Are Fra Diavolo and Taverner operas?
Taverner (opera) Taverner is an opera with music and libretto by Peter Maxwell Davies. It is based on the life of the 16th-century English composer John Taverner, but in what Davies himself acknowledged was a non-realistic treatment. The gestation for the opera dated as far back as 1956 during Davies's years in Manchester, and continued when he went to Princeton University in 1962. Davies produced several instrumental works related to the opera during this gestation period, including the "Points and Dances from 'Taverner and the "Second Fantasia on John Taverner's "In Nomine"". Davies had completed the opera in 1968, but lost parts of the score in a fire at his Dorset cottage in 1969, which necessitated recomposition.
Belfagor Belfagor (premiere 26 April 1923) is an Italian-language opera by the composer Ottorino Respighi to a libretto by Claudio Guastalla (1880-1948) based on the comedy "Belfagor" of Ercole Luigi Morselli (1882-1921), itself loosely based on the novella "Belfagor arcidiavolo" by Niccolò Machiavelli. It was premiered in 1923 at La Scala in Milan, under the baton of Antonio Guarnieri, since Toscanini was unavailable. The cast featured Irish soprano Margaret Burke Sheridan as Candida, tenor Mariano Stabile as her lover Baldo, and baritone Francesco Merli as the titular Belfagor, a "arcidiavolo" who tries to marry a human maiden while in disguise as a nobleman, using gifts of money to her father.