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The musicologist Joseph Kerman famously called Tosca "that shabby little shocker". Audiences, however, love it, and lap up its tale of courage under oppression, as well as its great tunes.

Combining the effortless musical inspiration of a master at the top of his game, with the outstandingly rich wordplay of a young symbolist on the rise, Rusalka is an extraordinary fin-de-siècle mash-up of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid with Czech fairy-tales. Viewed as an allegory of Czech nationalism, ecological collapse, or feminist revenge, the work invites endless interpretation as you look into its bottomless depths. Come because you have an idea what the story is, stay because the music is so sad and beautiful it melts your soul, and leave in tearful shock as you meditate on the limits of individuality and your place in the universe. Rusalka is the kind of artistic achievement that makes life worth living.

Claude Debussy's only completed opera, a symbolist work based on a hugely influential play by Maurice Maeterlinck, presents a unique, dreamlike operatic vision. The work's perfection is matched only by its opacity - but give yourself up to the dream, and you'll be swept along to the tragic ending. Maeterlinck and Debussy fell out over casting (plus ca change!) and the playwright became publicly hostile. On seeing the opera in 1920, two years after Debussy's death, however, he admitted that the composer had been right about everything all along.

The first opera by "ragtime" composer Scott Joplin, which centered around real-life events when civil rights leader Booker T. Washington was invited to meet President Theodore Roosevelt. Joplin took the opera on an extensive tour, but halfway through, someone stole the box office receipts and the tour had to be cancelled as Joplin couldn't make payroll. The score was confiscated along with the rest of Joplin's belongings, and has never resurfaced. Opera is a risky business. Composer / impresarios, beware!

CinderellaI. Why is 1904 not the Madam Butterfly year, the people cry! It's true that Puccini's opera, about a young Geisha who falls in love with a shallow American naval officer and tragically takes her own life, is probably the composer's best. But the Italian maestro has other representation in this list, and Pauline Viardot was a truly fascinating character. Daughter of one of Rossini's favourite tenors, and younger sister of the acclaimed diva Maria Malibran, Pauline's biography is a who's who of influential artists. She knew absolutely everyone, made seminal performances, and did a huge amount to supercharge opera and classical music in her age. Aside from all that, she composed, and Cendrillon is her most well-known opera. The opening, in which Cinderella switches between spoken text and a song, is immersive and charming. As has been said many times here, it's time that figures like Viardot receive more attention. Another also-ran in this year was Janaček's Jenufa, a dark and perfect opera that never fails to move and haunt us today.

Something was evidently in the water in the early 1900s. A German translation of Oscar Wilde's 1891 French play Salomé, this opera is pure amoral decadence. Containing the erotically-charged "dance of the seven veils", as well as Salome's erotically-charged interactions with the severed head of John the Baptist, and what has become known as "the most sickening chord in all of opera", Salome has shocked audiences since its premiere.

Smyth appears to have undertaken what today would be regarded as "research and development" by seeking out verbatim accounts of people luring passing ships onto the rocks in order to plunder them, from local inhabitants of the Cornish coastline. She had a battle on her hands to get the work performed, and as Charles Reid wrote: "For five years Ethel Smyth, wearing mannish tweeds and an assertively cocked felt hat, had been striding about Europe, cigar in mouth, trying to sell her opera The Wreckers to timorous or stubborn impresarios." A cut version of the opera in German translation was premiered in Leipzig, but even though it was a success, Smyth, on learning that they would not reinstate the cut material, marched into the orchestra pit and confiscated all of the sheet music. Now considered as something of a harbinger of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes (1945), the piece has seen a surge in popularity in recent years, and looks set to enter the canon.

This dark story was premiered in German translation at the Komische Oper in Berlin, and has never made it into the operatic mainstream. The story is about a feud over land in a rural village, and ill-fated love across the feud.

Based on a 16th-century version of a very old Persian story, Leyli and Majnun led to Hajibeyov being recognised as the father of Azerbaijani classical music. He was apparently the first composer of an opera in the Islamic world. the piece integrates Western classical elements with the traditional modal music system of "Mugham".

Expectation. This blistering one-act monodrama for soprano accompanied by a large orchestra is famous for having no musical material return over its 30 minute run time. It is a paradigm of musical modernism, reaching into the depths of the subconscious to offer us a vision of a fractured, unreliable, disintegrating psyche wracked with neurosis and guilt. It is not staged often because of the large forces needed for such a short run time, as well as the perception that it is difficult and impenetrable. The piece was not premiered until 1924 but is included here, the year of its completion, so that Janáček's Cunning Little Vixen can take the '24 slot. Shadwell staged Erwartung in 2016 to critical acclaim.

