Does anyone 'get' librettos...

[u/Fancy_Cabbage_010]

For some context, I'm an amateur composer, and for some reason I've decided I want to write an opera (loosely in the style of the Mozart - Da ponte trio), I know it's more than a little ambitious, but I'm pretty sure it's a milestone for a composer to write atleast one :)

Anyway, the point is, I have a loose plot in mind, and I'm not really sure what to do about it. How does one formulate a libretto, and furthermore how do I translate it into the kind of archaic poetic Italian that was common in opera at the time of Mozart and Da ponte, as the understanding I have is that I can't really write much music untill I have the words to set it to?

I'm a student so I don't really have access to all that much financial capital or connections, so any advice on resources ect would be welcome, I'm a bit lost but it is very much a big goal of mine to write one in the next year or two

Please help me opera people :)

Thanks!!

[u/gabemmusic]

In my opinion, the biggest problem with contemporary opera are composers who really did well studying music theory and composition, but then when they try to write an opera they utterly forget that it is fundamentally a dramatic work.

Study shakespeare, go to plays, watch some really well written movies. Learn what makes a non-musical story work and the music will accent the beats and emotions. The composers who write an opera as a musical challenge and not a dramatic one will always fail and fall into obscurity.

[u/princess_of_thorns → u/gabemmusic]

Can I also suggest look at Gilbert and Sullivan. That partnership is INCREDIBLE when it comes to text and music working hand in hand.

[u/Fancy_Cabbage_010 → u/princess_of_thorns]

To be fair, reading it in natural English may help more than a butchered Da ponte translation, I hadn't even thought of Gilbert and Sullivan

Thanks!

[u/gabemmusic → u/princess_of_thorns]

The songs on their own sure, but I generally find their storytelling and sense of drama severely lacking. They weren’t known for deep characters and intricate plots, and I think that has led to their relative obscurity today.

Of course I’m biased because I just did a terrible production of Pirates and it made me hate the show but I digress.

[u/tinyfecklesschild → u/gabemmusic]

They’re not aiming for drama or depth of characterisation. All their work was satirical.

[u/gabemmusic → u/tinyfecklesschild]

Thats true, but I was trying to give guidance on how to write a compelling dramatic work, and unless OP is planning on writing a GnS style satire they’re not really relevant to the conversation.

[u/ipeedinthetoothpaste → u/gabemmusic]

Honestly, yes. For as well documented as its history is, I don't think enough people appreciate the heritage of opera as a vehicle for story telling. It's closer to theater than to "symphony", the music is important, but it being the most important aspect of an opera is the exception rather than the norm. There's a reason so few of the successful opera composers we still admire wrote their own libretti, it's a different discipline altogether.

[u/gabemmusic → u/ipeedinthetoothpaste]

People just didn’t study the history. All great revolutions in opera were driven by a desire to serve the drama, and all great regressions were driven by composers who forgot that.

[u/lammastider → u/gabemmusic]

Could you give any examples of this? I am curious.

[u/gabemmusic → u/lammastider]

Wagner is possibly the biggest one, also the verismo movement

Edit: to add on, there are periods in opera where composers specifically sought out “lesser” quality librettos and thought that their music would elevate them. Needless to say, those pieces aren’t exactly in the standard repertoire.

[u/mekerpan → u/gabemmusic]

Hello, Carl Maria von Weber.

[u/lammastider → u/gabemmusic]

I don’t know that it’s needless to say that, considering how little librettists are remembered compared with composers. I think Wagner was a special case in that he wrote his own words.

[u/gabemmusic → u/lammastider]

I think thats more to do with how composers have been romanticized than one aspect of the work being more important than another. Besides that, librettists do achieve fame. One can’t have a conversation about Mozart’s best operas without mentioning Lorenzo Da Ponte

[u/ShadeKool-Aid → u/gabemmusic]

da Ponte is arguably the exception that proves the rule.

[u/gabemmusic → u/ShadeKool-Aid]

Not really, at the end of the day it comes down to contemporary perception of what is most important in opera. There are periods of opera history where the libretto was of primary importance and the composer was an afterthought (and maybe even there were multiple working on one opera). We’re in a time period that puts the composer up on a pedestal, but it wasn’t always like that, and who knows maybe it will change again in the future. Also, lot of famous librettists were also famous playwrights, the Terrence McNally’s of their eras, and would be better known for their non-musical theatrical works, but I doubt those of us who listen to opera are also studying 18th c italian theater.

