of the operetta took place on April 5, 1872, Easter, in the Theater An der Wien.

The plot of this opera by the Russian composer Rimsky-Korsakov is based on the novel “Christmas Eve” by Nikolai Gogol. The libretto was authored by the composer himself, who wrote his opera in the style of a fairy tale, enriching it with imaginary elements, as well as including in the libretto ancient pagan sayings with which Russian peasant household rituals were particularly rich.
“Christmas Eve” was premiered on November 28, 1895, at the Mariinsky Theater.

This opera's libretto was written by Luigi Illica who based it on the novel "The Vulture Wally: A Story from the Tyrolean Alps" by German writer Wilhelmine von Hillern. The opera was premiered on January 20, 1892, at the La Scala opera theater in Milan.

This is Spanish composer Manuel de Falla's first opera. He worked on it for about a year, from August 1904 to March 1905. It was premiered in French translation on April 1, 1913, in Nice.

German composer Carl Otto Ehrenfried Nicolai wrote his opera “The Merry Wives of Windsor” on the basis of English playwright William Shakespeare's comedy of the same name (1597). The opera was premiered on March 9, 1849, at the Berlin Royal Court Opera under the baton of the composer.

In 1893, Gustave Flaubert's novel "Herodias" inspired the English writer Oscar Wilde to write his one-act drama “Salomé” in French for the famous tragic actress Sarah Bernhardt. The play was staged in European theaters with a great success. The German composer Richard Strauss watched it in early 1903 in Berlin.
The exciting exotic nature of the East, Herod's hysterical character, and the sharpness of the contrast between Salome's disastrous amorality and God-fearing Jochanaan's (John the Baptist) piety inspired Strauss to compose an opera based on this play.

The French composer Mascagni wrote the opera "Cavalleria Rusticana" for the competition of one-act operas organized in Milan by the publisher Edoardo Sonzogno in 1888.
Learning about the competition very late, Mascagni turned for help to his friend, poet Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti who decided to borrow the plot of the libretto from a novel by Giovanni Verga. Guido Menasci also participated in the reworking of the plot. In March 1890, the decision of the jury was announced, according to which the winners were Niccola Spinelli's "Labilia," Vincenzo Ferroni's  "Rudello," and Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana."
The opera was premiered in Rome on May 17, 1890, and was a great success.

The authors of the libretto of the opera “The Pearl Fishers” (“Les pêcheurs de perles”) are Eugène Cormon and Michel Carré. It was premiered on September 30, 1863, at the Paris Lyric Theater. Bizet, who had not yet reached the age of 25, was welcomed by the audience who, in addition to singers, also demanded the composer.

This episode presents Gaetano Donizetti's Opera Dom Sébastien. This is the last opera of the composer.  Its libretto was written by the famous French playwright Eugène Scribe, based on the drama of the same name by Paul-Henri Foucher. It was premiered at the Paris Opera on November 13, 1843.

The authors of the libretto of this opera by French composer Berlioz are Léon de Wailly and Henri Auguste Barbier. It is based on the memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini, the famous Italian sculptor, jeweler, painter, soldier and musician of the period of  Renaissance.

French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau's opera "Hippolyte et Aricie" is based on Jean Racine's tragedy "Phaedra." No later than December 1732, Rameau's patron Alexandre Le Riche de La Poupelinière introduced Rameau to Abbé Simon-Joseph Pellegrin. The latter agreed to write the libretto for the opera.
The opera premiered on October 1, 1733, at the Royal Academy of Music in Paris (now Paris National Opera Theater).

The plot of the Opera Faust is borrowed from the first part of Goethe's tragedy of the same name, which is itself based on a common German medieval legend.
The libretto was written by Paul Jules Barbier and Michel Antoine Florentine Carre.
The first performance of the opera took place in Paris, in Théâtre-Lyrique, on March 19, 1859.

