# Top 10 All-Time Worst Opera Librettos



## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

Culminating in fowl play.

https://www.sfcv.org/article/all-hail-or-to-hell-with-poor-opera-librettos
https://www.sfcv.org/article/top-10-all-time-worst-opera-librettos-part-2


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

It makes sense that a number of these are from operas never performed. _Euryanthe_ isn't named, but it's a good example of an opera with some fine music that's generally felt to have a poor libretto which Weber's musical genius couldn't overcome.


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## Sieglinde (Oct 25, 2009)

And then there is Iris, which was forgotten for a reason. Apparently Illica was into tentacle porn when he didn't have Giacosa to hold him back.


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## Guest (Jun 27, 2018)

> Librettos and librettists are regularly raked over the coals


Eh? In the UK, to rake over the coals is to revive a memory/incident best left forgotten. We'd say to 'haul someone over the coals' if we wanted to say that someone was getting a telling off, or subject to fierce criticism.

Ah well, as GBS is supposed to have said, divided by a common language!


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

To this list I would add the unbelievably embarrassing libretto written by some English amateur for an opera by Isaac Albeniz ! called "Merlin ". The famous Spanish composer was commissioned to write a couple of operas set to librettos in English by some English eccentric whose name I can't remember . 
The plot deals with Arthurian legend and the title character is the legendary wizard Merlin .
The libretto is written in an execrable pseudo archaic English . It's hard to tell whether the libretto embarrassing or hilarious . This opera was recorded some years ago by Decca in Spain with a Spanish cast and conductor , and I doubt it's still available . But the music is still pretty good and it's worth looking for .


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

_Merlin_ is number 5 on the list.

The article lost me in the first paragraph:



> Even a true Italian opera-lover like me, able to swallow the improbabilities of _La sonnambula_ without batting an eye, may flinch as the huge wet-blanket ending of _Don Carlos_ approaches: The not-really-dead Emperor Charles V conducts his wayward grandson into a monastery cloister. To do what? - watch old episodes of _Glee_ on TiVo?


I get that a TiVo joke would be more funny in 2012 but this is such an unthinking dismissal that I don't trust his opinion on the ten operas on the list. I also generally don't want to hear people complain about things they don't like; it's just so lazy.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

mountmccabe said:


> I also generally don't want to hear people complain about things they don't like.


I agree: that's one of the things I really don't like.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

The libretto of Bellini's opera I Puritani is probably effective, because the opera is still played. But I find it very stupid and annoying. The main character, Elvira, keeps alternating between being and not being sane. 

Maybe that happens in the real life,but here, everybody presumes, she will stay sane when reunited with her fiancee.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

Bellini's opera La Straniera. At one premiere in New York, people laughed openly.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

If it pleases Your Honour may I bring to the attention of the court a post I made some time back on the _Operas With "Silliest" Plots_ thread:

_Mozart's L'oca del Cairo ('The Goose of Cairo') from 1783. Mozart composed most of the first act before his exasperation with the ludicrous plot and feeble libretto (written by a priest, Giovanni Battista Varesco) bludgeoned him into submission. Why did Mozart consider it in the first place? Well, he was looking to compose a hit opera buffa and agreed out of desperation to give it a go as his chosen librettist Da Ponte was unavailable to write something better (I gather Mozart waded through numerous manuscripts before opting for this one so it makes one wonder how bad the others must have been). The brief summary of the plot - such as it is - is courtesy of Wikipedia:_

_'Don Pippo, a Spanish Marquess, keeps his only daughter Celidora locked up in his tower. She is betrothed to Count Lionetto, but her true love is Biondello, a wealthy gentleman. Biondello makes a bet with the Marquis that if he can rescue Celidora from the tower within a year he wins her hand in marriage. He succeeds by having himself smuggled into the tower garden inside a large mechanical goose.'_

_As if the sudden arrival of a huge metal goose would go unnoticed! _


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

superhorn said:


> To this list I would add the unbelievably embarrassing libretto written by some English amateur for an opera by Isaac Albeniz ! called "Merlin ". The famous Spanish composer was commissioned to write a couple of operas set to librettos in English *by some English eccentric whose name I can't remember* .
> The plot deals with Arthurian legend and the title character is the legendary wizard Merlin .
> The libretto is written in an execrable pseudo archaic English . It's hard to tell whether the libretto embarrassing or hilarious . This opera was recorded some years ago by Decca in Spain with a Spanish cast and conductor , and I doubt it's still available . But the music is still pretty good and it's worth looking for .


FWIW ... Francis Burdett Thomas Nevill Money-Coutts, 5th Baron Latymer of the Coutts banking family


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

I'm afraid there are many operas with silly libretti. We are inhabitant to movies with bad screenplays, to loose treatment with literature origin, to ridiculous presentation of history or to adaptations of computer games. Before cinema appeared, opera librettists had been doing the same.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

I’m sure there are no films with bad scripts! 😂 😂


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

Everyone knows those anecdotes about two Verdi's operas. Ill tongues used to say that Il Trovatore's plot couldn't be retold and Simon Boccanegra's libretto were so weak because Verdi had written it himself. I love both operas and go to opera house when it's possible. After many Trovatores seen or heard I can retell it easily. The story is typically operatic (beautiful woman in love with a fool, harrased by a selfish alpha-male, and a mad crone in her early forties, who runs the plot), but who cares, when it is properly sung? Boccanegra is pseudo-historic soap opera like many others, but I can say all the same about it. 
Libretto is not why we keep on watching and listening to the opera. The list of silly or historically inaccurate plots may be endless. I might mention Don Carlo or La Favorite as examples of good operas based on doubtful source. 
Some Mozart's operas have embarrassingly strange plots, La finta giardiniera for example. 
Even Tchaikovsky recently added something to my experience. His Sorceress includes all possible melodramatic cliches, except amnesia and lost and found children. But there are attractive parts for all the voice types and lots of beautiful music.