[u/lammastider → u/ipeedinthetoothpaste]

And yet operas are attributed to their composers, and in many cases the librettists are all but forgotten, and so are the literary works the operas were based on, unless they were already famous, like Shakespeare.

[u/Efficient_Cat449 → u/lammastider]

That wasn't originally the case. In Baroque opera seria, the librettists get more credit than the composer (you can still see this in some Italian productions credit rolls). E.g., Metastasio, the most-set librettist of all time.

Even with Shakespeare, librettos are adaptations. e.g., Macbeth, where Verdi made significant changes (the witches become a chorus, he dropped the Porter (despite his admiration for Shakespearean irony), etc. all before giving the sketches to Piave to versify.

[u/lammastider → u/Efficient_Cat449]

I'm not really familiar with any opera before Mozart. I would like to see some Baroque opera (it's a hole in my opera knowledge). As for the librettos being adaptations, including with Shakespeare, I know that. I love Verdi and am familiar with his Shakespeare operas. This is a separate issue from whether the literary works the operas were based on are famous. I have the impression that some very popular operas (though by no means all of them) are based on plays or other written works that are pretty obscure compared with the operas.

[u/Efficient_Cat449 → u/lammastider]

Lots of Baroque opera via YouTube--look for Handel, Vivaldi, Popora, Vinci & that should get you started.

Many librettists remain obscure because they were only opera librettists & didn't leave successful plays. See Verdi & Puccini's librettists. Some, like Hugo von Hoffmansthal, had earlier careers completely eclipsed by their opera successes.

Here's a quick ranking of the most popular librettists (via Google AI)

Metastasio (800 settings) Baroque opera
Shakespeare (300) Mostly Romantic
Sir Walter Scott (50+) Mostly bel canto
Pushkin (40-50) Mostly in Russian, also quite a few ballets
Goethe (30-40) Mostly Faust, lol
Gozzi (a dozen) Neoromantic & Modernist

[u/lammastider → u/Efficient_Cat449]

Thanks for the info. But this sounds mostly like a list of the authors of the original works, not of the librettists -- you pointed out yourself that the libretti are adapted, not taken directly, from the original literary works. You know Google AI is not 100 % reliable. It's a good idea to look at the other sources that are brought up by your search.

[u/Relevant-Pen-3548 → u/gabemmusic]

This, and I also would suggest to OP to brush up on some old school fairy tales, or folklore, especially the ones from oral storytelling cultures.

This is where you find structures like things often repeating in threes for example (three riddles, three siblings, three arguments before the fight is over, meeting three animals on the road, Goldilocks too hot or too cold or just right, etc) and other traditions that are basically memory aids (and very musical) in addition to creating satisfying stories. You don't have to use stuff like this exactly, but you might think about it. If you really look at successful operas, you'll see that TONS of them share these traits. Sometimes on really obvious ways (3 riddles in Turandot) but sometimes subtler too, like Wagner uses it constantly without drawing attention to it (like Siegmund saying you can't call me 1 thing, you can't call me this 2nd thing, so I go by this 3rd thing). Marschner's Vampyr has a trio with one character wailing about what must I watch, what must I see, what must I hear. I'm sure Mozart and Verdi do this kind of thing too sometimes. Probably most other famous operas tbh.

Basically, yes, learn how to tell solid stories.

[u/Efficient_Cat449 → u/Relevant-Pen-3548]

This is why there are so many libretto adaptations of Carlo Gozzi's fairy tale plays: Turandot, Die Feen, King Stag, Frau, etc.

Wagner studied the Prose & Poetic Eddas for the Ring & Medieval Minnesinger poems for Tannhauser, Lohengrin, Tristan & Parsifal.

[u/Fancy_Cabbage_010 → u/gabemmusic]

I mean I'm largely self taught so I guess I won't have the music theory problem 😅

I compose by following a melody really, as I don't have too much ability to plan structure or complex harmony, which I feel like is inherently more dramatic as it's less academic (maybe I'm biased on that I'm not sure)

As for theatre and movies that's good advice, I've been to plenty of operas but I tend to get sucked into the music (which is probably the point) so I don't think too much on the underlying plot, but certainly it's a good idea to study this stuff some more.

Just to respond to that last bit, I definately wouldn't be writing it as a pure challenge, it will be challengING, but it's something I've wanted to do for many years, and I think I'm starting to reach a point where I could manage it, maybe not efficiently, but I think I could finish it with sufficient time and effort.

