An incomplete list, including several operettas. There is no need for any more operas about Gesualdo, unless, as Will Robin once suggested, someone wants to write an opera about a composer who goes insane while trying to write an opera about Gesualdo. To date, only one person has written an opera about a composer and then gone on to become the subject of an opera. But maybe we will one day see a work entitled Pfitzner.
Ignaz von Seyfried, Die Ochsenmenuett, 1823 (Haydn)
Friedrich von Flotow, Alessandro Stradella, 1837/44
Louis Niedermeyer, Stradella, 1837
Charles Luce-Varlet, L'élève de Presbourg, 1840 (Haydn)
César Franck, Stradella, 1841
Franz von Suppé, Franz Schubert, 1864
Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, 1868 (Hans Sachs)
Flotow, Die Musikanten (La jeunesse de Mozart), 1870
Suppé, Joseph Haydn, 1887
Rimsky-Korsakov, Mozart and Salieri, 1897
Stanislao Falchi, Il trillo del diavolo, 1899 (Tartini)
Chopin arr. Giacomo Orefice, Chopin, 1901
Schubert arr. Heinrich Berté, Das Dreimäderlhaus, 1916 (Schubert)
Hans Pfitzner, Palestrina, 1917
Franz Lehár, Paganini, 1925
Reynaldo Hahn, Mozart, 1925
Paul Graener, Friedemann Bach, 1931
Bernhard Paumgartner, Rossini in Neapel, 1936
Peter Maxwell Davies, Taverner, 1972
Francesco d'Avalos, Maria di Venosa, 1992 (Gesualdo)
Alfred Schnittke, Gesualdo, 1993
Franz Hummel, Gesualdo, 1996
Salvatore Sciarrino, Luci mie traditrici, 1998 (Gesualdo)
Scott Glasgow, The Prince of Venosa, 1998 (Gesualdo)
Franz Hummel, Styx, 2001 (Handel)
Bo Holten, Gesualdo—Shadows, 2003
Luca Francesconi, Gesualdo Considered as a Murderer, 2004
Jonathan Harvey, Wagner Dream, 2007
Marc-André Dalbavie, Gesualdo, 2010
Gabriel Kahane, February House, 2012 (features Benjamin Britten)
Dante De Silva, Gesualdo, Prince of Madness, 2013
Michael Dellaira, The Death of Webern, 2016
Avner Dorman, Wahnfried, 2017 (features Siegfried Wagner)
Todd Machover, Schoenberg in Hollywood, 2018
Johannes Boer, La Tragedia di Claudio M., 2018 (Monteverdi)
Tarik O’Regan, The Phoenix, 2019 (about da Ponte, features Mozart)
Victoria Bond, Clara, 2019 (Clara Schumann)
Elliott Sharp, Die Grösste Fuge, 2024 (Beethoven)
Ella Milch-Sheriff, Alma, 2024 (Alma Mahler-Werfel)
Sarah Kirkland Snider, Hildegard, 2025