Music: Are Haydn Operas Coming Back?

Neglected for two centuries, they abound with sparkling scores

If I want to hear good opera," the Empress Maria Theresa-once remarked, "I must go to Eszterháza." Such was the fame of Joseph Haydn's musical establishment at the country palace of his patron, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, that even crowned heads journeyed from Vienna to rural Hungary to hear his operas. Yet today the two dozen or so operas by one of music's most important, beloved figures are the least known of his major works. It is an undeserved obscurity.

As Haydn's 250th birthday is celebrated...

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