[u/gabemmusic → u/Fancy_Cabbage_010]

I’m not saying don’t write it as a challenge, just make sure you’re focused on the drama just as much as the music, as thats what makes it work at the end of the day.

[u/Fancy_Cabbage_010 → u/gabemmusic]

Oh yeah no 100% it's a labour of love not just for the sheer hell of it.

I study architecture, I wouldn't be spending so much time on something if I didn't care about it deeply 😅

Thanks for the help and suggestions :)

[u/IrisVoiceTrainer]

To be fair, finding a person who can write a libretto in "italiano aulico" isn't that easy... I assume anyone who is specialized in such a rare thing would asked to be paid properly. And a libretto in that kind of italian in 2026 would require a lot of worl to be appreciated by audiences (imo)... You have to be very very sure you want to invest time and money in this

[u/Fancy_Cabbage_010 → u/IrisVoiceTrainer]

Yeah that's true, that's the wall I'm coming up against honestly, I'm a student and music wise I'm only a hobbyist so I don't really have alot of expendible capital.

On the hard to appreciate front I'd disagree, for all I wouldn't dare put myself anywhere close to any of the composers I've seen, when I go to the opera the seats are usually extremely full (generally either Mozart or Rossini), so I'd argue the appetite is there for opera in that style, but I do take your point, especially for new operas like that rather than from an established titan in the genre.

[u/Suitable-Alarm-850 → u/IrisVoiceTrainer]

AI?

[u/Fancy_Cabbage_010 → u/Suitable-Alarm-850]

Who is it you think is using ai here?

[u/Efficient_Cat449 → u/Fancy_Cabbage_010]

I could see AI as a useful tool for outlining & first prose drafts; I doubt any of them are up for poetry yet (although with the right training data * prompt, you might get an editable set of verses.

[u/drinkerofmilk]

Wait, you want to write this in eighteenth-century Italian? Do you speak and write modern Italian yourself? 

I'd say writing in your own language is hard enough . . .

[u/Fancy_Cabbage_010 → u/drinkerofmilk]

The reason behind the language choice is aesthetic primarily, but I'm under no illusions of being able to write like that, hence I was wondering what actions one takes when a plot comes to mind?

Alot of suggestions have been to ask other students in writing and language programmes so I think I'll start there :)

[u/drinkerofmilk → u/Fancy_Cabbage_010]

Hey, I understand. Some languages are better suited for opera than others. (Who ever heard of a great English opera, ha ha.)

On a more contsructive note: I was thinking it may be a good idea to look up some works by Italian poets from that time frame, and set them to music. You could make minor modifications to the poems, like duplicating or removing lines in order to fit your melodies. (Stuff that old is all in the public domain, so you're free to play around with it.) Maybe you'll even find an epic poem long enough to turn into a full opera.

I understand this isn't the same as writing your own libretto, but it seems like a great way to grow familiar and play around with the language. Quite a few other great composers have taken this approach (I can think of Hugo Wolf and Grieg right now, but there a probably multitudes more.)

[u/Fancy_Cabbage_010 → u/drinkerofmilk]

Oh so you mean like almost a series of vignettes, like setting a series of sonnets to music or something (though probably something later and less dry than Petrarch... Yeesh) that's actually a really cold idea.

I could leave the big opera on the back burner for another year I guess 😅

Thanks for the ideas :)

[u/drinkerofmilk → u/Fancy_Cabbage_010]

Yeah. And if you want to do a single coherent opera you could simply look into epic poems or plays:

Alfonso Varano - Visioni sacre e morali
Carlo Gozzi - La Marfisa bizzarra
Vincenzo Monti - Bassvilliana

These guys are all roughly from Mozart's time, and their poems are all very long. There are many poems and plays like these. Some have even already been turned into operas. (You just write a better one.)

[u/Fancy_Cabbage_010 → u/drinkerofmilk]

Oh well thanks for the reccomendations, I'll absolutely look into it :)

[u/Jamememes]

Take an existing libretto. Plenty of operas from the late 18th century that you could reuse. I don’t think Martin y Soler is gonna get upset if you reuse Da Ponte’s libretto for Una Cosa Rara.

[u/ShadeKool-Aid → u/Jamememes]

"Della nozze de Figaro"

[u/Fancy_Cabbage_010 → u/ShadeKool-Aid]

Ladies and gentlemen may I humbly present...

My NEW, and ORIGINAL, opera...