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## marlow (11 mo ago)

I’m a great lover of handles music but the libretto of some of his operas leave something to be desired. like Alessandro - unfathomable!


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Becca said:


> FWIW ... Francis Burdett Thomas Nevill Money-Coutts, 5th Baron Latymer of the Coutts banking family


Without looking up the details wasn't it a kind of Faustian pact - Albéniz would be commissioned to compose a number of operas which would be financed by Money-Coutts but the libretti had to be written solely by the latter?


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## marlow (11 mo ago)

ColdGenius said:


> Everyone knows those anecdotes about two Verdi's operas. Ill tongues used to say that Il Trovatore's plot couldn't be retold and Simon Boccanegra's libretto were so weak because Verdi had written it himself. I love both operas and go to opera house when it's possible. After many Trovatores seen or heard I can retell it easily. The story is typically operatic (beautiful woman in love with a fool, harrased by a selfish alpha-male, and a mad crone in her early forties, who runs the plot), but who cares, when it is properly sung? Boccanegra is pseudo-historic soap opera like many others, but I can say all the same about it.
> Libretto is not why we keep on watching and listening to the opera. The list of silly or historically inaccurate plots may be endless. I might mention Don Carlo or La Favorite as examples of good operas based on doubtful source.
> Some Mozart's operas have embarrassingly strange plots, La finta giardiniera for example.
> Even Tchaikovsky recently added something to my experience. His Sorceress includes all possible melodramatic cliches, except amnesia and lost and found children. But there are attractive parts for all the voice types and lots of beautiful music.


Most of Verdi’s libretti are very good as Verdi himself was extremely fussy and demanded many changes before setting them. Where they do have weaknesses in the sum of the middle operas was because they were hacked about by the censors. Verdi’s two greatest libretti are the two last.
Wagner‘s libretti have the weakness of a man too much in love with his own voice (or prose), which he was in real life, I believe!
I agree that La Finta Giadiniera is absolutely idiotic. I have the version conducted by Renee Jacobs which is delightful musically but have totally given up trying to make sense of the plot.


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## 59540 (May 16, 2021)

My vote would be for _Der Rosenkavalier_ or _Salome_. One is never as funny or insightful as it wants to be and the other is just over-the-top attention-whoring (like the Wilde play it's based on).


marlow said:


> Wagner‘s libretti have the weakness of a man too much in love with his own voice (or prose), which he was in real life, I believe!


I think Wagner's libretti are quite effective in their settings. The ending of _Das Rheingold_ gives me chills.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

dissident said:


> My vote would be for _Der Rosenkavalier_ or _Salome_. One is never as funny or insightful as it wants to be and the other is just over-the-top attention-whoring (like the Wilde play it's based on).
> I think Wagner's libretti are quite effective in their settings. The ending of _Das Rheingold_ gives me chills.


Attention-whoring is an apt word for _Salome_'s libretto.  High-class kitsch is probably what I'd call it. It all makes more sense if you regard it as a comedy, and I think it's more amusing than _Rosenkavalier, _which doesn't amuse me. Of course, that's just my "subjective" opinion (are you there, Strange Magic and Eva Yojimbo?).


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

dissident said:


> Wagner's libretti are quite effective in their settings.


Wow.. See how much you changed? Remember your past opinions. (Or maybe they were consuono's; I'm not too sure. It's kind of like confusing a certain David with marlow).



Woodduck said:


> that's just my "subjective" opinion (are you there, Strange Magic and Eva Yojimbo?).


You want them here? You feel this thread has too few pages?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

hammeredklavier said:


> You want them here? You feel this thread has too few pages?


I said "there," not "here."


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## 59540 (May 16, 2021)

hammeredklavier said:


> Wow.. See how much you changed? Remember your past opinions. (Or maybe they were consuono's; I'm not too sure. It's kind of like confusing a certain David with marlow).
> ...


hammeredklavier, you are into this stuff way, way too much.


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## Ludwig Schon (10 mo ago)

In comparison to his other masterpieces, Tannhäuser and Lohengrin’s librettos are are suboptimal…


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Lohengrin seems in some ways the most conventional of mature Wagner with rather traditional villains and a boring hero etc. 
Tannhäuser is a bit stark in the contrast of Wagner's two main themes, erotic passion and spiritual redemption (I don't remember who said this but one evil quip was that Wagner's music smelled like a mix of semen and incense...)
I am not too fond of either opera but they worked well enough; I think for the longest time these two were the most popular Wagner operas by some margin, or maybe even the only really popular ones.


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