This opera-western, often translated as The Girl of the Golden West, was premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. It's fascinating that this melodic and characterful work could have been premiered the year after Erwartung, and the fact that this quintessentially Italian work was premiered in New York City shows how opera's centre of gravity was now shifting over the Atlantic.

The Knight of the Rose. Having previously explored human depravity and decadence in Salome (1905) and Elektra (1909), Strauss took one of the most surprising left turns in the history of opera, and seriously lightened up. The result was the delightfully witty, humane, tender, and ultimately moving work, Der Rosenkavalier. A huge work to mount, it's a firm favourite with audiences who can't get enough of the spell-binding "Presentation of the Rose" scene, or the desperately emotional trio at the end, in which the older Marshallin gives way to the younger Sophie in her love for the dashing Octavian. An opera about time, about growth, and about reconciling ourselves to the inevitability of change. Rarely have such concerns sounded so utterly ravishing. Be warned though - Strauss makes you wait for it before giving it to you with both barrels.

The Dead City. Nadia Boulanger's importance to the history of classical music in the 20th century can scarcely be overstated. Believing herself to have limited compositional talent, she gave up composing and instead taught several generations of the most successful composers. This opera was finished in 1912 and was due to be premiered in 1914, but this never happened due to the outbreak of war.

This fascinating operatic experiment was put together by powerhouses of the Russian avant-garde Futurist movement. The plot follows a group who attempt to kill reason by destroying time and capturing the sun. Influential in terms of its radicalism and design, the work still feels fresh and challenging.

Premiered by the creative powerhouse that was the Ballets Russes at the Palais Garnier in Paris, and based on a tale by Hans Christian Andersen. Interestingly at the premiere, the singers sang from the pit, and dancers played the roles onstage.

Translation: The Csárdás Princess. Beloved across the European continent, this operetta tells a convoluted story of love and society in huge, sweeping, sentimental music.

Drawing on the long history of operas about operas (see year 1604 for a discussion of opera's super-charged relationship to diegesis, or music that the characters can hear), Strauss and his librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal served up a two-act structure in which we watch the frantic preparations for a performance in Act One, followed by the performance itself in Act Two. Compare with Viva la Mamma! by Donizetti (1827). Originally premiered in 1912 but revised into the version we know today and premiered in 1916.

The Swallow. Hilariously, when Puccini was invited to write an operetta for Vienna, he agreed on the condition that it would be without spoken dialogue like Der Rosenkavalier (1911), "only more entertaining and more organic." The opera was eventually premiered in Monte Carlo, but Puccini revised it twice before his death, never settling on a definitive version.

Il trittico means The Triptych, and here Puccini presented three short operas: Il tabarro, a gritty tale of murder beside a canal, Suor Angelica, a desperately moving story about sacrifice and redemption in a convent, and Gianni Schicchi, Puccini's funniest and naughtiest opera about scheming Florentine aristocrats attempting to secure their inheritance from their rich and very already dead relative.

The Woman Without a Shadow. Having channeled Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro (1786) in writing Der Rosenkavalier (1911), Strauss and his librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal now created something in the vein of The Magic Flute (1791). The Woman without a Shadow is a richly symbolic adult fairy tale.

The Dead City. Korngold was only 23 when this astonishing, dreamlike opera was given a double premiere in both Hamburg and Cologne, simultaneously. It was one of the most popular operas of the 1920s, but faded slightly into obscurity when Korngold's music was banned by the Nazis because he was Jewish. The fiercely talented composer moved to the USA where he became one of the founders of film music.

The Czech composer Leoš Janáček was 67 when he wrote this searing opera about dreams and infidelity in an isolated Russian town. The title character, Katya, seeks something more than her husband can give her, and begins an affair with another man. As the truth is exposed, she gradually comes to pieces, culminating in a tragic ending. A taut, atmospheric piece that only grows in popularity.

