Librettist

Carlo Osvaldo Goldoni (25 February 1707 – 6 February 1793) was a celebrated Venetian playwright and librettist, whom critics today rank among the European theatre's greatest authors. His works, along with those of the modernist Luigi Pirandello, include some of Italy's...

Colette was the pen name of the French novelist Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (January 28 1873 – August 3 1954). She is best known, at least in the English-speaking world, for her novel Gigi, which provided the plot for a Lerner & Loewe musical film and stage musical. ...

Pope Clement IX (January 28, 1600 – December 9, 1669), born Giulio Rospigliosi, was Pope from 1667 to 1669. Born Giulio Rospigliosi to a noble family of Pistoia, Grand Duchy of Tuscany, he was a pupil of the Jesuit. After receiving his doctorate in philosophy at the...

Wilhelm Richard Wagner (22 May 1813, Leipzig, Germany - 13 February 1883, Venice, Italy) was a German composer, conductor, music theorist, and essayist, primarily known for his opera (or "music drama" as they were later called). Unlike most other great opera composers,...

Wystan Hugh Auden (21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973, ) who signed his works W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet, regarded by many as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. His work is noted for its stylistic and technical achievements, its engagement...

Ruggero (Ruggiero) Leoncavallo (April 23, 1857- August 9, 1919) was an Italian opera composer. His opera, Pagliacci, was and remains one of the most popular works in the operatic repertory, currently appearing as number 14 on Opera America's list of the 20 most...

Louis Hector Berlioz (December 11, 1803 – March 8, 1869) was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande Messe des morts (Requiem). Berlioz made great contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on...

Hugo von Hofmannsthal (February 1, 1874 – July 15, 1929), was an Austria novelist, librettist, poet, dramatist, narrator, and essayist. Hofmannsthal was born in Vienna, the son of an upper-class Austrian mother and an Austrian-Italian bank manager. His great...

Arrigo Boito (February 24, 1842 – June 10, 1918) was an Italian poet, journalist, novelist and composer, best known today for his opera libretti and his own opera, Mefistofele. Born in Padua, Boito studied music at the Milan Conservatoire. The premiere of his only...

Aleksandr Petrovich Sumarokov (Russian: Александр Петрович Сумароков) (November 25 1717 - October 12 1777), was a Russian poet and playwright who single-handedly created classical theatre in Russia, thus assisting Mikhail Lomonosov to inaugurate the reign of classicism...

Philippe Quinault (June 3, 1635 – November 26, 1688), French dramatist and librettist, was born in Paris. He was educated by the liberality of Tristan L'Hermite, the author of Marianne. Quinault's first play was produced at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1653, when he was...

Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi, better known by his pseudonym of Metastasio, (January 3, 1698 – April 12, 1782) was an Italian writer and poet. Metastasio was born in Rome, where his father, Felice Trapassi, a native of Assisi, had taken service in the Corsican...

Nahum Tate (1652–July 30, 1715) was an Irish poet, hymnist, and lyricist, who became England's poet laureate in 1692. Nahum Tate was born in Dublin in 1652, the son of Faithful Teate, an Irish clergyman, who had written a quaint poem on the Trinity entitled Ter Tria...

Augustin Eugène Scribe (December 24, 1791 – February 20, 1861), was a French dramatist and librettist. He is best known for the perfection of the so-called "well-made play" (pièce bien faite). This dramatic formula was a mainstay of popular theater for over 100 years. ...

Karl Georg Büchner (October 17, 1813 – February 19, 1837) was a German dramatist and writer of prose. He was the brother of physician and philosopher Ludwig Büchner. Georg Büchner's talent is generally held in great esteem in Germany. It is widely believed that, but...

Béla Balázs (4 August 1884, Szeged – 17 May 1949, Budapest), born Herbert Bauer, was a Hungarian-Jew film critic, aesthete, writer and poet. He was the son of German-born parents, adopting his nom de plume in newspaper articles written before his 1902 move to...

Felice Romani (January 31, 1788 — January 28, 1865) was an Italian poet and scholar of literature and mythology who wrote many libretto for the opera composer Donizetti and Bellini. Romani was considered the finest Italian librettist between Metastasio and Boito. He...

John Harris Harbison (born December 20, 1938 in Orange, New Jersey) is a composer, best known for his opera and large choral works. Harbison won the prestigious BMI Foundation's Student Composer Awards for composition at the age of sixteen in 1954. He studied music...

Chester Simon Kallman (7 January 1921 – 18 January 1975) was an American poet, librettist, and translator, best known for his collaborations with W. H. Auden and Igor Stravinsky. Kallman was born in Brooklyn. He received his B.A. at Brooklyn College and his M.A. at...

Francesco Maria Piave (18 May 1810 – 5 March 1876) was an Italian librettist who was Verdi's life-long friend and collaborator. Like Verdi, Piave was an ardent Italian patriot, and in 1848, during Milan's "Cinque Giornate," when Radetsky's Austria troops retreated from...

DuBose Heyward (August 31, 1885 – June 16, 1940) was an American author best known for his 1924 novel Porgy. With his wife Dorothy, he was co-author of the non-musical play adapted from the novel, which became the foundation of George Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess. A...

Catulle Mendès (22 May 1841 – 8 February 1909) was a French poet and man of letters. Of Jewish extraction, he was born in Bordeaux. He early established himself in Paris, attaining speedy notoriety by the publication in the Revue fantaisiste (1861) of his Roman d'une...

Ottavio Rinuccini (January 20, 1562 – March 28, 1621) was an Italian poet, courtier, and opera librettist at the end of the Renaissance and beginning of the Baroque eras. In collaborating with Jacopo Peri to produce the first opera, Dafne, in 1597, he became the first...

François Benoît Hoffmann (July 11, 1760 – April 25, 1828) was a French playwright and critic, best known today for his opera libretto. Hoffmann was born in Nancy, and studied law at the University of Strasbourg. However, a slight hesitation in his speech precluded...

Antonio Ghislanzoni (25 November 1824 – July 16 1893) was an Italian journalist, poet, and novelist who wrote librettos for Verdi, among other composers, of which the best known are Aida and the revised version of La forza del destino. Ghislanzoni was born in Lecco,...

Adolphe Philippe d'Ennery or Dennery (June 17, 1811 – January 25, 1899) was a French dramatist and novelist. Born in Paris, his real surname was Philippe. He obtained his first success in collaboration with Charles Desnoyer in Emile, ou le fils d'un pair de France ...

Emanuel Schikaneder (Straubing, September 1, 1751 – September 21, 1812, Vienna), born Johann Joseph Schikaneder, was a German impresario, dramatist, actor, and singer. He was the librettist of Mozart's opera The Magic Flute and the builder of the Theater an der Wien. ...

Sir Francis Cowley Burnand (November 29, 1836 – April 21, 1917), often credited as F. C. Burnand, was an editor of Punch, taking over from Tom Taylor in 1880, until 1906, when he was succeeded by Sir Owen Seaman. He was also a prolific humorist and writer, creating...

Alice Goodman (born 1958), American poet, was educated at Harvard University and Cambridge where she studied English and American literature. She has written the libretti for two of the operas of John Adams, Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer. Although she was...

Christopher Vernon Hassall (24 March 1912 – 26 April 1963) was an English actor, dramatist, librettist, lyricist and poet, who found his greatest fame in a memorable musical partnership with the actor and composer Ivor Novello after working together in the same touring...