Most Performed Operas in the world

What are most performed operas in the world?

According to OperaBase,  in the opera season 2015-2016 (the last one reported) , the most performed opera in the world is La Traviata by Verdi (with 4190 performances), followed by  followed by  Mozart’s Die Zauberflote (number 2 with 3310 performances)  and Bizet’s Carmen (number 3 with 3280 performances).

In the top ten of the most performed operas we can see: Puccini, number 4 with La Boheme (3131 performances) , number 5 with Tosca (2694 performances) and Number 6 with Madama Butterfly (2641).

In the top ten we then see: Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia at the 7th position  with 2549 performances; again Mozart with Le Nozze di Figaro (number 8 with 2483 performances) and Don Giovanni (number 9 with 2299 performances).  At the 10th position we can find again Verdi with Rigoletto (2285 performances) and 11th position with Die Fledermaus by Strauss (2207 performances).

In 2015-2016 there were over 22700 performances. The most operatic country was Germany with 6795 performances but the city with the most opera was Moscow (582 performances).Wuen comes second with 535 performances, Berlin third with 527 performances and London fourth with 427 performances.

An interesting section of the report is related to living composers. According to OperaBase, 64 living composers have had at least one opera performed in the last five seasons (2011 – 2016). This means that more than half of our 1281 composers are alive now. The US dominates the ranking, with three American composers in the top five (Glass, Heggie and Adams). In the ranking of the living composers two female composers show up: Naske (number 11) and Saariaho (nunmber 39).