The Dwarf. This one-act opera is based on an Oscar Wilde story, and is perhaps Zemlinksy's best-known opera, although it is rarely performed. As is so often the case with Austrian and German composers in 1920s and 1930s, Zemlinsky had to flee to New York in 1938. Unlike some other emigres, he didn't manage to build a reputation in the USA and stopped composing. Zemlinsky's extraordinary music deserves to be better known. This semi-autobiographical opera which he was spurred to write after his affair with Alma Mahler came to an end, with its extraordinary lyricism and emotional scope, is a good place to start.

Courtship Party. Smyth's only foray into operatic neo-classicism, recycling the forms and styles of the past but with expanded harmonic and compositional possibilities. The piece was commissioned by the British National Opera Company and premiered in Birmingham.

Perhaps Janáček's best-loved opera, this tells the story of Sharp-Ears the Vixen and her adventures among the humans and the animals in the wood. Natural beauty is matched by nature's cruelty, and the whole thing cycles into something ineffable and eternal. A perennially fresh opera, great for adults and children too.

One of only two completed operas by the modernist Alban Berg. He wrote the work whilst serving in the army in the Great War, and finished it once the war was over. A searing exploration of psychological terror and degradation, the work is fiercely modernist, and many consider it to be one of the greatest 20th century works of art. Sadly Maurice Ravel's utterly charming L'enfant et les sortilèges misses out this year.

This opera is an absolute cracker if you haven't seen it before and don't know the story yet. What begins with a focus on a strange legal case, snowballs into something utterly strange and wonderful across the second half.

The Miracle of Helen. Korngold considered this opera to be his masterwork, and many others agree. Set in a totalitarian state and with a dreamlike plot, the work was labelled as "degenerate" by the Nazis. Its popularity has barely begun to rise, but wise betters would get down to the bookies to bet on this extraordinary work making its way back into the canon.

Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's signature Weimar-Republic "play with music" was based on John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1728), updated to launch a wickedly funny critique of capitalism. The work retains its cross-genre appeal, being performed in both opera houses and theatres throughout the world.

Originally finished in 1917 and due to be performed at the Mariinsky in a production by the celebrated director Vsevolod Meyerhold, this opera based on a Dostoyevsky story had to wait until 1929 to be performed because the Russian Revolution got in the way. A revised version was eventually premiered at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels. Bitter Sweet by Noêl Coward loses out this year.

Based on a Dostoevsky novel, this is Janáček's final opera, and premiered two years after the composer's death. This is a bleak work set in a Siberian prison camp populated by a large cast of men. The opera was left partially unfinished at Janáček's death. Across a series of masterful operas, Janáček made a huge contribution to opera's history, and his reputation continues to rise as more audiences are given a chance to engage with his immense work.

The Bacchae. Egon Wellesz was a significant composer in pre-Anschluss Austria, but had to move to the United Kingdom in 1938 because of his Jewish heritage. He was a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg, and this adaption of Euripides' The Bacchae pulses with complexity and diverse musical influences, with vivid choral writing. For a time during the war Wellesz was interred on the Isle of Man but released after petitions by Ralph Vaughan Williams and the Times music critic. He went on to become a respected Oxford University academic and teacher.

Celebrated American composer Amy Beach only composed one opera, which was completed in 1932 but only received its first performance in 1947. The one-act chamber opera has an interesting structure, in which the majority of the action takes place in a dream.

Brecht and Weill's best-known work apart from The Threepenny Opera (1928), and their last major collaboration. The striking double-casting of a soprano and a dancer to play different aspects of the same character was dictated by the commissioner Edward James, who wanted his wife to dance in the completed opera. A satirical look at the way creative dreams are compromised by capitalism.

Based on a novella by Nikolai Leskov, this amazing opera's central character is a woman who cheats on her husband and then murders her father-in-law and then her husband too. This opera presents a uniquely depraved picture of humanity, which can be read as a fierce social critique of the conditions that people are forced to live in. It was denounced in 1936 in the pages of Pravda during Stalinist cultural purges, and was banned in the Soviet Union until 1961.

Gershwin's opera of African-American life occupies something of an ambivalent position. Some commend Gershwin's insistence that only performers of colour can play the lead roles, while others view the piece as promoting racial stereotypes in its depiction of the lives of its characters. Contains the show-stopper "Summertime".

This profound, moving, disturbing, transcendent work can stake a viable claim to be the most under-appreciated operatic masterwork. Based on Sophocles' telling of the Oedipus myth, the opera covers a huge scope from the hero's birth to his death. The piece received a startling staging from Fura del Baus which premiered in Brussels in 2011 and then the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 2016. Seek this piece out - a transformational night at the theatre.