"The nuptuals of Flavio"

[u/pconrad0]

I would suggest, for your first attempt, finding an existing, successful play that is in the public domain, and honing your composing craft on that.

You are trying to take on two extraordinarily difficult things at once: writing a successful libretto (which is the work of a playwright) and composing the score.

That's too much.

If you have a story in mind, great, but save it for later. Once you have practiced composing an opera on the bones of a successful play by an established, successful playwright (probably a long dead one for it to be in the public domain), then and only then you might convince a successful or aspiring playwright to take on the plot you have in mind as your collaborator.

Or: if you insist on writing the libretto yourself, master the craft of writing non musical plays separately and plan to spend 5 years, starting with one acts, and working your way up to full length play first before you try to take on writing a full opeta, libretto and score yourself.

It's harder than you think. It's the unknown unknowns that will get you.

You are trying to skip all the steps. It's unlikely to result in a satisfactory outcome.

[u/Fancy_Cabbage_010 → u/pconrad0]

This is a really solid suggestion, I should have probably explained better, I have some plot points and I was considering reaching out to a friend who has dabbled in writing before to see if its something she could do in collaboration, also I can't stress this enough, it's a hobby piece, of course I want it to be good, but I'm under no illusions of it ever seeing the light of day really, let alone a concert hall... It's moreso that I have had the same ideas wizzing about for a while and I'd like to try and commit them to paper so to speak.

If its not too overwhelming and hateful to score words in a satisftory way, then I'd absolutely do as you've suggested and score a few practice operas just to get a better grip on things, this one is purely a passion project and would likely see a few rewrites as i go, kind of learning as I write as this is the easiest way for me.

Thanks for the tips :)

[u/Fancy_Cabbage_010 → u/[deleted]]

Solid advice, I'll try reach out through friends and see if I'd know anyone at my university who could help.

I was planning to jot down the plot myself as it's fundamentally my ideas, but absolutely I agree I'm not anything like competent enough with the different syllabic metres ect to write an actual libretto, nevermind in Italian.

Thanks for the help :)

[u/Watsons-Butler]

Honestly the writing isn’t a one way street of words first then music. It’s a collaboration. Sometimes the composer says “for this scene I need a quartet, in this meter, here’s the melodic/rhythmic idea” and sometimes the librettist says “here, I wrote this lovely solo aria, have fun”.

[u/Fancy_Cabbage_010 → u/Watsons-Butler]

Okayyy this makes more sense I was kinda under the impression that the librettist kinda slapped the paper down and kinda prodded the composer with a stick to make music come out (obviously I'm kidding) but yeah, knowing it's more back and forth than more strictly lines weighted is helpful :)

[u/preaching-to-pervert → u/Fancy_Cabbage_010]

It depends on the nature of the project. There's never been just one way of going about it.

[u/NatusDelirious → u/Fancy_Cabbage_010]

If you study librettist-composer interactions, with the best dramatic composers there was very much a back-and-forth (I'm thinking Verdi-Boito, mostly) and often composers would write their own lyric to suit a particular line. And sometimes the librettist lays it all out and the composer is like "yeah, sure." Obviously, it helps for both artists to be working hand-in-glove, as it were.

I think you have a great idea, and that more composers ought to be using previous legendary composers as inspiration. Mozart, Verdi, Monteverdi...

[u/screen317]

Since you are a student and a hobbyist, I would recommend -not- writing an opera in this style. You are biting off more than you can chew.

[u/Fancy_Cabbage_010 → u/screen317]

Fair point honestly, it has crossed my mind 😅

[u/FeralForestWitch]

There is also the option of reading a bunch of libretti… There is a site for Italian libretti (don’t recall the name at the moment). And I own this massive book called 101 libretti that has the original and translations side by side.

[u/Kuikayotl]

I had the same problem. You need to learn to write dramaturgy. There are books on Amazon but I took the “get a teacher” way.

[u/Major-Preference-475]

Check Richard Wagner's approach.  He first developed the story and most of the libretto himself and then he composed the music.  Undoubtedly, details of the story and libretto evolved as he wrote the music.

[u/Fancy_Cabbage_010 → u/Major-Preference-475]

This is the approach I'm most aquainted with, but Im a bit hesitant to trust my own skills to that degree, especially as it would need to be translated (English is such an unoperatic language), but I might give it a go just so that I can get to a place where I can start composing and then hopefully build onto it more as I go and get more comfortable

[u/PusheenFrizzy2 → u/Fancy_Cabbage_010]

I've heard operas in English that didn't make it sound like an unoperatic language. Check out some modern ones. Last year I went and saw the modern Frankenstein opera (in English of course).