The libretto of this opera was written by Victor Étienne de Jouy and Michel Dieulafoy.
The opera was premiered on December 15, 1807, at the Paris National Opera in the presence of Empress Josephine. Despite the tendency to get rid of Italian influence in French music, the audience immediately appreciated this opera as a masterpiece.

The libretto of the operetta "The Merry Widow" is based on Henri Meilhac's comedy "The Embassy Attaché" and is authored by Viktor Léon  and Leo Stein.
The operetta was first staged at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna on December 30, 1905. The success was tremendous. The audience constantly called the artists back for an encore, demanding a repetition of certain parts, and the operetta ended with a huge ovation.
"The Merry widow" is deservedly called the Queen of Operettas. Its witty libretto and Lehar's beautiful music have made it very popular. In different countries, various films have been created based on its plot.

Libretto of the Opera "Oracle in Messenia" was written by the Italian poet Apostolo Zeno. In 1738, the opera was a great success in Venice. Thanks to the perseverance of Vivaldi's friends, in 1742, the opera was also premiered in Vienna.
This work previously considered lost has been recovered on the basis of the libretto of the Vienna premiere, which has been recently found in the Library of Congress in Washington. This important and difficult task has been successfully carried out by violinist and conductor Fabio Biondi who has used the technique of "pasticcio" in reconstructing the lost passages of the original opera.

In 1844, the famous French librettist Jules Saint-Georges invited Flotow to participate in the creation of the three-act ballet "Lady Harriette" for Grand Opera. The premiere of the ballet on April 21, 1844, was a success and marked the beginning of Flotow's cooperation with Saint-Georges, whose librettos were used by Flotow in a number of operas.
But Flotow also collaborated with the Hamburg-born singer Friedrich Wilhelm Riese. It was the latter who persuaded Flotow to use the plot of the ballet "Lady Harriette" for the opera "Martha, or The Fair of Richmond."
The premiere of the romantic-comic opera "Martha" took place on September 25, 1847, in Kärntnertortheater, Vienna.
The opera consists of four acts, which are presented in four parts of our broadcast, respectively.

Libretto was written by Vladimir Begichev and Vasily Geltser.
“Swan Lake” was premiered in February 1977 and met by the public not very well. The experts of that time considered it unsuccessful, and it was soon removed from the scene. The main culprits were considered choreographer Vatslav Reisinger and Polina Karpakova, who performed the role of Odette.
After almost twenty years, the Directorate of Imperial Theaters again turned its attention to Tchaikovsky's work to include it in the new season of 1893-1894. Thus, a new script of the play was developed by famous Marius Petipa. The composer's brother, Modest Ilyich, remade the libretto.
The new premiere took place in January 1895 in St. Petersburg. Since that time, the ballet has received a well-deserved recognition among both the public and music critics.

In 1876, Marius Petipa was attracted by the idea of the ballet "La Bayadère." Sergei Khudekov developed the plot based on "Shakuntala, or The Sign of Shakuntala" by the ancient Indian poet Kalidasa.  However, the original source of Petipa's ballet wasn't this ancient drama, but the French ballet "Shakuntala" by T. Gauthier.
The Austrian composer Ludwig Minkus's ballet "La Bayadère" was premiered on February 4, 1877, at the Bolshoi Theater in St. Petersburg. Then the play disappeared from the repertoire for more than a decade. In 1941, a great expert on the classical heritage, Vladimir Ponomarev, and the young choreographer Vakhtang Chabukiani jointly created a three-act version of the old play. In 1948, this version was replenished and since then has not descended from theater stage.

In April 1849, the five-act drama by Eugène Scribe and Ernest Legouvé "Adrienne Lecouvreur" was staged with triumphant success in Paris. Based on this play, Arturo Colautti wrote a libretto for the opera of the same name.
The heroine of the opera is a historical character, an actress of the French Comedy Teather, Adriana Lecouvreur, famous for her roles in Racine's tragedies.
The opera was premiered at Milan's Teatro Lirico on November 6, 1902.