Alban Berg's second opera, left partially unfinished at his death, but recognised as a 20th century masterwork. We follow the title character Lulu on her downward spiral in life. The opera requires a central performance of extraordinary complexity and stamina to represent Lulu's complex and multi-layered relationship with the femme fatale archetype.

Alternative title: The Key of Dreams. A surrealist and multilayered opera that takes place in a world where no-one can remember anything. Stories, dreams, and reality collide and merge. Martinů's masterpiece.

Set in Haiti in 1791, this opera by the "Dean of Afro-American composers" covers events in the Haitian revolution. Although met with a mixed reception, the opera was the first grand opera by an African American composer to be produced by a major company.

The first Japanese opera, based on a story about American black ships attempting to open Japan up to trade during the Edo period.

d'Harcourt was an ethnomusicologist as well as a composer, and wrote several works for the stage. This one was based on a very popular Irish play written by John Millington Synge in 1909 and completed by W. B. Yeats.

Richard Strauss' final luminous opera takes a walk back through opera history to a question which has obsessed opera makers since the very beginning - which has primacy, the words or the music? Salieri's 1786 opera Prima la musica e poi le parole (First the music and then the words) was the model for this Straussian meta-operatic fable. In classic Strauss style, we begin conversationally, build to an extraordinary emotional climax, and end in melancholy. An opera from a forgotten age, and the end of an era.

Victor Ullmann's satirical opera, in which Death goes on strike in response to the tyranny of an all-powerful Emperor, was written in Theresienstadt concentration camp, but did not receive a premiere there because the Nazis viewed it as a satirical representation of Hitler. The opera was premiered in 1975 bt Ullmann did not live to see it. He was murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944. The piece now stands as a testament to indomitable creative spirit in the most harrowing of circumstances.

The Love of Danaë. Discussion of Strauss' later years can't ignore the fact that he continued to work in Nazi Germany. The first performance of this opera, for example, was a private one which had been sanctioned by Goebbels so that Strauss could get to hear his composition. When compared with the fate of Ullmann's Der Kaiser von Atlantis from the year before, it is hard not to feel deeply ambivalent. The truth of this matter is complex, with many examples of Strauss attempting privately and publicly to help Jewish artists and relatives, as well as examples of both private and public willingness to work with the Nazis.

Widely considered in operatic circles to be Benjamin Britten's best work. The opera paints a tragic story of an outsider in a small-minded fishing village with a muscular and evocative sweep. The sea acts almost as an extra character, a constant and ever-changing presence at the violent margin of village life. The work calls for sharp characterisation and overwhelming choral singing, with the enigma of the misfit fisherman at its centre.

A complex opera that looks back on an instance of horrific sexual violence in Roman times from a later, Christian perspective. Many today find the opera's Christian moral hard to stomach, while others decry the continued representation of violence against women on the opera stage. Those who appreciate the opera point to its sophisticated exploration of war, history, violence and the passage of time, and respect the deep empathy of Britten, possibly a sexual-assault survivor himself, towards his characters.

The Breasts of Tiresias. Some aficionados will be upset not to see Britten's Albert Herring claiming the top stop for 1947, especially as Shadwell performed the work in 2011. However it would be parochial to choose it in the face of Poulenc's hilarious zany goofball surrealist extravaganza with a sad heart, The Breasts of Tiresias. Go and see this piece if you get the chance. Look it up. Celebrate it. It's a wonder.

The Magic Potion. A refined and intimate opera that retells the story of Tristan and Iseult so famously rendered by Wanger (1865), with less Germanic baggage.

The Prisoner. The serialist composer Luigi Dallapiccola was a passionate critic of fascism as it appeared in both Italy and Germany. This work, which was initially premiered on the radio, grapples with the possibility of freedom, and the strange intimacy of captor and captive. It has been compared to Beethoven's Fidelio (1805).

Menotti is the first composer on this timeline to have lived into the 21st century, and this was his first full-length opera. It premiered in Philadelphia, and won a Pulitzer Prize. The action takes place in an unspecified totalitarian country, like so many other operas written around this time, and builds to a horrifying and tragic end.

Stravinsky's best-loved opera, to a libretto by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman based on Hogarth's famous paintings and engravings. This is the archetypal "neo-classical" opera, in which Stravinsky returned to the 18th century for formal organisation and dramatic structure. We watch Tom Rakewell's descent into madness as he pursues a life of pleasure, led on by Nick Shadow (the Devil).

