Tim Ashley’s introduction to opera: In search of the best opera productions available to watch complete on YouTube.
18 March 1892: ‘Verdi’s Aida is almost beyond praise’.
13 July 1900: A review of Puccini’s Tosca in London.
9 June 1926: Dame Nellie Melba bids farewell to opera at Covent Garden.
8 June 1927: Covent Garden was crowded with spectators eager to witness the first performance in England of Turandot, Puccini’s posthumous opera.
9 June 1945: The first production of Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes, at London’s Sadler’s Wells - ‘An orchestral score full of vivid suggestion and action’.
15 March 1952: Britten’s Billy Budd comes to Manchester - ‘incontestably his finest opera so far’.
14 December 1971: A year at the opera - people can get opera in a way as never before, without setting foot in an opera house.
17 September 1977: Opera diva Maria Callas, considered one of the greatest singers of the 20th century, is dead.
26 April 1977: Death takes a holiday. How an opera written in a concentration camp came to be performed 32 years after the war in which its authors died.
25 October 1987: John Adams’s Nixon in China world premiere: ‘a compelling, original and thought-provoking art-work’.
31 July 1991: Pavarotti triumphs in Hyde Park - Prince Charles and Princess Diana join thousands of fans who brave torrential rain to celebrate the tenor’s 30 years in opera.
Top 50 operas: These operas span four centuries and give a flavour of repertoire’s huge range and variety.