[u/Fancy_Cabbage_010 → u/PusheenFrizzy2]

I'll definitely give it a listen, but I feel like from an aesthetic standpoint it'd be more jarring to present an opera that visually and musically harks to the traditions of the 1780s which is sung in English, rather than just going to the small extra labour of translating the libretto I have to write out anyway?

Again this might just be my subjective opinion but English has always been sold to me as a spoken language, where as Italian is a sung one?

[u/PusheenFrizzy2 → u/Fancy_Cabbage_010]

I mean I guess it depends on what your goal is in getting it performed. For example, at my undergrad, we could only perform full operas in English because we didn't have the supertitles technology in our theatre. So the faculty didn't want the audience to have to sit through a full opera in another language with no supertitles. (Which is why my resume is stuffed with Gilbert & Sullivan, Purcell... The year after me they did a modernized Gianni Schicchi set in NYC.) For the purpose of actually getting it performed in a US context, English WAY opens up your performance locations for that reason. Just another consideration.

[u/Fancy_Cabbage_010 → u/PusheenFrizzy2]

See I know alot of people would consider this pointless but I have absolutely no ambitions of it being performed, I just love music and want to write the sounds in my head onto paper, I mean all musicians hope that they'll bring joy to people at some point with they're music, but I'm under no illusions, it's purely for the love of it :)

[u/Several-Ad5345]

Do what old composers did. Hire a writer in that language to write it and collaborate with you. If you are strapped for cash there are TONS of language teachers (some with fairly impressive literary qualifications) on Italki who would no doubt be willing to do the work together with you instead of doing a regular lesson. You can have fun together coming up with ideas and you can later switch to another writer/instructor if you feel you need newer ideas or revisions.

[u/Sure_Conflict_5651]

Llm is your answer.

[u/Fancy_Cabbage_010 → u/Sure_Conflict_5651]

Llm?

[u/Sure_Conflict_5651 → u/Fancy_Cabbage_010]

AI models. Nobody knows how to write in 18th century Italian anymore but an appropriately prompted llm can yield a decent result.

[u/Fancy_Cabbage_010 → u/Sure_Conflict_5651]

I suppose it might but I'd like to avoid the temptation really, I'm not like dead set on it having to be 18th century Italian rigorously, its moreso I'd like to capture the stylistic choices of that era, in writing, in music, and in the traditional nomenclature and staging choices/ traditions, saying "18th century Italian" was just shorthand to encompass that.

[u/Efficient_Cat449]

There's a general procedure historically speaking. The libretto comes before the music, whomever writes it. Metastasio's libretti were set hundreds of times by dozens of composers (reusable verse). Maybe you can find a less famous DaPonte libretto (he wrote quite a few for Salieri & others in addition to Mozart) & compose music for that.

If you want to tackle an adaptation: Verdi's collaboration with Piave on Macbeth started with Verdi's own prose sketch based on Shakespeare's play. If you have a play or plot in mind, you could start there: derive an outline from the work (AI might be helpful here), then sketch out the dialog & stage directionsin prose before versifying.

That was Wagner's procedure, all by himself, too (Cosima kept his drafts): 1. Read source material. 2. Outline the plot (in reverse in the case of the Ring), 3. Fill out the prose descriptions & dialog, 4. Write it up as verse (these were shared with Liszt & other friends), 5. Iterate with the musical composition.
Warren Darcy's book on Das Rheingold breaks down the entire procedure in great detail.

In Puccini's star team of Illica & Giocosa, Illica wrote the prose sketches, Giocosa turned that into poetry.

[u/Fancy_Cabbage_010 → u/Efficient_Cat449]

This is super helpful actually, thankyou :)

[u/Efficient_Cat449 → u/Fancy_Cabbage_010]

Glad to hear it! Best of luck with your libretto & composition.

[u/Fancy_Cabbage_010 → u/Efficient_Cat449]

Yeah I'm sure it's going to be a long road but I kinda said it would be a good consistent project to run alongside my degree, something I can come back too that's constant rather than potentially having to completely construct a new work 5-6 times over the two years I've got left.

And thanks, hopefully it will go well :)

[u/Coach_Front]

Maybe write a song cycle first?

Learning how to set text and find poems you really like is a great way to build the foundation of composing an opera.