Another retelling of the Abbé Prévost's story which had inspired Massenet's Manon (1883), and Puccini's Manon Lescaut (1894). Across a single act, Henze takes us into a varied sonic world in which serialist elements and jazz combine. A hugely evocative portrait, not just of the characters, but of a modern city.

The Musical Hat. This is a children's operetta, which seems to have been premiered on Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française, the French national broadcaster at the time, for which Claude Arrieu (real name Louise-Marie Simon) worked for. Arrieu wrote 12 operas across a hugely prolific career. Perhaps now is the time for opera companies to stage some of her works, so her contribution can be properly appreciated.

Britten's adaption of the famous Henry James ghost story, in which a young governess is haunted by the ghosts of a previous manservant and governess. The work is genuinely chilling, and continues to spook audiences today.

Michael Tippett's operatic output has been largely eclipsed by that of his contemporary Benjamin Britten. The Midsummer Marriage, which is modelled on Mozart's The Magic Flute (1791) has never been greatly loved except by some devoted fans. There are signs though, that companies are interested in revisiting these works. The opera was premiered at Covent Garden with designs by Barbara Hepworth.

Bernstein's problem child, based on Voltaire's picaresque satirical novella. It had its first run on Broadway in 1956 with text by Lillian Hellman, but underwent several revisions with different focuses after that point. Many consider it to be practically unstageable because of its huge variety of locations and abrupt scene changes. In Bernstein's hands, a sharp critique of McCarthyism is mounted, and then softened by a humanist message of tolerance and survival against the odds...with sheep.

Regarded by many as Schoenberg's masterpiece, this work was unfinished on his death. it received its premiere in Zurich many years later. The work still exists on the fringes of the operatic repertoire but those who witness it are staggered. Special mention in 1957 must go to Poulenc for his desperately moving Dialogues des Carmélites, a searingly moving work about nuns who were martyred during the Reign of Terror in 1794 France.

Samuel Barber collaborated with Gian Carlo Menotti as librettist, composer of many operas including The Consul (1950). Together they came up with an atmospheric story of love, delusion, and cyclical tragedy set in a country house in the year 1905. Barber won a Pulitzer Prize for the work, which maintains a steady popularity today.

Blomdahl's sci-fi epic, based on the book-length poem by Harry Martinson, which features a talking super-computer as a character, is scandalously unperformed in many countries around the world, including the UK. A community on a spaceship are blown off-course and left without purpose when Earth is destroyed.

Britten worked with his partner Peter Pears to adapt Shakespeare's play, and the resulting opera immediately became popular, remaining a crowd-pleaser to this day. Shadwell chose this piece as one of our first productions, in 2010.

This fascinating work is based on Robert Graves' book Homer's Daughter, which contends that The Odyssey was written by a woman. The principals scenes are in english, and the choruses are in Greek, and Glanville-Hicks carried out an in depth ethnographic study of Greek folk music, which she used to inspire the Greek chorus sections. Premiered as part of the Athens Festival at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, but unperformed since.

Those in the know consider King Priam to be one of the finest operatic works of the second half of the 20th century. It is based on Homer's Iliad, and premiered in Coventry the day before Britten's War Requiem. Also in this year, Louise Talma premiered her The Alcestiad in Frankfurt, the first full-length opera by an American woman to be staged at a major European opera house.

Set to a Finnish libretto by the soprano Aino Ackté, which was based on the novel by Juhani Aho, this tragic story bears some similarities with Janáček's Kát'a Kabanová (1921). Originally written in 1922, the piece was rejected by the Finnish National Opera until 1967 after a staging at the music college in Lahti in 1963 convinced everyone of its merits.

Britten described this piece as a "parable for church performance," and based it on the Japanese noh play Sumidagawa (Sumida River).

Viewed as the inheritor of the operatic vision in Alban Berg's Wozzeck (1925) and Lulu (1937). It tells a bleak tale of the degradation of a woman called Marie as she interacts with a variety of soldiers, and Zimmermann called for gobsmackingly large forces to pull it off, including a 100-piece orchestra and a very large cast, as well as integrated video design and sound effects. The composer originally wanted the audience to sit on swivel chairs as the action happened on twelve stages around them, but this idea was abandoned in favour of something a little more manageable.

Grace Williams was the first British woman to score a feature film, and this is her only opera. A short comedy set in a Victorian seaside resort, which was premiered at the New Theatre in Cardiff. Darius Milhaud premiered his La mère coupable in Geneva this year, which was based on Beaumarchais' third Figaro play.

This opera is based on Elias Canetti's 1953 play Die Befristeten. As a dissertation by Laurel Parsons put it: "The opera explores how consciousness of death affects human behaviour. The opera is set in a fictitious society whose members are allotted lifespans by the State, and named according to the number of years they will live." Considered by some to be Lutyen's finest work, the opera remains unperformed.

Harrison Birtwistle exploded onto the scene with this uncompromising and exuberant opera based on the famous puppet show. Punch is a psychopathic character who ultimately seeks a form of redemption. Violence, cruelty and beauty intermingle in what must be one of the most starling operatic debuts.

This monodrama for singer and six players, which lasts only 30 minutes, has exerted a profound effect on so many works since. To represent King George's madness, the singer is required to use the voice to cover a range of five octaves and to produce a huge array of strange, funny, mournful and horrible sounds. A work of deep pathos and empathy, it will always sound radical. A pure avant-garde jolt to the system. Inject it into our veins! A Shadwell favourite.

Tippett's strange and symbolic opera was premiered at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. It has a meta-theatrical relationship with Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Originally written for television, this tragic tale about pacifism and what we inherit from the past has failed to gain much of a foothold on the schedules of opera companies.

This opera was completed in 1911, but didn't receive a full performance until 1972. Joplin was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for the work. It is now steadily gathering admirers with more productions appearing on different continents.

Britten's final opera is based on the novel by Thomas Mann, in which a jaded author named Aschenbach travels to Venice in the hope of rejuvenating his creativity, and whilst there develops an obsession with a beautiful young boy, Tadzio. This rich, strange and complex opera concluded Britten's formidable contribution to opera history.

William Grant Still composed this opera set in a Creole village on the Mississippi Delta, in 1941, but it wasn't until 1974 that the work received a premiere. The composer's widow attended a performance in Los Angeles in 1976.

This radical opera, which premiered at La Scala, eschews conventional linear narrative, and instead weaves together a tapestry of texts from Bertolt Brecht, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Karl Marx, and Vladimir Lenin. Translates as In the Bright Sunshine Heavy with Love.

Running at over five hours with no interval, Einstein on the Beach was created as a collaboration between the director Robert Wilson and Philip Glass. Alternating short "knee plays" with longer formalist sections, the work has no narrative as such but allows the audience to form personal connections between themselves and the mythic figure of Einstein. A giant space for contemplation, mathematics, individuality, and the universe. A unique theatrical event.

Scottish composer Thea Musgrave has examined historical characters in her operas several times over the course of a distinguished career. This opera was premiered by Scottish Opera at the Edinburgh Festival. A work surely deserving of a contemporary revival - at website launch it's just been announced that ENO will perform the work in 2025.

Billed as an "anti-anti-opera", this relatively short work is mind-blowingly sonically extravagant, and narratively daring. It's satirical, riotous, teeming with pastiche, and wickedly funny. Rarely seen in the UK.

This Ritual of Death is best described in the composer's own words: The main character is Agni; mystical beings borrowed from stories (represented by the other six singers) gravitate around her: Lewis Carroll, Merlin, a witch, the Queen of the Night, a blind prophet, an old monk, Tristan and Isolde, Mozart, the Master of the Waters, Copernicus and his mother. These characters could be Agni's dreams that follow her during her initiation and finally into her dematerialization.

Based on a true story, this opera explores the fates of three lonely lighthouse keepers who disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1900 in the Flannan Isles. Maxwell Davies takes this and turns it into a disturbing, terrifying journey into the heart of the beast. Shadwell performed the opera in 2017.

Thursday from Light. Perhaps the most ambitious operatic project ever undertaken was kicked off in 1981 with the premiere of Thursday from Light, the first "day" of Stockhausen's seven to be completed and performed. The entire cycle of seven operas has never been given in one go.

Sadly Tchaikowsky never got to see this important and ambitious opera. Its premiere was given in 2013 in Bregenz. A powerful credo against bigotry and hatred, the famous courtroom scene from Shakespeare is rendered here with masterful dramatic tension. Tchaikowsky is most famous for having donated his skull to the Royal Shakespeare Company for use in productions of Hamlet.

Containing an enormous symphony orchestra and lasting for over four hours, this opera charts the spiritual development of the patron saint of animals. Messiaen himself was an ornithologist, and even travelled to Assisi to transcribe the birdsong there in order to represent it in his opera.

This joyful fantasy opera is perfect for adults and children. Knussen worked with Maurice Sendak himself to develop the libretto based on the beloved children's book. Featuring a nonsense language that sounds a bit like Yiddish, the work memorably channels Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov (1874) for Max's coronation by the Wild Things. Shadwell staged this opera for families in 2019 and 2021. A miniature masterpiece.

In this opera to be performed by young people, Weir mixes a folk story from Switzerland with a newspaper story from Poland, to tell the story of the re-emergence of a pestilence-causing spider after centuries being buried.

Birtwistle returned to one of operas founding myths with this complex and multi;layered work exploring the story of Orpheus and Euridice, opening up a conversation with an operatic obsession that began with Jacopo Peri's Euridice in 1600. Birtwistle's work is multi-perspectival and ritualistic, drawing on different versions of the same myth and their contradictions.

John Adams' opera about Nixon's famous visit to China to meet Chairman Mao was suggested as an idea by the director Peter Sellars, who brought librettist Alice Goodman onto the project too. Although critics were initially reserved, the opera has firmly entered the canon, with Adam's vivacious music seen by many as a breath of fresh air.

A transposition of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex into the East End of London and based on the Steven Berkoff play of the same name, and premiered in Munich, this ferocious, hilarious work expands our conception of what opera can and should be. A youthful jolt of electricity into opera's mainline.

Birmingham Opera commissioned this dance drama, which fused opera with Indian traditional instruments and dance, to tell a story about drug addiction. The piece was a success, and travelled around the world, including performances in India. George Harrison attended the premiere in Birmingham.

John Cage quipped that "for two hundred years the Europeans have been sending us their operas. Now I'm sending them back." This is a cycle of 5 operas, two of which were premiered in Frankfurt in 1989, two in London for Almeida Opera in 1990, and one in amsterdam in 1991. The first two are particularly complex, creating a situation where each audience member effectively sees a different opera from the person next to them.

Experimental composer and vocalist Meredith Monk wrote this opera about spiritual journeys, loosely based on the life of Alexandra David-Néel, the explorer and spiritualist. The work has been neglected until recently, when the Los Angeles Philharmonic staged the piece with Yuval Sharon.

The Conquest of Mexico. Many operas have explored colonialist topics and particularly the Conquest of the "New World". None have been as interesting as Wolfgang Rihm's The Conquest of Mexico, which some say isn't really about that at all. The plot concerns the encounter between the conquistador Cortez, and Montezuma, ruler of the Aztecs.

Sorrel Hays had a hugely prolific career and made a big contribution to opera, including this opera, which portrays sixty years in the life of Anna Safely Houston, an antique dealer surrounded by her glass collection.

Premiered by Glyndebourne Touring Opera, this opera isn't about King Kong himself as about the idea of King Kong - in fact, the tenor plays "Kong: the idea of him". The plot follows Pearl (from Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring) and her attempts to be with King Kong (the idea of him).

Based on the life of Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll, otherwise known as the "dirty duchess". Lurid details of her sex life scandalised the UK in the 1960s during divorce proceedings, and this opera draws on a diverse range of musical styles to paint the shattering of her world. Also contains an on-stage blowjob, represented explicitly in the music.

Tan Dun premiered this work in Munich although the piece had been commissioned by the Edinburgh International Festival, because it took a long time to write. Centering on the classic journey Polo took from West to East, in this opera "Marco" and "Polo" represent different aspects of the character and are voiced by different singers.

Turnage worked with Scottish poet Jackie Kay to adapt her script for a television programme about inequalities of justice with regards to victims of domestic abuse who kill their husbands. This taut monodrama for mezzo-soprano and sixteen instruments was the result. Shadwell staged this piece along with Schoenberg's Erwartung (1909) in 2016.

One of the first mainstream LGBTQ+ operas, with the plot following the love-story between two women. Patience comes from a wealthy family whereas Sarah is a poor farmer's daughter. The work was written for deliberately affordable forces in order to make it more easily performed by smaller companies and music colleges.

A favourite theatrical device in the 18th century was to begin an opera with a storm. Elliott Carter did the modern equivalent in his only opera, and began with a car crash represented in music. The libretto is by Paul Griffiths, who also supplied the words for Tan Dun's Marco Polo (1996).